Absence

Things are not always built by adding,
but sometimes by cutting away the unnecessary,
leaving only the slim, the clean, the essential.
Today, there echoes the absence
of voices no longer heard,
realities no longer visited.
It's a curious balance struck between
opposites or things almost similar
when negative space is as noticed
as what is there
and when the world's defined
by lack of definition.

Rise

Sometimes she feels as if she's alone in her determination.

She wonders if anyone else even knows

the true meaning of the word

like she does,

or if they would tell her

to get up and keep going

if they knew how much

that defense was costing her.

Each day fills her with the heaviness of years,

and each day she is left alone

to fall and rise, fall and rise,

measuring progress only in

obstacles overcome.

She barely half-understands

the unconquerable force

that pushes her and only her along,

tumbling her down a road

filled with rocks and thorny weeds,

for a reason so faint and worn-down

it might as well be nonexistent

except for the imperious rattle and pull of it

deep within the darkness of her chest.

Battle

The greatest battles are those that no one else sees:
the constant ebb and flow
of pain, nausea, pride, anger,
straining against the thin veil
that holds them just beneath
the surface.
These are the battles that really matter,
the ones where all sides are equally strong,
equally righteous, equally deadly,
and always
equally silent,
conscious of their growing importance
in the underbellies of human minds,
dependent like all great secrets
on their capacity for grace
and patience.
How dare people talk of peace
when they themselves will never know rest,
when their minds are so obviously
created for debate and division?
Inward turmoil goes hand-in-hand
with outward calm,
or so it seems when soldiers lay down their guns
and shake hands,
their eyes still darting and searching
for invisible weapons
to hoist against their private enemies.

To Say Thank You

This post has to do with the power of kindness and the devastating effect it has on a person's life. More specifically, it is about a certain person whom I met some time ago. About two people, not including myself, will know who I am talking about, and if either one of them ever reads this I'll eat my sock. I was going to use a random name generator (which gave me the name "Sean") to refer to this certain person, but then I thought, Screw it. Sean is not necessary.

Anyhow, picture it. He is a senior. I am a sophomore. By all rights we should have absolutely nothing in common, and yet somehow we do. At least I think we do. We develop a friendship of sorts during the week/week and a half that we know each other, and by the time this period is over, we promise to stay in touch. Which we do, after a fashion.

Being the hormonally charged idiot that I am (was) I fall in "love" with this mysterious person, and attempt to set up a meeting with him, to no success. Our friendship remains entrenched in the virtual world. Gradually his e-mails become less and less frequent, I hear less from him in general, until one fateful day last April he appears to drop off the face of the earth completely, and I have heard nothing from him since.

At first I was angry, then sad, then completely depressed. I could not believe that this person, who I trusted more than almost anyone else in the world, could just stop communicating with me. It hurt me more than anything else I'd ever experienced in my pitiful little life.

But tonight, I was going through his old e-mails, and it hit me. This is the most thoughtful and kindest person I have ever met. Seriously. The day after he gets in a car accident? E-mail. How does he handle all my whining and complaining about sophomore year? Sends me advice and encouragement. We trade writing samples, and he writes (of course) nothing but good things about my writing. At one o'clock in the morning, after he witnesses a curiously timed lightning storm: e-mail. My Lord.

And of course the biggest thing about all of this is that, unlike any other senior boy I've ever met (sorry to anyone who reads this) he talks to me at an adult level and as an equal.

There was one time when I called him at nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the house was dark and empty and I had no one else to call. I only intended to listen to his voicemail; to hear another human voice was really all I needed. But then he picked up. The minute or so of conversation we had was enough to save me. It takes a special kind of person to keep their temper when they are bothered by a younger teenager at eleven P.M.

I don't have his phone number, and he doesn't answer e-mails. He went to college out-of-state. If I could reach him at all, I would say, Thank you. Thank you for being my inspiration through the most difficult months of my life so far. Thank you for your words, your patience, the times you laughed at me when I could not laugh at myself.

And, even though you have probably forgotten me by now, thank you for saving my life one dark and silent evening. This is the sort of random act of kindness that completely changes someone's life.

Throughout sophomore and junior year, I've been discouraged and about to give up so many times. Each time, the thought of him and where he is now is enough to keep me going. Maybe one day I'll end up where I want to be, in my dream college somewhere far away from here. Maybe one day I'll have a chance to say thank you.

For now, all I have left is bittersweet nostalgia and a torrent of words I have been saving up, syllable by syllable, possibly never to be given to their rightful owner.

It all boils down to this.

Thank you.

Run

ANOTHERPOEMOMGYAY.

----

I run
when the sky turns to water
and merges with the flat grayness
underneath
I run
in the darkness
down streets lined with
sugar-frosted houses

timing my breath
to the ebb and flow of distant muscles

In between last light and first light
I run

even if the running is mostly in my mind,
where I am unwound from my heaviness,
where I sail freely on feet that are not
or maybe were once
mine.

I run.

Quotes from Tongues Long Vanished

On my last AP quiz, I got an 83%, of which I am desperately ashamed. I figure the reason I do so poorly is because I don't really "get" history. Sure, I understand the facts and such, but I have a hard time connecting what happened then to what happens now. I need to remember that these were REAL PEOPLE with actual THOUGHTS and FEELINGS. Enter shock.
Here are some quotes from my history book that kind of made me think twice about calling history dead and dry:

"I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown...Your Highnesses have an Other World here." -- Christopher Columbus (Really, Chris? Really? You're trying to impress nobles of another nation and all you can say is some vague almost-compliment about "an Other World?" If I was them, I'd be more than a little confused.)

"Who of those in future centuries will believe this (destruction of the Native Americans?) I myself who am writing this and saw it and know the most about it can hardly believe that such was possible." -- Bartolome de Las Casas

(Compared to the following quote by Charlotte Delbo about the Holocaust.)

"I'm not alive. People believe memories grow vague, are erased by time, since nothing endures against the passage of time. That's the difference; time does not pass over me, over us. It doesn't erase anything, doesn't undo it. I'm not alive. I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it."

"A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking pit thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit (Hell) which is bottomless." -- King James I (At least SOMEONE had his head screwed on right!)

"The Negroes are so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that have often leap'd out of the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept underwater till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and saved by our boats, which pursued them; they haveing a more dreadful apprehension of Barbadoes than we can have of hell." -- A random sailor. (I'm afraid I have to agree with what one of my classmates said about the miniseries Roots; it almost makes you ashamed to be white.)

"There is a saying, that we should do to all men like as we will be done ourselves...But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against...Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating husbands from their wives and children?" -- Mennonites in Germantown, Pennsylvania (Sentiments which have been echoed time and again, across the world.)

And finally, an excerpt from a child's hornbook:

NOW THE CHILD BEING ENTRED (?) IN HIS LETTERS AND SPELLING, LET HIM LEARN THESE AND SUCH-LIKE SENTENCES BY HEART, WHEREBY HE WILL BE BOTH INSTRUCTED IN HIS DUTY, AND ENCOURAGED IN HIS LEARNING.

THE DUTIFUL CHILD'S PROMISES:

I will fear GOD (I love how GOD is always capitalised) and honour the KING.
I will honour my Father and Mother.
I will Obey my Superiours.
I will Submit to my Elders.
I will Love my Friends.
I will hate no Man.
I will forgive my Enemies, and pray to God for them.
I will as much in me lies keep all God's Holy Commandments.

And what happens to the Undutiful Child?


...well. One doesn't talk about such things.

I'll keep putting up interesting stuff I come across throughout the year.

The Daily RANT...

So, I'm sitting here idling on my fifth of approximately twenty-five thousand essay questions, which are all due on Thursday, worrying about the SAT, which is only a month away, and cursing my laptop, which has a shimmering stripe right down the middle of the screen.

But, you know what? None of this is my worst problem.

No, the worst problem currently facing me is...DRIVING. God, am I the only one who freezes in absolute horror every time I plunk my fat little butt behind a steering wheel? It's terrible. I control this huge machine, which is entirely capable of killing up to a hundred people including me, and the only thing between me and utter destruction is MY REFLEXES.

Okay. Let me repeat this again. MY REFLEXES, which are approximately equal to the reflexes of a sloth who has been buried ten miles underground in a nuclear bunker. Wow. It's a wonder people don't just start screaming when they see my car.

I hate driving. Hate, hate hate it. Probably no-one cares, because no-one actually reads this blog. But wow. If I could remove one element from my life, it would be cars. Because everyone needs to use public transportation anyway. Hell, I would use public transportation if it weren't for the fact that my school has no bus, and also it's pretty much impossible to hitch a ride from Phoenix to uptown Scottsdale. But we're getting into a whole other issue there, which I don't feel like going into on the interwebz, thanks much.

On the other hand: Only three-odd more months until winter break! :D HOW DOES ANY JUNIOR EVER SURVIVE? AT ALL? THIS IS UTTERLY RIDICULOUS.

Rant, rant, rant. Rantrantrant. RAAAAAAANT.

To Want

*Note, this inspiration was taken from a most excellent book called North River by Pete Hamill.

-----

To want. Everyone's first verb.

This is the glue to the paper of
all first sentences,
the slim grasping thought that
documents our first glance up
from the mud.
To want,
the story of all humans
in a syllable,
of all things, really,
but humans distinguish themselves
by pointing out so clearly
and with such longing
the underbelly of inspiration.

I want, too.
I want. I want. I want.

Fragile Strength

In the time between one second and the next,
after the alarm clock goes off
but before the world stops spinning,
I find myself alone in the silence
which is no longer taken for granted.
I close my eyes, letting my spine
recollapse into the forgiving hug of my bed,
seeking again the fireworks blackness of sleep...
...but only for the time it takes to pull myself
closer to the beginning.
My feet seek the floor, tendrils from an uprooted tree,
even though they ache like no tree
has ever done.
The cage that holds me cracks with
every breath I take. My neck pulls
to one side,
determined, painful.
This is the way it has always been
when the sun and I meet each other
at the moment of my lifting
and ride out together
to conquer the expected promise
of the day.

Q and A

Another poem at the end, but first a bit of ranting...

Junior year sucks majorly, even at my tiny school, and I can't imagine how awful it must be elsewhere. Truth is, my class isn't even that bad, there's just a few people who ruin it for everyone.

I sit alone in my last class, and in my elective. It isn't by choice.

/end self-pity :)

Only 180 more days until I am free again!

THE POEM...*looks downward*

Answers are elusive things,
clambering around in the hard shell of my brain,
wanting to be reunited with their questions
even though I have forgotten how to direct them.
The more days I live,
the more I am convinced that the biggest answers
are overgrown transparent creatures,
weak with disease and age.
Their bones must be hollow from
the thoughts I have piled onto them.
We are the ones who most deserve release.

Remember Me

Inspired by Explosion in the Sky's "Remember Me as a Time of Day."

Remember me as a time of day.
Think of me as an undefinable warmth,
as the warmth of the morning sun,
steadier and more capable than your bedroom lamp
as you stumble down the shadow-lined hallway
and breathe in my promise, a man released
from his wrongful grave.

If it is cloudy, or if you are denied
that first stretch, those first breaths,
let me be the busy energy of the day.
I will be your strength, even through the power of my absence,
guiding you down the one sure road you choose to take,
weaving your life and your memories
so tightly to the daylight
that no one can look at them and tell them apart.

And if there is no daylight for you,
remember me as the night. Remember me as
a faint glimmer of watchful stars,
or let me be the coolness in your room,
the whisper of wing that tickles its way
across your face
and sinks deeply into your dreams.

Remember me as a time of day,
so that when your clock stops or
your city's fog shuts out the seasons,
or when you no longer have clear memories of me,
still
you cannot say that I have been forgotten.

The Music that I Listen To!

This is arguably one of the most beautiful songs I've heard in a long time, even though it has no lyrics:

And then K'Naan refutes the idea that all rap is retarded poetry with this following gem:

Heh, I love changing the little colored bar thingies. Wow, I'm such a freak. o.o

Dinner Talk

There are languages beneath the words,
currents of meaning carrying the thin white foam along.
I sit silently at the dinner table,
unmoving yet never still,
following the step-by-steps;
not only of the words,
but also of the flick of eyes,
the strategic clink of forks on plates,
the just-in-time coverings
of faces by napkins.
It's enough to make me wonder
if dinner really is only a time
for families to talk,
or if it's a time for separate
universes to come together,
a time for fragile shadow bridges
to be built
and for messages to be signed across,
unspoken but still received,
under the ceaseless gaze
of the watchers.

I haven't been here in forever...

...and neither have I written very much poetry. Suckish, yes. I have two new pieces to toss out to the world, but before that, I would like to post my adoptable:

These tiny cute thangs are from valenth.com. Remember, I am 16, and I am still susceptible to stuff like this! ^^

...OMG! There's a cricket on my bedroom floor! *hides*

Um...?

I don't know how to delete posts, so I've just removed the somewhat embarrassing content of this one. ^_^

Speak

Speak.
I want you to use the voice that you were born with.
I want the roundness and smoothness and hurried tones
of your voice more than I've ever wanted anything
before.
Your words deserve to be released
from the polished silent luxury
of your mind.
The sentences and speeches that you could
toss out with a single twist of your tongue
would
save
the
world
if you let them.
Speak.
Stop being the person who fills up the corners
of benches
and acts out a story of her own happiness.
I want you to spell your soul
in the way that we both know
you've always dreamed of.
I want to see you silence a room
with the quiet power of
your speech,
and then
I want you to scream, shatter the
sound barrier,
let everyone know
the imperfect truth of you.
Everything and all of this and more
should be yours
but is not.
And when I watch you in the mirror,
notice the line of your jaw
that is also mine,
the sadness in your eyes
that also belongs to me,
the tilt of your lips
that could only ever
belong to us,
I want to hold your two hands
and tell you,
command you,
to speak,
but I do not
have
the words.

War

We can't explain the truth of things

and neither can we set our sights on anything real.
Something called faith, called freedom, called standing on
a ledge watching the drowsing city of generations' dreams, silent in
golden light -
and the way it fades away from you as the door
closes, never to open again but rather
to be blown from its hinges and ripped to wooden shreds.

Yes. We're all going to try to be very good.

Driving Practice

All of us are,
deep inside,
scared teenagers
driving at breakneck speeds
down midnight roads,
hunted by a feeling,
guided by emptiness,
south of the final edge
of the last map
and comforted only by
our own wheels' humming
and our anemic faith
that soon, the tangle of roads
will solve itself
and we'll find ourselves
back at home,
cringing under the harsh words
of those who love us,
but secretly
(not on our faces
or in our eyes)
secretly, carefully
smiling.

Search for the Answer

in this tiring endless circle
of school, then work, then sleep
we get caught up in the doing
and forget to look beyond
the words on the page.
we miss the meaning of the equations,
the rich stories unfolding
in languages as yet beyond
our comprehension.
the search for an answer
is everything, we think,
and none of us ever look up
even once
to accept as it is
(with its flaws and its failings,
its limits and chains)
the magic
of knowledge.

Mountains

I was a child of the quiet suburban streets

forever filled with warmth

in my memory.

On one side, the busy network of roads

pumping life to our neighborhood

and back again;

on the other side, the desert,

my desert, 

extending to the mountains

that held their secrets far above

my head.

My past is a story full of 

mistakes and regrets;

I was glad to escape elementary school,

glad to be rid of middle school,

and in all the gladness of these

necessary endings

we left that drowsy, melancholy house,

removing any attachment

that might have lifted it above

all other houses in my mind.

So I became a teenager of the city.

This house is an island of sanity

in the middle of the rainbow weavings

of cultures.  I traded

the narrow-mindedness of my birthplace

for the boundless acceptance

of my second life.

But still,

I cannot see my mountains

through the haze of dust and smog 

that falls like a widow's veil

over the land.

The sounds are harsher here, the smells

less vague, more insistent.

The song, though, is the same.

I can still hear the patient rhythm

of the earth itself, bound under buildings

and laced with concrete and roads.

And when I sit in my room

in the dead of night, the rhythm

brings me back to the days

when I lay on my stomach

and hugged the land itself to me,

staring at the purple beauty

of the sun-touched mountains

against the sky.

All the photos I've missed out on...

I try to upload a picture a day with my napowrimo prompts, but haven't been able to get to an uploader for the past three days D:  So here they are in order from most to least recent:

The Heart of the Wilderness

She walked
with measured steps,
draped in striped and fringed cloths,
treading the earth proudly,
with a slight jingle and flash
of barbarous ornaments.
She carried her head high;
her hair was done
in the shape of a helmet;
she had brass leggings
to the knee;
brass wire gauntlets
to the elbow;
a crimson spot on
her tawny cheek;
inumerable necklaces
of glass beads on her neck;
bizarre things,
charms, gifts of witch-men
that hung about her,
glittered and trembled
at every step.

(She must have had the value
of several
elephant
tusks upon her.)

She was savage
and superb,
wild-eyed
and magnificent;
there was something ominous
and stately in her deliberate
progress.
And in the hush that had
fallen suddenly
upon the whole sorrowful
land,
the immense wilderness,
the colossal body of the
fecund and mysterious life
seemed to look at her,
pensive,
as though it
had been looking at the image
of its own tenebrous
and passionate
soul.

- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The Newsletter

Recently I signed up for my church's online newsletter.  This is not a normal Christian church.  It's nondenominational, and one might argue not even entirely Christian.  Anyways, here's the prayer I found in the latest edition of the newsletter:

       Living, loving God, I have listened deeply and You have lovingly shown me what is mine to do.  With a deep knowledge that You will give me everything I need, I am made willing to take the action that is mine to do. I am made willing to die to the old so that I may be born to the new.  I know that when I act in accordance with Your will, my actions are filled with the grace that You provide me.  Thank You, God, for giving me this work to do in order that I may be a greater blessing to the world. And so it is, Amen.     

Paradise

In the end we will all kneel at God's feet,

or maybe at the feet of Mother Nature or some

unheeding and hooded fate,

and we will wish for silence so that

we might better hear our future.

We will stare into the blackness of uncertainty,

stripped of our carapace of lies

and faithless before the presence

of limitless faith.

Then we'll remember the days

when we curled up in our boxes

and beds

and succumbed to the stories

of a lurid paradise.

We'll look back at the days spent

chasing the perfect life

and wonder if things would be better

if we saved memories of small things

and collections of the real

in the corners and closets

of our mind

to be released later, fireflies,

into the darkening skies

of our existence.

There Was A Time

There was a time
so long ago
when you were not
a memory
an idea
a voice in my dreams
or a faceless identity
behind a computer
screen

There was a time
when I wrote for you
and sang your name
in the darkness
of my life
believing it would
save me
from forgetting

There was a time
when you
and I
were people

Identity

I liked my middle name better than my first.
When people said my first name, it was as if
all the darkness in the world was shot out
at me through those three syllables.
I hated the roundness of it
marred only by the buzzing "z" sound
interrupting my thoughts, trapping my attention
whenever it was spoken.
Compared to that, my middle name was a blessing.
Over the years,
I heard a variety of accents roll over
its vowels, each reincarnation sculpting
the weight of it in my mind.
I changed again and again, but 
my name never stretched beyond its letters.
So the one thing that I trusted
beyond any sound or shape that might otherwise
have defined me
was the presence of me, nameless,
alone at odd moments in the spotty sunlight
of my days,
in the places where everyone all at once
knew
who I was.

Strength is Everything

They tell you strength is everything 
you need 
to pull yourself to the top 
by half-inches. 
Maybe it is. 
Maybe strength is everything 
in their uniformed 
march-together madness 
of a heartbeat. 

Strength cements your hands 
to the grey-scarred rock 
slowly, slowly, never slow 
enough. 
And like puzzle pieces 
spilled out of a box 
the spirits that once 
shouted freedom 
fall together under 
a common banner, 
a common goal 
of blindness. 

It takes strength 
to climb the wall built 
by tradition, 
but it takes courage 
to let go 
and push off on your own, 
even though the sun 
is choked with clouds 
and the rock grows 
shadowy with disapproval. 
Strength keeps your hands 
steady. 
Courage guides the wings 
you didn't know you had 
as you maneuver yourself 
in search of your own 
ending 
and laugh at the old 
photographs of you 
on their fossilized 
flypaper, 
their wall. 

Spruced Up

The box says that it will give her
all the things that God forgot to.
She believes in its magic
and watches in delight
as she brushes beauty across her face,
guiding a dark ballerina tracing
patterns in the dusty floor
with slippered feet.

Later she will curse halfheartedly
at the mirror and wonder
why beauty is so hard
to get rid of.

Some of my better photography...

I just started about a month ago but I'm addicted :)

Going, Going

Our memories are tangled, tightly woven clots of
life's miscellaneous castouts.
In our waking lives, we find no use for them, so
only when the whipstitched order of daylight
begins to fade do they dare creep along
over our blankets and pillows and tie themselves
securely into our sleeping brains
taking on the cloak and emblems of dreams,
resting the laurel crown on their balding heads
(perhaps to cover some weakness brought on
by time)
and dragging us, as quickly as they can,
away from the mind-numbing darkness of
a hungover Sunday morning and back into
the closet days, when all was bright.
They persist until the first buzzing of the alarm,
dispelling any halfhearted enchantment
they may have cast, our former selves'
last offer at a chance for
salvation.

-April 3, 2009

If you like it, vote! And then maybe check out some of my other work. :)

Heading on in...

This is my first blog post, so I think I'll wait for a tidbit before I start announcing it to the rest of the world :) See if I like it first, I guess.

I'm a poet and photographer, in the final stretches of 10th grade. Life is annoying, busy, and retarded. Life is also good.

These next two years are, I'm told, going to be some of the busiest I've ever had. I can't wait!