Shay: Favorites

Jan 2013 Shay

Crayon

Jan 2013 Shay

Andrea Lopez

Crayon

There are so many colors in a crayon box.
Everyone has their favorite.
Mine just happens to be you.

You're the pink to my hearts that overfill the page with your name written inside.
You're the blue to the tear on my stick figures that I draw every time we say goodbye.
You're the red to the fire I doodle when ever I remember our last kiss.
You're the yellow I shade in the smiley faces as you make me grin.
Your're the green to the color of nature, that has a beauty so very close to yours.
You're the orange that shows our warm hugs like the suns light reflects the sea shores.
You're the purple when we're apart, there's loyalty there that I trust with all my heart.
You're the black to my night sky, surrounded by the twinkling stars of our outrageous memories.
You're the white to heaven's clouds, and its not as far as it seems, i'm there whenever you're with me

But most of all,
You are my personal color.
A color no one could use or borrow
I'll use you yesterday, today, and tomorrow
And never get old.

In a sixty-four pack box,
You are my crayon.

Jan 2013 Shay

And While We're All Still Here

Jan 2013 Shay

Cake Jazpick

And While We're All Still Here

We Haven't Found an Anchor Yet (But This'll Have to Do)

...

Tear the clock off the wall
We'll say we invented
A world where time passes
The way it was meant to

We'll build it out of bottlecaps
Or cadences of songs
That were sung a long long time ago
And will be sung long after
We're all gone

It was good to sing along

Or build it out of unmade beds
Or scratches on the walls
Or the things we said before
We went to bed and
All the parts we can't recall

I know I loved it all

Our hearts are still red
And the walls are still white
And we haven't got a map
But we've got all night

The sky may turn black
But the ocean's still blue
We haven't found an anchor yet
But this'll have to do

Tear the clock off the wall
We'll say we invented
A world where time passes
The way it was meant to

Throw yourself to the wind
Let it take us wherever it will
We've hours and pages
and glasses to fill

Art for Aeroplanes

It was something, it had to be
something about the sound
The wind chimes made
That reminded me

Below flickering shapes
of the last silhouettes of the leaves
in trees in autumn yards we
made our way through

The melody was
Aimless and the
Cadence never came
So much different than the
Saddest thing
A symphony could play

Like the sounds from our childhood
Resolved into a wordless hum
We understood

It was something, perhaps
A particular way that the light
Hit the street
That reminded me

Connecting the dots
On those stumbling walks between
Softer parts of mid December's
Muddy sting

It had rained and made those
multi coloured
columns on the ground
We went walking down the middle
there was
No one else around

I think I felt the way we did
In all our favorite hiding spots
When we were kids

It was gone in an instant
It was gone in an instant
And so were we
We had places to be

Afternoon's grid
Of jet trails overhead
Looked nothing like the lines we would've left
Had we spilled paint behind us
Everywhere we threw ourselves
When that high sun had set

Not sure what we're looking for
If anything at all

Something that we've seen before?
Something that we lost?

Or maybe this is it, for all we know

The light was bright, we turned away
And the bits of it that stayed
Looked something like the softly focused
Half remembered shape of things
From sun baked roads so long ago
On rainy days

Not sure what we're looking for
If anything at all

Something that we've seen before?
Something that we lost?

Maybe this is it, all I know is
If our faces showed a little of the lights inside our heads
We put on quite a show

And so
One more for the road

One Thousand Little Rooms

We've left our shoes
By the doors of a thousand places
Much like this one
Before

I've seen those colours
In the eyes of a thousand faces
Much like yours
And yours and yours and yours

Marilee is pounding the keys of
A piano all covered in ash
Below bottles in a row on a windowsill
With paint stains on the glass
Paint stains on the glass

I think we're made up of
Sparsely scattered instances
In places
In time

Like shapes of cities at night
Are but a million filaments
Of incandescent light

Marilee still pounding the keys of
A piano all covered in ash
Below bottles in a row on a windowsill
With paint stains on the glass

And our conversation fell
And our conversation rose
And our conversation fell
And our conversation rose
And all the things we had to say
Overlapped the notes to make a space
Your restless island souls could call a coast

One thousand little rooms
Where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
From little rooms where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
From little rooms where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
The little rooms where we light our little fires

Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight

Farewell Fires & Flying Machines

That night you brought a camera
That night your hands shook, but
It was the closest that you ever came, I'd say
To how it really looked

That night you wore a sweater
You left it lying on the floor
The folds I traced with tired eyes like some old map with lines that led to
Places we'd forgotten things before

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadences of our favorite songs
Give them a shape
They're prone to fade away

We still had lights behind our eyelids
Long after we'd all gone to bed
I'd love to save them but I've never been a painter
And so I write it down instead

And I'll fill one thousand pages
I'll write whatever comes to mind
And on the day I find myself one thousand miles away
Perhaps a part of me will still exist behind

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadences of our favorite songs
While I'm describing fleeting dreams
Of faces, streets, and wine
We'll make them real

Oh, but what colour was that fire anyways, my dear?

When I leave I'm going very far away
When I leave I'm going very far away

When I leave I'm going very far away
I don't want to see your colours fade
When I leave I'm going very far away
I don't want to see your colours fade

I don't want to see you
Looking like those grey remains
Of last night's farewell fires
Waiting to be swept away

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadence of our favorite song
Each and every brightly coloured, tired eye
We'll leave a mark at all
The highest spots we rise

There are things which have no shape

While We're All Still Here**

We hid away in places
No one else would ever think to look
Imagined that the things we said
Were inked and set in pages
Of some great book

Well in a way they were
I think
Although we'll never know
Quite how the whole thing ends

When the sun begins to rise
When all our lines are said
When, someday this moment's passed us by
The way we seem to pass our shadows
As we're passed by cars at night

Will we see pages?
Looking like familiar flags
Will we see them through Old Eyes?

It was hand on heart
It was heart on sleeve
Impossible to miss, but
It was hard to believe
It was staring at the sun
It was stumbling blind
It was a place
It was a time
It was hard to define
It was the sum of all our footprints
And the paint we may have spilled
It was a little like a blueprint
Of a thing we'd planned to build
It was the times we had to whisper
And the things we had to shout
It was the candle that we lit
To see the last one burning out
It was hazy
It was aimless
It was staying the course
It was a weighty affair
With direction and force
It was a world that we built
Out of bits of thin air
It was bent light in a parting glass we've yet to share

We're all still here

There will come a day
When the sky goes dark with
Aeroplanes, angels, and black clouds

But we're still here
For now

There will come a day
When the sky goes dark with
Aeroplanes, angels, and black clouds

But we're still here
For now

...

These are the lyrics for a five song mini-album I've been writing (obsessing over) for the past couple months.

Jan 2013 Shay

Reflections and Resolutions

Jan 2013 Shay

Krista Anna

Reflections and Resolutions

When achieving your dream becomes anxiety and failure becomes guilt, remember: it is okay to leave the pressure to find the passion.

2. You cannot force yourself to love that boy, even if he is perfect. It will only break his heart.

3. When the right boy enters your life, he will be far from perfection: a beautiful blonde mess even your band teacher labels a bad idea.

4. It is easy to be seduced by a picture-perfect image of success.

5. It is impossible to stay practical and balanced when falling in love. Ignore your mother’s advice and let yourself be swept away.

6. A high school diploma represents more than hard work and passing grades: in those four years, you grew into someone you can be proud of.

7. Treasure the present instead of waiting for the future.

8. Don't forget to be yourself even when you are changing.

9. Sometimes, you explode. Do not stop yourself from experience all the ugly emotions.

10. Never rush recovery.

11. Expectations don't always understand that healing takes time.

12. Trust this: you will be okay.

Life is the hardest thing to love though it is the worthiest. Even on those days when the sickness blinds you, life is beautiful. Even on those days when the temptation of kitchen knives and the pill bottle on the second shelf of your mother’s medicine cabinet pull you to pluck your pulse in perfect pizzacto, you must let life remind you: you are worth it.

Dec 2012 Shay

The Things I Carry

Dec 2012 Shay

Tyler G

The Things I Carry

I carry the shallow weight of my own regrets.
I carry the guilt of my mother who felt she could’ve done more for my grandmother.
Nights spent, teary-eyed phone calls to the nursing home.
I carry the comprehension of my father.
Hundreds of times he’s defeated me at chess, at card games.
I am his knowledge.
I carry sorrow from soccer games lost and triumph from games won with the stench of wet grass and caked on mud still fresh in my memory.

I carry the weight of high school, the pressure to get into college, the weight of rumors and the regret of not paying attention in class.
Feeling hopeless and defeated when I fail a test, though I remember I can carry the power of success.
I carry the daily jeers and spite of my peers and my teachers.
I carry the burden of my mother’s size eight firmly up my *** when I don’t do what I’m told.
I carry three-day weekends and the joy of a snow day.

I carry my blood, my veins, my organs.
I carry my bones, my cartilage, my flesh and my hair.
I carry my beating heart and the sound it makes letting everyone around me and myself to know that I’m still very much alive.
I carry the ability of perfect hindsight vision, the ability of blind foresight.

I carry my friends, the pressure of their own burdens.
I own the ability to make them smile, the ability to cheer them up when I don’t know how to help myself.
I’ve carried some of them for as long as I can remember; some I can’t carry anymore, and some I’ve just started to carry.

I carry love and passion; I carry hate and abhor.
I carry confusion, delirium, nostalgia of days past.
I carry insomnia and sleepless nights dreaming up at my ceiling of life to come.
I carry my dreams, both physical and mental.
I carry what I aspire to be.
I carry photography, a story of my life through pictures, through captivity, through still frame.
I carry my wishes.

I carry the beach, the waves that crash down onto the shore and onto me and the salty residue that lands on my flesh and hair from staying out too long.

I carry stupidity, I carry charm and I carry luck.
I carry the regret of anonymity and the fear of being alone.
We all carry that; no one wants to spend life alone.
We carry expensive wedding bands and the pressure to say “Yes” and the hope that she’ll say it.

I carry the everlasting gaze of older relatives, some who have passed on to a better world.
They won’t have to carry anything anymore.

I carry countless vacations and holidays spent with my cousins and the millions of laughs we have shared.

I carry reminiscences of vacations and of meeting new people, people who I tried to stay in contact with, but alas, distance prevents friendship.
I carry the knowledge of the traveled world and the confusion of the uninhabited, undiscovered land.
I am a world traveler, I am a superhero; I am what I want to be and I carry that.

I carry a tainted mind.
A mind spoiled by politics, by war, greed and corruption of not only the government, but of my parents as well.
I carry the ignorance of thinking I’m right and everyone else is wrong, the false sense that I know what is really going on in the world and that I, and I alone, can make a difference.

I carry the benefit of living in a prosperous nation, a flourishing town.
I carry the thought of uncertainty of impoverish nations and how they live everyday without food and water, while I sit here and type on my own personal laptop.

I carry teenage angst.
I carry thoughts and memories of former lovers.
Some girls who have grown up to be different than what they once were, some who haven’t changed a bit.
I carry the thoughts of wonder, should I have said something to her?

I carry individualism, not being afraid of letting you know who I am and what I do.
I am myself and if you can’t deal with it then you won’t have to carry me anymore.
I no longer carry these words; my thought have been poured onto this paper.
My future holds the risk of not knowing what I will carry tomorrow, but I know I will carry life.
I know I may not be able to carry this all, but one thing is for certain: I will carry myself.

Dec 2012 Shay

The Vows

Dec 2012 Shay

Vijayalakshmi Harish

The Vows

Would you stop for a minute
and lie down by my side,
look up at the stars with me
beneath this blue night sky?

Would you tell me your story
your secrets and your fears
and trust me to keep them safely
as we peel away the layers?

Would you take me as I am
hurts and tears and all?
and seal each scar with a kiss
help me stand up when I fall?

Hold my hand and walk with me
I’ll stay forever by your side
hold you when you stumble
lean on you when I’m tired.

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
13.12.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

Not entirely happy with this one..been working on it since yesterday afternoon. Suggestions for improvement are most welcome! :)

Dec 2012 Shay

The Studio Tea

Dec 2012 Shay

Nigel Morgan

The Studio Tea

When the fragile music dies
you put away your voice,
and with the passion
of Campion’s songs
still running in our veins
there is another duet,
and so intense its harmony
that only the need for food
brings it to a ritardando.

In the dark kitchen
I cut the crusts from brown bread,
making sandwiches, cream-cheesed,
the sliced cucumus sativus
flecked with mint and cress,
and placed on blue plates,
surrounded by olives, grapes
- an apricot apiece.

Then for the coda:
(in the bluest of blue bowls)
musk strawberries lounging
on a bed of rubus idaeus.

We troop upstairs
with our matching plates,
and I lay the Welsh-woolled rug
on the studio floor.
We place beside them
heavy glasses of mint and honeyed tea,
and eat immediately, hungrily.

Later, still aflame
from such music and its crystalled verse,
we lie amidst the studio tea
making sure we are not fiction, but wholly real.
You say, ‘Perhaps raspberry is the new fig’.
and place this fruit between my lips.

Dec 2012 Shay

What is True

Dec 2012 Shay

Danny S

What is True

Wander
It’s a beautiful thing
Rocks under my hands
Leaves under my feet
The world is alive,
And I am too.

Into the woods
Lost among the trees,
Older and wiser,
They take me in and
I can breathe again.

I am not afraid
Protect myself no longer
I return laughing,
Resurface as I truly am.
The bruises from daily life
Seem not to sting so badly
Anymore.

Fully healed
The trees then open
To share their perspective
To teach me
What is true.

Dec 2012 Shay

For Giveness

Dec 2012 Shay

The Silver Albatross

For Giveness

Explain to me,
mother,
why it is that
I can breathe
easier with his hole in my chest?

It is about
time
that I realize
I've done this
to
myself.

It is about
time
that I realize
I
should give up.

The waves crash against my thighs.
The waves crash against my pelvis.
The waves crash against my stomach.
The waves crash against my chest.
H
hA
haR
harD
hardE
hardeR
softeR
softE
sofT
soF
sO
so what? so what if I drown?

Let the reaper eat my stomach contents.
Let Him drink my spinal fluid;
let it trickle down his fleshless chin.

Recycle my eyes so that I may
see.
Recycle my heart so that I may
smile.
Recycle my brain so that I may

forget.

Nothing's funny when you're bleeding.