i used to be eighteen with blue hair
exuding the pure waters of my heart
to the tangled tips of my salt ridden curls
by nineteen the colors of my waves were stolen by darkness
oil spilling out
to leave a story told in the blackest parts of my eyes
but like oceans before me
the murkiness faded
and sunlight began to graze my waters
but my heart never flowed quite as strong
and the colors no longer touched my curls

Up

A seed is a forest-to be.
A rock is a mountain-to-be.
A drop is a river-to-be.
A river is an ocean-to-be.
A cloud is a sky-to-be.
Clouds are an aspiring heaven.


An apple is a pie-to-be.
A brick is a house-to-be
A house is a city-to-be.
A city is a state-to-be.
A state is a country-to-be.

Down

A country is a war-to-be.
War is a bullet-to-be.
A bullet is a death-to-be.
Deaths are a city destroyed.
Death is a house fallen.
A house fallen is just bricks,
apples not grown, pies never eaten.

Death

Death is
the hell of  war,
the hell of the bullet,
Death is
a city, country fallen to hell,
hell is the fallen house,
bricks tumbled to dust,
rotten apples,
poison pies.

Death is the hell
of a heaven never found,
clouds never made,
rain never falling,
oceans never formed,
rivers never to be,
rivers dry from a dam of bricks,
forests never grown,
seeds never planted.

Disappointed i am
for i was dropped
like a potato
not that i was hot

Disappointed i am
for i was given heat
as i had erred
not that i was ****

Disappointed i am
for i lost the man
i used to see in the mirror
not that i can recognise anymore

Disappointed i am
for the time lost
in learning to love
and to have lost it all

Disappointed i am
while the world tries so hard
to put a smile and be grateful
and know its a slow death for us all

I gave you my heart.
And what did you give me in return?
You had my attention, affection, admiration,
And my love.
That last one is the hardest to get out of me.
But somehow, I opened my heart up to you.
I loved again and I’m still surprised by that.
You see, I had my heart broken not long before you came around.
I knew you were special, but I thought, “there’s no way I can fully love again. At least not for a long time.”
But I was wrong.
Love grew wild and free from a place where hurt once was.
Love for you.
But you know that saying, “all good things come to an end”.
I really wish that wasn’t true.

We were a good thing,
But I don’t think we were the right thing.
Even still, my heart hurts in the place where you didn’t harvest my love and cherish it like a bouquet of fresh cut flowers.
You saw it, and knew you couldn’t give it back to me.
And what did I get in return for a heart of love not embraced?
I’m still walking around my fields, looking at all the flowers that bloomed for you and wondering, “what will happen to these”?
What will happen to this beautiful and fragile love that lays unharvested?

At this point, I don’t know.
All I can do is marvel at the fact that love grew again in the first place.
I’m still waiting to see what I will get in return for the love you left in me.

m.h.

The act of growing up is so simple
Yet so many miss their chance
There’s a door connecting us
The I before
And the I after
Yet it’s a one way door
To open it
One must understand
Love
Compassion
Empathy
And passion
Yet not only towards others
But towards the self too
For a great deal we grow up
Through understanding ourselves
Then, a rather complicated act
Becomes a very simple one.

My mom's passionate about Newton's second law of thermodynamics.
She uses a "mom" version which can be stated as:
"Daughters tend toward disorder if not managed."
If I'm nothing else, I'm vigorously, meticulously managed like a tiger that must be turned judiciously from one situation to another lest a foot be forfeit.
"You're too young for"... is more than a formulate, it's a knife-like rule-tool, to dampen upheaval, banish trespassers, and put the "new" under glass" just out of reach. It's forever primed, there in the parenting tool-belt and can be thrown with the gunfighter's liquid, skillful ease.
So when I say I'm into something "new," I mean I've tiptoed into that Tartarus where you find the scandalous, like short skirts and Internet *******.
The "new" is prima-facie proscribed until it's proven cold, safe and harmless then blessed like an old Disney movie.
Our impromptu confinement in suspending the world has allowed me unaccounted moments to sample and measure how this "new" might fit into my life.
So it is  now that I wake up every morning ready for crime and I live but a hairsbreadth from punishment yes, I've discovered one of God's greatest gifts and seductions - coffee.
After about a week, my brother, while I'm reading the news, transparently focuses my mom's attention on the cup by my iPad, by glancing, slowly with his eyes. My mom is fleetingly lost, then she alights:
"You're too young for coffee," she says.
I look up and groan.
Then, as she moves to collect the now-banned item, I send a sisterly glower to my brother who stands blithely and innocently sipping from his cup.

(in 2017 my parents wanted to move us to Shenzhen, China - for a year)

No luminous field of stars tonight and no rain as yet, just booming thunder and the play of light on darkness.

I lay in a grass clearing, watching the sky. Swirling clouds and flashes of light - bright streaks - as far as the eyes can see.

Wind whips the trees, the sky, my hair. Leaves irregularly blow by as if in a hurry or perhaps debris from some strange slow-motion explosion.

I feel at home in this chaos. This angry sky mirrors my mood, my life at this moment. The next few days, next few hours will change everything, for me, or nothing. My future looms suddenly dark, frightening and empty.

Am I really caught in this plan, this parental gravity, this storm, that can upset my entire life, where years of furious work are meaningless??

There is no compass for dreams, they know only passionate directions. I’ve defended them as best I could, like a lioness, a lover, but there’s no stopping a storm.. I guess.

As the rain begins I know one thing.. I will not move..

Parents, the keepers of the door to this amazing universe..

To them I am a fragile sapling, staked for its own good. Protected from sweet kisses, funny and salty, somber and delicious.

Parents, those figures of authority - from whom our true lives are kept.

Protect me from scars no deeper than a blush, from rustles on a soft battlefield, caressed curves, tousled hair and appetitive breaths of each others air.

Parents, who guard against loves bombardment, the persistent courtship. Giving ground in slow but immense movement, like those of continental plates.

Parents, whose power will fade with no more cause than time, gentle as mist, as powerful as a waterfall.

What's the scariest book you ever read? ... Some Stephen King book like Salem's Lot or The Shining? For me it's Kate Millett's ****** Politics ... Oh, man ... Now THAT will scare you to death if you're female.

I discovered a man, overheard at my church, who actually believes his *** is a sign of power and of superiority. WHY am I so startled? Some childish trust not yet scrubbed off?" Or worse yet, some belief, not yet strangled, in a better world? See, stupid me, I thought this bill had been paid, by sufferance, by real people like Elizabeth Stanton, Carrie Catt and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ... by entire generations who ran through those tangled woods emerging cut and bruised ... if at all.

What is it like for HIM? I see him eyeing us, his little inferiors who bleed with the moon, with secret, catlike distaste ... regarding female opinions as slightly impure ... then, with calm, Godlike grace, granting females the forms of servant to assume.

Can I, can we, be forced to accept this inheritance? I don't know ... All I know is that this prejudice, so strangely without substance, strikes me like a dueler's lucky ******, robbing me of attendant rights and wit ... springing a tender trap of doubt in the future and abandoning me to stammering.