As I go past each, I am struck with sonder,
With each new face, I cannot help but wonder,
Have their lives been whole or torn a sunder
Live with purpose or live in blunder.

Hearts as complex, as unknown, as touched by others.
Friends and family, enemies and lovers.

Lives at rest or tense with stress.
Rooms all clean or clothes a mess.
Calm or angry, happy or sad.
Angel or demon, good or bad.

I know nothing about anyone’s soul.
All I know is that they have lived as all;
As strangers that I cannot begin to understand,
All of us stuck together and sharing this land.

have you ever tried to write poetry
when you’re not at all feeling poetic?
when life isn’t necessarily ugly
but it isn’t necessarily beautiful either?
when you could talk about
the sonder you try to feel
as the people sitting at tables around you
eat their food, talk on the phone, finish their homework, sip their coke
do whatever it is they do
when you could talk about how the
chill of this air reaches underneath
your goosebump skin
and draws out a shiver, a chatter
when you could capture the sounds
of the ice machine
and the clicking keyboard keys
and the rusty sliding of chairs on
a linoleum floor
when you could write about
whatever you **** well please
but it just doesn’t come to you?
have you ever been too tired
to feel tired?
god, i wish i were awake.
life is happening
and where am i?

in a city of shifting faces
we become forgetful about life in different places
succumbed to a world within a world.
construction and history
poverty and misogyny;
the city is lost within me and i am lost within the city

we all suffer the internal blackholes of everyday life

in a city of anonymous faces,
we take no notice
succumbed to a world within a world where only our world matters
and we wonder what's for lunch whilst thousands live homeless and the irony of wondering why so many go hungry
in a city of greed

consumers consumed by consumerist propaganda

all the shifting faces we walk past on a daily basis
bigots, fascists, racists
and we are wrapped up
too engulfed by our own lives to care about others
but selflessness is only selfless if not done for self, but i was told
"no good deed goes unpunished"
but we should do good anyway
because in a city of shifting faces
be the face-shifter who stops turning pages and pauses --
take in the scenery
and be alive for every moment;
it is okay to be a passer-by in a city of nameless strangers
but never in your own life

Next to your pyre
Nest to your flame
I am ashamed by my mortality

these days have made ash accumulating of me
the grown-up ghost I'm taken to be
a soundless sonder

Through another man's lens
through another boy's poem
you are still beautiful to me

Some other man's Eurydice
Some boy who didn't turn around
when faced with the world only a few steps away

Now I am buried under this city
practicing sleepless nights
I talk to you backwards and pray for the world to begin again

a double exposure in third person
the picture makes sense, the pieces don't fit together
My schizophrenia in monochrome

Limerance,
though spurious
pending supplication

sonder.
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

this is one of my favorite words, because it really opens your eyes in the realization that every single person you walk by really does have their own world they're living in.
each person carrying intimate moments, memories, songs, hurts, struggles, secrets, pains, and beliefs about themselves and the world they live in.
but what if we chose to extend a loving hand to people. in treating them with kindness, respect, dignity, and forgiveness. what a beautiful world we would live in.

Do you ever have a moment
that suddenly it     SLAMS             into you
                                                             ­     you          are    alive.
And seven billion people     write the same story. You wonder,
  alone in the crowded Seattle-Tacoma airport, if someone
   will ever hold your empty heart       like the man in a gray business suit
   and the woman wearing a striped neckerchief. Will someone ever be upset your flight didn’t depart at the expected time, and give            the bouquet of rhododendrons to a stranger. Will someone               ever burst into a full sprint
upon first glance at you, deliriously happy that you are
      home.
Will someone ever    acknowledge that
  you are alive,   breathing for a change, wishing    for a slow dance,
loss of insanity. Will someone ever, in the passengers
   of the world,
                   notice you.