I like it when things aren't said.

When things aren't said, assumption lingers thick in the air;
The way that it fogs my vision is the most perfect way I would like to see the world.

When things aren't said the rumbling in my stomach stops;
no one anticipates, no one waits, no one attacks, no one comes up with a comeback.

When things aren't said, nobody has the last word.

When things aren't said, I actually don't know what to do, which gives me an excuse to not do.  

When things aren't said, I find it quiet,
and the night finally comes to an end.

I still can not write about you.

Because every time, every single time,
I have to stop myself from seeing the world through my pool of tears.
It is as if I have to watch you grow from afar.
And I do, I see you grow -
without me.

I have so many dimensions in me, and yet none that I could release to find you again.
It is as if I have lost you, and that you have left, but you have never gone.
Not once have I not thought about reliving every particle of you.

Every time.
Every single time.
I see you grow - apart and away.

The house burned down and I wasn't there to witness it.
I wasn't there.

Our bloodlines dictate how close we are, yet the body only reaches as far as the fingers could touch.
She whispered to me, "The house burned down and you weren't there for them."
It's true - I was not there.

We fell out of the same tree, but I think someone took a bite out of me too early.
A part of me stayed, but mostly left.
And this is what I get for being too ambitious.
I could not be there.

Had I travelled under a different moon,
had I have been another form of legacy,
had I have not been me.

But, oh, why wish when you could have seen that fire!
Its blazing tongue licking the limbs of its victims, yet undulating in dew of beauty.
And years that I've been gone was not blindfold to my past.
It is the unwrapping of my coexisting souls.

Oh, I wasn't there.

I discovered beauty in the morning light,
and in the incongruent lines of your smirk
which is facing sideways at the moment;
your head resting on my pillow.

The slow buzzing of the outside world waking up
is no threat to the solace that I found last night
in your arms before we went to bed;
I do not move away from them.

One cold and quick caress from the breeze of daybreak,
yet another that is warm and lingering from your fingertips
leave me undecided between pulling the sheets closer,
or loving you again,

and again,

and again,

and again.

invite me to your cradle.
                                           your womb.

she was never my mother
                                             (nor father)


so i was
                                                                ­          unwanted



but only because i was never theirs in the first place.
it was simply her acceptance i wanted,
but it was her children's love that sustained me.





it is not the same.

There's an anomaly
in my body.

I move so softly in the face of things,
but I'd like to move in nature;
it makes me a wild bird lost in the cryptic love for
thought,
kinesis,
and flight of the universe.

It makes me as fragile as the tides,
similar to an ****** prose - moving in its poetic ways.

There's an anomaly
in my body.

I've got nothing but words to make you hear me.

I've got nothing but words.

I've got nothing.

I'm sorry.

like *******'s paint splattering on canvas
like Warhol's Campbell soup in print
like Cunningham's democracy on stage

she loves him like that; she loves him like Art

We are the people who came before us: the crooked, the loving, the boring, the extraordinary, the joyous, the depressed, the sick, the healthy, the poor, the wealthy. You cannot forever shun your roots; you can only walk with them attached to the soles you own. You cannot forever pretend to forget and wish to not be a part of them.

This is growing up: accepting your source, accepting that you are coded in the system as a part of a larger picture and sometimes, that picture isn't the one you wanted it to be - whether for your own conscience or another particular reason. The challenge is to love yourself greater than what exists now and to love the ashes, the shadows that led you to be.

How long will you dwell on the mistakes of the past? How long will it take you to forgive the wombs that birthed you? How long will you forget that you are made of them, too?

Sunflower stood in the middle of the greenness that is Grass.
She was folding her yellow crown jewels,
singing with the wind about the ray of luminescent light
that sometimes is there in the darkness that is Sky.

Sunflower was planted in the dirt that is Earth.
She was extending her curly roots,
touching the tips to the core of terra,
burning the ends of Her,
but she knows a little pain is needed to experience Love.

Sunflower still stood on Grass,
looking towards Sky,
experiencing Love,
and Little Moon was ready to give all of that to Her.

I have gathered all time tellers,
grandfather clocks, alarm clocks, phones, watches -
to tell you that : I have all the time in the world for you.

It might not be the most sophisticated way
to say that I have an ear for listening and a heart for consolation,
but don't be too skeptical with my methods.

Forgive me, maybe, perhaps, if I can't be so bold and concise.
At least, now we've got all these antiques to talk about.

One can only wrap oneself so much
With burdens and dark voids,
With stories and undivided attention
With pressure and fracture

One can only wrap oneself so much
So that the unwrapping takes longer to do
The slits and ends are difficult to find
And only by letting oneself to carry through the process

One can only wrap oneself so much
And only the wrappers show
So that one is completely deaf and blind temporarily
To the many ridiculous things waiting out there

One can only wrap oneself so much
In the end these wrappers will disperse, transform
Its aura only so unmoving as a goodbye,
Morphing into the unknown

It is only too easy to miss, too hard to follow

Eventually,
One will unite again with these wrappers
And they will only come back for more
So that one can wrap oneself with only too much
Until one can wrap no more

As I sat on a small chair
The chair of eternal bliss
Finding someone that would care
Someone who willed for a kiss

The chair of eternal bliss
It shone like a star
My love is more than this
A dream, a dream too far

It shone like a star
And it blinded my heart
It turned into a frozen bar
Of ice that could break apart

And it blinded my heart
Made its love go away
I had to run back to the start
Because I ran out of things to say

Days went by
Eerie sounds of nature,
Across the forests of darkness
Trotted along to haunt
She still didn't wake up

In the mid of night,
She woke up and screamed

Screamed until she couldn't
Childhood dreams went back
And tortured her in her sleep
Ranting inside her all night, but she
Yawned and settled back to sleep

It's a bit past midnight -
So light under these fluorescents, but so dark in my mind.

On a couch in college, I am reeking of ****** deeds earlier, -
and of avoidance too.
Eyes drooping to a standard hibernation position, I try to sit up to let my hands finish these questions on the latest Middle Eastern borders.
Yet, still there is left a dent in my heart for all the **** that happened in the past week.

A sociopath with morals.
A ******* wanting to reconnect.
A friend with overbearing qualities.
A mother dying to love me.
An idea with no promise.
A bucket of philosophy.

I hope I'm not the only one coming up with ideas of how to escape.

This is the fear of:

tripping (1);
walking (2);
smelling (3);
feeling (4);

(1) into
(2) towards
(3) the fragrant
(4) as if

(1, 2) a home with no love.
(3) scent of blood of those we neglect.
(4) I was the one wrong in this affair - even though I'm the child.

How do you come close to an idea?

There's a path, but you're not sure where it leads you -
or maybe, how it will get you there.
Where?
Anywhere, really.

You look up and all you see is darkness -
no light, no stars, no supernovas
in the distance,
just complete isolation from the universe.

But you hear things.

And you wish you could understand this foreign language of whispers,
the kind that raises your awareness of your surroundings.
They raise their own decibels as you walk more into the path.

And suddenly, you see.

It isn't a light.
You still wish to see one,
but instead, you see the ocean - the echo of all living things.

Water. It was the water that has been speaking to you.
The waves congratulate you for your bravery to come to the end of the path.

You turn around to return, but the path has gone.

So, like a wandering child, you patiently look at the sky to dream;
a staircase falls upon the curtain of your vision.

You step up, but you are reluctant, scared that the path will disappear again.
Or that you can't come back down.

Retreat.
You retreat and rewind.
You settle down.
You close your eyes.
You lie upon the soft earth to listen to the steps you've never taken.

The slight curvature of the edges on his eyes would say:
"I am the wave, the tornado, tsunami that will wipe your glass wall
clear from all the dust and mud that you've chosen to ***** it with."

And yet, I feel like his walls are still marked too
from all the days he spent wondering about love,
and Love.

And from all the days he gave his heart out to the words on his notebook paper
to talk about longing, arrivals,
and departures of the heart.

And from all the minutes he spent listening
to all my words - without clarity nor coherence of the concept which I was talking about -
Instead, he let me
blabber.

Now those doe-eyes.
They glimmer with the confidence
of clearing everyone's wall,
but before that,
perhaps I need to plant a seed that is the Self within him
so that he'll clean his first.

Didn't you know I couldn't find you?
All over this almost empty room, I've searched.
You come with no warning or sound and it makes it harder to recognize that you're here

But then, you saved us and brought us home
Did you know the world stopped when you gave your arms at last?
I  should've never stopped believing, never stopped contemplating

So I did forget that for once we were one.

My spectacles differed than yours
I really thought we were separated
Those moments, too uninspiring,
I had no one to turn to anymore
I never have recognized that you've always been here

But then there you stood stronger than the earth,
Your feet planted deep
And the soil went outrageous

I should've never stopped asking, never stopped believing, never lost my trust in you.

Sometimes, you need fresh air,
and beyond the curb of ignoring an annoying party-acquaintance,
you step outside to feel the briefly welcoming air;
you think you'd overcome the standing hairs of your neck,
but you don't and you stay.

Sometimes, you need fresh air.
Slowly, after that last awkward smirk from your blind-date,
you reach for your cigarettes and head outside into the rather stark breeze of night,
leaving coffee for smoke, intertwined with the thin ice, that is breath.

Sometimes, you need fresh air,
and it's cold, too cold to leave the room,
and it's dark, too dark outside,
but you leave anyway because whatever stands inside is a spoiled pique unrelentingly trying to get you.

*Sometimes, you need fresh air.

none of you have changed since I've left.

the dim light flicker the same flicker;
as you approach me, i opened my hands to you.

but you stop.
and in reverse motion, walked out the door.

I've grown older;

I am grayed and abandoned,
but renewed with Love pouring unto me like golden water on a white, marble fountain
in front of the Taj Mahal.

There's something in the silence of our words,
in the wait for our next ones,
in the ecstasy of the present grace.

There's something in the silence of our union.

She's a bit smart and a little in pain,
so she takes her pills at dawn when everyone is dreaming
- while hers translate into crosses on her wrists for the loves she has lost,
and straight lines on her thighs as tally marks for each joy unaccomplished.

She's a bit ugly and a lot of beauty,
so she stares at the nothingness that she is
before any clothes, before any thing
- but how can that be, to be less of a person when nobody even said she was one before?

She's a bit honest and a whole lot of truth,
so she speaks censoring every softness that is of her heart,
but launching every thorn that ever struck her inner flesh
- it's for security, she says, and self defense...of course.

The Great Queen isn't everything that you see.

How could you be so out of times, my child?
The clock goes tick tock, but you are -
Enframed; untouchable
How could time be so frozen in your mind.

Enframed, untouched, what could you say to get yourself out of this mess?

The bells are ringing
The skies are dimming, their lights
Maybe it's time to move on
But you are still,
too still and unabridged

I rest my case and you win

Much of my stoic quality won't win in this world
Thank god I learned from you,
a valuable piece of information I suppose
And here, I still stand -
Here, I still breathe your air

my biggest heartbreak is still that these words were once dance:
the letters were arms, tracing invisible surfaces; the semi colons silences; the periods as fading stage lights; stream of consciousness as music, rhythm made available by choice. my choreography was a line of spirals made from bodies in diagonal formation--beatless, fleeting, smoke-like, diluted into the next move.

i had sworn my allegiance to this: the slowing of time in the practice. every breath taken lied down pulled my eyes further inside its sockets, closer to the soil under my skull - complete release of the body unto the ghostly embrace of stillness.

i let this take me.

Try, my love; try to open the doors to real pathways
It's running water under my floating house
in the ocean of uncertainty and misguidance now.
I can't live in this, I gotta move!

Look, watch as the tides show you that I can't play alone; another raft is waiting
A future home based on unreadable waters.
But we can't wait anymore, we have to move!

The fingers are pointing to different eyes every time you seek it,
but I'll still believe in man's second chance.
I'll move on now, but I'll come back to see if you're ready.

Is there a grudge that you're keeping, because I'm not coming back to fix that.

I’m a person of one

With the hearts of many lost souls

Too many hours I’ve spent thinking

Of how I’m going to straighten my own mind

Knowing many lies that lie ahead

Knowing the many villainy committed to put me down

Too many hours I’ve spent to listen

To all your sweet mouth’s talk

To all of your ******* without direction

To all of your ignorance, magnified!

If I had a God then I would run

But I’m only a person of one

And this time, your spear lingers for my heart

Shall I compare thee to a memory?
Thou art more powerful and deep-rooted
The strength fails to be classificatory
Repulsing my being, away from the alienated

Like a motion picture, steadily it moves
With only the sound of your calming voice
I really don't care about what it proves
About leaving when it was once a choice

But as I seek to foresee the future
I'm not yet close to the end of my bide
And already I could imagine the torture
Of you not being by my side

So please, let me have your long embrace
Before time comes to find what it could replace

My hair is blue from swimming across the ocean, sir.

today
i arrived
and the earth
rejoiced without reservation

little did i expect
the radiance
from sweet
little wrinkles,
nostalgic banter,
and walking canes.

i am happy i did not forget how to love the elders i walk with.

like rivers;
like running;
like waterfalls;
like rivers running through waterfalls,
i felt the depth
and the eternality
and the cascading
of you.

but i also feel
this inertia
of me
moving
towards
the end
of
us.

I say let's crawl inside the sheets together.
Let our hairs go wild, and our knees touch!
Here I go with a wink of an eye, and you kiss the other.

I say let's talk until our neighbors hear us.
Our arms can touch each others until the clock strikes us asleep.
Here I sit with one leg on top of the other, and you trace it with one finger at a time.

I say let's lock your door inside out.
We can hope no one will ever knock to wake us from the fantastic slumber of passion.
Here my heart is tugging on your sleeves - to peek, to understand, to see what I mean.

I say invite me for a sleep over on a lazy Friday night; you won't regret it.
I'm an artist when it comes to building fortresses, and a lover when it comes to you.
Here I observe the corner of your lips heightening into a smirk.

I say close your eyes and do not over think.
Your imperfections orient me toward you only more and more.
Here I say we should spend every day together until forever after.

I could, if I wanted to, pray for my own sanity
But I haven't had enough of this nonsense in my life

I could, if I wanted to, walk to the other side
Where the grass is greener, but why would I want to?

When I have you,
I walk in my sleep
I lose all control

My feeling's too deep

When I have you,
There's no thinking
Just the beating of my ******* heart

I am losing it
Losing my sanity

Losing my sanity for you

Do I still have to tell you
How much I crave for your love?
How much I crave for your voice to whisper in my ears?
But would you really understand then?

if fire is your element,
and
this is your year,
and
if
you wanted to be an asteroid in the night galaxies
to find a place to land
and
if
she
  was your rebellion,
and
if
your rebellion never meant that you could land on
me:
the water that could soothe you,
   the ambush of esoterica,
     the place where you could lay your paranoia to sleep,
        the resistance you denied entrance to,

then -
you could have just said
so.

your sartorial opulence arrests me,
mijn geliefde -
but i am learning.

when i pull pants that look like pajamas
out of the drawer
to wear to work,
i think you'd cringe
at my weak monday patterns,
incredibly unconventional for the modern world.

i look at you:
torn up jeans with indigo embroidery
and
a crisp white tee shirt
and
very nice leather loafers!

i'm intimidated.

i look again:
you smile
at me
and
at my weak monday patterns
and
at my pajama pants for work.

"mijn geliefde,"
you said with a softened gaze with no cringe.

My backbone was cracking through my skin
It woke me up from the long slumber that I have been in
My skin was drying from the coldness of your heart
And praying was the only thing I could do as my part

I searched for the air that you were breathing
But it just turned me back around and mislead me
I became identical with what I was searching for
And oh my, a mirror maze it was!

My logic tried to fight it but heart was in the way
Into tears I turned and dragged unto the sea I went
Like raindrops I was nothing but a cycle
Of emotions and confusion

I tried to move with the waves but my mind caught me
It caught me giving up from my prime objective
It was you that I have wanted for only so long
I had nothing but memories and expectations of you

My backbone was still pushing through
And my skin was still getting drier
There was no sign of you getting closer
And here I am getting caught in a mindfire

Has the sun risen yet?
Because I want to make sure the path towards home is lit for you
You got lost once, I'm not letting your eyes avert before you get here

A little cabin awaits you here, with me in it
Pick this or your gold-adorned walls in the other village

I don't blame you if you don't want to come back; the air here is soon becoming hazy
Just don't forget to write letters to me

Has the sun risen yet?
Because maybe, this time, you'll stay and I'll find this path of yours

I'll only leave if you want me to stay safe inside my little cabin

I hope your doors aren't locked because when the sun rises, I'll start my journey

Where is your smile, your face, wrapped in the peach-colored roses and white blankets of youth?
Have we lost it?

Where you once were, there is a drop of tear from each of us.
An indefinite resolution, a short relief for remembrance.

Moonlight reflects from the tip of your nose and from ours too
as we sit under the tropical moon, wishing for more time together.
A dark breeze let by our bodies and confined us with awe.
But our eyes begged the stars to call our names too.

We were the night and you were dawn,
the waking light of our solace.

Where you once were, there are teardrops from all of us.
A chant of grievance, a slow sinking to the ground to reach for your trembling hands.
*I still want to hold them.

My voice has been cut off from this telephone line we call prayer
My eyes have been blocked by this ray of bright loneliness
My arms, self-amputated, they move like crawling bugs on people's dead faces
My legs no longer move to take bigger strands on earth

No more melody.
Monotony.
Slashed by the unexpected and inevitable nature of fate - my hopes.

Where to find an opening in this endless void?
Face this monotony like you can escape it,
Nobody knows the end to this maze.

i had an epiphany.
it was that i didn't need you to need me to need you.
it was that i had bones that didn't have to hold anything up but myself.
it was that i knew deeply how intrinsic we were to your existence.
it was that i knew deeply how you thought this was true for me.
it was that i knew how you turned our chemistry into mud.
it was that i knew this mud is not me.
it was that i could be free of this.
it was that i could be free of this.
it was that i could be free of this.

Her eyes painted blue by the majestic force above
So true, yet unreal
What the ethereal land holds, we would never know
Maybe more nymphs like her,
With gold, sun-sprayed hair and her miraculously soft skin
And the breeze of icelandic air, brought in every time she paced

Her bosoms sprang like two, upside down crescent moons,
Dragging young men and older boys who understands, along her way
Her arms graceful like angels' wings, more graceful than mine

Ah, me.

Let's not talk about my forgetful self,
I get lost in my own mind thinking about the boy that she wants,
The boy that could soar higher than eagles
A masculine figure, too good for myself?

Am I so undeserving that the icelandic nymph smiles so condescendingly?
Is she spinning the biggest web of lies to defeat this human being, myself?
Is she genuine in her thoughts,
Or is she deceitful to her own holy kind?
Oh, talk about holyness!
The only unholy one out of the hundreds, those suitors

I wish I was only a teardrop,
only so meaningless
I wish I was only a shadow,
only so obscure
I wish I was so big,
only too big to be unseen

Or maybe I wished she was the one like me.

Yet I'm still human, mortal, and defeated by her beauty.

Skin.

They stick to the veins,
painting the **** to add more simplicity to a motley of already existing colors.

I wish though, sometimes, that I can take it off of you -
Just to prove that there's a heart that gives a **** about me.

Breathe In

Ready?
Visual, auditory, kinesthetic
Light, sound, touch

Buildings are of the same shape, stiff outlining
People talk the same way, smell like the same scents
The air's texture caresses me at the same places, softly

Breathe out
Have I left home at all?

We ran so quickly that whatever's left behind didn't matter
A soul, a heart, and their monstrous enemies
They crawled back to follow us, but we did not ever look back

So take this : our words are our promise!

We will take revenge and our song will again be heard
As a chant or just silent whispers - our dreams will haunt you.

We weave our souls with the everyday canon, but -
I know the depth of lives we've lived together
in the grooves of our palms
and the intricacy of our thoughts,
my sight.

Me and you -
Five thousand years and we're still here,
in each other all along -
just like Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi told us.

We are still discovering
whether time and space ever existed between us
and if it will cease to.

I can see how I thought it would always be mine.

It's -
My chocolate stain on the beige carpet,
The black hair shed and left on the bathroom wall,
How the fridge opens smelling like traces of Indonesian fried chicken,
My body curves stamped unto the bed mattress,
Lavender incense that first greets my entrance,
The shoe rack that is never big enough for all my shoes,
The box of nostalgia under my bed.

That is until I had to leave.