I used to fear that one day I would run out of words.
That I would put pen to paper and spill expired honey too sticky to lift,
But now I know there's still a thousand ways to say your name
I know S can be a silk bridge like Lala salama or bright like sunrise or asante
So today when I say babe
Let your ear convince your heart that it is not broken
I have tried and failed a thousand times to write a poem about butterflies, french fries and you
But if the past year has taught me anything it's that relationships cannot just float on two lungs sacrificing oxygen for a kiss
And no matter how much you fit between my ribs I still have to rip open my skin to let you in
So I don't promise butterflies anymore, but I promise to give you the universe, with all the good and bad that comes with it
And if I cannot be there know that I will always be here, so don't be afraid to fall
I trust the earth to spin fast enough to send me your way every so often
Let me be your wave and you will be the rocky shore, tempting sea levels like me to rise.
Let me hide my fears in the space between your eyelashes and watch you blink beautiful.
So as you watch me stumble in the dark searching for where the tunnel starts, having faith that I will remain the boy of your dreams and become the man of your prayers. Know that I remember all the places I buried my smile and all the times you've gone grave robbing.

Most times I write poems for the sake of writing poems, I write pretty words that make you smile and butterflies flap in your belly.
Most times I write poems for the sake of writing poems, I write harsh realities that make your bones shiver and your will break.
But sometimes, sometimes I write truth. I write poems about a boys day dreams and his night prayers. About a boy too young to be this old, about a boy too strong to be scared.
But he knows more than any that the palms of fear are sweaty, that it's voice shakes in rhythm to a shaking faith and it's knees are two rope bridges, the only path between standing and falling.
He carries his pride in a backpack of loved ones, and even though they may seem heavy, he knows that if he falls they would always have his back.
Most times I write poems for the sake of writing poems, but sometimes I write about you. About how I dream of being everything like you but pray to be slightly better.
Mother prays my feet are bigger, but she knows the shoes better than most.
Shoulder cannot be both broad and cushion. Boy cannot be both man and Saint.
So for every blue cloud under a yellow sun, there's an ode to the grey. There's a star more silver than bright and a rain drop not quite.
But the sun is coming, the dark is not as fast as December, and for every dark night, there's a blue Sunday.

This is for those December mornings, when the sun is having a lazy day and the clouds are trying too hard to make a rainbow.
For dreams that only the night can carry.
For angels with broken wings envious of pigeons.
Fathers say our shoulders are strong enough to carry the world, but only some of us will have to, mothers say only some of us will get to.
Mother carries you in her arms and father carries you on his shoulders. The world isn’t that heavy today.
Most days we try, sometimes we fail. We only know what we know until we know better.
Our cheeks have known too many rivers and joy doesn’t flow around these parts no more.
But I do know a few things, I know faith is showing belief in the sky by planting deeper into the ground. I know curiosity shouldn’t always be explored and sometimes feathers are better pens than they are wings.
So catch flight with this, let this be your mothers’ arms and your fathers’ shoulders.
I know someday soon the world won’t be this heavy and we’ll get to carry it, even though we don’t have to.

One year
This is for you
You that counts time in moments
You that has stopped claiming to know things like the back of your hand because time has made your body a strange place
This is for my grey haired aunties and two stick uncles
One year is 365 sunrises and sunsets, It’s 52 crepes, It’s 8409600 breaths, It’s 2 coffins, It’s 10000 steps that if I placed on a map would show I never really went anywhere
It’s 100 I miss yous and 10000 I miss you too, It’s 2 I love yous still finding their way out of my mouth
Apologies to those of us that had to search for eulogies in old albums this year.
Congratulations to those of us that could search for eulogies in old albums this year

I used to think you knew your soul mate if their chin fit perfectly into the nook in your neck. My first girlfriend was pretty awesome at giving hugs.

But I knew the kind of woman I wanted to marry the day I watched my mother hum her favourite song while doing the dishes.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to her humming.

Would my son ever watch me slow dance with his mother?

Or would I always be writing poems about leopard print skins and french fries hair.

I carry all these things on top of my heart and I fear if it gets broken they’ll all fall through the cracks.

Maybe I have a flawed perception of romance, maybe slow dancing, humming, dishwashers don’t exist. Maybe gorgeous earthquakes aren’t always heart breaking but ground breaking.

I feel like each second is a grain of sand and the waves are washing away my sand castles one after the other. People always tell me I make the truth the hardest to understand, so I guess what I’m trying to say is I feel like time is running out. And with all the so called fish in the sea, these waves never seem to leave any on my shores.

Maybe I’m too blinded, concentrating on fish when there’re great blue whales around, tiger sharks and even electric eels that we’ll always have a spark.

I’ve been living too fast, but there’s no point finishing first if there’s no one waiting at the finish line, I’d rather slow dance to her humming and maybe in essence we would be the ones that won.

I knew the kind of man I wanted to be, the day I watched my father slow dance with my mother to no music in the living room. I know she eagerly anticipates the day her and I slow dance to my wedding song. I hope this is not another failed attempt of me trying to get closer to that day.

The first was in the corner of the smile of a fourteen year old girl when I asked her to be my valentine. Apparently you’re meant to ask before the day. I still think about her. Hers forms the basement in my jar of stolen heart pieces.

The second time, it was holding my hand when reality met nightmares. It carried words like “alright” and “fine” as arm candy. And even though I wasn’t alright or fine, a maybe was enough for me.

The third time was when I asked my grandfather if I would see him again. I half expected a “not” after it. He taught me that making choices is easy, but living with them is hard. Although his lessons were more things not to do, than things to do, he’s still one of the best teachers I know.

The fourth time, I met a girl with surrender in her lips but escape in her eyes, she seemed to laugh a lot. I always knew if I pulled back the curtain of her laughter I’d see broken heart fragments realising tears isn’t the best of glues. She left like the ocean leaves the shore, slowly stealing grains of sand, knowing she’ll either come back to return it, or she’ll always have something to remember me by. A maybe for the former was all I had left to hold on to.

The fifth time, I carried it in my hello when I talked to sis, although distance separated us I could feel her tears drop on the shoulder of my voice. I tried to act like I knew what I was saying, but a maybe seemed to end every advice I gave.

The sixth time, the man in the mirror asked if I had feathers for fingers. How I made words seem so fly. They would lift off pages and tickle ear drums till a smile was the only response the body knew to produce.

The last time, I heard it somewhere in her blush, somewhere in her smile, somewhere in her laugh. And I thought, maybe she’s the one. I can’t promise I’ll always feel like this, but a piece of me will always only show goosebumps for just you.

1) Somewhere not so deep, serendipity carries serenity.

2) Eyes are just more beautiful fingers, so try to leave goose bumps where others leave bruises.

3) My hobbies are poetry, basketball and convincing people of things I don’t believe.

4) Art is something that cannot be expressed in any other way.

5) Fear God.

6) Sometimes, the answer might be right but the question might be wrong.

7) If you could steal the moon from the night sky, the stars would get more attention.

8) If tears glowed in the dark, pillows would make wonderful night lamps.

9) People may be shades of grey but still have one black shadow.

10) Beauty is not so relevant when drawing with white chalk on concrete.

As long as people see themselves in art, metaphors will always be the best place to hide truth.
Because I will rather say “two fireflies that fall in love in the belly of a dragon might just stand a chance in hell” than explain that the tough times make us stronger.
But maybe fireflies don’t fall in love, maybe you and I are two wet wind-shield wipers that love playing chase in the rain but never do touch.
We shouldn’t have tossed our hearts around, gravity always finds a way to win, whether it be falling in love or breaking hearts.
There’s an anchor of cobwebs and strings that should never have been attached, but the deep of my voice would always be a resting place for your worries. Even when life puts shorelines and new loves between us, I’ll always have a metaphor that carries you in its arms. I would always have pennys for your thoughts and paper cups with holes made for old strings.
As long as people see themselves in art, metaphors will always be the best place to hide truth.
Because I will rather say that patience is a key to a door I haven’t found yet, than explain that most times I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
But maybe the fear of the unknown makes pacifists out of activists and poets out of lovers.
If words could make you sweat as much as they make you cry, the world would be a better place.

My heart has never been good at solos, its always been too much flutter and skip and too little beat. It is a glass jar holding two whirl winds always leaving pieces of broken dreams on the kitchen floor that pierce the soul.

My lungs are two empty revolvers searching for bullets in every breath, something to make my words hold the whole world to ransom. But they are beginning to learn to give way to the ears.

My feet are constant reminders that time is just as important as distance and sometimes a fast life does nothing but set a clear path for the slow and the steady. So walk, one step at a time fast enough to clear a path but slow enough to leave your foot prints in the grass.

My fingers have always loved puzzles, whether jigsaw or broken hearts, but my knuckles have always loved trouble. Together they fix as much as they break. They are experts at gathering loose ends of old strings that once held me together trying to sew me together again, but they are still learning to wipe tears.

But my mind is both battleground and cemetery, it is a bed of roses growing in gunpowder. It is still learning that only death before life can prepare you for life after death, but it knows that only true love can give birth to awkward poets with too much cloud and too little earth. So bury me with pen and paper and just maybe I would bleed words till I’m nothing but bones and rose seeds. And maybe I will live on, planted somewhere in the mind of another, a memoir of words and anonymous legends.

I learnt today that things hidden between the shadow and the soul are the most precious of all. Maybe there’s something about darkness that keeps, that stays, waiting for light to leave but still doesn’t reveal itself. I learnt today that somewhere, between the shadow and the soul is where dead things live.

Maybe in the dark we can both lay down our armors and no one will know. Maybe we can strip our bones of our skins and bath in the shimmer of night till we belong.There’re two lovers at the bottom of a well somewhere in the middle of nowhere with their souls dancing to the sound of sinking water.

There’s a rotten corpse that serves as a home to an earthworm and a field mice that know they shouldn’t be in love, but they come back to the dark everyday. There’s an alley that dances with its shadow every night when no one is around to judge. And I’m somewhere in between, between dancing alleys and sinking water, spread over the different shades of dark, between the shadow and the soul.

But with all this dark, nothing compares to mine, where I have hid me, somewhere between metaphors and mirrors. Cos the brightest of lights make the darkest of shadows, so we hide in plain sight, a dozen fake smiles away from sunset, waiting for night to come.