I know love by how the tears
glistened in my mother's face
as I came home crying one day

I know love by how a passing
stranger changed a fellow stranger's
life with just one look of sympathy

I know love by how a beggar feeds others
before feeding himself despite his
insides telling him to live for himself

I know love by how a young girl
overcame the mean kids in school
with her kind words knowing she did not
deserve it all

I know love by how my best friend  
desperately stopped my hand
from pulling the trigger
gun, pressed coldly to my head

I know love by how you
whisper sweet melodies
in my ears
as I write
this poem for people
to see love everywhere

Verdicts flung out even without gavels in their hands
Justice's muse fumbles in the dark
Her scales tipping to one side
As partiality has become more burdensome
One failure makes a person
One flawed idea creates a prison of belief
Everyone acts as the jury
Playing criticism like a big survival game
No winners, all self-appointed judges

Whatever did Sylvia Plath
and Anne Sexton
have in common?

—two great minds
of the literary canon
who drove themselves
to the proverbial crimson

One gassed herself
like a condemned Jew
the other stayed in her car
letting the breathlessness brew
A melody of the swans that
not even Beethoven
could undo

What could have been
in their poetry
that consumed them in
the deepest misery
—like one of a dark soliloquy
or a dying plea?

Dig yourself
but not too much
or you'll be setting a* **grave

I think we ruin children by telling them
Crying is bad
When crying is being vulnerable
An expression of pain so natural
So they grow up to be ashamed of emotions

I think we ruin children by telling them
They have to become someone
When being themselves is already being someone
So they grow up wanting to be someone they are not

I think we ruin children by telling them
Disobeying the rules is inexcusable
When sometimes breaking the rules,
Is freeing one’s self from the expectations of others
So they grow up to feel insecure in the face of uncertainty

I think we ruin children by telling them
Monsters are supernatural creatures
When monsters can also take form in humans
Who exploit, manipulate and trample on others
So they grow up unable to confront even their own monsters
For how could something so unimaginable take form in themselves?

I think we ruin children by telling them
Punishment is discipline
Spanking, verbal fear to shut them up good and easy
When there is a thing called gentle discipline
One that requires less pain and more understanding
So they grow up to become aggressors
Believing they are heroes who save others from disorder

I think we ruin children by telling them
School is the best way to getting around life
Drowning in grades, homeworks and activities just to get by
When experience teaches far more important lessons
School can only teach in words
So they grow up to believing the good life is a tried
And tested pattern and there are no other ways to live

I think we ruin children by telling them
To avoid fears instead of confronting them
When the dark, cockroaches, dogs, can be overcome
So they treat fear as an enemy
Instead of being a friend, a lesson
One that teaches them to be braver, to be stronger

I think we ruin children by telling them
What you wear is what you are
Frills and laces for girls, ties and pants for boys
When anyone can wear just what the **** they want
Clothing is a choice in as much as who they want to be
So they grow up confined by what the crowd is wearing
Fearing any diversion would make them odd

I think we ruin children
By making them believe that success
Comes in fancy clothes, cars, a truckload of money
When happiness is the real mark of a well lived life

I think we ruin children
By telling them being alone is a shameful thing
When the key to understanding one’s self
Is through the painful yet productive solitude
That people so likely shame
So they grow up believing their happiness
Is in other people’s hands

I think we ruin children
By telling them outer strength is the real strength
When there are children who
Cannot lift their own chairs
But have the strongest, bravest hearts
Fighting their way into sad days
Like the heroes that they are

I think we ruin children mostly and importantly
By believing
That they are wrong
That they are too young to understand
When all the while
We could have been wrong
Age makes us not wiser
Just older
And so children lose their capacity to see things brightly
And the biggest chunk of the world’s dreamers are then silenced
By adults who never really believed in the magic of the world
As much as the kids do

So how do we ruin children, really?
By telling them being themselves
Is the least they could ever want
By telling children
That being who they are will never be right

You are the sun
of the deep night

truly the brightest
of the bright

whatever comes,
keep spreading
your warm light



*This is for my roommate who had been like my sister for the past two years and counting.Thank you for always believing in me.

Half smiles leaving trails
Of simple wonder and childlike fantasies
Thought of in carefree days
Strained eyes, suppressed sighs
I see the concealed words in your faraway stares
Your mother and father
Handed you the life that was not your own
Making you a disbeliever of the fate you could have created

Your happiness took flight like a lonely bird
Leaving you with an empty cage to live in
Everything that you are, everything that you ever wanted to be
Are now winged hopes, flying in the horizons of lost dreams

The spark in your eyes tell a different story
From the praises that strangers throw upon you
They know you by face
But they never asked whether you are your dreams
It hurts me to look at my victories
The ones you have given at the palm of my small hands
With your selfless and strong love at the sacrifice of yourself
You are not everyone's hero, but you are mine

Your happiness took flight like a lonely bird
Leaving you with an empty cage to live in
Everything that you are, everything that you ever wanted to be
Are now winged hopes, flying in the horizons of lost dreams

Leave all your hurts to me
Pass on all your wishes to
The little girl who listened to all
The unheard dreams
The unfulfilled promises
Leave them be, let me be
The keeper of every winged hope in your wingless heart

In spite of my tears and the nagging hurt in my chest,
I write—in a fragile paper, perhaps
Hoping against all hopes that the words could save me

You bit your lips,
All bloodied and damp
From the despair
That consumed your teeth

Your eyes
weary and lifeless
From the silent nights that fueled
Your torment

Your body,
A testament to the
Musings of a wrecked ship
That is yourself

Your words eager to blow forth
From the mouth
That has rolled with
The bitterness of dark solitude

Your mind
a mere shell
of madness and escape

Your life
An empty message
That the world is a hopeless clash
Of selfish souls
Thirsty of imprinting their kind
With the demons
They themselves have reared

Gold pennies in designer wallets
Shopping lists in silver buckets
Running the thirst out like water
from dainty pockets
All in the name of ***** rackets

A trend show on the outside
A hollowness on the inside
Heaps of hard price tags aside
You are bought but unsatisfied

Glitter screens the cloudy eyes
Of those who are in the grave of earthly lies
Vanity consumed until the heart dries
In a mansion of hedonism,
existence nullifies

A jacket made of money would still leave you cold
In your last breath, just how many things can you hold?
You're the perfect fit of a capitalistic mold
And your will has long been sold

Rise
From the ashes of your failures

Rise*
From the red hot burn of hate

Rise
From the dissonance subduing your own unique flow

Rise
Rise

You are born to fight the fickleness of life

*Rise
Believe in yourself
Far greater than all your misfortunes combined

I refuse to leave a life of innocence
A world of freedom and spontaneity
The future looks like a grim possibility
With myself as both the hero and the villain
Who can make or break reality
Into a story or a tragedy

There must be meaning

If we are doomed to find it

All our lives

To you who dwell in the story of a book,
who longs for air in a quiet nook

To you who wander for a time alone,
who would rather stay at home

To you who seek a friend in your own,
who quite easily gets caught in a zone

To you who love solitude
with every fiber of your being

Forget the rest of the world
hustling and bustling

*Silence is not an echo of weakness
but your soul speaking in its greatest presence

Marmalade skies making love to a ball of fiery mass
parting, spontaneous, eager from his maiden’s *****
fertile with brown-green vigor of nature

Buoyant as  air in the sea,
the sparrows poured forth the blue stretch
familiar in their parade, uncertain in their path

Clinging to infant evergreens
the morning’s dews slid past the satin beds
and into the ground so steep and primordial

Last night’s rain
hung limply in the nipping air
and is here to stay

Soldier bees on their daily march
buzzing here and there
as if the queen dispatched them on a war within themselves

I stand in the midst of all the intricacies
overwhelmed, dazed
nature’s ease has caught me in an awestruck spell

Beholding the spectacle in my finite eyes
the horizons echoed my sunken soliloquies
In all this exuberance
there must be something inconceivably greater than itself
In all this enigma
I was quite absolute that I
am just a split second in an everlasting expanse
of space and time

I am a Pandora's box
: an enigma
: a flow of contradictions
I am infinitely pulled by madness and lucidity
: ambiguous
: definite
I am the lake and the river
: deep
: never-ending
I am explosion and implosion
: wrecking anything great
: and infinitesimal in my wake
I am the universe and the  vacuum
: expanding
: condensing
I am two poles wide apart
: the northern
: the southern
I am two realms
: the real
: the surreal
I am the skies and the earth
making love to birth a questionable existence
Dangling precariously on the edge
Floating in a current of self-made paradoxes
Born to be my own antithesis
And breathe with the complexity of it all

Pray forgive me then,
For living as I am
Is a battle in itself

You smell of teardrops
And a little bit of rain
But it doesn't make me less lonely
Doesn't make the night less carefree

Incense me with your words
Trap me in your senses
Oh Odessa,
why must you be so lovely?

Odessa,
Come to me as you are
Turn on my fire
Linger in my desire
My heart is your home
Together we can be alone
Our love was so splendid
how swiftly it all ended

I see your deep eyes
But your heart is grave
Our lives are no longer touching
I can hear my glass dreams breaking

Wish me well in your delight
As I am torn by my plight
Oh Odessa,
won't you fix me?

Odessa,
Come to me as you are
Turn on my fire
Linger in my desire
My heart is your home
Together we can be alone
Our love was so splendid
how swiftly it all ended

The ups and downs of a swing
Mirrors the mad ride of my befuddled heart
In one end, my face stretches to a jester's grin
In another my sadness leaps like a gray cloud
It's as if someone is playing, puppeteering my failing will
Pushing the limits of reason from my slipping mind
I seek for the answers
But only questions welcome me
Self-awareness has left, landing on a different plane
I am now in an island
Nowhere to walk on
Save for the abysmal, unclear waters
Of the inscrutable, irretrievable person
I once was

I'll dance with the tornado
Go along its willful flow
Would you go right by my side?
Fly open and never hide?

The storms come, whether
anyone likes it or not
Maybe we'll get caught
Maybe we'll put up a fight
Win or even not quite

But I'll come with you in
lesser and in enough
Down to the impossible,
down to the rough
Calm is where you are
However high, however far

So I'll catch the stars
with my one hand
Our infinity has long been
written in the sand
Time fits in the curve
of your eyes
As your lips turn
to the grayest skies

I'll be the pedestal
you can lean unto
even if it was built by
only one
and not two

their words swirled in my head
and seeped into my whole
staying there for as long
as it wanted
for as long as I seek it
ruining me beat by beat
of my shaking heart

alarming with its power
destructive in its influence
those mere slips of tongue
feasted on my fears
leaving me with nothing
but my cowardice
for all to see

Be the water
hushing the all-consuming fire
in every single living hell you've gone

And I'll spend
the rest of my days
gazing upon the stars
that used to bind us together
dreaming of what our love could do
for us
for the future
now nowhere in sight
after you took it along
with my heart

Out of the bedroom window I looked
At the story seamed like paint splatters before me
Squandered in Monday grays and heavy lidded beams,
Skinny trees half pirouetting with the Northern master ,
Wet linens like rainbow dilettantes in their nylon pole slumber beds,
The wide sheet that overlooks all now turns in orange luster
That mundane truth from the pink sill (I see, I see)

An electric post stands above the swampy rice fields
A modern mammoth, the millennial miser
Perched in its lumpy wires birds mirrored each other like a pair of stilts
Whispering like Romans in spite of a forgone Caesar (political and free)
That mundane truth from the pink sill (I see, I see)

The night creeps like the batting crickets in the yard
Harmonizing in crooked ears a silly little hum
What I had heard when I was ten, as how everything had
Become known strangers scraping at the back of my pendulum
That mundane truth from the pink sill (I see, I see)

Out of the bedroom window I looked
At the story seamed like tell tale signs before me
The spit on a once young fool's clarity
Sealed in tight frames perennially set in a single motion
The old withering passenger squirms in his dinghy
Tides of chaos hooding that rage against the universal engine
That mundane truth from the pink sill (I'll see, I'll see)

words ****
tightening the noose on the neck
stabbing  anyone in their safest places
firing invisible bullets in chests

hate stays at the corners of death
while you are in front of it
shooting arrows aimed at the heart
laced with spoken disdain
cowardly commentaries turned solemn eulogies

he falls to eternal silence
his pained voice echoes in you forever
you walked him to his grave
quietly, convincingly
...

it' getting dark
in your disturbed slumbers, his dying face waits,
uttering that it's now his turn
to bring you to your grave

you are an artwork
you are harnessed
by the cosmic greatness
from a sea
of glory, of defeat
of suffering, of enduring
of love, of kindness
of strength, of vulnerability

you are an artwork
paint, create yourself
and be noticed
be seen for the cunning artistry
that you are

My dreams never felt so trapped
As when you told me
They should just stay inside my head

Mad, mad Dorotha, gay as a fiend
She had no one to call a friend
Who could dwell in the warm skies with her until the end

I had a dream last night
and saw a little girl
who looked so much like me
she smiled oh so eagerly
her eyes glistening with joy
her ears red from the cold that was that world
her small hands anxious for my warmth

My heart broke in nostalgia
as I watched the life
in her face
the unbridled naivete
the peace that was her air
And tears flooded my eyes
as I met someone I used to know
a long time ago

How she became a stranger
*How I've become a stranger

No petty words, no string of pretensions
Yet my hate runs deeper
Than your shallow friendship

Church bells tolling like risen gongs from ancient catacombs
The bells latched onto the conscious like anchors in shifty sand
Pulled me in between a stage of a ghost-like pantomime
Funny, funny fellows, followers of fools
It rhymed like pretentious poetry over my head

I'd wonder: those tails that wag the rope to beat
Do they move with the words of one or the smell of a thousand?
Are the hands that wiped the pews flawless
Bound to the secrets of the stained glass,
The shadows of the curled tongues in white gowns?
Like velveteen doves in rigid frocks?

Temples, do not confuse me
For a gatekeeper who keeps watch and never enters
I have locks to hear and ears to think
Those bells strike in the same places,
Invade everyone's Waterloo like a Napoleon possessed

Chartered vessels to dock in the legs of heaven
(Though horses on crusades know more than we do)
Knees scraped from worship all day long
But the marble stage tinkered on
Can only say so much for the hungry
Who raised their hands and never thought why

I need some time with me, not to refuse the love of company
Just to know that I'm all by myself
But never quite alone

Be careful little lady for the world is ill
It beguiles you deeply to its will
And then you wake up everyday with no thrill

Love they judge as taboo
The hopeful who cares they misconstrue
As an idiot with a loose *****

The truth is but a faraway fancy
With people living for themselves only
Lies here and there, truth being heard deafly

Peace is a dying cliche
Violence, aggression all they pray
The dignity of many turning into decay

So you see my dear,sweet innocence
Open your eyes but embrace this reality with grievance
One that has lost its meaning and balance
But with you, a believer, a kind soul, might still give it a chance
Do take action with love and not vengeance
For you can still save a world stripped of conscience

We are weak and human in all sorts of places,
hide them in all walks and spaces.

Lines stretched from end to end
Tied affinities since time began
We are a queer bunch, after all
One and the same

Through our own making, we disentangled
The threads bringing us together
Circumstances walled us from our humanness
Hardening our fears of embracing
The otherness of others,
The otherness in others
When truly stripped from
All these trivialities and caprices,
We go back to the same cloth

One sees the world
in a straight line
but it is in fact round
and round
with curves
and turns
and it is wide
and expansive
and encompassing

Though someday he'll hit
a dead end
and fall  to a complete ruin
with his
distorted eyes