It’s not happening as you expected? So what? How do you know that what you wanted to happen was for the best?
Embrace the challenges. Embrace the unexpected. That way, you’re unstoppable.

He left at dawn with stars still bright
To catch the tide by morning strike
With promises and laughter near
He kissed her cheek and she alike

He set sail with the highest hopes
Ready to conquer awaiting dangers
His bait is placed and rod set
Sailing a sea with many lurking strangers

Farther and farther he goes
Unknown waves hijack his boat
Rougher and tougher the sea becomes
The more he struggles to stay afloat

The sea roared and the sea raged
Waves were hungry for a wooden taste
He tried to swim, he tried to stay safe
However the waves decided not to waste

The sea still roared and the sea still raged
She wait ashore for his return
With tear stains and knees on the floor
So disheveled, she gained onlookers' concern

when love blossoms
from a crack
in the sidewalk
of your life

remember

a garden would grow there
if you let the concrete crumble

It was not supposed to be that way.
No green-purple spots in my eyelids, I said,
said
no graveyard asphalt on the back of my knees.
It was supposed to approach me modestly,
quietly,
with blushing fingertips and eons of time.
I had imagined it would approach me modestly.

In the meantime, I could visit a brothel
or two
***** my heart out, spread open its capillaries.
Poetry is prostitution of the lewdest kind
and how lovely, while I **** my paragraphs
to eat a man
or two?
There was one
with hardened fingertips and no more than a second to spare.

I had imagined it would approach me plainly.
No sifting through mounds of shell and bone, I said,
said
no puppet shows.
No masquerades, and my veins were supposed to do their job.

This was supposed to be my play,
my knight takes rook,
my girl takes respite.
I was supposed to come out golden.

He was not cruel but it seeped out of him
like mustard gas.
Sickly, yellow,
I inhaled it with relish
acid burned its way down my cheeks
through my chest.
And how beautiful, to love and be loved
without feeling it crush your lungs.

I have never known love at its awakening; To a mere happenstance, it unfurled in the simplicity of side by side walking through the streets, picturing each shared memory at every corner of it. Like we are the side story of someone else who has been on the same spot of the coffee shop, little did we know that we always share memories for someone else to tell.

Have you ever memorized each word that I said that day, from the first time we met, from the way I said each syllable and how I forced myself to not stutter? Although we cannot recall each scene day by day, what matters is that I always remember each fragment of our memory each time I say your name.

It's like a collision, but it's a peculiar one. It is perfectly meant to meet each other, like it is measured accurately and approximately. But is it really worth the time?

wrestlemania

traveled cross country,
wrestling with extended
celebration and an
unexpected death;
the body maladjusts,
only to be disrupted
when time zones reset,
hard a-heels upon return,
packing up again for a
sacred pilgrimage
to a summer place
of sheltering, where poems
grow and dangle like participles
from local fruit farms, one
need only pluck and taste,
attach your moniker
and then feed them to the
joggers & walkers running past

send them all on their voyages,
hopefully protected from
travel disorientation and the
cycle of rebirth

with luck, bits and pieces of me
will accompany said word whispers,
them shreds and shards
requiring healing,
or just pruning,  
exiting old words,
fresh fruit berries,
roadside acquisitions  to b
carry me stained & strained
& happy new travels o‘er
this fruited plain