To the young lady that tends to lose her track;
Your eyes are not for tears,
Your eyes are to open portals for my thoughts
To transcend their limitations
And step into your worlds of wonder.
Your face is not to frown,
It is for the people like me
To find the clarity they once lost,
The warmth they crave,
And just the glow they need to light their way into a better perhaps.
Your hands are not for clutching,
Not for
Creating wide spaces to cover the diameter of your face;
Your hands, are to wave in between threads of air that
Hold my love and send it to you;
Your fingers are to unleash the senses
Of those whos bodies are numb
Those who have never experienced your touch.
Your soul is never for anger
Your hatred is untrue
Your energy lies within
You just have to extract it.
You are not to cry,
You are to set free torrents of emotions
Trapped inside a cage with golden bars
A brunette with beautiful wide eyes;
You are not to breakdown
You are to dissect your existence and reshape it
To better represent
Your essence.
You are the gem that loses its spark
When the dust becomes so heavy on your soul
Until it starts burning your eyes;
But shake the dust.
Shake the dust and rise
Be the young lady I know you keep inside, the young lady I love.
Be the savior,
For you do not want saving
Be the hero,
For strength is dormant in between your eye lashes
Be the elevating voice,
That rescues us from our pits
Be the young lady I know you keep inside, the young lady I love.

Here’s to the poets;
Here’s to the lives
That started and ended
In short sentences,
Hiding behind the words and the commas,
In between the lines
There is a space;
There is a space for poets
To dream and dissect dreams,to
Examine the heights of their rationale
And the depth of their emotions,
Like teleporting from the tops of Adonis
To the bottom of dark alleys in Hamra.
Here’s to the artists,
Here’s to the works of art
Forgotten on sharp corners
Between the margins in a copybook
And light emerging from their classroom windows;
Here’s to the scribbles
That created life, when living
Seemed impossible.
Here’s to the outcasts,
Here’s to the girls
Who read comics
About super heroes
Hiding behind
Kashmir scarfs and ripped jeans,
Reading 6 words at a time
Because the area of a flashlight
Covers just enough to get her wondering,
To get her to forget how
Her tight jeans left scars on her untouched thighs,
And how her feet were painted red
Before and after
She had to wear twin towers to walk in.
Here’s to the jokers,
Here’s to the unappreciated laughter
To whatever happens after
Here’s to the grand stages you formed
Out of two desks put together
And a pencil/eraser microphone;
Here’s to us,
To our shattered talents and lost souls
Here’s to our oppressed minds
And distorted comprehension of ourselves
Here’s to us
And who ever falls in love with us.

She approached me
Tiptoeing from across the room,
Although no one was asleep around us to wake;
I watched her lower lip bleed
From biting too much,
As she deciphers the DNA codes on her hair
With her fingertips,
Stroking the life out of it
Up and down-
And up and down again.
She said don’t get me wrong
But I found myself;
I found myself lurking underneath the light of your words
Bending with your o’s and standing straight with your I’s,
Because I
Got lost;
I got lost in the stories you wrote
About the girls who broke
And they felt just like me-
Dazed
By the love poems you cried down for her,
And I wondered how beautiful she must be.
I got flustered
In the blank spaces
That you chose not to write in,
And it felt like I should cut parts of myself
And add them in the vacancies
But I just don’t know what to add.
For every time I rest my soul
On the tip of a pen
I feel like I’ve said too much,
And every time I scratch my words
Throw away my being
Behind
Unread books and dusty light stands
I believe I haven’t said enough
For I could give more,
Be more,
If only I could start over,
And you
You seem to know me more than I know myself;
You have built bridges
Out of my paper shreds,
Tunnels out of my unexpressed thoughts-
You have created your haven inside my brains
And settled down in my heart.
You’ve managed to make me chew your words
Like breakfast
Was a poetic meal to be served
At all times of the day;
You’re an image,
I re-create you in my mind
Before I sleep
After asleep
And even during I sleep-
The thoughts of you never quit my head
Like a gamer would never quit
A game of Warcraft
In the midst of hunting season”
She took off her glasses,
And I could see the marks of them
Being there for too long.
She closes her eyes
As if she was about to take a leap of faith,
But instead she leaped two steps into my arms
And that was when
I got to ask her
What her name was.
And that was when I realized
It didn’t even matter.

She asks me “what do you think of me?”
I stop;
Reflect upon what just happened,
When a complexity of a girl
Asks a simple guy
What he thinks about her.

She asks me “what do you like about me?”
I’ll tell you what I hate;
I don’t hate your eyes,
Like round circles we used to make
With our dancing bodies
In preschool playgrounds.
I don’t,
Hate your lips;
They could be traced
From a million miles
And they curve so beautifully.
I don’t hate your smile,
The semi grins you keep
Before the flashes,
Before the posts;
I don’t hate your eyes,
Like bullets entering the soul
With an insertion of dopamine.

She asks me “do you really think I am worth your troubles?”
You are not.
You deserve my delight;
You deserve my green days and blooming flowers,
You deserve my watering mouth
Nourishing the vines underneath your tongue,
You deserve the sunrises in my playlists
And sunsets in the warmth of my jackets;
You are not worthy of my troubles
I am not worthy of my troubles.

She pushes me away,
The walls are too tight
And the stares,
They scrape on our throats.
The girl is lonely,
Her social circle spreads wide enough
To leave a gap;
Her friends walk next to her
And not on her side;
Her smiles-
Electronic cigarettes that look genuine,
But the smoke never rests
On the teeth,
Just a vapor that fades away.
She’s anchored to her reality
Her ships are not meant to sail
Just yet.

She asks me “what do you think of me?”
You’re a concept;
You’re a fusion of vivid elements
Wired with secret buttons
Hidden in your desires.
You’re an emotional rollercoaster
That we ride
You and I,
When I think of you
You’re just a white canvas
That whispers into my soul
The true meaning of art.

She asks me “is this your real answer?”
She ask me “is this your real answer?”