Haiku

 Sing the song of spring

Sighs pink petal blossoms blooms,

The wind whistles too.

Environmentally friendly

Repaint, cut & reuse

Like recycling.
Old thoughts, just renewed and rephrased
With a different meaning.

This is to the ten year old in me.

Leaving behind is the only way to move ahead in life. Change is a constant. It is only by saying goodbye to material things that we become more appreciative to simple things like memories. Overcoming the unknown is a risk, but experience is true knowledge in this silly pickle of a thing called life.

Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made. Whatever defines as better, you may not know immediately, because the good often emerge with time, determination and perseverance. Maybe nobody really knows what you have to give up, and how much that really means to you. Because on the surface you manage to pretend. Pretending as a way of survival, it makes you seem optimistic, even though you struggle your way through the change.  But be hopeful, stay positive, and remember that you are never alone. Dear ten year old in me, remember that fate is written in His hands. Find love, and cherish it. Hold strong and believe in Him. Everything is willed to happen with reasons you are incapable of understanding. It's okay to feel tiny and overwhelmed, because you're only human.

I hope you remember it's okay to feel ten sometimes, even after the age of twenty.

Battle of the Organs

I have my prejudices and bias. But silly how empty words inked I read, can soften my heart. Even sillier how my mind beckons to rid my prejudices, but my heart says otherwise. So my heart is confused, it seems. But my mind is starting to sound like a justifying opportunist.

Masquerade

In ivory masks, some painted gold
Victorian dresses that flatter like-
The feather that tremble in their hairs
While the candle-lit chandeliers hang above them,
Like swans they gracefully danced

What grandeur maroon curtains unveil
On dusty wooden floors
That screeched at every poised step, tapped-
By the pointed heels of their petite toes
Swirling elegant dresses and dainty gloved hands
In a chic frenzy of synchrony string from the subtle violoncello

& sits a boy in khaki & socks up to his knee,
Smudged skin with dirt hidden by black mask
With a tall hat tipped with shillings, clasped-
Between his fingertips
Like the King of Spades in a Venetian Carnival

La pluie du printemps

Rien n'est plus parfait
Que regarder des gouttes de la pluie

Ils tombent sur l'écran
Comme le ciel est vraiment triste

Mais moi, qui assis en silence,
Mon coeur joyeux, il sourit
Le printemps est là, il dit
Même si la tristesse du ciel la rend
Un plus heureux coeur de la fille

Coal-sketched Silhouette

On a black and white tree inked on paper
Across the bridge of wooden popsicle sticks,

Where the blue tissue river flows.
She sits on an eraser swing,

Hanging off a yarn for string.

Yonder lies the minty ball of moon,
Among the glitter stars,
The coal-sketched silhouette girl sighs,

For all that she can ever be
& every hopeless dream
To liberate beyond the paper thin

Is but an invisible stream
Of the consciousness restraint
By the juvenile artist

Tug of War

& I keep pulling on this rope, burning the flesh and skin with the gripping of my hands, fully knowing you're way stronger than I am. I have my knees sinking into the dirt, and have lost every ounce of dignity. But you keep pulling on too, with your strength tenfold mine. There is no winning this war. I will fall if the rope reaches my end, and I will fall if I let go. Because I''ve burnt my flesh and skin, with knees sunk into the dirt, I know regardless, I will fall.

Fluttery

Remember the butterflies that fluttered in millions. Trapped inside our stomach before a presentation. The tiny ones, and some with such docile willpower, much yet enough to palpitate the heart and silence our tongues, even spin our head dizzy. Or the rush of coolness backstage, in the darkness before the red curtains call to open and the spotlight shines on the hard wooden floors. What silly thoughts conjured in our minds, in fear of forgetting memorized words and lines!

But here I sat, at the striped booth of a nearby coffee shop. Over a cup of white-chocolate-mocha. Bubbling up with three others of ambitions, dreams, hopes, memories and on the topic of regret...she said something really profound that stirred the warm chocolate mocha to churn in a rhythm of epiphany inside my stomach. She said, 'How can we experience regret, if we are uncertain of an alternative that we have never experienced, and  yet anticipate that it would be less regretful?'

It is the uncertainty in life that causes bubbles of the butterflies. Uncertainty is inevitable, nevertheless.

Summer 2011 Reading Bucket List

• The Natashas by Victor Malarek
• Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• No God but God by Reza Haslan
• Black Out and All Clear by Connie Willis
• Awaken the Giant by Anthony Robbin
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Recommended selections from:

• Sophie Kinsella
• Sandra Brown
• Orhan Pamuk
• Mario Puzo

Personal Picks and Preferences by:

• Charles Bukowski
• Virginia Woolf
• The Humbling by Philip Roth
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• iBrothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevky
• For One More Day by Mitch Albom

Potter's Wheel

You spin fate like a wheel.
Of an artist with a muck of clay
Between his fingertips.

And I, sculpt with such precision,
My skin, like terra cotta
With what malleableness I possess carving my fragility.

On the potter's wheel,
Endearingly I sit
For fear one day the spinning will stop

For that be the day my dancing ends,
No longer between your fingertips,
In ashes of open hearths I harden.

Rain & Green Tea

I like running in the rain,
Even though I am tired of May showers.
I love green tea ice-cream
Even though sometimes I risk a scoop too bitter.
But I like them both a lot more with you around.

The fly

Twenty-two cups of tea
Will not make thirty teaspoons of sugar
To disappear

Forty-four empty baggages
Is as burdensome as
Three hundred red bricks

You can tell me to flee,
But I'm still standing here
Like the summer fly I stay
In winter I'll hide
Spring to reappear.

The fish

This is a photograph I did not take.
A guy in a purple shirt, and a girl in a collared white shirt.
Seated by the rocks, swinging their feet into the lake.
The guy with a fishing rod, sat ever so silently.
& the girl, who stole his black hat, was bubbly with certainty as ever.
I saw her reached for his hand, that lit the boy's face to smile.
Then out of nowhere a fish appeared, tugging at the fishing line.
& they were laughing like it was the happiest day in their lives...
How simple and sweet life seemed for them.

Lace & honey

Like a crinkled white lace,
Adorn with grace
Honey-sweet words said
Have turned soggy

But here I am,
Ironing the crease to smooth the edge-
& edges of my bitter tongue
Nonchalantly

So spilled jars of honey
Have left the bees to be buzzing
With one of us stinging
A mess of sticky.

Sensation

I enjoy blowing out candles. There is something gratifying about it. It makes me feel happy despite a slight muscular twinge from puffing my cheeks. Perhaps it subconsciously reminds me of childhood birthdays.

& the scent of burnt out wax is worthy of remembering too.
Cranberry scented candles would probably be my favorite.
But what I really enjoy smelling, is the aroma of apple cinnamon in a pot of apple-sauce in the making.

The smell would linger on for days, you could almost taste it.

Puddle

A puddle so blue deep by the sidewalk,
Its horizon stretches far and wide like a sea
Two ants set sailing on a paper boat,
The paper soaked soggy too soon-
They swim.

And sinking, the paper all soft and thin
The ants thought folly, what miserable skin!
Two bugs overboard, they jumped into puddle sea
& swim-.
and swim,
They swim, swim, swim

Dear Prince William

I have been crushing on you since I was six. Your golden mushroom-capped 90s hairstyle, ivory skin, and a heck of a bridge for a nose was the very definition of beautiful for the six year old, that was me. Yesterday, I woke up at 6am just to watch you exchange vows with Kate Middleton. Among the cynicism I have grown to feel for the monarch, and my continuous question of curiosity with regards to what 'monarchal duties' actually are, I was glued to the screen. My heart leaped, and I was probably as nervous (if not more) for you. Your wedding must have cost a fortune of tax payer's money. Regardless, the procession reminded me very much of Princess Diana. You share her bashfulness, and what sort of was a turned on was the very fact that you share her passion for the love of humanity as reflected by your acts of charity. But then your soldier-regiment-watever costume reflective of your rank and military positioning made me cynical again. And when I witnessed you looking at Kate's dress and mouthing 'beautiful', I was secretly heartbroken but at the same time I found that terribly cute I nearly exploded.

I honestly hope you continue your charitable acts, if that is what royal duties entail. I hope you find happiness in your marriage. I am proud that you've picked Kate, rather than a member of an aristocrat as it proves the genuinity of your love.She is beautiful, poise and regal as ever yesterday. Despite your sign of baldness, I still think you're a really pretty man. I think every young women wished to be Kate Middleton yesterday...and the depiction of a fairy tale wedding both fascinated and angered me (you know, the whole upholding the status quo, class and false hope thing...). Overall, I am a rarely confused person, and I know you won't be reading this, so I was just ranting.

But yeah...

With affection,
-HRH The Princess Confusion of Dorkland