writer
A good writer is someone who makes you realize something you already knew, even though you didn't know you knew it.
When I typed out that sentence, I left out the word "good". I didn't mean to, but when I read back, it wasn't there. It just said, "A writer is someone who makes you realize something you already knew, even though you didn't know you knew it."
And I think it's true, maybe. Everyone writes, even if it's only just a little, even if they wouldn't say they do. Even if it's just typing text messages now and then. But you become a writer when you write something that someone reads and thinks, wow.
Even if that someone is only you.
Is there a distinction between "writer" and "good writer"? Every writer has bad days, it's never all "good". And what does "good" mean, anyway?
If you know you're a writer, if you feel it, I think that's enough.
painting in the color of silence
His silence was deafening,
but my head paints louder pictures.
they race around my head
leaving ragged footprints
and violent echoes.
his lips spill only blue
yet my ears take it in, red
and angry
red
and
blue
they flash.
powerful
but utterly powerless.
even so, the footprints in my head
pound in navy terror
the furious stars burst
and I did it all.
I did nothing.
monochrome
she saw the world in monochrome. blacks, greys, and whites. she didn’t know there were colors. but one day she met him. and he showed her color.
he’d hold her hand and point to an apple. “look, that’s red.”
red, she’d say. and she’d smile, pointing to her battered cherry shoes.
“red.”
yes, he’d say. “red.”
the sky was blue. bananas were yellow. the grass was green. traffic cones were orange. pansies were purple.
and he taught her other colors.
crimson, neon orange, canary yellow, emerald, sapphire, lilac. then scarlet, vermillion, soft buttercup, pear green, manganese blue, lavender.
he told her that there were infinite colors.
---------
“what’s your favorite color,” he asked her, as they strolled in the park, him naming the color of each flower.
“white.”
“that’s not a color,” he said.
“yes. it is. it is all the colors.” she smiled.
he let her walk ahead of him, watching her laugh at the butterflies and sniff the flowers. her once dark grey hair was now warm chestnut, red woven into brown, hues of sunrise melted into chocolate. she turned around, and he walked towards her until they were an inch apart. he looked into her eyes which had appeared to be a solid brown at first, but were really spirals of earthy brown stained with hot chocolate on a cold winter night. honey droplets splattered the brown, and her irises were rimmed with candy apple green. the deep pools of dark-cinnamon imprisoned the sweetness of saccharine chocolate and the bitterness of strong coffee.
he kissed her. and he was filled with white: all the colors, at full brightness.
---------
they lay down on the dewy grass field, staring up at the sky that was no longer, to her, a light grey that deepened into black, but a baby blue dotted with cotton candy clouds. until dusk’s rosy fingers reached into the sky, painting a monet of muted tangerines and dusty pinks and crimsons, the endless edges a purple grey that seeped into the painting.
and then night fell, which she liked to envision as a large dark cape draped over the sky, inky velvet studded with bejeweled stars. he told her that he liked to think of the night as sugar spilt over black marble. that in the senerade of black, the stars were a choir singing in infinite patterns. the darker the night the sweeter the song.
he held her close, counting the stars, counting the colors.
she told him that the sky held the world, and he whispered to her, “no, the colors do.”
checks and balances
my life
is a balancing act.
but why
why is it like this?
im shocked
that eight hours of sleep
in two days
and an emotional high
would lead to this...
but am I?
my brain
is a good lier.
even as I speak these words
it whispers
“I only speak truth”
but does it?
do I really
not deserve
this happiness?
do I really
need to do this again?
STOP IT BRAIN
I want to sleep.
Sometimes I don’t want these checks and balances.
reality
check.
I don’t need you today.
can’t I just have
a good day?
and yet
as I write this
I’ve already convinced myself
that I
shouldn’t feel this way
today.
you’ve been happy long enough.
why not?
crazed smiles through the sobs
guilty hands, quivering with tension,
held far away from you
you can't let yourself do this
you promised
you promised
you promised.
a smile again,
so wide it hurts.
keep it up
be strong.
it is not hard to do
easy, in fact.
how can you smile?
why not
why not
why not?
WHY NOT?
If only I couldn't think of anything.
but
in reality,
who can't?
be strong
be strong
be strong
and stop.
All was Golden in the Sky
laughter echoing across the wooden picket fence
honeysuckle blossoms between sweet cherry-red lips
the hollow echo of a pebble bouncing across pavement
Olive eyes drinking in the cotton candy clouds stretched across the sky
The wind runs gentle fingers through loose brown hair, carrying whispers of summer fields and fingers sticky with vanilla cream
faint streaks of kool-aid dyed hair
woven round wilted dandelions
giggles and grass stained knees
crawling under splintering wooden beams and weaving around rusty equipment,
following the thin tabby cat to the horses in their rolling pastures,
wiry tails flicking at the swathes of flies floating lazily on the stagnant patch of warm air
rolling down the window, listening to the crackling radio
the tires squealing on loose gravel ,
laugh and look up at the sunroof, sun baking freckled shoulders
come across a small fruit stand
peach juice dripping down lips and bony elbows
raspberry stained fingers wave goodbye as the car pulls away,
a tub of strawberries dripping onto the passenger's seat
my empyrean.
A simple thing
But everything to me.
Can you see it as I do?
Destiny plucks stars from the sky
Ending the pattern, spoken verbatim
For this.
Galectic beauty, beauty in the dissarray
Hell below is jealous of the heavens above.
I wonder how people can ignore it
Jaded in repetition, routine
Kept in the dark, eyes downcast.
Look up. you won't regret it.
Map the stars, again and again.
Nature demands to be seen.
Our world is graced by our heavens above.
Perspective swirls in the pattern it makes.
Queer, the things we are given.
Rare, yet so common
Simple, but utterly complex
Timeless, but missed in the rapid world we are trapped in.
Ubiquity that never gets old
Veiled no more
We look up at our sky
Xenolith in our dismal world
Yank your sight from the ground.
Zenithal paradise is waiting.
The Unknown Philosophy
When we see a box that is not intimidating, let’s say it is on your kitchen table, unlabeled and cracked open a little bit, our instinct, our nature is to look inside that box. We have a desire to know! Apparently the unknown beckons us. The unknown seems to elude us as we pursue it. We just want to have less unknown in our lives at the same time it is a catalyst in the process of getting answers.
Who is the future loyal to? Is the 'unknown' friends with the future or is the future our friend in finding out the unknown? To be fair, does the past get too involved, burying evidence as it cohorts with time.
The unknown can be dangerous. We must practice caution in certain situations, in which we are grateful to the unknown. So is the unknown a bad thing?
Why do we feel such ambivalence toward the unknown? The downside of the unknown fills our inquiring minds with uncertain scenarios, possible threats and unconfirmed theories.
We will have many unknowns in our lives. I choose to embrace the unknown considering it to be a growth opportunity, as in growth of the mind to seek and the heart to hold steadfast.
The unknown leads us to consider something in the universe knows, just not us.
We must accept there are questions we just do not get the answers to right now.
Some things should not be known so, may be the unknown knows exactly what it is doing.
I believe the future has all the answers even if we physically die not knowing.