there's a difference between cockiness and strength. when one speaks of strength and really means undoubtful surity in the ability to do everything, they seem to merely be drowning themselves in arrogance. when every thought is original and every belief is "non-conformist" (despite the fact that there's really not such a thing), that - to me - is arrogance.
strength is just the opposite. strength is knowing that one has weaknesses. that fear isn't the enemy, or cowardice, or insecurities, but that knowing when to have a balance is. knowing when to say yes or when to say no - because we are not all capable of doing everything perfectly, and if we believe so, we've just fallen to the utopian ideals of "perfection" and competitiveness that have been set before us. dance in your insecurities. love your flaws. knowing that you have them is not the enemy...denying them is.
and in that moment and in this moment and in every moment where your skin trickles with enticement...this is where it is best. and i would have done it, right then and there if you had asked me to.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
a series to make me forget and remember all at the same time
she laughed.
in my face, of all places,
and the anger was trickling through my blood stream
just like the water was flowing down my body.
this is once where you had touched
long before i realized
my body is my own temple
and is not for you to desecrate
(with your graffiti hands that burn me at every
inch you get closer)
and as much as i'd hate to admit it
those old tunes you'd use to play are still
sneaking out of my speakers
unassumingly i'll listen
(just as i had once done)
until
certain chords and certain beats will remind me
bring me back to those graffiti walls
and you, red-handed in the spotlight
laughing insanity mess
drink
to
be
me.
"baby we're only young once.
live this right, live us right."
and if i had a thousand lives to live
trust me, darling:
none of them would be anywhere related to you.
"i will talk to you soonish"...sometimes i wish you wouldn't lie.
we each lit one
candle, two matches
blazing to the heavens
above
the window cracked slightly
wind whispering to us through the
screen that would protect us from everything else
and you, your arms are here, hold
me close and protect me here
your lips, my skin
"a kingdom for a
kiss upon the shoulder"
your lips, my lips
"all my riches
for her smile"
so we lay solitary
eye to eye
the way i like most
in the distance the curtains
catch wind by the hand
warning not to disturb
us and the only thought i can
muster is that
if my ultimate wish is
to return to the oceans after death
i could die looking into your eyes
and i would be home
exit 259: infinity
and
beyond
so you took another hit
turned the wheel 90 degrees
towards an exit with no exit
i didn't try to stop you
maybe i should have, or at least that's what i thought when the car went skidding on its top across the four lane skyway. the view was nice, or what i could see of it through the shattered sun roof looked appealing --
and from my peripherals
i could see you with
your hands to your heart
clasped together
in meditation
and as we went crashing
into the pacific
you bowed forward and
whispered
"namaste"
sinking to the bottom and we had our most meaningful conversation
talking about fate and life and all its many crashes
and the one-hundred plus speeding trips we would take
that was like love, for the first time;
with a metal tip you etched into my hand
"never forget"
it took me until we reached the bottom to realize what you meant. your infinity was already over, denoted by a hard blow to the steering wheel, and i was looking through the windshield at schools of silver fish catching their scales by the sunlight on the surface. "never forget" - never referred to life or to the things one experiences, but instead - that life is not exclusively ours, bottled up in a pickle jar like lightening bugs you caught and kept on your nightstand. every life will drown one day. every life is replaceable - none are immortal. "never forget" - what you do is probably temporary. but if temporary touches a life, forgetting that each breathes and lives accordingly is a never kind of thing.
i want to write this down.
write you down, frame
your perfect figure
in a sequence of meticulously thought-out words.
impossible. as the veins in my lips
trail the outline of your freckled skin,
and i can feel you breathe (in, out, in again),
i grasp this indescribable emotion in my hands.
(tighten. arch. grasp. hold. scratch. release.)
the smoke is hollowing out the roof of my mouth.
feels like the inside of a cathedral. the wisps act like monks
walking uniformly towards one central idea.
blow out. uniformity lost. and when i smile
(with this white cylinder clouding the sanity in my lungs)
all i want is that feeling in which says
take every vulnerable party of my body. of me.
(tighten. squeeze. deepen. bite. relax. breathe.)
peer pressure, and persuading you is like persuading a light pole.
useless. but still, your face:
lights up the room you're in
and inside my chest these fireworks explode
playing techno in this hollow ribcage
bounding wildly against my hardened skin.
(that patch of decorated dots on your shoulders
are merely outliers on this complicated diagram.
inside of each other we do not find ourselves;
instead, we find that "i" we wish to be.)
yours truly...
(p.s.: your eyes? they are like a color wheel
intermittently swirled in numbers of two's and three's
laugh gently, sweet thing. breathe softly, me in.)
look at me with eyes not fit to stare
touch me with hands not fit to feel
talk to me with lips not fit to speak.
in this charades game of colorful persuasion
I am not who I say I am but
who I say I am is not relative to I --
where periods actually denote endings instead of
age-old life-changing beginnings
is where I tiptoe, difficultly, conspicuously,
and in the morning when you creep
across the drops of clear dew resting on
the freshly-showered blades of green
please do not forget about the lilies
that grow in small, undiscerning patterns
and only open in the mornings for your empty delight
cross them with dancing feet and light movements
as you go about your day, forgetting them as you breathe
each second a heart beat arising from the blood in your veins
but instead in the night when you arrive back
from your plentiful yet meaningless adventures
and you feel the lush carpet beneath your feet:
pedicured, fragile, soft, vulnerable
please remember that i, as well, am laying there
like the discerning morning lilies
and i am here, my darling, only to soften your step
extended periods of time where you've been in my life and nothing more monumental than my pen tracing heartbreaks has happened. it's a miracle, right?
in my face, of all places,
and the anger was trickling through my blood stream
just like the water was flowing down my body.
this is once where you had touched
long before i realized
my body is my own temple
and is not for you to desecrate
(with your graffiti hands that burn me at every
inch you get closer)
and as much as i'd hate to admit it
those old tunes you'd use to play are still
sneaking out of my speakers
unassumingly i'll listen
(just as i had once done)
until
certain chords and certain beats will remind me
bring me back to those graffiti walls
and you, red-handed in the spotlight
laughing insanity mess
drink
to
be
me.
"baby we're only young once.
live this right, live us right."
and if i had a thousand lives to live
trust me, darling:
none of them would be anywhere related to you.
"i will talk to you soonish"...sometimes i wish you wouldn't lie.
we each lit one
candle, two matches
blazing to the heavens
above
the window cracked slightly
wind whispering to us through the
screen that would protect us from everything else
and you, your arms are here, hold
me close and protect me here
your lips, my skin
"a kingdom for a
kiss upon the shoulder"
your lips, my lips
"all my riches
for her smile"
so we lay solitary
eye to eye
the way i like most
in the distance the curtains
catch wind by the hand
warning not to disturb
us and the only thought i can
muster is that
if my ultimate wish is
to return to the oceans after death
i could die looking into your eyes
and i would be home
exit 259: infinity
and
beyond
so you took another hit
turned the wheel 90 degrees
towards an exit with no exit
i didn't try to stop you
maybe i should have, or at least that's what i thought when the car went skidding on its top across the four lane skyway. the view was nice, or what i could see of it through the shattered sun roof looked appealing --
and from my peripherals
i could see you with
your hands to your heart
clasped together
in meditation
and as we went crashing
into the pacific
you bowed forward and
whispered
"namaste"
sinking to the bottom and we had our most meaningful conversation
talking about fate and life and all its many crashes
and the one-hundred plus speeding trips we would take
that was like love, for the first time;
with a metal tip you etched into my hand
"never forget"
it took me until we reached the bottom to realize what you meant. your infinity was already over, denoted by a hard blow to the steering wheel, and i was looking through the windshield at schools of silver fish catching their scales by the sunlight on the surface. "never forget" - never referred to life or to the things one experiences, but instead - that life is not exclusively ours, bottled up in a pickle jar like lightening bugs you caught and kept on your nightstand. every life will drown one day. every life is replaceable - none are immortal. "never forget" - what you do is probably temporary. but if temporary touches a life, forgetting that each breathes and lives accordingly is a never kind of thing.
i want to write this down.
write you down, frame
your perfect figure
in a sequence of meticulously thought-out words.
impossible. as the veins in my lips
trail the outline of your freckled skin,
and i can feel you breathe (in, out, in again),
i grasp this indescribable emotion in my hands.
(tighten. arch. grasp. hold. scratch. release.)
the smoke is hollowing out the roof of my mouth.
feels like the inside of a cathedral. the wisps act like monks
walking uniformly towards one central idea.
blow out. uniformity lost. and when i smile
(with this white cylinder clouding the sanity in my lungs)
all i want is that feeling in which says
take every vulnerable party of my body. of me.
(tighten. squeeze. deepen. bite. relax. breathe.)
peer pressure, and persuading you is like persuading a light pole.
useless. but still, your face:
lights up the room you're in
and inside my chest these fireworks explode
playing techno in this hollow ribcage
bounding wildly against my hardened skin.
(that patch of decorated dots on your shoulders
are merely outliers on this complicated diagram.
inside of each other we do not find ourselves;
instead, we find that "i" we wish to be.)
yours truly...
(p.s.: your eyes? they are like a color wheel
intermittently swirled in numbers of two's and three's
laugh gently, sweet thing. breathe softly, me in.)
look at me with eyes not fit to stare
touch me with hands not fit to feel
talk to me with lips not fit to speak.
in this charades game of colorful persuasion
I am not who I say I am but
who I say I am is not relative to I --
where periods actually denote endings instead of
age-old life-changing beginnings
is where I tiptoe, difficultly, conspicuously,
and in the morning when you creep
across the drops of clear dew resting on
the freshly-showered blades of green
please do not forget about the lilies
that grow in small, undiscerning patterns
and only open in the mornings for your empty delight
cross them with dancing feet and light movements
as you go about your day, forgetting them as you breathe
each second a heart beat arising from the blood in your veins
but instead in the night when you arrive back
from your plentiful yet meaningless adventures
and you feel the lush carpet beneath your feet:
pedicured, fragile, soft, vulnerable
please remember that i, as well, am laying there
like the discerning morning lilies
and i am here, my darling, only to soften your step
extended periods of time where you've been in my life and nothing more monumental than my pen tracing heartbreaks has happened. it's a miracle, right?
Sunday, April 26, 2009
pretense is all about the "tense"
you, flames -- i, raindrops
the rain
trickles in
the holes
in the window.
slowly, unassumingly, hitting
the crackled white windowsill.
resting near, the audible
movement of flames dance
in stark contrast to the
pitter-patter of the weather.
you, flames: your dance is
dangerous. what i should
not touch in my mind, in
my heart is blurred with
curiousity. the blues of your
eye push and pull with the
reds and yellows of your
outer body --
the rain
trickles in
the holes
in the window.
i, raindrops: i am falling.
hitting in and out; sitting
on this windowsill and
creeping down the sides,
bringing with me splinters
and scars, bringing with
me every bit i fight to
keep hidden --
you, flames, i, raindrops,
we cannot mix - our
combination is deadly. pushed
together and we extinguish
each, creating an
evaporated puff of smoke --
(but when we extinguish
each other, do we really?
or is the dance transformed
into an eternal particle,
floating hidden in the sky?)
the rain
trickles in
the holes
in the window
and the flames
dance beneath.
the rain
trickles in
the holes
in the window.
slowly, unassumingly, hitting
the crackled white windowsill.
resting near, the audible
movement of flames dance
in stark contrast to the
pitter-patter of the weather.
you, flames: your dance is
dangerous. what i should
not touch in my mind, in
my heart is blurred with
curiousity. the blues of your
eye push and pull with the
reds and yellows of your
outer body --
the rain
trickles in
the holes
in the window.
i, raindrops: i am falling.
hitting in and out; sitting
on this windowsill and
creeping down the sides,
bringing with me splinters
and scars, bringing with
me every bit i fight to
keep hidden --
you, flames, i, raindrops,
we cannot mix - our
combination is deadly. pushed
together and we extinguish
each, creating an
evaporated puff of smoke --
(but when we extinguish
each other, do we really?
or is the dance transformed
into an eternal particle,
floating hidden in the sky?)
the rain
trickles in
the holes
in the window
and the flames
dance beneath.
she's cute, that's good. i'm happy for you. really, i am - i promise. it's just that sometimes i really don't understand you or your intentions. and as my best friend - or what used to be called my best friend - i thought that we were supposed to actually talk to each other. especially about things like this.
and sometimes i remember the tattoos that were blazed across her wrists and chest. sometimes i remember the cigarette-and-coffee breath that i, for some reason, liked... despite the fact that i hadn't ever liked it on anyone else.. and maybe i especially liked the fact that everything was a disaster. a beautiful disaster, the kind that they frame on big movie screens in big cities. the kind that changes your life, not in a garden state cliche-way but in a synecdoche, new york kind of way. makes you question your life and your purpose and makes you laugh at the frail inconsistencies that make up life. the stupid things we worry about and the nights we spend trying to fix things we don't understand (and things we can never fix).
i'd die for that feeling right now. the feeling of my legs tingling under the pressure of little white dots... it's been too long.
and sometimes i remember the tattoos that were blazed across her wrists and chest. sometimes i remember the cigarette-and-coffee breath that i, for some reason, liked... despite the fact that i hadn't ever liked it on anyone else.. and maybe i especially liked the fact that everything was a disaster. a beautiful disaster, the kind that they frame on big movie screens in big cities. the kind that changes your life, not in a garden state cliche-way but in a synecdoche, new york kind of way. makes you question your life and your purpose and makes you laugh at the frail inconsistencies that make up life. the stupid things we worry about and the nights we spend trying to fix things we don't understand (and things we can never fix).
i'd die for that feeling right now. the feeling of my legs tingling under the pressure of little white dots... it's been too long.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
because the misquotes are eating my legs
one paper down, one to go, three exams. finished my portfolio - took forever, but hey, at least it's over now.
the sun set today at 7:00 as we were rolling over the hill near my house. it was like the apocalypse and heaven all at the same time - whatever my conception or your conception of heaven might be. it amazes me how some people never think of these things - about heaven or hell or the lack thereof - because it's a constant thought in my brain. reincarnation? heaven? there's no certain answer. there's nothing than we can say that will surely answer any of our questions and yet we keep picking away at them, proclaiming ourselves "right" because we have to be "right" or we wouldn't be able to validate ourselves. what's so great about validation, anyway? and is it really possible for any human to fully accept the truth? what if there is no heaven - what if there is no hell? no reincarnation? what if it's a lie we continuously tell ourselves to soften the blow that our lives exist only in one realm, one place, one time, one century or decade or however the hell long you live.
i'd be scared to grow old. scared to be incapacitated. scared to have to rely on someone all the time to do the things that i normally would. i can imagine that, if i were to live to see myself become that way (or not see, who knows), i'd probably be bitter as hell. anyone who knows me knows that i do things for myself and insist on it. having to be the other way around? would probably absolutely kill me.
but for right now i'll enjoy it. my useful legs and my useful heart and my useful lungs - i'll sit out here on this back porch and take in every smell and breeze and every little drop of water that happens to float my way, because even if i don't have heaven or hell or reincarnation or whatever other-ly world one could believe in, at least i have this. and that's really all i can ask for.
i guess for me there's been few
who've walked up smiling and drawn a line
between so far and from now on
yes, a big glowing life time
and i've been disappointed
i've been heart-broken
i too have loved from afar
but we are 78% water
even our pumping hearts.
ani <3
the sun set today at 7:00 as we were rolling over the hill near my house. it was like the apocalypse and heaven all at the same time - whatever my conception or your conception of heaven might be. it amazes me how some people never think of these things - about heaven or hell or the lack thereof - because it's a constant thought in my brain. reincarnation? heaven? there's no certain answer. there's nothing than we can say that will surely answer any of our questions and yet we keep picking away at them, proclaiming ourselves "right" because we have to be "right" or we wouldn't be able to validate ourselves. what's so great about validation, anyway? and is it really possible for any human to fully accept the truth? what if there is no heaven - what if there is no hell? no reincarnation? what if it's a lie we continuously tell ourselves to soften the blow that our lives exist only in one realm, one place, one time, one century or decade or however the hell long you live.
i'd be scared to grow old. scared to be incapacitated. scared to have to rely on someone all the time to do the things that i normally would. i can imagine that, if i were to live to see myself become that way (or not see, who knows), i'd probably be bitter as hell. anyone who knows me knows that i do things for myself and insist on it. having to be the other way around? would probably absolutely kill me.
but for right now i'll enjoy it. my useful legs and my useful heart and my useful lungs - i'll sit out here on this back porch and take in every smell and breeze and every little drop of water that happens to float my way, because even if i don't have heaven or hell or reincarnation or whatever other-ly world one could believe in, at least i have this. and that's really all i can ask for.
i guess for me there's been few
who've walked up smiling and drawn a line
between so far and from now on
yes, a big glowing life time
and i've been disappointed
i've been heart-broken
i too have loved from afar
but we are 78% water
even our pumping hearts.
ani <3
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