2013 on Multer family website

Sundays in the City: The Mission District

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Every Sunday I go into the city of San Francisco to go to my home church, Reality SF. Located on the border of the Mission and Castro District, my church is central to some pretty cool things in the heart of San Francisco. Because I go weekly into San Francisco, I have decided to explore this giant city that is right across the bridge from Berkeley, yet seems a world away at the same time. Thus Sundays in the City is born as an effort of exploration and discovery outside of my Berkeley bubble.

You Found Me

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The tremulous touch of God’s presence is the palpable essence of electricity in the air before lightning touches the barren earth and thunder roars across the sky. This was what I felt when I encountered you. The hair raising slowness of breath when one encounters the Divine. Yet you, the unassuming, the plain, the patchwork pattern of a human being, knew not what was hidden behind your graying cataract eyes. Could you possibly have known? Could it possibly have been you? Cross knitted eyebrows and deeply etched forehead disguised in the baggy weightless clothing of a man lost under his own skies; I found God.

Hakone Gardens

Fri, 16 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Summer is winding down to an end and with that is a serious of desperate attempts to fill the dwindling amount of time with as many adventures as possible. Today’s mini adventure was to the Saratoga Japanese Hakone Gardens, the oldest historical Japanese tea Garden on the west coast. This small expanse of tranquil land fashioned with Japanese Maple Trees, koi filled ponds, and bamboo gardens is a luxurious little escape from the everyday.

Charlotte and Paula hiking Moore Creek

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Back in Berkeley

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After a short reprieve from school to visit my home in Santa Cruz, I am back in Berkeley.

Back to campanile escapades, rolling down hills, blowing bubbles out my window, and for the rest of the summer, work. I am really excited to start working this summer and see all of the things I will discover.

I am halfway through college and it hurts my heart to even think about that. A lot has changed and I am starting out the last half of my college career in a totally new vantage point. New jobs, new house, new roommates, new responsibilities but the same school and a lot of the same people I have come to know and love with all my heart.

Observations from a New Vantage Point

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So I have been in my new home for a few days now and to avoid the stress of moving and adjusting to a new place I have taken to long periods of time just staring out of the windows in my room. The windows of my room are my favorite thing about my new home. One over looks the entire bay, the Berkeley Marina down below, the Golden Gate Bridge in the foggy distance level with my ever searching eyes. The other looks onto the Berkeley campus over the red thatched roofs of the castle like houses between my bedroom and campus. The campanile sits just beyond grasp but fully in view. I can hear the campanile ring out ever hour, so that I never loose myself in time.

Isaiah’s Flame

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Sirens wail within the walls of these catacombs
Reaching through the permeable loom
And its outstretched strings weaving together
A city of countless threads thinking they stand
Independent from the unraveling yarn.
But if we burn the end and watch the fire swallow the coil
We will all burn together
This masterpiece going up in flames
Like the greatest bonfire of being
That ever burst forth from the abyss of this abysmal world
The powerful and strong will not reason
The reckoning flame away
That flicker of the snakes tongue can taste the air
Filling with heat, the crackle and pop of thread
Being split in twain
But just alike, both will burn together.

Calamitous Coil

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Fourteen

Silence weaves with delicate needle fingers
the lips of eternity together
to protect the world from its whispers.
This loom of words, each string of sentences
used to thread together the flesh of fear
and tie up the loose ends of antiquity
making modern the mask of mystery;
giving it a grin more akin to a grimace
fighting back the suture of sin
that sealed the seventh scroll.
The world will unravel in its own calamitous coil,
we tried to piece it back together
but the piercing hook that once bound
now bends against the hardened flesh
finding it impenetrable and unyielding
even to the craftsmen that created them.
But still we keep breaking our fingers
trying to get a hold of your hearts
to breath back life into your being
and let the ruach make what once
was stone, new flesh again.

Fool’s Trick

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Old Name had died of a Fool’s trick that was perfect.

Happy Mother’s Day

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Mom,

You are my best friend, my travel buddy, my partner in crime, and the light of my life. I love you in more ways than words can express. I am sorry I can’t be there in person to tell you everything I have to say, but I can start here; Happy Mother’s Day.

We have traveled the country together, long hours in the car that never got boring or tiresome because we always had something to talk about and even if we didn’t we both enjoyed the silence and the company of one another other. We have wandered down creek beds, climbed trees, fixed flat tires, run across so many different surfaces that I cannot even begin to think of all their names. And oh the places we have gone, the places you have showed me, enjoyed with me and the memories that I have of you, with you, that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life.

Deep-Sea Waters

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Hit the floor like a shot to the mind set in deep-sea waters.

Surreal Silence

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Enjoy the dark calm, There’s no surreal silence crying for a bullet to the head.

Passion

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Impassioned beyond the bounds of creative change.

Blue Goddess

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Blue godess cry to compliance and guarantee the nightspot blues.

Relief

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Brutal voice, I know No relief day, or night.

Tree Rings

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

These old rings catch the light of the setting sun like the laughter lines on your face.

Absence

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A sting of merciful fear opened the door of absence; the invasion of the new.

Amber Lithe

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The vicious hiss of vicious words were amber and lithe, eagerly waiting another.

Beauty and the Foreigner

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Beauty had her back to the mirror and left time at another century. Foreigner, to escape the mind, witness tranquility as a perfect stranger never to return.

Justice

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Justice, the burglary of principles. Question the substance of the theft without locks of inquiry.

Content

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Know the Author.

Blackout Poetry Project

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It was about a year ago, almost to this very day that I stumbled upon this book. Battered and shoved between the crevices of a decaying wall, this book, along with two others, sat pinned between the cracks in the wall where no book belongs. So naturally, even though I was walking somewhere with friends, I stopped everything I was doing to rescue these lonesome orphaned books. It isn’t everyday you find books left for trash to bring home.

Hummingbird

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 30.

The dip and dive of the hummingbird
just protecting her young
never reached beyond the honeysuckles,
where she rested and never woke up.
There she lays, the dewdrop queen
quieted by butterfly kisses
that couldn’t calm the hum of her heart
even when the willow brush began to sway
like the funeral waltz of a damaged widow’s brigade.
This flower ringed beauty was bound by vine
too jealous to let her wings keep going
so they laid her low
leaving her babies up too high
even for heaven to bow down and embrace them.
Without their mother, how will they survive?

Silver

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 29.

This tarnished silver
never sung the blues
like the willow weeping
on that late Sunday afternoon.

Backfire

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 28.

The backfire of an engine
is a jarring reality
of teeth that grind like
chainsaws pulled freshly to life
by the hands of one, desiring
to devour the life of another
with the same greedy eyes
of an orphaned child turned
from his origins, never to face
what he was or acknowledge his past
ever again. These hungry eyes
are never satisfied.

Canary

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry forgot again.

Day 27.

Cry Canary, cry, can’t you smell the fumes?
This cave was born to collapse
and bring you down too. So sing out
what will your heart song sound like?

Grace

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 26.

Let me be slow to anger
and abounding in grace.

Ripples

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 25.

The laugh lines on your face
have drawn us together
like a ripple in a pond
where we disappeared, a rock
slipping away into the water
leaving only the wakes of our being
when we used to be two
but became one.

Wren

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Again, sorry forgot to post.

Day 24

The warble of a robin egg blue wren
is caught in the canopy of my window;
kept trapped in a little treasure box
for safe keeping for a summer day.
But can I cage the sound without the being
in a tattered net that cannot hold
even the smallest of mysteries?

Clock

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry, forgot to post.

Day 23.

Count down with a failing arm of an age old clock
that sags beneath the burden of time
like a flower left by a graveside
that holds its best, longest
even though there is no one to see its beauty.

Meerkat

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Because everyone needs a little meerkat in their day…

Changed

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 22.

I guess it took me longer than expected
for me to find my way back to you.
Nothing has changed
except
that I feel I have grown older than you.
We grew up together, you help my hand
when times were rough and never
left me even when I left myself.
We made quite the couple, you know,
and now that I have come back
I feel
sadly
that I have outgrown you old friend.
I have changed
Oh how I have changed
but you, dear friend,
have remained exactly the same.
How can I let you know the things I have learned
and the ways I have grown.
No longer alone
no longer longing
but finally and completely full.
You filled me for so long;
you were my false God,
the object of my being
my worship, my praise.
I don’t know if things will ever be the same,
but now that I see,
I don’t know if I want them to be.
I want you to come with me
I want to bring you from the darkness
we dwelled in together for so long.
Come and take this step with me
and begin a new life
so that next time we meet,
we will both be changed
and made new each and everday
by something greater than us.

Autumn Remembrance

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day 21.

My heart is consumed with the soft melodic whisper of fall;
the gentle rustle of leaves as they become brittle
rattling like the empty cage of bones in a harsh winter wind.
I pulled apart pieces of my sweater and tied them to trees
to bind the naked limbs of outstretched arms
with skeleton hands to bony to find the warmth
that fills winter hearths with a fire burning
that speaks with the barely audible crackle like a leaf stepped on
just as it finally found a common place with comrades
just as brittle and lonely as itself.
But the comfort of fall has been long gone
this sun brings back the leaves to the naked trees
the new sprouting buds cover
the ties of cotton wrapped around their growing arms
that I left behind on a cold autumn day
hoping the trees wouldn’t feel quite so alone.

Not with Spite

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry missed this Yesterday.

Day Nineteen.

Held in the hands of yesteryear
we never would have cradled ourselves
in our cold contentment if we knew,
but the heart of our minds
can never recover the moments wasted
with empty promises of sunsets to come.
Instead today we pick up the mantle of love
and learn to live again in a world
where Lady Apathy no longer lingers
in our doorway on the worst and best days.
Shut from the home of our hearts
she will dwindle and die.
Pick up the mantle of progress
not of hindering spite;
there is a whisper in the wind
carrying the time of change
do not let it pass you by.

Purgatory

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Twenty.

This frame you left to me is so hollow it hurts.
Its wire is bending under the pressure and puncturing skin
like the indentation left when a needle is pressed against a balloon.
The burrow of contact in the fraction of a moment
before the collapse and the implosion of being
that once belonged to this barren body.
The flesh no longer covers bone,
the words cannot blot out the worst in me,
and the way your eyes on me sear the curled edges of my being
burns more than the hell fire of this purgatory.

Separation

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Eighteen.

Devastated by this disaster
The chaos of cataclysmic clatter
wedged between our hearts
this vacuum between you and I looms.
The day when
Separated by a moment
turned into lost for all time.

An Exchange on the Street

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Seventeen.

The woman holds out leaves of paper
That fall from her hands like autumn
But crash to the floor like a hurricane
Without words he pulls her to him
Encompassing her in his long arms
she doesn’t even try to stretch her wings
just crumbles like the ruins of a decaying façade
letting herself be consumed by something larger than her
He holds her like the binding of book
Trying to hold onto the loose pages of life.

Everywhere

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Sixteen.

I am stuck
with my face
in my hands
and the words
everywhere
but
the page

Vendetta

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Fifteen.

Vendetta is a word wrapped in silk
It encoils its bearer with the sweetest feeling
It slides from the tongue in an ever-pleasing hiss
The self sufficient lover of the tortured
The ever hungry beast from the heart
That dwells in the darkest of places
Just dying to get out

Vendetta is a feeling burning in your eyes
Seething with hatred and a promise yet surmised
It whispers tender evils into the innocent ear
And corrupts the benevolence within your heart
Here it is the power to take back what was rightfully yours
To steal away what was stolen from
Dignity, honor, and your name

Holi: Festival of Color

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The holiday Holi was a couple of weeks ago but this weekend at University of California, Berkeley the Indian Student Association put on a festival for Holi. Many people have heard of these festivals of color where people by colored powder and in a giant mosh pit of people everyone throws color at each other.

A giant throng of people gathers and takes part in this festival each year; this is my second year taking part and it really is an amazing thing to experience.

Petals

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Thirteen.

Heavy petals feel of heaven’s feathers
Like an angel’s wings
Plucked from the fresh body of innocence
Shorn of shame leaving you bare and naked
Before the eyes of the sun and the melody of reason
Screeches like a snapped violin string
Even your upturned palms
Cannot bear this burden
Of eyes unseeing peering down upon you
This gaze will crush you and your will
Leaving you the shattered broken form
A wingless angel stripped of all that didn’t make you human
This is the disease ridden world
Where the grass against your cheek
Feels like shattered glass ripping into skin
That has never before felt the graze of reality
The voice which is pulled from you is alien
Horrified by the essence of self pouring from you
There are horrors in these hands.

Eucalyptus Buttons

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Twelve

When the fire came it burned a hole in the porch,
like a portal being opened to the far below.
Sissy used to tell me that if you dropped something in it
you could hear it fall all the way through to the end of the earth.
So one day I took my collection of eucalyptus buttons
and threw them in the blackened pit below;
the jigsaw teeth of the burned out boards
like ivory appendages ripped from bodies of great beasts.
I didn’t hear the sound of falling like Sissy said I would,
So I just stood there with my empty jar,
bereft of years of good keeping
my collection was swallowed up by that black earth
leaving me with the wasted anticipation and the heavy
empty jar. It seemed so much lighter when it was full
even though it weighed down my arms.
So I walked away from the yawning abyss that swallowed
my eucalyptus buttons whole, with a heavy heart of disappointment.
When we moved away a short time later
I left the jar with its emptiness
beside the pit the inferno had left behind;
standing upright on its own, the jar was
the only thing left in our gutted out home.
But when I grew up and years had whittled my cheeks with age
twenty maybe even thirty years later
I went back to the place where the fire started late that night,
hoping to look that darkness right in the eye
and ask the questions that haunted me for so many years.
But when I pushed my way through the gutted cobwebbed remains
of a place I once called home and made my way to the back porch
the darkness was gone, replaced by the outstretched trunks of eucalyptus trees.
The trees rose up in the middle of our porch
the new trunks breaking through the old planks of wood
pushing upward and upward as if to show that they could.
I walked across the deck with slow awestruck steps
my eyes turned upward in reverence of the great canopy.
Drawn back to the earth from the skyward reach I heard the crunch below my feet.
Lifting my foot I held below, the ground was littered with buttons
like a fresh blanket of winter snow.
I knelt by the edges of what once was an abyss and touched the base of new life
that grew in the face of darkness and refused the decree: do not be.
To my amazement, as I knelt there, I found it beside me
Unchanged except on thing, this time when I picked up the old glass jar
it was far from empty.
Filled to the brim with fallen eucalyptus buttons
the trees had replaced the source that had unknowingly given them life.

Diner

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Eleven.

Sifting coffe beans through withered fingers
like they were smooth rocks found on a beach without pebbles.
Feeling each delicately, as if they would crack
crumble and fall away like the shell of a robin’s egg.
Sorting each bean on the counter top of a diner
lost in an age of countless coffee stains
and waitresses with smokey voices
caught in the cloud of cigarette ash.
The old man waits at the counter
with an empty bar stool still left spinning
from the years of memories weighed down upon it
but vacant for these remaining days.
He waits, not wondering for a time to see her again.

Israel: From the Desert to the Holy City

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The night spent in the goatskin tent felt like an eternity, even though we actually slept for about 3 hours total due to our late night jam session. The ground was hard, the air cold and thin, but even through this, it was still a great feeling to wake up and feel surrounded by new-found friends. It really was after that night that I think we all stopped being people on a trip and became friends.

Mandrake

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Ten.

I can smell the mandrake in your veins
Thick as molasses and light as a sea breeze;
It runs from your cracked edifice like a deluge
Of cold glances cast down lonely roads
Caught only by the spider’s web
Left to the whimsy of the wind;
But theses white walls
Will not be washed clean of me.
No bleach nor paint will draw me from the cracks
That keep this house whole
Because the fibers of the brick thatched roof
Has been slowly woven into me
This macabre patchwork of my being
Has been interlocked like the roots
Of a mandrake that stretches out
Like a child’s hands
Reaching out for the nightshade
Not knowing what this shadow will bring.
Mandrake melody sing not too loud
As the fire consumes you
Some sacrifices were necessary, my darling
And the dark was closing in before the day was done
What was I supposed to do?

Flame

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Eight.

Fire found its feet in the coals of yesterday’s ashes
Nestled amongst the darkening stones
With a greater reverence born from dependence
Between the one who needs all and has nothing
And the one who has all but gives nothing
Folded in on what can never have a life of its own
This is an implosion of eternity
This dying ember cannot be awakened
By the words carried on whispered winds
Only the hands brave enough to reach in
And bear it upwards from the forgotten flame of yesterday
Into a new lightness not born
From the consumption of everything in its wake
But from the kindling of hearts that bring new light

Serpent: נחש

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Nine.

The sidewalk is lit like fairy circles under a full moon,
But the spaces in between are darker than the deepest deluge.
It is in this space, between the moment of whispered words
Held in the bitterly cold night’s breeze saying Let there be light;
That I find myself staring at you.
Moving quickly by, briskly marching to the beat of an unknown cacophony
Like the heartbeat of a thunderbolt, your heel crushes the ground.
Step after step draws you closer to me.
I feel my earth quake and the air tremble as the space grows smaller
Until you are right before me like a hurricane making ground.
The tension in the air between us as the eyes of this storm
Share a sudden and incalculable gaze
Your eyes were the darkest shade of azul.
A storm brewing in them, that once released could never be stopped
I swear I could smell the scent of Petrichor on your breath.
That moment in the eye of the storm where we passed one another
In the darkest of spaces between the light of this earth
I knew you as the destroyer of all things the earth had made in me
I saw deep inside of you as you looked into me
I could see the smile in your eyes and the smirk on your lips
Somehow I always knew it would end like this.
With the silence of a storm and a solemn shared stare,
As the void of you, that claimed power over me, saw through my disguise
And knew only me; knew of the guilt in my heart,
and a forked tongue held behind clenched teeth.
The words lingered there as well,
Without ever sharing a word, our worlds where made whole
Bringing back full circle where my beginning made their end.
Our eyes spoke of failures neither of us could forget.
Your eyes cast across that darkness and shook me to my core
And in that darkness the final sonnet of sorrow sung from the dust of me:
I am so sorry.

The Taciturn Rhapsody

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Seven.

The way the water rose to me was more than a ballet of perfect harmony
It was the ballad of a Thursday lost in Monday’s news,
The unprinted page of a love note addressed to you.
Never was a song more sombre than the taciturn sparrow afraid to sing-
but on that day that rang out a glorious rhapsody
the burden of the unsaid was ransomed from me.

Tree Top

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry forgot to put up Day Six last night! Here it is!

The birds sat perched on tree tops
that never registered their feather weight
But still, I wonder
Do birds sit in tree tops for the view?

Out of Season

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Five.

Found on the outskirts of you,
A new being began.
Born from the puddles of summer rain;
Constructed from the petals of May flowers;
Lost in a season not of its own kind
But of a colder climate that strips beauty
By the roots and plucks petals placed on eyelids
Like coins for Charon on a cold winter day.
This deification of displaced days
Is lost in the blur of a summer breeze
Caught in the heart of a winter waiting on change.
But without a place to lay their heads
The tulips bow under the weight of a season
Celebrated too soon.

Graveside

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Four.

I dreamed today you died.
the hollowed out belly of the earth
was not a great enough grave for you.
Tulips with streaks of unknown hues
planted in every corner of the world
just so every time I saw them
I knew it was a part of you.

Canary Whisper

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Two.

cage confined and cradled tight
the canary couldn’t find the voice to sing
as the woman wrapped in wrinkles
kicked the cage again
sucking in on violent air
that ends a voice before it begins.
ashes tapped into the maw of a porcelain tray
brought to lips again
a kiss of death placed upon your own lips
with a falsified promise to be made new.
the canary lost its voice
in the labyrinth of the woman’s smoke
so even when the cave comes crashing down
the canary could only let out a smoky whisper
to lead their ghosts down the tunnel’s solitary way
where once was solid, returns to the unformed void.

Downpour

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day Three.

she never knew what her summersong sounded like
until the drifting harmonies
where swept away with the fallen leaves
like old headlines faded
on newspapers smeared by autumn rain
that unlike spring
brought a downpour with no pretense for blossoms

Fox Trot

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Day One.

Trap snapped shut
Bones crack like the crackle of fire
Hair bristles like a soldier’s salute to the grave
Arms folded like American flags
Trying to pull in the pain
Gathering it slowly like a child to your chest
Cradle this cacophony of chaos
Like a bullet ricocheting in your brain
I am the fox with barred teeth under snarling lips
Peeled back like onion skin from the bone white beneath
With frantic eyes and fearful heart
Waiting for the hunter to find me.

Poetry Month

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The month of April is poetry month and to celebrate I am taking up the mantle of a challenge to write a poem every single day of this month. Be it short or long, I will try to put something poetic up everyday.

I am going to try out short poems which I have never really done before, so bare with me as I try something new.

Israel: The Bedouin Experience

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This day marked the end of the first leg of our journey in Israel. We woke up early, bags packed, and lined up on the curb like children waiting to board the school bus for their first day of class. We ate our last breakfast at Nof Ginosaur and watched the waves lap on the beach, our last sight of the Sea of Galilee. It was a sad and exciting moment to leave behind the place we had called home for the last three days in order to branch out and find a new home in Israel. We had one stop on the way before out final destination for the day could be reached; we had eight new members to pick up and join our merry crew.

Mission of Mercy

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The robins came in the rain
To take the worms away.
Mother told me they were drowning
And the birds lent their wings
For a rescue mission
That taught the creatures
Of the earth, what the sky
Felt like beyond just a dream.
That the robins whisked them away
From mud puddles deeper
Than the well I watch Father dig
That seemed to stretch from earth
Back to sky all over again.
Mother told me worms couldn’t swim
Because their arms never grew right.
Kind of like how I never grew right.
Will the robins save me
When the waters come too high?
Of course they will honey,
And they will teach you to fly.

Egret Eyes

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My mind is full of egret eyes.
Swiveling movement like the weight
At the end of a fishing line,
Pulling the hook serrated and sharp
Into the darkest parts of the sea
That only fish with grey translucent eyes
Can see with something more than sight
That illuminates the darkest parts of this world.

I feel disturbed like the jellied eye
Of a fish left too long in the sun;
Poked by innocent hands seeking fun.
My mind is pierced by shrieks of delight
As children run away, cringing in fright;
A game played by children in a twilight too dark
To be anything else but night.

Ravenous Reading (A Tear for Poetry)

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I always cry when I read poetry.
Oh, you must read very sad poems then.
No, I just forget to blink or maybe I am afraid-
In case a word slips away like a ship into the sunset
That can never be returned if lost at sea,
Or a love note burned so that it will never be seen.

You see poetry is elusive,
And we must keep a wary eye upon it at all times.
This watchful gaze cannot be pried from the page-
Just in case a word tries to escape,
Like a fox willing to bite off its foot for freedom
You see, I am diligent in my reading, like a hunter in wait.

Pinecone Pieces

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Picking apart the pieces of a pinecone
Digging with fingertips sore from the pain
From the sharp edges of a hardened core
The consistent pulling apart to pry open
The heavy wooden doors of the heart
Individually plucking the pieces like the strings of a harp
Angels screaming when the pluck turns to a pull
Like a sharp withdrawal of breath
That doesn’t belong in your lungs
This poison of decay
Not the decay of fall
Like the slowly drifting leaves that cascade
From heights unattainable by man
That can only be felt by the swift sigh of the wind
Between your grasping fingertips
Like the grasping fingers of your love
That slips away because you weren’t strong enough
To hold on to them as they begged with teary eyes
Looking up at you from the great descent
And you let them go, knowing you couldn’t bear the weight
Of both of you and the love that was creating a canopy
Over your heads and compressing your hearts
And lungs until even the soft scent of fall could not revive you
On this cold winter day
As the last of the fall leaves are being swept away down the stream
Where you once cast little paper boats
Wondering as you held hands where they would land
Hoping for fantasy but knowing even as your fingers unwove
That they would end caught in the dam of nature
Of things never quite meant to be
But it wasn’t enough to make you say no
Even as you plucked the ribs of a pinecone
Asking whether she loved you or not
Like petals of a daisy that have atrophied and petrified
Just as the bitterness of the question has cemented in your heart
Like a cancer hardening you from the inside out
Until you are as purely petrified
As the dissected limbs of lumber left for dead
Each band stands out, creating a carousel of time
But the Braille of years gone by has become illegible
Leaving you to remember the lost sound of symphonies
Music notes echoing into starless nights
Caught in cashmere skies cascading with rain
Where only the earthy smell of Petrichor remains
And the scattered scales of the barren pinecone
Left in the fall foliage like spent shells of artillery
Even these bullets cannot stop the pain in you
As you abandon the stripped pinecone
And begin to pull apart the sharp edges of yourself
To find the hardened core within
Hollow it out until it is empty
And start over again

Israel: Mountains and Mysticism

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the early morning aftermath of our New Year’s Eve Party, everyone slowly emerged, none too happily at that. All of us with little sleep and bleary eyes. It was a hard time to be waking up at 6:30am when you didn’t go to bed until around 2am that morning. Regardless, we struggled out of bed and greeted the first day of the New Year with half-tempered smiles and curious minds for the day ahead.

Israel: A New Place, A New Year

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On the eve of a new year, I began my newest adventure in the land of Israel. Sleepless night turned into tired morning as the sun wiggled its way under my door. Being jet lagged is never fun, but when you open your door and feel the Israeli sun on your face for the first time, many things are forgotten. I opened the door to a clear crisp sun on a slightly hazy day that seemed to have been sung in by birdsong.

Israel: The Beginning of a Journey

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Whenever I return home from a trip there is always a barrage of questions awaiting me from everyone I know. I love to return to family and friends that are inquisitive and curious about my experiences, but I always feel a sense of disappointment in my ability to answer their questions. How can I put into words so quickly the things that I saw? How can I explain the ways in which I have been changed by the things that I saw? How can I convey the beauty and complexity that fills the world that we live in and how grateful I am for even a short glimpse into these complexities? This is what I am faced with upon my return from any trip, but I feel these things especially now after my return from Israel.