Sluggishly you frump to school
passing by people
whose faces you'll soon forget.
      They don't matter,
don't waste your time.
            tick tock.

You go to practice
your meeting
rehearsal.
      Whatever it is
you group yourself in
to feel like you belong.
      And for what else?
To look good on a college application
maybe; the motions of it
are the only thing
that matters.
Paying attention, making memories
is not traditional thought process.
How will that look on a transcript?
            tick tock.

You mindlessly drive home
not paying attention
to the miniscule details
of the nature around you.
      It doesn't directly effect you
so you see no point in admiring it.
what's the need?
            tick tock.

You lock yourself in your room
and open the books
that surrounded you
for seven hours already today
and work for two or three more
hours of your precious evening.
      You do it because
that's what is expected of you.
      Monotonous efforts that someday
you will be unable to recall.
            tick tock.

                          When was the last time you have done something
                                  that you will be able to vividly remember
                                                      years from now?

You are
wasting
your
time.
                                                          ­                                                                 ­                                 Go. *Live.

Lying there lifeless

pretending...

Pretending to be asleep
the gray ceiling drips onto my face
with each passing second the
room gets smaller and
hotter

Smothered by restlessness
suffocated by longing
I sigh a heavy sigh
expelling another moment from my muddled life
debating on whether I should get up or not:

     The effort of pulling off the iron covers
     the indecision, the fear
     afraid of being caught


Sneaking out to do naughty things?
                  I think not.
Something I shouldn't be doing?
                     Hardly.


Taking slow strides across the room
my eyes adjust
just enough
to bring forth indistinguishable shapes
I rely only on the silent energy
that the darkness emits
my ears pivot to pick up the blackness' ululating drone
I tune into its mystic frequency
abandoning all mixed signals that came about today

The slits of oceanic blue light
slather the window's opposing wall
an illuminescence too scarce to peg the door's frame

I twist the cold brass **** until I hear the click of metal

Tip - toe - ing . . .
through the never-ending runway-hallway that seems to  

S T    R       E          C            H        o  n   f    o     r        M  I       L           E                  S 

strafing crucified
agaist the wall
still hitting every
creak I had been aiming to miss

Descending down
the steps
I reach the
Flat 
one more step down and my excitement rises

I glide across wooden floors
stirring up invisible dust...
I am the lazy particles that float in the air
minus the fanned out beams of sunlight
shining through cracked blinds
to scream out my presence
and fuel my pestiness

Finally I am close
close enough to breathe steam on the storm door
remove the stick

push up the lock

pull. slide. open.

Ahhhh
The cold air knocks the wind into me

My first barefoot step is into a pool of icewater
turning to close the door I enter hypothermia
my body crystalizes, cracks, shatters, and re-crystalizes again
sitting down on the step I become inorganic

I tilt my empty heavy head up to the heavanly sky,
howling my thoughts to our silver satellite

I try to find comfort from afar - comfort my bed alone could not supply
my insides evaporate from my
frozen skin and
disperse into the air
my particles grow incandescent wings
the kind that effortlessly ***** and flutters

My molecules are ****** up towards the sky
they leave me behind to join the stars
I welcome their departure and wave goodbye
I hope when they return they bring back good tidings

Now that my insides are gone, my particles adrift,
My frozen-solid body is hollow
and so, a weight is lifted
(even if only temporarily,
the numbness is temporary)

Still gazing at the infinite clusters of stars like
woven celestial patchwork
littered across infinite black plains
I feel content admiring the lone stars
adventurous and brave as they come

    Feeling like those lone stars,
    trying to find my place
    I snuck out to my backyard

All I needed was some space

poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul

it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.

if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.

as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.

and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.

yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.

then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.

if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.