i'm from a small, yellow bedroom
yellow flowers, yellow layette
and yellow jaundiced skin  
i'm from the taste of the tea mother makes me when i'm sick
and from the sound of her singing
about how she looked and looked for the light
like the roots and the leaves floating in the boiling water
her voice a soothing sound
like bubbles in simmering tea

i'm from words written on a page-
the feeling of an old book and the smell of a new one
and i'm from hiding beneath the covers
falling in love with black letters printed on white paper
i'm from lots of illustrations and then none at all
when my mind became colorful enough to fill all the pages
i'm from "the game is afoot"
and "after all this time?"

i'm from all over the world
pieces of my heart, a jigsaw puzzle
like my family scattered all over the globe
i'm from canada, from the US, from france from lebanon from italy
i'm from a country nobody wants
but a country that desperately wants us back

i'm from messy hair, oversized sweaters
half-finished sketchbooks filled with promises
and rubbish poetry lines
i'm from the echo of my own voice
against the splatter of the shower
i'm from reading in the flashes of street lamp lights
i'm from pursuing science and desiring art
drawing on the airplane's foggy windows
and wondering how it flies
with a clear head and with clouded eyes.

in a universe
full of drifting souls
you chose me,
the forgotten and abandoned

i warned you
all my pages were empty
but that didn’t deter you
in fact
you were more intrigued

and now i understand
it’s because
your pages were also blank

so we held hands
and scrawled our words
in writing that’s messy
only because there’s
so much to express
in so little time
and we just might forget
if it’s not written down

now my pages
they’re full
and yours are the same

two souls mingling
forgotten and abandoned
by all but eachother.

Confused and misguided I found myself in the bookstore,
Looking for myself in the writing of poets,
Where pain and love met, I yearned for more
Found myself in disguise, broken, feeling time fly

Broken and insecure, I found myself in the bookstore.
Reading about my past lovers, was I not strong enough for the storm?
Loved a man who failed to explore,
The woman inside me begging for more

Lost but committed, I found myself in the bookstore.
Reminiscing on our lust, was I a bore?
Picking up a book filled with promises,
Will I ever get what love has in store?  

Running towards lust, I ended up broken in the bookstore.
You left me broken but wanting more
Addicted to your soul, I failed to remember..
That I met you at the bookstore

-Henessy J. Beltre

Days are long sugar canes
And time is a squeez of lime
Combined with hot pepper
Lunch was the only time
To be the skipper
Who reaches for his backpack to find
Those little divers, screw drivers
Delving deep in the knapsack, poking it
Breathing in it, through the tiny holes
And pliers took bites off my lunch
The way a crocodile snatches a buffalo out of water
And made a splatter of tomato sauce
The gloves gave me handshakes
When I reached for the book I read
And handed me crumbs of bread

I’ve never been the type to write poems that rhyme
I’ve never been the type, I say time to time
But I’m in a seat meant for two
Thinking of you
And all I could do to make you mine
You’ve never been the type to say how you feel
But darling I have to say that it’s so very real
But I will puff out my chest
Do my very best
To make it look brave and not like I have just had a meal
Our conversations side by side get so very deep
And lovely while you are here trying to sleep
I toss and I turn
And I beg and I yearn
For something other than terror! My soul, may it reap
Alright cut the rhyme
Cause I’m a try hard and I used to be a die hard in the sense that I’d try pretty damn hard to do just that
And there you were
Next to me
Rubbing circles on my back to calm me down
I showed you this musician called cavetown
So many of his lyrics make me think of you
Like, “She’s so in love with all the things i hate most about myself”
Like, “It’s cold but you’re warm, can we hug til you freeze tonight?”
Like, “Strangely, he feels at home in this place”
I’m so in love with the way you smile with your entire body
And how when you’re flustered or genuinely laughing, your whole chest moves along with your voice
How you call me that stupid nickname when you’re happy to see me
And maybe that’s just some kind of love I can’t recognize swelling in me
But it doesn’t explain why I want to kiss you
I read a book called Fahrenheit 451 last week
What astounded me about it is that man was vain enough to think he could entertain himself with nothing more than parlor stories and fire
How books are a world we simply cannot live without
But my dear friend(and praying for something more)
If I wanted to entertain myself for an entire lifetime, all I would have to do is look into your eyes

I like books
the way the pull me out of reality and into the story
the way you can truly feel what the character is feeling
the way you can decide how you imagine the atmosphere

Once I tried writing a book
I mean I love to write
and I guess I always will
but I never finshed the book
I just couldn´t decide for an ending

I guess it´s the same in reality
I have problems making decisions
I like to think of every possible outcome
just to run away before it ends

maybe I am to scared to see the end
because I want it to continue forever
and now I am asking myself
am I still talking about my never ending book
or my life

I guess I´ll never find out
because in the end
I will run
and run
away from the end
and into the past
repeating my mistakes.

are you happy?
she asks him, out of the blue
in his own silence and his own life he knows the answer
but he will refuse to say it
i’m going to write the question in the back of the book
because sometimes it’s hard to realize the sentences aren’t just to other characters
you are being spoken to

The human suffering is my life's project
How could I ever turn my back on it

All the images of loss I had painted
On my own cold concrete Berlin wall
Paintbrush dipped into a catalog color
"Dark ocean of despair"
Smearing it cautiously on the rough surface
Protecting the still innocent from the ricochets

Oh the number of books that I had written
About another restless soul stuck in limbo
Circling the globe on a boat called "Oblivion"
I shoot them into my not so public library in the sky
Riding on the back of a spark flying from my sympathetic heart
Only to allow their sad glow to forever illuminate the top of my head

An archive of movies stored in a chamber of my heart
Categorized into natural human disasters
All written and directed by me
Starring every soul that ever exposed itself to mine
On a hot sticky night with a glass of wine
In a dusty desert wearing dark green uniform
On the grassy banks of a beautiful European canal
Their silent cries for help are the soundtrack of my life
The shot of an unfallen tear I could never cut out

The pain of a life lived internally,
A bag of beautiful intentions bursting at the seams
Are the substance of the blanket I cover myself with
When I try to fall asleep
Who would I be without it?