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.