I love learning,
I always have.
Curiosity compels,
To understand all the spells,
Bells and whistles.
Forever the learner
And never the learned.
The more I know,
The more I don't know.
It is troubling and yet…
Freeing.

I was born
with questions in my mouth.
Why do wolves howl?
What do bees dream?
Will I ever be held
the way that the ocean's depths
hold secrets?
*
I pressed my hands
into the cool dirt of every mystery,
removed them to find earth under my nails,
ink on my palms,
and a smile I still cannot explain.

They tried to tell me:
not everything needs to be known.
But how could I keep from exploring
when every whisper of the wind,
every caw of the crows,
every daisy's petal,
tells me there is more.

They tried to tell me:
Pandora's jar is just Eden's apple
wearing a new name -
blooming only sorrow,
but can we really know the light
without the dark?

Hope was the last thing breathing.
She was caught in the looking glass,
unable to speak,
and I thought her reflection
looked an awful lot
like me.

In an ancient city of Europe
In a museum filled with splendid artworks

Dashing and charming whispers
Colored the entire room with liveliness

Wandering around the corner
Gazing at every glittering piece

My eyes were locked into a stranger
Who I never met before in my whole life

A stranger with a pair of dazzling eyes
Looking at me beautifully for a while

So appealing were the eyes
That I almost wished
I could even look into them forever

With long and beautiful eyelashes
A pair of eyes made of Atlantic

I couldn't resist his eyes upon me

His angelic features

Made my heart surrender
Made my heart skip a beat

Couldn't escape his stares for a while

Suddenly he was standing in front of me
He was right in front of me

And looking at me passionately
Like he knew me for a long while

Calling me softly, "Ciao Amore"
Smiling and grinning at the same time

When I asked him why ~ ~

He whispered into my ear softly saying
"I've been looking for u through my whole life"

Confusion and curiosity
Along with questions and worries
Preoccupied in my entire mind 

I looked around and around—
To ask his intentions behind his words

But he's nowhere to be found—
He disappeared slowly into thin air

Like midsummer rain ~
Like a midsummer dream ~

Children wonder what

it would be like to be dead --


but not: to be old.

Compassion,
The path of all things.
To care about nothing
Would be to learn just the same.

Curiosity,
The drive of all things.
To have it about nothing
Would be to receive just the same.

And thus, we have our twins!
Two constants with reciprocal natures
In continuous flux, each a prerequisite of the other.

To coddle one too much
Means the deprivation of the other.
To neglect either
Means the neglect of each other.
That is,
To neglect either is to reject both.
To foster chaos is by either's rejection,
In that both shall neglect each other.

The incompassionate mind is not curious.
The uncurious mind is not compassionate.

As in, by our neural structures,
The ways we decide to go
Are like the paths which grow.
For you leave more than only footprints
Where no man has ever walked before.
Yet, that you leave nothing,
You constantly walk those roads.
Yet, that it is immaterial,
You still do so in the physical.
Yet, that it is material,
You still do so in the metaphysical.

For it's inbetween being betwixt,
For it's seperate & imperceptible.
For it's singular, yet collective.
For it's collective, yet individual.
For it's infinitesimal, yet infinite.
For it's eternal, yet finite in existence.

That is, existence like ice
Slowly melting into water.
That it remains the same,
But changes & fluctuates
Relative to any environment.
As like with the constraints of time,
Actions outward of the body.
Action of the outward body.
In relation to it,
Matter unchanged
But translated via a different state.

Celebrate.
To live is for life,
But we all die sometime!
Yet, is this change?
Transmutation by that of another order?

Something perennial, yet still coming into being.
Something endless, yet but only just beginning.
Something futuristic, yet which is already happening.

When all eyes turn to nature
When all hearts brush the trees
Whisper into the leaves

When all feet steps the grass
When all hands grasps the seeds
Speak into the trees

When all lips breathe the wind
When all bodies swamp the waves
Shout into the sea

The dead trees whispered to me in my sleep about happy endings.
(I should have known better than to talk to strangers.)
Maybe the bottomless wine glasses were a dream and I’ll wake up.
(she didn’t wake up)

I heard them say, “His blood turned sour long ago.”
I smiled back at the shadows, nodding my head –
yes.
(But I can’t resist the taste of bitter citrus.)

Do you paint stories across the walls of your mind?
(We accept the love we think we deserve.)
Adrenaline and attraction intertwined at last.
(When is a monster no longer a monster?)

Oh, how the moonlight dances upon despair,
(I have learned to waltz with my own shadow.)
We whispered confessions to the night so still,
(Are secrets safe when whispered to darkness?)

Listen to the symphony in the chaos we created...
(When does the hunted become the hunter?)
In a universe full of paradoxes, what do you believe?
(I stare into a broken mirror, unsure which piece is mine.)

At the edge of reality, where does it end?
Burning alive, my white dress turns into black ash,
I smile, and ask if you’re happy.
(The trees whisper back that you are.)

I don’t remember when I became friends with the rabbit.  
It must have been when I was too young to know that
Rabbits aren’t supposed to talk or
Keep time with pocket watches.

I quite liked how the clocks spun backwards and the doorways shrunk.
I often laughed at the way colors swirled or
The funny way mirrors distorted images.
But only the rabbit and his friends understood.

Kids at school would laugh when I told them about my tea parties with no tea.
Apparently, the clocks didn’t spin backwards for them.
Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't.
And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would.

I learned to hide the fact that the sky was green and the grass was blue.
Picking my personality from my pocket, I became a walking mirror.
Yes, yes, the sky is blue and the grass is green and the clocks spin forwards and the mirrors are not silly and the colors do not swirl and the voices do not wondrously whisper in your ear.

The rabbit would try to console me. (For he was the only one who was not mad.)
I cried and cried and the more I cried the more the sky turned green.
For the first time I begged and pleaded that it would turn to blue. (But it never did.)
I quite liked the world until the rest of the world decided it didn’t like me.

Please do not lock me up again in that awfully small white room, I really did not like it in there.
Please do not burn me at the stake for showing you a glimpse of my world.
Please do not cast me out in sin for being me.
Please let me live in my world, and I will let you live in yours.