High Rise

Wake up to another East River morning.

Downtown sunshine, rush hour taxis,

Left-turn arrows a pedestrian hazard -

Pre-coffee, post-shower fog.

Slide through elevator shaft

Encounter glass, pavement, bus.

Storefronts, apartments

Brick and steel scraping sky

A halting blur.

City soundscape while walking,

Fast traffic breathing to a subway heartbeat.

--11.19.09

Spill

The words from my eyes

Spill out onto my lips

Trip past my chin to collect

Into a puddle in my lap,

Drowning my knees

In emotion, and memories

Of when you made them tremble.

When they went weak,

And I couldn't stop smiling,

And I felt stupid for being so happy.

Well my knees are forgetting

What it was to smile -

They're ready to run on city streets.

But my eyes keep saying what my knees forget

And I'm holding my tongue,

Trying to dry up the memory puddle.

Still something keeps spilling

From tears to tongue to truth,

And it turns out my knees are pretty good swimmers.

--8.26.09

Para Esperar

Yo te deseo

Y tu me deseas,

Entonces porque no me amas?

Quiza con tus palabras,

Pero no con sus acciones.

No entiendo.

Estoy solamente

Estoy esperanza,

Levantando con la luna.

Tu eres la oscuridad

Que trata a ocultar la verdad.

Estoy Esperanza.

--8.24.09

Cloudy (A Haiku)

The trees are raining.

Crying for a people lost

Who can't save their world.

--8.19.09

Complication/Implication

Once upon a moonlight

Used to think it should last

That which was started

Should endure

Lest it mean nothing

But now these moments

Faster fleeting

Are somehow always

Deeper seeking

Stronger bonding

As they fly by

Your arms

Only a moment last

Talks perhaps

A moment more

Before it's gone

Yet I no longer

Brush it off

As something past

For while your

Heartbeat fades away

Words linger

Though from before,

I think truths last

Regardless of

Our current reality

So I hold on

While I let go

Hoping you know

What you still

Mean to me

Not sign of 

My weakness at last

But my wisdom first

Though I worry always

I'm a fighter

And contemplation

Keeps spawning this

Intellectual dance.

--6.2.09

Of Erasers and Metronomes

You may not realize it

But the handprint

Of you holding my heart

Is still all over

This pencil-drawn soul.

It's been a while

Since the weight has been lifted

And my mind's been feeling

A little heavier too

While you've been missing.

Cradled in others' arms

Feels familiar yet so foreign

Recalling memories of

The last time it felt like this,

Safe and nervous at the same time.

I miss you,

And I hate missing you,

But moving on is treacherous

Though I don't want to dwell

On an echoing past.

So I take my two steps forward

Try to skip the one step back

Hope one day you'll catch up

If I just take my time

Though my heart is skipping beats.

--6.1.09

Untitled (And Inspiration in Progress)

Well I made it to the city

But I guess it's quite a pity

I left my walking shoes at home.

Still I'm going somewhere fast

Try to make each moment last

When I say goodbye to you on the phone.

--5.31.09

Shadows of Quixotic

OLD:

Finally, they were together. Simply existing in the same space, with a connection that couldn’t be felt because it was purely known, inherent within each of them. She was both incredulous and completely unsurprised at the same time.

Everything simply felt comfortable and right. She turned to face him, and looked into his eyes in the dark. They kissed, softly and sweetly first, then with a stronger passion, a fiercer desire. Her fingers ran through his hair. His hands on her back held her close to him.

He made her feel beautiful without saying a word.

She loved the soft weight of his arm draped across her waist as they lie still together. In the darkness, she could feel the comforting pressure of his stomach pressing against her lower back as he inhaled. This was a confirmation of his existence and hers, and a silent testimony to their intimacy. His breath gently caressed her neck as he exhaled.

With every breath she was assured.

In these moments of quiet darkness, she felt completely at peace. She did not sleep, but lay awake with her eyes closed, savoring every moment of that feeling of safety. She didn’t want to dream; she wanted to keep feeling his presence next to her. The silence enveloped them. For once, her thoughts did not attack the silence with a cacophony of doubts and insecurities. It was no wonder she wanted the moment to last.

She sank into the physical and emotional comfort of him.

His hand held hers, his thumb stroking her palm. The warmth of his touch told her the past was going away. She smiled behind closed eyes. Every inch of her body was completely at ease and simultaneously tingling with the pleasure of sensing his body right behind her and his arms around her. His embrace was a safe place. That was enough for her. He was more than enough.

Now they sleep apart and she wonders if he thinks about her as much as she thinks about him. She wonders if she cares too much. If she’s too stuck on one person, who is only one person, but is the person who is making such a difference. She wonders if she should just stop worrying. She doesn’t know and she’s trying to simply trust what she’s got, even if that hasn’t always worked out in the past. She’s living now. Loving now. And not losing now.

6.26.08

Green Screen Love

OLD:

It was green screen love. Behind any background we chose, free through the wires and the ether. So much easier to talk in typed words, planned and replanned in head and then on screen. A blinking cursor, encouraging, a mediator between us. Each of us called by that simple signal.

It was green screen love. Our words fell honest and open behind the safety of hardware and light and thousands of miles and three hours time difference brought to mere milliseconds apart, with the stroke of a key. And as if our screens back to back didn’t bring us close enough, though we could never be close enough, your words brought you closer to me, and mine to you.

It was green screen love. Or was it love? It was not anger, or hatred, or malice that drove us apart. It was presence. I know not even exactly what that means, but the words know they are right.

It was green screen love. Or at least, at the very least, green screen attraction. But in the presence of one another, something changed. Well, you changed. My feelings are now unrequited. And let me tell you, unrequited love is a bitch and a half. It attacks multiple times over in ways I never expect in every waking moment, when I turn a corner or when I’m just sitting still.

It was green screen love. I believe that it was, whatever it is now. And for the sake of how much I love you, and for my hopes that such love won’t go to waste, because I have a fear of loving in the first place… I hope you can learn to love me back.

It was green screen love. And it is very difficult to come away from that malleable safety net into a real world, with scenery that changes only when you leave one place and journey somewhere else. It is hard, but not as hard as loving you, which is equally as hard as trying not to love you, trying to hate you, which I thought would be easier.

It was green screen love. This is where I have retreated, to express my voice, as I know not where else to turn. The Freudian typo “run” just slipped from my fingers without my consent. But you know all about the rogue fingers.

It was green screen love. Perhaps that’s all, for you. But I am lost; I have fallen. I fell for you and have not gotten up and it’s hard here at the bottom, because I came here with you and expected to soar to the top but fell off of the flight even harder almost as soon as we took off.

It was green screen love. And from this screen, through this lens, the journey is far from over.

--9.3.08 1:12 am

Sharper

You peel off me like pencil shavings

Leaving me a little smaller each time

But more pointed, ready to attack.

Then I do, with my mighty sword

And leave myself feeling dull and useless.

I don't even know what I'm writing anymore

But I can't stop - the shavings keep falling away.

I used to give you professions of love

All I hoped we'd be, and thought we were.

But I couldn't keep writing the same thing forever

Had to change, mighty sword sabotaged itself.

Bleeding my own blood, tasting me, isn't the same

And I miss you.

--4.15.09

Irises

I think you and I took better pictures.

(I was always good at taking pictures.)

But

You two have the same eye color.

I guess that means you belong together.

My brown eyes

(Always brown; they never change)

Used to stare into yours,

But green no more sees brown

Green sees only more green.

And mine (brown, still)

See only pictures.

--4.14.09

Urban Dreams

Rainy days in New York

Are still as romantic

(In my imagination)

As they were a year ago.

Umbrella flowers bloom

On the grey, shimmering streets

Brightening the tightly-carved rivers

While yellow fish splash quickly by.

The Village still hums

Times Square still glows

The Brooklyn Bridge still pulses

I love rainy days just like the others.

I'm a walker

Subway rider

Taxi dodger

Urban explorer.

--4.12.09

Reflections on Third Avenue

I don't know where the hours went.

The days, weeks months.

It's 9 p.m. 

Where did the last 3 hours go?

Yesterday morning feels years away.

But I remember the dusk of summer

Like it happened today.

I look out the window

And can remember this view, the first time

On that steamy August morning

Penetrating New York sunshine.

A year of new friends and play.

So much work, always more to be done,

Learning, creating, and exploring

All my dreams finally won.

And there's more but first there's less

And some things stay and some things go

So I have to keep what I can and let the rest be

Though what, in the end, I'm left with, I'll never truly know.

--3.31.09

Draft II

It's hard to believe without trust.

"I love you"

Always comes with strings attached.

It's not just a story that

Lives with me, not New York or Chicago.

Those words, and everything they mean and shouldn't mean

Live in me, and in everywhere they don't belong.

There was a time when I arrived

I was here - here was where I was.

Those heaviest of words didn't matter.

I didn't remember the past.

I forgot I didn't have to focus on it.

I just didn't - I was released.

And this state of being to which all aspire 

I escaped from, and was free.

I knew it wouldn't last, and it didn't;

Now I'm indecisively split

With so many people

To whom I have lost this resilient heart.

Fighting against is hard,

Fighting for is perhaps twice as difficult.

--1.19.09

Written as an assignment for voice and speech, requiring the lines "I love you" and "I forgot I didn't have to focus on it" the subject being love.

Report Card

The chemistry just isn't working.

I was never good at science anyway.

The artsy types rarely are.

But I thought they were supposed to be good at falling in love.

Well I'm not very good at that either.

And being good at organizing isn't much help,

'Cause you can't organize emotions

In the shelves of life that keep falling apart.

I was a straight A student. I remember that.

I used to be good at being good.

Now I'm not even good at falling.

--3.11.09

Unbitten

I wake hoping to sleep

Rarely sleep.

Hour after eternal hour

Waking in despair.

Empty and falling

With no one to land with

No hands touching

Vacant lips.

Hot fingertips, freezing heart

Skin breaking,

Blood self-inflicted

Letting go.

Forgetting earlier words

Forgetting self

Can't forget you or the others

Haunted.

Falling

Breaking

Running out of hope

I've lost you, or

You've lost me.

--3.11.09

The Latter

We simply fell apart.

There was heartache, but no fighting.

Perhaps we were too close from too far away.

It just sort of happened, the end.

Not really at an abrupt moment.

Now we're more separate than ever though we're the closest we've been.

It doesn't so much hurt, anymore.

Now it's just kind of sad, and confusing.

One the fullest emptinesses I've ever experienced.

This poem is not over. But I'm kinda done with it. At least for now.

A Fable

They thought they were wise - 

These two young people.

She at least had been told she was smart,

And he was well traveled, so it was assumed,

But if that wasn't enough the acceptance confirmed it.

They thought they were great - 

The two of them together.

In a joking cocky way, called themselves the best,

Before they ever knew each other

They believed they belonged together, in awe of one another.

But they lost their confidence - 

Became scared of what was so perfect.

She confirmed her fear as rational

And he realized his fear of commitment as real

So they were simply scared apart.

They thought they were wrong - 

That their failure meant it was all over.

She was mad at his rejection,

And he regretted his first acceptance

So they sat silently grieving and alone.

But these two young people - 

They are smart, and great.

If they wouldn't give up, if they would fight

They could realize they were right

And together these two young people could be perfect.

--10.27.08