Confessions p. 18

These words have been a companion to me,
they have been my global ambassadors
They have facilitated my reconciliation with the world.
From the beginning when I entered this labyrinth
I have laid a string of words to mark and trace my way back out.
The fibers of that guideline are laden with the taste of salt n copper
they are drawn tight around the corners, fraying at the bends
Like a cross continental power line
the lifeline of my memory disappears behind me into the horizon.
Some places, it lies submerged in forgotten pools
gathering floating oddities,
Underneath the canopy of forest leaves
it has grown into the moss,
Beneath the crest of waves deep under the possibility of light
it has become a part of the seabed
like a fading trail through the perpetual darkness.
Over the hills it hangs through heights, sometimes
it catches droplets of morning dew, and for a few brief moments
a string of small suns are reflected along its length,
Occasionally, one of those droplets falls
like a tiny shard of a mirror dazzling and glistening
with the colors of the solar system
as it falls to the earth like a moist kiss from the sky.

cave dwellers

They will say
we lived in a broken home
somewhere between darkness and light
sometime between day and night
we wore our chains like our favorite clothes
walked backwards and couldn't stand the sight of our own footprints.
They will say
we built walls out of our fears to protect us
lived lives dictated by what not to do.
We forgot
the colors of the sky
we forgot
the stars out in the middle of nowhere.
We built a broken home
brick by brick, fear on fear
somewhere between darkness and light
sometime between day and night.

quotes 2

"I didn't know what to ask for anymore. As soon as I started thinking about what to wish for, I couldn't escape knowing that I had everything I needed. I saw a road leading to every wish I could truthfully make. Before me I saw a tower made of fear, ever rising, while a pair of golden boots shone from its top as it lay surrounded by two moats of desire and lethargy. I crossed the moats, though it took many years. I climbed the tower, though it took even more. When I put on the boots, it was like they were made for me...and I have not stopped walking since."
A.D.A.

confessions p 17

I never told you, that time

when you missed your flight

and had to stay another night

I wept as you slept, awestruck

by how beautiful you are

and I wondered whether

I could return your love better

than the last man who broke your trust

Heart Diaspora

We speak of home. What is home for the diasporic? Are we not all on a diaspora? Spiritual beings on a physical diaspora. What home? We do not know the word. And if home is where the heart is, then let us tend to the heart and defend the "republic of the imagination." For without it, we are nothing but meaningless cogs in an accidental clockwork universe devoid of a higher consciousness than our own. And though some find this easy enough to believe, we would be extremely presumptuous to believe that we are the highest form of consciousness thus produced within a universe spanning billions of years and birthing untold numbers of stars, solar systems and galaxies; not to mention the potentially infinite number of other universes and bubbles of existence between the plains of pre-eternity to post-eternity. Or it could be that we are the crowning achievement in this sea of being and becoming. The microcosm to the macrocosm of the universe. Either way, we have not yet experienced but a drop of that which we are truly capable. Consciousness has so much room to grow within all of us. We should be fighting to learn about ourselves patiently everyday, over years, lifetimes, generations, and ages. We are such a young species; we are only the earliest blossoms of humanity's spring. Trees have been growing for 700 million years. Can you even imagine what a story that old would sound like? Do you think you would be able to hear it if it were being told everyday-every moment you spent outdoors? What if one day you wake up and find yourself able to hear the all sagas that are being told around you? And you begin to hear tales in the slow shuffle of your neighbor's crooked step. And jutting out like the veins in a leaf, you start to read the stories that the trees never tire of telling. And that tiny green shoot growing between a crack in the concrete becomes an epic [Homerian] narrative of hope, of struggle and grace in growth; a heroic celebration of life over prisons of stone. Can you imagine what would happen to you if you heard all these tales? Your ears might take on the sensitivity of a virgin's  lips or a soldier's wound. You might rush to that insignificant plant and cry tears of elation over the marvel of its everyday growth through layers of rock and man-made sediment. "If you can grow between the layers of concrete, oh my green ancestor, then I too can grow a heart from these walls that my fathers and I have erected between ourselves and others who call this place home."

tearbrush

as an artist without a paintbrush
i use my tears as the paint
with which i try to recreate
the stars on a clear night
upon the floor of this borrowed home
where we dance and kneel
where we bleed and peel
back layers from the night sky
of our own dark hearts.

confessions -1

While I still breathe
every mortal moment 
of my life is timeless
though I am not.
So do not comfort me 
with promises of reconciliation
in another world
this is the only one we know
this moment, the only one we live

ode to artists in exile and the freedom of expression

Do you know what it's like to write a poem about your home
and not be able to share with your neighbors?
Or what it's like to make an international award-winning film
about your people and then be outcast from your country?
Can you imagine singing a song that captures the heart of a nation
only to be barred from setting foot there again?
[The artists in my country are bleeding.]
The flowers in my country are torn from their roots
before they have a chance to blossom
Hear me out. Imagine, the very next time you come up here
to this stand and perform a poem before this mic,
you go home and sleep, like any other night
and the following day you get a letter in the mail,
signed by the highest authorities, informing you
that you must never again return to your birthplace
that you may never again see your parents in their own home.
I can't speak to that...I'm not there, yet.
But one of the saddest tones of the human voice I've ever heard
was a man singing about the separation from his homeland and mother
and what broke his heart was that he couldn't be there
to bury her when her time came.
So for all the artists out there, all the boys, girls, men and women
with fire in their lips, hands and feet
who are questioning whether or not to continue
keep perfecting your craft.
Don't take it from me, take it from the exile.
This is our greatest liberty, the expression of our humanity.
So the next time you come up here, keep that torch burning baby.
Keep it burning for the rest of us,
keep it burning for those who are kept in darkness.
And I would humbly ask that you not only keep the torch burning
but that you feed it until it burns so bright
that it illuminates even the darkest corners of human imagination

Ancestry

Do you remember...
Do you remember where you were born?
Do you remember the words whispered
and murmured over you in the womb?
Do you remember the sounds of your parents lovemaking
when you were conceived?
Or their promises when you were given birth?
Do you remember your birth?
Was it when you came tumbling head over heels, crying
while still hanging onto the umbilical cord of your former self?  
Was it when your parents first laid eyes upon one another?
Was the song of your birth written hidden
foretold in the genetic code of your first forefathers?
Or was it when the sun first laid rays on the virgin body of water?
Was it when the earliest wave heard the call of the moon--
broke to the shore and spelled your name on the sand in its wake
before returning to the ocean?
Do you remember the stories that the trees have been whispering
through their roots and singing through their leaves for millions of years?
Do you remember when we were held in the womb of the stars?
Or when they died?
Do you remember the universe echoing
with the glory of the unapologetic death of ten thousand suns?
Or the passing of untold numbers of people, creatures, plants,
planets, stars, and solar systems for life right now?
Do you remember...
before word, before memory and before birth
Do you remember the divine notes of that primordial sound
perforating what was not yet silence?
It was not the sacred beginning--because all is sacred,
But it was a beginning, our beginning.
And those stars dying like cells splitting were creating something new
So what had to die to pave the way for the birth of this universe?
I may never understand. It may never even matter.
So let us know nothing
like the nothing before the eye of the universe was opened
and maybe, like that wave rushing for the coast
we will arrive, leave our mark on the shore
for a few moments, and remembering home
return on the long journey back to the heart of the ocean
and all the cradles from which we sprung to life.
Back to the earth, to animals and plants, to volcanic ash and water.
Back to supernovas and the first star nurseries
among interstellar clouds and nebulae.
And when we have tasted the perpetual darkness before light
and drank down enough of both to contain the sum of all experience
then, we may return, with a few stories of our own
to that foremost moment of inexpressible possibility
the birth of birth itself.

a short history

At first

unformulated

unborn

sightless

unlettered

wordless

unveiled

to the last seam

and then 

unearthed

metamorphosed

a thousand beams

into a sun

a thousand suns

into a heart

unnamed

and untamed

upon which 

masks come undone

violins unstrung

throats unsung 

for thousands of years

break unbridled

unchained

the strong, the meek and lame

the wise, mad and vain

the proud, forgotten, and slain 

quotes 1

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated and to never complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."

-Arundhati Roy

thank you p. 1

I had one moment
one pure, unfiltered moment
and the veils were lifted
for a split second
and I knew, oh I knew
that I was watching
the universe undress itself.
It took me a soaked shirt
before I could put words
to that moment of unveiling.
And even now, I can't tell
if I was crying or laughing
but I remember
for the barest of moments
I was made aware
of a beauty so indescribable
the only way I could express
its recognition was through
pouring tears and rolling laughter.