Hi.
Can I just say that you’re beautiful?
I can’t see you.
I can’t hear you.
I don’t know if you can sing like an angel or are as off key as a drunkard on Christmas.
I don’t know if you’re porcelain pale or have laugh lines and freckles on your cheeks.
This isn’t a pick-up line.
There’s no punchline cause there’s no joke.
Just me.
Ordinary, imperfect, me, telling you that you’re beautiful.
It needed to be said.
It needed to be said because I’m one thousand percent sure that you’ve never said it to yourself.
I’m one thousand percent sure that you’ve never looked in a mirror and loved every single little part of you.
I’m pretty sure that you’ve looked into a mirror and said ‘Heck yeah, I’m lookin’ fiiine today’
But fine is…well…fine.
It’s not beautiful.
And today means today.
Not every day.
So, hi.
I don’t know your name.
I don’t know where you’re from or where you’re going.
I don’t know the color of your skin or the pigment of your dreams or who you love with an infinity that burrows itself into the very tip of your bones.
Quite frankly, I don’t need to.
Some cultures have a tradition of naming people for their personality. I don’t know you, but I’m sure you’re a thousand scribbles of a pencil knotted in lovely uncoordinated whorls that paint themselves into a smile.
I don’t know those scribbles
So, for now, you are Beautiful.
Beautiful, and I don’t care whether you think that’s a cotton candy sweet cliche or not, Beautiful your name is every single piece of you that locks together with puzzle pieces that only fit you, Beautiful, you are highs and lows and tears and laughter, a soul that soaks up warmth like it’s sunlight and huddles away from the cold by blowing on sparks of imagination.
Beautiful is the name that spreads your heart out until it fills your chest, pushing against your breastbone until it feels like there’s an ache, right there, from pure joy.
Beauty is not perfect.
Perfect is cold, so very very cold.
Beautiful, you are not perfect.
That does not mean you are not Beautiful.
You are every single facet of your mind, body, and soul, mirroring off each other in endless harmony, sharp love and soft frustration, pushing billions of molecules aside every second with just a tap of your finger.
Aren’t you extraordinary?
Call yourself Beautiful, call yourself by your name, say it as softly as you need to, as loud as you can bear it, let it fill you, take you in, take every part of your beautiful self in. You don’t have to smile if you don’t need to, but let sink into your muscles and your blood, let it blink out of the tips of your fingers.
You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t have do be perfect. You just don’t have to.
Because beautiful is not trying.
Beautiful is just being you.

From the one who needed to hear it most,

Hey beautiful.

Can peanuts breathe within their shell?
When they’re eaten, might they go to hell?
Or are they, truly, lifeless nuts
No sadness, madness, or stagnant ruts

Perhaps the peanut has a king
A mighty ruler that makes the law
Or perhaps the peanut has a queen
A tender mother without flaw

Who knows, the peanut could be grand
With magical tales of Peanut land
Castles, Wizards and Warrior hunts
Pursuing their foes, Macadamia Nuts!

Galloping upon their steeds
Peanut’s charge! Peanuts Breathe!
Screams so loud the birds doth fall
Pulverizing the enemy’s wall

Now the Peanuts have an “in”
They focus their gaze upon the ****
Hoarding together & funneling thru
Macadamia nuts receiving a chill

Piercing shells for 3 long days
Injured Peanuts in gruesome ways
Mournful moans of agony
Numbers declined, so tragically

Is this the end of Peanut land?
Why couldn’t the Peanut still be grand?
“Get up I say and finish your quest!”
The Peanuts did and fought their best

Above the smoke, white flags flew
The Peanuts emerged victorious!
Striding thru familiar front gates
Returning home, so glorious!

Perhaps, in fact, this story is true
That Peanuts breathe like me and you
But one might wonder of Peanut land…
How Peanuts ride with no hands

And if you truly wish to know
How Peanuts talk and Peanuts grow
Open your ears and do come hither
“Duh! The Peanuts have a Wizard!”

Oh, the tales and jokes they tell
One day, they’ll be on TV
Perhaps in films known by all
Like, “Harry Peanut,” aired by BBC

Or, maybe they are just meant for our bars
And smashed and spread upon your bread…
But next time you eat this salt sprinkled treat,
Ponder, “am I sure this Peanut is dead?”

- BPW

Big ships, small ships, yachts and dingeys
Floating across the mighty sea
Carving their way, displacing their weight
To keep afloat the Captain and First mate.

Old ships, new ships, schooners and cruise liners
Have crossed paths throughout the ages old
Once to explore, make claim, pirate and fight
Now to wine and dine on a luxurious bite

Salted beef, rock hard bread and weevil-friendly biscuits
A 3 course meal fit for Old Salts alike
Weevils & worms and bugs of all kind
Along with sparse portions of meat, you might find

French wine, filet mignon, sushi and pastries
Buffets and fine dining, variety is key
All you can eat, whenever you'd like
No chores, no work, just eating all night'

What a contrast exists between these two worlds
Only 2 to 300 hundred years apart
Once grimy, risky, arduous and fraught
Now fancy, lazy, and much to be bought

What if the Old Salts could teleport to today
And live aboard our floating hotels?
With no masts to climb or sheets to tend
Would they break or would they bend?

I suppose that switch would be easy enough
But send us back to Pirate-ridden waters
You'd be sure never to hear from us again
Swabbing the deck would **** us alone
Not to mention the food and disease of back when.

- BPW 
Dec. 11, 2013

Cake, the meat of culinary delights;
Icing, the sauce.

Cake, the main entree, the special of the night;
Icing, the decorative garnish.

Without Cake, Icing has no purpose
A clump, a blob, of meaningless goop.

1 spoonful of Icing alone and you're done.
Spread out amongst the firm surface of Cake though,
Icing becomes much more interesting, and much more fun.

I am the Cake.
You are the Icing.
Without me, the base, the entree, the meat
You, the sauce, the garnish and blob, don't matter

You can be the Icing to your own Cake or to another
But without me, you'll do nothing but rot teeth and smother

So, to enjoy you, Icing, to the absolute fullest
I must, first, combine the ingredients, stir and bake
Because it is vital, if one is to appreciate your sweet taste,
To properly prepare my foundation, the meat, your Cake.

- BPW

Stepping forward, I curl my toes over the edge.
Gazing down, I breathe in the expanse that lay before me.
Limitless – almost frightening because there is no end.

I feel it calling deep within my being.
I hear it in my blood.
The peak of my inhale.
The void of my exhale.
It lives.  It breathes.  It bleeds.

In my dream, I lean farther forward and fall.
The rushing wind encompassing my body
With a million tiny fingers holding me tight.
I feel safe in this embrace and close my eyes.
Oh, what a lover the wind is…

Awake, I recoil at the limitless expanse before me.
It's too big, too large for words and thus too much to take.
I am so tiny compared to this world of worlds out there;
It will consume me, no questions asked.
Better to thrive in a limited existence
then to perish among greatness never attained.

So around I go, placing my back to the eager wind
and the edge of imminent destruction
And into the warmth that now lay before me.
Ah, my familiar friend, your rays soothe my soul
as my mother's soft hands did so long ago.
If only you could sing me to sleep,
into a dream of sweet possibilities.


I could soar through that rushing wind
with my arms outstretched as wide as my smile
surrendering to the invisible currents of afar.
I could reach peaks so incredibly vast
where even the clouds bowed below
and the warmth of mother sun is so strong
that I would never again go hungry for song.

Instead I lay stranded in this purgatorial wasteland
Afraid of what's right and discontent with what's left.
Which would be fine if what's right here and right now
was even near to the perfection I crave.

Ha, perfection, what a sweetly packaged lie
Served on a platter plated with gold, made from mold
And crafted with tears from countless, unfounded but treacherous fears
driving even the insane to redefine the limits of insanity, it's crazy
how something that does not exist can drive us so mad.

You know what's also crazy?
Standing here with my arms outstretched as wide
as my mesmerized, sunburned and dehydrated eyes.
What does this stagnation prove?
What do I gain from this over exposure of familiar muck
besides a cancerous vocabulary and an ill-fated mind?

No, this warmth is best felt on the move.
Running, jumping, dancing through trees
and high-fiving leaves with my face
focused fiercely forward towards
that limitless expanse
I so fervently feared before.

Well, these idled hands
have had enough twiddling thumbs for this lifetime.
They were made, instead, to soar beyond
the greatest and most distant horizon ever seen.
It is time I set aside this melancholic diatribe
and rise from these two dimensional sewers.
I do not thrive on a sheet of paper
constricted to one direction or the other
void of the peripheral magnitude that actual life affords.
I am a 3D, no 4D, no Unlimited-D Being
And I will settle for NO leash.

So around I go, placing my back to
this victim-clad paradigm of "I can't" and "they won't"
(I've should enough on myself for one day)
and into the rushing wind that now lay before me once again.
A smile creeps upon my face as I realize the
Eager wind that was once my foe is not taunting me
But cheering me on, promising the secret of everlasting flight.

With the warmth caressing my now sun-kissed back,
I step forward and curl my toes over the edge.
Gazing out, in all directions at once,
I breathe in the unlimited expanse unfolding before me,
Outstretch my arms even wider than my smile,

And I Fall.


- BPW

Safe and sound and nearly drowned
That's where I prefer to be
Deep, deep down is where I must go
As the storm picks up fast and I want slow

Nearly drowned is not fully drowned but instead a good thing
Exasperating perhaps, exhausting for sure but yet I still breathe and sing
This substance that I have sunk deep amongst to the stillness down below
Is organic, power-infused, and passes, effortlessly, in and out of my nose.

I breathe and gaze upwards, up, up, up towards the choppy and hell-bent sea
And as I sink lower, the importance of this egg-shell picks up it's bags and flees
It's insignificance glows bright and I smile in the light, inhaling the rainbow of colors
I am safe and sound, and although nearly drowned, I am much more alive than others.

-BPW

Balance.  What a charged and pregnant word.

Balance.  Common in our daily vernacular
but void of it's innate and innermost meaning

Balance - what do you see?
The Golden scales of antiquity?

What a dichotomous lie
For Balance is multi-planar, multi-dimensional
Multitudes of exponential, fractal-like branches
Hanging from the largest trunk of the largest tree with the largest network of life-providing roots spreading in all directions at once like a wild-fire with unlimited fuel

Balance.  It's perfectly symmetrical reflection
Only distorted by the waters of our perception
Thrives and simultaneously strives for connection
Connection to the mirrors of eternity
The pristine, naked, flesh-covered bodies of pure vulnerability, set free to explore this spherical dream

Balance is a friend, but left unseen, reaching for our touch without so much of a glance towards it's arduous efforts to bond with the deep dwelling dreams of Souls,
Balance can be distorted, as the tree is, in the ripples of our confused and distracted minds.

Crack!  A branch breaks.
Balance falters, catches itself and picks up its severed limb - a sacrifice, for the greater good.  The only good.

Crack!  Another branch breaks.
Balance steps to redistribute it's misaligned weight
A sacrifice, for the greater good.  The only good.

A fitting mantra.

Crack!  Crack!  Crack!  Branches breaking back to back
Plummeting to the cold hard ground.
This sudden decay is too much to handle
The limbs of this great tree, the greatest amongst all cannot regrow at the speed at which the others wither

Ironically, balance is now imbalanced

Shaking, desperately grasping the ground with its roots  to stay upright, at the very least, to remain present, persistent, possible, but, most importantly, present
Present for those vulnerable naked bodies to one day glance past their distorted waters and into the depths of what truly is...

A force, so strong, so humble, so forgiving reaching out through it's remaining, fatigue-strewn branches in a dire need to make contact with the branches of our mortality

When branches unite, as they shall, as they always do from time to time,
Imbalance is washed away as waves wash the shore
And Balance emerges from the distorted waters, now retreating, pulled by the tide of self-awareness

Perfectly, our fingers fill the gaps of our grief-stricken but eternally determined ally and meet with it's tender stumps, the necessary wounds of time
A fusion of worlds meld the two together in a forge as hot as the sun but as nourishing as a mother's touch

Balance, in all it's glory, sewn to us through the channels of our consciousness is now, truly, and undeniably,

Balanced.


- Brian Patrick Williams
11/13/2013