He keeps looking.
Like I'm something for the taking.
The way he's staring at me dancing
Gets me thinking, I should stop.

No concrete action, no kind of evidence,
Just a rise of the hairs,
A sort of indescribable sense,
Warning bad intentions are by,
Stay quiet and put and shy.

Maybe if I cover more,
Maybe if I show a little less,
Maybe if I look away,
And keep ignoring all the rest,

Maybe it's what I have to do.

Stiff shoulders, stiff arms, I'm knotted and I'm shaking.
I've always been good with sitting still but now I can't stop running.
My heartbeat sounds EDM when I need to be sleeping.
I'm trying, I'm really trying, but I can't stop freaking

Out, I'm freaking out,
I'm freaking out, and I don't know what to do...

So should you, should you, should you ever have your hands free,
Would you, would you, would you knead away my anxieties,
Deepen the pain until I'm numb, and press, press, press your palms,
Until I can no longer think, then maybe I'll find my calm.

There are nights of neon,
where the pavement cries,
the windows cast shadows,
the city runs purposeless.

These nights, I am in space,

and midair on the moon, I stare back
into this glowing orb of blue and green.
Amidst endless black, I imagine it burning,
the most bizarre thing I have ever seen,
and I ask, for what? Like they say of life,

all a striving after the wind.

Shards strike C-minor on the marble, I
step slowly, on tip toes, ever so lightly, I
fly on feet above flickering flecks, I
will not wallow where what traps lay, I
am after something bigger, something stronger,
something solid and not see-through, and
I will become something.

"If I look back, I am lost,"
and a dragon’s words guide me
forward towards fields of green
and brown and blue, where quietly,
I stump on memories and push them,
deep under wet soil, and then only keep
my gaze to the horizon, back slightly bent,
nothing except the harvests of tomorrow.

She is as bright as the sun?
No - she is the sun itself.
Singing sweet beams, her embrace
softens every marrow, every bone
into one with flesh,
and I mesh with her light -
together shining, radiating
twenty thousand stars above,
and after a millennia of the *******,

I am now hers.

Neither here nor there,
Neither silent nor loud,
Neither full nor bare,
Neither humble nor proud,

Neither game nor serious,
Neither love nor indifference,
Neither realistic nor delirious,
Neither the house nor the fence,

yet still two, pacing together,
and either for worse or for better,

stuck in dying fire.

His bulletproof boots
decorated with wet mud, dried blood
trampled fields of flowers
fourteen years before her.
She, a cloud of fluff and rain,
was his first shower.
He, a kick of crack *******,
was her fifteenth.
Every departure had her,
tasting of his cigarettes,
teary-eyed against his shoulders.
Every mile of distance had him,
singing to her songs,
pulsing to another woman’s skin.
Tonight, with their hands interwoven,
his lips parted open,
sweating as if birthing a confession,
her smile lingers, glistening

like snow nobody has walked on.

I fell in love
with the way you wrap your suit
around my shuddering shoulders
on a summer, New York night.

I fell in love
with the way you draped "beautiful"
over the face and body
I thought a clown's.

I fell in love
with jazz music blowing up my dress -
I was the world's only princess
when you spun me around.

I fell in love
with the fire in your eyes,
your voice, your skin, your glowing red demise,
another one of a million fights...

I fell in love, once and then twice, three times and then ten times, desperate and pathetic and forlorn and ecstatic,


I fell in love.

"Look into the camera,"
and bring your eyes nowhere else,
not behind to where the lady stands,
holding an eight-year-old's hand.

"Place your forefinger on the sensor,"
and don't dare move it closer
to your wet eyes, for the man
with the ten-year-old might see
you shudder.

The arrow always points forward,
so take your steps fast and sure.
Ignore the shouts, shove away the feels,
smile and wave your way to
DEPARTURE.

Let my self esteem not be governed
by how many of my memories
you can recognize,

Let loose these bonds of achievements,
these stocks of degrees,
names you call me
that don't represent me
and my soul, we
don't quite agree with that.

We are the free spirits
We are them who you don't remember
Don't know, don't care,
We are not recorded in autobiographies
Nor looked up to as models of inspiration, we
Are not known.

And they can never capture,
What they don't know, they
Can never judge,
What they don't understand,
We are the
outsiders.

When I go back,
will you wrap your arms around me,
even though I smell differently,
speak foreignly, think a little too liberally,
will you, will you still love me?

When I go back,
will you re-teach me my language,
re-connect me with my roots,
re-live the years I missed, re-kindle my innocent bliss,
will you, will you still call me yours?

When I go back,
will you provide me with friends,
not “childhood friends’, but the ones
that are ready to make new memories,
and appreciate my multiple identities,
and will they, will they accept me?

When I go back,
will you guarantee me a relevant nationality,
a place I can belong, a culture I can call on,
to answer these confusions, these conundrums
these clashes of who I am and where I’ve been,
of when I changed and why I’m me,
Will you cure me, finally,
of these anxieties?

Or will I
forever be a splinter
that doesn’t quite fit in right
a thin piece in society
that jabs at its veins,
remain unwanted and, ultimately, a pain,
but can never be uprooted?

Only there,
slowly growing
*insane?

Blink.

Blink the dust away.

The particles of vacancies because you didn’t stay.

The droplets of memories leaking to different shades of Monet.


Blinks.

For seconds of blackness and rests for what the soul receives

and rejects. Every time these lids fall close, it seems like thieves

will finally stop stealing dreams.

But they don’t.


Blink and blink,

Faster so the eyelashes will flutter

For the caves to open and welcome in crazed butter-

flies, before the bats chase them

through the gutter.


Blink.

Blink.

Blink.


Blink back to my dearest

unfortunately not my nearest.

Blink again for the heights of happiness.

Of the summit and fall from the crest.


Blink.

Here’s a space to dream.

Of sleepless nights staring at starlights,
Only dropping twinkles can enter this bubble,
Of you and I.

You and I

Will meet where crossroads are paused
When cars stop and red lights glow
Beyond the smog of the city. I

will never forget, how eye
to eye, we were traumatised
by the beauty of painful love.

Or maybe, maybe, it was just my
imagination, the way lies
seem like truths
so easily disguised.

We travelers don't simply visit a place
We roam and rave, and lose ourselves,
whether in between alleys or cedar trees

Or waves, and we never stop running into
the tides that crash into
us, breaking all we ever covered
ourselves, all we ever hid behind.

No, we travelers don't sleep in white sheets. We
lay naked under the stars. Only under cold breezes
will we close our eyes, resting from the sights
that shine so bright they sore us.
And even then, we will listen
and we will dream.

We travelers don't fall in love to be in love
We let our hearts open for no other reason
than genuine awe of another being
who may or may not reciprocate our feelings, so
we'll laugh and cry bittersweet tears and smiles
until either nothing, or everything is what's
left.

What are friends?
Are "friends" just specks of moments shared,
times when you feel cared
for or are they real persons?

Do friends make you cry,
make you feel hated,
wonder if this was an end belated,
or are they just the good smiles and laughter?

Do friends leave,
or are they forever?
Do they remain a part of your life
even though you're a traveler?

Why do we have to give up? Why do we have to move on?
This so-called action of maturity, of dignity, of practicality,
Wiping years and tears as though they were far gone,
Refusing to let anything hurt just a little too slowly.

But isn't that sacrilegy?
Killing something sacred for the sake of an easier way,
A ****** of moments, reducing "friends" into just a diluted memory,
Tossing trust - mutual trust - into that pile of yesterday.

When we separate, when we fly to different corners,
When decades go by and all we have left is the past,
Are those still friends, or are they just matters
for the lonely heart to ponder on how it went by so fast?

I never thought my heart would ever come to this place
where doubts are shadows and the only lights left are two
really bright ones, but so many have flickered dead,
out of space,
What used to be a burning room of blue.