Words, once you free them
  —no longer slave to your name

(Villanova Pennsylvania: From a longer Poem- Fall 2015)

There are many ways people define their own meanings of it
I’m not sure how many I’ve written so far

Too many to count
to inscribe on each separate compartment of my evergreen heart
Too light to set in stone and
Never knowing how to start

I entered the world enveloped in it
Felt it’s soft embrace in the shapes of two people who taught me how to chase the world from the safety of movies, books and poetry
In the confines of a family tree with a canopy covering a brother older than me living a sea away with a mum who wasn’t mine
But a dad whose blood ran through both our bonded veins

We soon became three
Another brother, this time younger,
Took the position of the constant company I had never known before
After 6 years of waiting with only grown ups and toys to tell my stories to.
Some say love for a family is compulsory
For me it is a promise I feel lucky enough to keep

Then there are families that you unintentionally choose
Pairings where platonic love flows aplenty
friends you keep and sometimes lose
Fast fading but never forgotten
Memories evoked by reminiscent reminders that cast quiet smiles every once in a blue moon
provoked by shiny new conversations with people you hope don’t leave as soon as they arrived
words fail to compensate the connection unseen yet tangible in unspoken exchanges and belly-aching laughter
A place where paths cross and soon merge into the same road with no horizon in sight
But a sunset worth riding straight into

A sunset similar to the same sunrise that guides a heart to realise
Just how far it is capable of falling without intending to
The heart of a girl raised so well on romantic ideals
she convinced herself she fell the right way first time around
So when she fell out, she forgot how to spell it without him.

Until months of cautious practise soon proved her wrong
seeing oceans in unfamiliar eyes didn’t sting anymore
And the fear of letting someone new in slowly subsided with every secret infatuation
The apprehension of the in-between never tasted so sweet

We fall in love with melodies, allow touches to linger on our bodies or construct imaginary fantasies with strangers who pass gently through our timelines
There are chemical concoctions responsible for the pounding in my chest
I have fought with my favourites and which parts I think I like best
But you’re doing pretty well at keeping first place as far as my fondness is concerned.

Although knowing things for definite is where my weaknesses lie
I can say for certain that I am a person who feels many things very deeply
And although it causes confusion and problems and pain,
it’s something I would never change about myself
I think, feeling everything is better than not feeling anything at all
I can say that the word “love” is something that carved its initials into my own a long time ago

It’s always been the one word that never stopped feeling warm, soft, and safe

It’s something I have always seen myself falling into
and curling up inside
while never being afraid to close my eyes

I know it will still be there when I open them.

As far as I am concerned
We are bound forcefully
By the air we breathe

That soaks up our tears
And spits them back out
In a deluge
From black clouds of our own doing

And by that measure
Our minds are connected
By the tongues of passion

That twist vigorously
Within the head of our greatest fear
The one whom we love
Unloading our universe unto another

And our most undying need
To morph the suffering in our world
With morphine of our own

Of which the recipe is dangerous;
A vulnerable, broken, dangerous self
That is trampled out of existence
As a newborn fawn is stolen suddenly by an unforeseen winter wind

The whispering wind in the air
Carried by all of our breath…
Indeed, we stole the fawn
And in doing so— ourselves as well.

I awake with cloudy eyes
on unfamiliar limbs
as if walking for the first time,
as if walking forever
down the stairs to river
then upward to become the other
blue peak beneath our quilt.
Each a snow capped prominence.
Each with it’s own lofty view of the world

while the wind howls between.

Into that echoing emptiness
a dog leaps.

Blessed nestling reminder
that even mountains
can turn and touch.

Start with a statement.
Something you know to be true.
See how it relates to the things you cherish -
family, nature, flying, anything.
Now write it, but also speak it!
Make sure it has a rhythm
that bounces to and fro.
Weave in the important elements
everywhere you can.
But be careful with your words!
Try not to repeat them -
this is where a thesaurus comes in handy.
A dictionary too!
Use your language correctly,
or have a **** good reason for not.
Punctuation matters too;
it affects how you read.
Listen in your head -
does that period belong there?
Grammatically it might be correct,
poetically, maybe not.
Hide things, little secrets,
between the lines
for the reader to discover.
But most of all,
and now this is the important part,
write what feels right,
nothing less
and nothing more.

That's how to write a poem.

Poets are murderers
Yes we are.
We are teachers of the ultimate truth
We enlighten the universe of the foundation of life
We teach them love
With sweet tongues we forge our words
Making them into beautiful sounds for the ears
And pleasant sight to the eyes.
We feed their hearts with fantasies and pleasant tales
That make their soul hunger for this sacred truth called love.
Then fate flips the cards
Attention here and there from strangers we never knew
Disciples we never saw, followers who clung to our every word
Pleading for that sacred love that we taught
But this love is not ours, we are only messengers of this
Sacred love that most of us never had.
It becomes our duty to **** their innocent heart
And shatter their simple soul with the bitter truth
That they fell in love with the poem and not the poet.

When we were 10, we laughed loudly at the back of the room. Teeth buck, and eyes shut, shoelaces untied and knees untouched. I looked at my own reflection only to see how red the sun had turned me, I chuckled at the peeling, though it hurts, I knew there was more for me to see. There was no need for rouge- just rough. My best friend looked at her own reflection only to see how badly she had scraped the bend of her knee. Ugly was not in our dictionary, but neither was pretty. In unkempt braids, hair bouncing as we chased the pink butterflies we did not intend to mimic. We knew these kinds of wounds would fade. We didn’t realise ugly was supposed to bring more hurt to feel, when it came from girls who thought pretty was supposed to heal. And still, I touch the burns from the steam iron and the far-too-many cicatrices from the concrete. I remember the desire and the bittersweet, my body made a map for the universe to mark out where I’ve been. In my sleep I run through the wild wheat a thousand times over, but I flinch at the idea of female bathrooms and looking past the landmarks and monuments to see dirt roads. And still, we remained burnt, we remained scraped, we remained unkempt.