Tag: poetry

poetry

Planetarium dreams

The other night I stood beneath the awakening moonlight
The sky folded in pale pink blankets where eyes could see
Soft shapes and shadows strewn across the night
Impending dark hugged me close, but let me be.

Like the planetarium visits of childhood
The sky’s dome hemmed me in
If I could go back to those memories, I would
But jumbled they become amidst the din

Of prosaic distractions and quotidian routines
That I was told would be good for me because I’m getting older
But age never was supposed to be a damper for dreams
It wasn’t supposed to only make my fear bolder.

So I find myself lost in nostalgia often
Gazing at pastel skies of dusk and dawn
Longing for simplicity yet meaning in tandem
Not knowing how possibly the time is all gone.

It all seems so close, yet so far away
Mental quiet, planetariums, unknowing of chagrin
Dress-up, dreams and all I always had to say
Bell-bottoms, flashcards, that smug little grin.

Who would have thought that South Pasadena dusk had this pull?
That skies could transport me to an alternate place
A home of meaning, memory, loneliness, lull
Nostalgia, quietude, an infinitely large space.

The sky felt close though, somehow it felt smaller
In that moment it caved around me, gave me a buffer
Between the joy and the shame that has come with growing taller
Between the memory and the regret of dreams that suffered.

Why do we so desire what we cannot have again?
It seems a characteristic of our nature, love, our dreams
Why we so pine for experiences or people that have been
When so much hovers above and before us, it seems.

poetry

The mourning dove.

Found myself at 3 am driving somewhere new
Cigarette smoke and clinking glasses, not a hospital room
Or quiet airport, a breeze through security
Checked in and at my gate before the fatigue hits me  

A different thing it is to look out a 6th story window
To see cars passing by, stoplights and billboards
Kids leaving school with dad, teens riding scooters
And know the child in front of you is breathing through tubes  

Standing on the corner of Sunset and Santa Monica
I hear your sound
Feel your voice
A tiny bird calls me
To remember my childhood  

Of summers riding my bike around the block
Stinky pear blossoms, flashcards, staring at the clock
Waiting for dad to come home and we could go to the pool
Reading and talking and the playground at school  

Had to google you because I didn’t know your name
Knew that sound but not from where you came
Harkened back to a time much simpler than this
Memories and feelings of love, joy, lightness and bliss  

Standing on the corner of Sunset and Santa Monica
I hear your sound
Feel your voice
A tiny bird calls me
To remember my childhood  

And there you were, little tiny bird with a whoo
A sound of innocence, of sadness, of youth
The cars in front of me rush by and I wonder
How such deep things a bird could make me ponder  

A season of mourning perhaps I’m now in
Standing with strangers and waiting for trains
Questions and loneliness and no one to ask
What meaning there is in the memories I grasp  

Uncategorized

Of freedom.

Caught in between
worlds, cultures and faces.
Where do I find myself?
But lost
within a notion of who I have been
conditioned to believe
that I should be.

Shapes, colors, details, bone structures,
have torn the world apart,
have told us who we are,
have told me that I cannot decide for myself.

But when I do decide,
what do I say?
Who am I to know now who I want to
become?

My face is not my culture,
it is not who I am.

But when I am free,
to act on something deeper
than my tiny nose, almond eyes and black hair,
am I ready?
Do I know what my freedom means,
or what it can do?
How do I find something that has always
been missing?

I need to construct, to redefine, to revert
and subvert
that which has been constructed for me.
Freedom is in this power
to discover and create.
Can we look beyond?
Can we look within?

To discover
that we are a human race
never meant to be defined by borders,
shapes, colors, frameworks, details or faces,
but by qualities
of love,
of creativity,
of compassion,
of discovery,

of freedom.