~~ WHAT IF...~~~

Every night when I lay thinking candidly,
Some “What ifs” crawl and creep inside my mind.
And prance and party all night long…

What if I could paint the sky
What if I could never really die
What if I could dared to always try
What if I could speak with the mountains
What if I could play with the stars

What if I could help illness disappear
What if I could turn pain into pleasure
What if I could be brave beyond measure
What if I could communicate without talking
What if I could succeed without failing

What if I could end violence with a prayer
What if I could make poverty vanish with a smile
What if I could say nothing but the truth
What if I could hear nothing but harmony
What if I could touch nothing but purity

What if I could think the unimaginable
What if I could feel the unexplainable
What if I could envision the unstoppable
What if I could create the incredible

What if I could have the unreachable
What if I could do the unthinkable
What if I could make the impossible
What if I could be the unbelievable

What if I could give more than receive
What if I could forgive more than regret
What if I could enjoy more than suffer
What if I could love more than fear

What if I could find all the answers
What if I could be totally fearless
What if I could know all the truths
What if I could act like the Gods

What if this happens…?
And What if this does not …?
Sigh…What if poems were wishes that could actually come true…?

~~ Silence ~~

Silence speaks
Silence screams
Silence talks louder than any word

Silence echoes in my ears
To my eyes it brings tears
Silence drives me around the bend
What’s the problem I fail to understand?
Silence is a weapon of my choice
To cut through my heart
Like a sword

Silence
I can hear my heart shatter to pieces
Silence
I can hear my skin slice apart
Silence
I can hear my blood drop to the floor
Silence
I can hear my knife being thrown across the room
Silence
I can hear my bottle break in my hand
Silence
I can hear my pulse stop in me
Silence
I can hear my soundless weeping
Silence
I can hear my mind whispering suicide options
Silence
I can hear you crying
Silence
I can hear your “I love you”
Silence
I can hear you say “Don’t do it”
Silence...
But I can’t hear you save me
Sshhhhh

I pull the knife out of my heart
And finally, put an end to this sound of silence...

~~~ Modesty ~~~

Indeed sometimes a simply put love note means more than any adorned form of expression. Somehow it seems even more real, more honest and I believe it definitely should be appreciated.

In nocturnal modesty I am as bold as any flower
Standing boldly into the nights sky
Basking in the moon's eternal glow
Selfishly taking in the steel air
My cool breathe presents itself to me
Like a magic trick that amazes its audience
In these last moments before I fall into slumber
This is my chance to adore the epic moon
She is the sister I never had
She is the confidant that I seek constantly
Impeccable mood she brings only tidings of inspiration
Calling to me to seek out my muse
That whisper that begs me to write
Composer of infinite dreams
She is my guide through the “Dreaming”

My pen is strong and it takes flight often
Modesty is the chance for one
To soar in skies of clouds and stars
To believe that I can
That there is no time for doubt
I must know the truth of my fear in order to overcome it
It’s really important, if I truly want to be free

When I pour my heart and soul
Do you laugh, or think of me weak or less?
Do you think silly the simplicity of my words?
Should I use complex ones to impress?
See, I refuse to use such lofty forms
For I want the world to clearly understand
And grasp the meaning
Humanity, its entirety to comprehend
To see a love’s beauty and kind spirit
A complexity only in its depth, a pure ascend
But if with haughtiness you counter feelings
Shall my old heart restore?

All those kisses it once poured
Out and under autumn's door?
No second spring, shall I see
No crazy love, only aching and bleeding heart.
Gone are my youthful hours
Flown away, like the end of a dream:
Images, only images now kept,
In old vaults, and far-off islands.
False hearts and cracked vows.
It’s all hell has allowed:
“Inconstancy,” my heart cries:
“Retire old heart, before you die”;
For sweetness of youth has gone away...

Three questions form and in my mind I wonder…
Is this truly a man whom I could love forever?
Am I in error offering my love, is this a blunder?
For even in the simplest mind, unadorned words
Amazing beauty, strength of spirit can be found
The soul’s warming cloak, a heart’s caress
That in a meek “I love you” does abound
Still…Amid barren arms
Of my naked companions
I jealously guard
Along those curvaceous lines
Of long outstretched arms
Painting shimmering patterns
In shadows of modesty…

Intentionally Ironical

What else can you do in the empty, silent, unspectacular and utilitarian city, but run amok, disrupt the silence, bash, aim, blast, shout and strut? In the vacuum of such a city, how to find a role, how to write, how to live? There are many ways to peel an onion: sharp knife and tears; under water like your mother taught you; surreptitiously, creeping in, layer by layer; or with sunglasses on.
There they are, those devastatingly onion-like little poems, with furled skins and layers, offering up biting street-scapes and cafés, half-remembered far-away places, distant friends, rock & roll, and lost, ordinary cities; that deceptive, seemingly autobiographical voice cruising between wit, boredom, disillusion, nostalgia, paranoia, irony. Always irony. Always the slippery poetics of knowledge warping, even as you obsessively scan the texts for narrative for seeking of untranscended life itself. Well, one last thing you can do is turn the irony back on yourself, the poet.

Yeah….now about the city. Nothing sacred here — all legend (text and belief) casually self-erasing. Or is it?
One effect of the irony is to mock the languidness of poet and expected audience, the “cultivated and singular minority”, that adopts the gesture of power, the eradication of all legend, but at the same time hails its own laxity and jejune cannibalism of the very thing it claims to mock. So the empty streets of the poem are filled with pissing and spitting bodies; narrative excitement is unlocateable, and mocked as the tedium of the blessed, and comically whipped up in the violent acts of nameless poets… I am just an example.

A yearned-for somewhere
adverb-physically
as lost as now
gazing across
the chunky valley
to a hill
of quivering lights —

There is no
destination —
just a place
no site
not Olympic
village site
only running wheels
casino site
nor section
of expressway
just east
of where
coincidence
has determined
your residence
in a city
you returned to
to remember
why you left ...

Inventing
nostalgia
for elsewhere ...
you’ll live there
in the future ...

And here am I,
nibbling
my jejune nourishment
with the laxity
of a cultivated
and singular minority

Languidly
erasing
all legend
flick flick flick.

Drinking in remembrance
of friends,
of ideas,
of projects,
of eight millimetre films,
of sketchbooks, screenprints, letters all
eliding somehow in the depths of the pile?

The extemporary verve of designs for a life
which never evolve into actual manufacture.
And now, in a kind of inner-suburban
isolation, brilliant — bright — paintings
are attentively wrapped & stacked
at the back of a wardrobe.

Mild domesticity
where reasonable evenings become numinous nights
of reading difficult books patiently flat
on your back and raging,
privately, laughing, noting the clues,
improving your vocabulary,
But never your method.

Thus setting out,
a scarlet flower
behind my ear,
into the wide
world into
banner-adorned cities
faking
permanent festivity
Here I am….

From Montessori to Adolescence

When I was young
Mom was my hero and Dad protected me no matter what
Years of me belonged to them
Times I will never recall,
Nursing by nightlight, singing at midnight,
Watching me laugh and crawl.

There were only three ways to be: happy, sad, or angry
Sitting with Dad to watch the rain
Splash down upon the window pane,
Catching expressions that cross my face
Even now in these mindful days.

There was no such thing as popularity
Wearing a skirt did not get you obnoxious stares
You could play and share your lunch with anyone
Crushes were scraped knees and got fixed with a band-aid and a kiss
The worst thing a boy could do to you was snatch your chocolate

It was OK to make mistakes, fall and get up again.
A broken heart was only a doodle
Differences made no difference
The biggest thing going on was losing teeth

Then all it seemed like I wanted to do is grow up
Parents were my captors
I started to change and became not as innocent
All of the sudden nobody knows what to think or who to be
Childhood drifts away, flitting just out of reach
Until it’s so far behind me that I forget what I was like

Everyone wants to grow up or become a kid again; never both
Out of nowhere there are cliques and groups, like sorting mail.
Some try to be different and stand out,
While others strive to blend and mix in.
Yet…what’s left is usually miserable.

And inadvertently we end up asking….why did we grow up?

What is the Color of Silence

Silence is Golden,
It glitters,
In the eyes,
Of those who hold it dear.

Silence is Golden,
That is what my mother told me,
Took my truths to the bank,
Oh, the riches I amassed.

Silence is Green.

Silence is Golden,
Greedily, I hoard my booty,
Storing the spoils,
For the inevitable conflict.

Silence is Red.

Silence is Golden,
The yellow blade wielded brandishly,
By myself,
At myself,
Silence is Black.

Silence is Black,
Yet religiously,
I hang on,
To its’ brilliance.
Yes....its true....Silence is Black.

My Promise

I literally wrote this one almost in a dream, rather in some kind of a trance…and then woke up and transcribed it immediately… still working on the meaning…..

You threw it at me…
In the form of a promise
And I caught it
Tight in my lips
And swallowed it
So you could never take it back…..