i suppose nature has not yet kissed
the moon rocks and space dust
on the surface of your home,
so if i flung some flowers to where you are,
would you notice this earth girl calling?
and would you, in return,
send me some space dust in a jar
so we could defy the laws of gravity
and let our love go beyond the stars?

i. when we die,
do our bodies become lighter?
do our souls fly away,
taking with it the weight our lives have carried
and leaving our skin and bones to drift in the wind?

ii. the other day i held you in my arms,
your eyes hollow and your voice a whisper;
you said it was just as a bad day,
i knew better than to believe you and i was afraid—
then suddenly, you were as light as a feather

it's hard for you, i know it is,
but the only thing i can say is that
i love you, and i will tomorrow, too.

even if i forget your name, your face,
when we first met, when we first kissed,
i love you, and i will tomorrow, too.

i hope that, even after the ten thousandth song,
you'd still have the courage, the desire to say
"i love you, and i will tomorrow, too."

i'm selfish,
for wanting the eyes of everyone i met
or have yet to meet
to be only on me.

i'm selfish,
i don't want others to rise
because i know it will mark my fall.

i'm selfish,
i know.

but aren't we all?

you're seventeen years old
it begins with confusion and ends with thinking
you're too old yet too young
you want to be set free
yet you want to hide at the same time

you're seventeen years old
and you feel the gravity
of the sleeplessness
tug on your eyelids gently,
saying "go to sleep" during the wrong times

you're seventeen years old
and you think you've found solace
in the noise and silence
but you somehow hear the heartbeat
of cities far away
and you feel small in your own bedroom

you're seventeen years old
and by now you thought
you would have learned to love,
and you have learned to love
in the right ways but for the wrong people
and still you haven't learned to love yourself

you're seventeen years old
you've done the worst and best
and you need to be reminded of this:
you are still growing
and you will be okay.

you're looking at the moon tonight
gazing in awe of its beauty,
its brightness and glory
in the midst of the cloudy night sky
in the midst of the darkness above

you looked at it very intently
for you'll never see it in that way
for years and for several decades

you're looking at the moon tonight
in the same way i looked at you everyday

The first thinkers were poets
Naming Mother Earth
Beginning symbolic thinking
Of nature, death and birth

Though themes are often repeated
Love, Beauty and God
Poetry in the guise of Religion
A prophet or a fraud

The poet resurrects the Primitive
Through allegory and similes
Disarming the unknown like explorers
Sublime Prophets and Visionaries

They must lay bare those treasured images
That must be expressed
Unraveling and revealing the sounds
At each soul’s behest

Encompassing the entire Cosmos
So lyrical the beat
The poet’s excitement flows outward
Laid at the Reader’s feet

So original, individual
She won’t examine or explain
Letting go the festering feelings
Disturbances in her brain

He exposes his dark, wounded psyche
Just to release and express
Such capacity to see and compare
Hyperbole at its best

I love, I hate, I suffer
A special dance in rhythm and rhyme
The poet as a buffer
Lessening the pain and sting of time

Laden with symbol and feelings
She gives you sweet relief
From something urgent, revealing
Confusion to belief

Through a cinematic kind of seeing
The poet purges to transform
By leaping through Alice’s looking glass
She never was one to conform

Quite intolerant of convention
Just like The Mad Hatter
His passions immune to all logic
In syncopated patter

Jamming up the poet’s mind
Struggling for expression
Seeking order out of chaos
An infantile regression

Cleaving to his imaginary world
The poet breaks out into words
Creating sound paintings to be unfurled
So his own agony is blurred

She succumbs to storms of passion
With instinctive techniques
Rhymes and rhythm still in fashion
Out of hand flows mystique

The poet mines from his unconscious
The Reader is not blind
For every single line and symbol
Means something to the mind

Causing an inner liberation
Enlightenment or flight
It is a matter of life and death
When darkness turns to light.