Appreciate a pure sunrise
See all its glory
Yet just before Amazing Dawn
Has its own story

Before you have a choice to make
Turning left or right
First pause to contemplate the spot
Right within your sight

Body language will belie the
Loud clang of false words
Look into a person’s eyes or
Miss the message heard

What makes a brilliant orchestra
Or pastoral scene
What defines their beauty is the
Spaces in between

In the pauses, in the spaces
Feel your resting hearts
Waiting for the curtain rising
Just before it parts

All the spaces in the painting
Give it life and depth
Sea shells overlooked make precious
All the ones you’ve kept

Hold that hole in that sweet donut
Just before it’s dunk
And keep an eye right on the ball
Right before it’s sunk

Anticipating Christmas morn
Or Baby’s first step
The moment he’s still holding on
Right before he leapt

Savor that bite, unopened gift
Mere ghost of a smile
Forget the end, appreciate
Running your last mile

In Aleppo, they do not weep
for how can one
weep in wounded time.

Souls bantered
piled up, interlocked
dead & dull
lost in dusts
in a cold frenzy night.

Oppress Eden
but not Aleppo
not today, not tonight
not in this time
where children can’t weep
to save their tears
for them to drink
& not their blood
while trapped
within collapsed walls
of the wailing world.

Children of Aleppo
cry not, die not.

Memories will never bury you
to the infested ground
saturated by psychedelic bombs
& festered by maddening
cataclysm of human cold art.

The old world tries to redeem you,
to let you live, live with living
but it cannot for how can the world
try to win, then and again
tears back to emotive impulses
breaking the wind pulsating
in the plane sanity of mind?

In Aleppo, dead men forgot
to weep. Forgetful men
wept yet weeping
with no clause why.

Aeroplanes are still there
buzzing the sky,
bombing your hearts.

Aleppo, your body might die
tonight & several nights more
but memory, in this wounded time
will never bury you to ash
for Aleppo, young child, will live
beyond wounds, beyond cries.

from her window she could see
the shells of buildings the bombs battered--gray concrete
ghosts, haunting in their silence

Father said his ears
hadn't stopped ringing since the attacks, though he still
could hear her playing

and he expected her practice to continue
for one day, he promised, prayers would prevail, peace
would return, and her song would be heard

play, he entreated, for ivory, black
and white, has forgotten the evil of men, their carnage;
the notes know nothing except to be played

and to give pause for hope, when
more trenchant sounds demanded one’s attention,
still the song must remain

Dear Alex,

I listened to President Obama read the letter you wrote today,
To an unfortunate little boy from Aleppo, and how you’d like to be his protege.
In preparation for his visit, you would gather all you’re most precious possessions,
Offering to him love, friendship and a gift called freedom of expression.

You would teach him and he would share his world with you,
A bonding camaraderie colored in Red, White and Blue.
You my friend, have a heart of gold like a treasure untold,
Because showing love to others…..is a longing in your soul.

Thanks you Alex!

how do you expect
a plant to grow if you
do not water it?

[believe in
me]

A man once came to a teacher of great renown
And asked…
“What is the greatest function of a teacher?”
To which the teacher replied…
“To Motivate”
“But surely” the man replied...
“The greatest function of a teacher must be to teach!”
To which the teacher replied…
*“If I only teach them all that I know,
Then they will only learn all that I know,
And think they have learnt all there is to know.
But if I motivate them to seek knowledge,
Then they will learn all that I know,
And still thirst for more; much more than all I know.”