I was born, raised and cultivated by my favourite books.
As my eyes rolled along paper and ink
My mind traced each curve of each letter
Fingers move to turn the page
Seeing who I will become next.

I am nothing but these words I've read.
I am a collage of paper trees and paper dolls
Photocopies of human beings
Who are photocopies of other human beings.

I am nothing but what the commercials want me to be.
I can't think outside of this television-shaped box
Suffocating ideologies of powerful men in business suits
I crave their orders in order to get by.

I was born, raised and cultivated by my favourite books
And I wonder if this is how I am supposed to be.

Sitting on the empty stair steps,
Pouring over a thousand of terminologies
In highlighted photocopies of this thick,
Hi.

I know how quiet it is there,
Away from the buzzing sounds
Of the other students in the room.
I know how you have to
Focus, focus, focus
So you chose the spot,
[Maybe absentmindedly? Maybe not?
(Sometimes I wanted to walk straight to you and ask)]
Trying to rack your brains
On what you crammed into it last night.
I know you.
That’s what I’m trying to say.

I know you, not fully, not totally, never enough
And maybe that’s a shame
Or maybe that’s okay
But I see you
More often than not
(It’s not destiny nor fate—just timing and space.)
And I see myself, somehow,
In you that when I pass by, whether up the stairs
Or down,
I can’t help but throw
One last glance,
One last look.
It’s a vague mirror.

I’ve seen the smiles you gave people:
The polite-hello smile,
The you’re-my-friend smile,
The I-know-you-but-I’m-not-sure smile (etc.).
I’ve seen how you walk over the cold tiled floor
Like you can take the world,
Although more humbly and
Without much cruelty.

I’ve seen the happiness in your smile
When people throw you
The look of recognition:
They know you.
You’re the smart one.
You’re the scholar.
You’re the overachiever.
You’re the nice, all-around guy.
You’re  basically, the best.

But I’ve also seen
The split-second of the tiresome day
Weighing down on your eyes.
I’ve seen you stare off space,
Looking like you wanted to run away.
I’ve seen the pressure on your
Blank face for only a second, a minute
That your mask gave away.

I want to tell you something.
I want to tell you the things I can’t tell myself.
I want to tell you the things I wanted to hear
When things spin too fast out of my hand.
I want to tell you, I know.
I want to tell you that sometimes,
It gets low.

And when it gets low
(Because it will get low and I know and I’m sorry),
Hold on, okay?

HOLD ON.

I know you don’t know me
Just as I don’t know you fully
But promise me something, okay?
Promise me, a nameless person,
Speaking to you through a
Typed message on paper,
That you’ll hold on through
The current that’s passing too strong, too fast.
That you’ll move on forward
When it gets haywire and foggy and weird.

Because
I see myself in you,
(Although somewhat lesser)
But unlike me, I know
One day,
You are going to be great.

So hold on,
Move on,
Go straight through
Because if you’ve reached the
Lowest point in your life
And no one puts their faith on you,
Forget them.

Forget them because
This nameless person right here
Knows the truth.

I believe in you
And I hope
You’ll believe in me, too.

you stand in front of your bathroom mirror
with puffed-red eyes and dried-tight cheeks
as you practice your smiling and deception

your thoughts feel light but your feet are heavy
and you cannot bring yourself to unlock the door

and soon you’re sitting on your little sister’s
step-stool with the unfamiliar pill bottle in your
hands when the cacophony in your brain comes to a
caesura. The sudden serenity caresses your soul
and makes peace with your demons

you know the treaty is only temporary and soon
you’ll hear the mad ravings of the demons once more
but for now you are grateful and release yourself
from your prison cell into your weary reality

the sadness murmurs beneath your skin
and deep within your chest, but its aches are
distant like an animal caged and restrained

your days become photocopies as you
continue wearing contrived smiles and still
no one knows your proud laurels are also
your crown of thorns

While sketching a lamp, it was seen that the current came on.
The memoirs about darkness too got stuck then. Thus started to pray

God is a father who gives ten if we ask for a hundred.
Otherwise, would he trick me, by giving me sleep daily, instead of the death I pray for?

The only consolation is the sky. Its reddened eyes, swollen eyelids, disturb.
The previous day, I saw it fallen into and lying in the river.
No, it wouldn’t have died. I can hear the birdsongs.
Is the kingfisher a bird enchanted by the water-spirit?
Or else, leave it, let it be a fish with wings.

When I couldn’t bear the boredom anymore, I thought I would write a letter to death.
As soon as I finished addressing, ‘O last supper of a loner,’ telephone rang.
When I attended, it didn’t say anything.
Earlier, it had given me a kiss.
I don’t remember reading in any book on marriage that from the second kiss onwards, you start feeling bad breath.
Forget all that.

Suppose I bewail ‘die me, die me’, to the current?
After all, it doesn’t know proper grammar or syntax.

Is the news that the copywriter who wrote the advertisement
for the glue which merges two lives
Didn’t get his pay, in today’s papers? No, let the day get lighter
It is a pity that there is no calling bell in the cemetery
Father sleeps , having secured  the mud door .
O no, I am not making any noise

O you who makes fun of me saying that I make a sign of the cross when I see a phone booth,
Please do not sin. You will never find a purer confessional!

I had wanted to make a good lay out for the suicide note, take lots of photocopies and entrust it to a friend to have it posted too.
Otherwise, leave it, it is better to live than to die thus..

I’ve always found peace during storms
Like everything in the world transforms
When the tragedy is by Mother Nature
And not your next door neighbor
Since in this decade violence is a way of speaking
Money is the only thing people are seeking
What happened to going to church on Sundays
Instead our streets are stained with bloodstains
These local teens are on this fake ****.
Keeping their feet and mind at a different speed
Teens are smoking marijuana everyday
Using alcohol and drugs as a getaway
People marrying and divorcing like it’s no big deal
Hurt teens thinking cutting is a way to heal
We can’t even pray to god in schools today
My faith in god I should have a right to convey
When in our pledge it says “one nation under god”
We claim to be so high and mighty but it is all fraud
Ladies feel they have to show their bodies to get any attention
Blaming it all on men but their insecurities they fail to mention
When half the time it’s us ladies who are putting our own gender down
It’s like we are all fighting for some sort of imaginary crown
All these men gang banging, fighting, and selling drugs
So many leaving their kids to pretend they are some type of thugs
When’s the last time the media had something good to say
All these famous people must get tired of the false image they constantly portray
These kids say they worship the Illuminati
Today the streets are just filled with photocopies
They say be unique but being different is frowned upon
We are so cruel to each other but we are all gods spawn
A flag is causing a major fight and uproar
When it wasn’t even their side that one the war
Racism can’t seem to finally subside
To this cause so many men and women have had to die
The worst tragedy to a country used to be an awful plaque
Now today so many countries are in fear of an ISIS terrorist attack
Love thy neighbor as thyself is quoted in the bible
Yet so many claimed Christians are tearing the LGBT community of their title
God used to be the center of everyone’s life
Now so many are abandoning their faith because they’ll do anything to thrive
Today our world is a disappointment to the man who created it
Now his creation is filled with hypocrites
That’s when it begins to rain
For once it’s not the people in this world causing the pain

I want to be the fist of many
The last of any
The only one you ever find yourself craving
I want to make up for all the years we've missed together
I want to see true love truly existing

"You are all the poems I haven't written yet and I want to spend every day scribbling you out trying to explain perfection to myself."

I day dreamed about you kissing my face
And what your arms would feel like around my waist
Never knowing you were a 1,714 miles away
I could never see your face clearly but somehow
I knew you would look like my prince charming
and you do

"Does love sound like the words "I love you" or like the sound of my keyboard keys clicking at 1:30 am in the morning?"

I've waited, I've prayed
I would of walked the world a million times over again
You were the treasure I was searching for
I would have crossed any burning bridge to save you
I would of walked on broken glass or swam the ocean floor
You were always the melody to the song in my heart
The one I will forever adore

I've spent my life making my way to you
I knew we would fit so perfectly together and we do
No other touch would ever suffice
No other person would do me right
I was made for loving only you

From a mid Missouri porch
To a ***** bar room floor
I burned bridge after bridge searching for you
And I never once thought I was lost
Somehow I knew I'd find my way to you

Just hoping to find what I was reaching for
The way it was in my mind
Knowing my dreams would all come true
If I was dreaming them with you

"I just want the opportunity to help carry your load knowing you would do the same for me
I don't believe in miracles or magic but I don't have to believe in you; you are a fact
I am not a small town and you are not a clothing designer, I don't work at a gas station and you don't make photocopies.
I am a mother, a daughter, and a friend and you are a dreamer and an architect with a pen and a vision and we are all hope should be."

All it took was just one kiss
And I knew you wanted to be loved
So, I completely consumed
Fell in love with you

The problem with people-watching
in the middling suburbs outside Pittsburgh,
is everyone looks like they’re related,
a little too similar, bad photocopies
of the same dull morality.
The girls have similar haircuts
and the boys wear similar shorts.
The men and women,
they cannot stomach the ‘F’ word,
but they adore efficient order
enforced through totalitarian violence.
Chemical air fresheners are pumped
through department store ventilation systems.
Perhaps the compound is designed
to induce complacency for the status quo
and suppress everyone's style
or sense of fashion.

Life is a series of experimentation
Tests based on multiple observations
Sometimes of the same thing
And yet I still have questions that still need to be answered
And there are no 4 options to choose from
And even if there were
The letters would have disappeared from how many times
I’ve shaded the circle
Just to erase it again
And sometimes I try to look for a quick summary
Just a simple short answer question
But there’s so many different variations
And none of them fit right
So I end up filling 3 sheets of paper
With just one answer
Just to get no credit
Because your teacher wanted you to
Summarize
What’s too much for you
To summarize

Once I think I’ve found a hypothesis
I receive some data feedback that
Doesn’t correlate
And so this idea
Of what this is
Of what love is
Of what life is
Can never be really answered
Like a webster’s dictionary entree
Or by anyone’s own experience
Because like time
It changes and grows

There was a story of a famous cobbler
Who was visited by a demon
And he was forced to make shoes for it
And when it came back for its shoes
It mutated between an elephant
A mouse
A man
A dog
I don’t know how to cobble the shoes that could fit
So many forms
From hooves
To talons
To perfect pedicured toes
That’s how love has always come into my life
And yet I have felt it so many times the same
Like a squeeze not on my heart
But my entire chest
But how do you cobble shoes
To fit so many feet
While staying the same

It’s like trying to explain why you hate something
To someone who has no idea
But you have that idea
Because of jealousy
Or something that happened
Maybe too long ago for you to
Really
Put words to it
But there’s that feeling in your stomach
And your brain is mashing the eject button
Whenever you have to be close
To this disgusting
Terrible
Ugly thing
That people would hate too
If they only knew
The feeling you
Just have

Until you
I didn’t have that missing link
And suddenly there are words in my mouth
To explain
The evolutionary changes in my mind
Of why
And not how

My Lucy
Knowing that you see the same sky above me
With me
Makes the stars diamonds
You are the reasoning as to why
I have love
Why I try to love
Why I live to try
To love
You are the clips in my brain
Constantly cycling through
The wrinkle of your jawline when you laugh
The way your shoulders bounce
The way you kissed me on new years

You kissed everyone else there
But I had to blame my sore stomach
Tying itself in knots
On the alcohol
But it was the butterflies
That you set a fire to
In my lower intestine
And they were crawling
Up my throat
Choking me
With their wings

And when you finally wanted me
As I watched you,
Wanted you
On the same warm rubber
Of the trampoline
In late spring

But the same rubber
Was cool
The night that I connected your lips to mine
And the look you gave me was
So confused
And distant
We were all so close
And the heat was radiated
Piled bodies pressed together
On top of us
Around us
And yet you managed to pull away

I wanted to break that distance
But that dark night was so bright
And so vivid
That in my mind
The look you had
Pulled away
Again
And again
And again
And in the yellow room where
Everything was so warm
And loving and hard
When it needed to be but
So soft
Recalling that time is
So hard
Because while the yellow is
So bright
It hurts
And photocopies into my brain
Like it was recorded over the same tape
That took in the image
Of you pulling away
The warm yellow
Cut
Again and again
By your face
Pulling away
Further and further
From mine

I cling to those warm images
Trying to think of just those warm images
Why can’t I just think of those warm images
The smell and feeling of you lingers
Like the heart beats I felt throughout my body
I think of you
And not just myself in your eyes
I don’t think of how sad I was
How much I wanted your attention
To validate me
Call me a person like Adam’s animals
Claimed with names like labels
That one has to live up to
I just wanted to experience
Your presence
And that yellow warmth
I just wanted to watch you
As a painter
As he would paint with such a tired, wise, skilled hand
And learn by just observing how you take in the world
And repeat it in your own imagery
Your own beautiful imagery

And I burn
When I think how people have seen this
And scrape at the surface of all you are
To present you dirt
Where tectonic plates should be moved
To give you the yellow sunshine beneath your feet
And swirl around your hair
Like a halo
Just to see how beautifully you reflect it
And when you came to me
With balloons twisted around your ankles
I wanted to hold you to the ground
And be your tethering rock to the world
I loved you too much to say the right words
To twist our fingers together into knots
And lock into place what we could be
So I turned away and let you be pulled back
A memory lost to gravity

To this day I can quote all of lilo and stitch
Or homeward bound
And still they sit on my shelf
Only to exist
When I chance a glance at their titles
And certain scenes come back
In vivid Technicolor
Playing in the back of my mind
And like someone had ****** with the tv’s color settings
Everything is just so
Yellow

how awful the past may seems to us in the present
revisiting a memory of a memory like only a memory can provide
the smells
the lights
the shades
the fights
that blue dress you wore once that you spilled wine on that night
or was it purple?
that night we walked and talked for hours
or was it raining?
the memory of memories like photocopies of photocopies
distorting sets in
the colors fade as the shades darken
the blacks and whites all bleed together
becomes static on an old television

Say I was wise and different
who has three German penfriends
who only wrote in English
We write about photography,
be sent photocopies of Black and White montages.

I  own about  30 Cameras
cursed not to be photographic each day
searching on meetup for courses
Someone suggested West Brompton  cemetery
Tried Macro photography
Bon Soir to Landscape
I'm on the verge of a buttercup
prosaic in my newfound world