Storytime

At least I look pretty when I cry. That's what I thought as I looked into the mirror once I'd gained enough energy to pull myself off the bed. The redness around my eyes makes the blue stand out even more strongly. And the expression on my face - it's vulnerable but like I've given up, too. Giving up. There's something sexy about finally just letting go.

I'd never meant to fall in love with him. In fact, I didn't even know I had until I'd already been in love for some time. It was like my love for him had always been there, hanging out in the background. Until one day it just decided to jump out from the side and tackle me. It hit me like a truck. And that's when I started crying. The floodgates opened because when you're hit with that many memories and that much emotion, you have to let it out somehow. So the tears fell. And fell. And fell until all the water was used up and I just lay there sobbing, my eyes bloodshot and dry.

I don't want to love him, I don't even want to think about him. But that doesn't stop my foolish heart from obeying itself.

I love him. So love him.
But I don't want to. You don't have to want to. Just love him in your own confused, convoluted way. And then let it go.

How Harry Potter Changed My Life

Jo Rowling is up there on my personal "Most Influential People" list. And the funny thing is, it's only in hindsight that I've noticed this. When I first started reading the Harry Potter series, I would never have guessed in how many ways it would affect my life. Let me explain:

When I was in 2nd grade, I got Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for a Christmas book exchange at school. My classmate came up to me afterward and said that it was a really cool book, so I was naturally very excited to read it as I walked home with my brothers in tow. But, to my complete disappointment, my mother took one look at it when I presented it to her with an excited flourish, and forbade me from reading it and promptly confiscated it. You see, my mother was one of the devout Christians who had been hearing all of the negative press about the books and was concerned about the subject matter. So for a while, Sorcerer's Stone sat quietly on the shelf in my mother's room and I, being an impressionable 7 years old, forgot about its existence. Over the next couple of months, however, Harry Potter kept coming up in conversation with my peers. At this time I had moved and was attending a new school, so I was eager to please and acquire new friends. So I stole the book from my mother's shelf.

I was never the kind of child to disobey my parents. But this was different; my mom had never given me a reason for not reading Sorcerer's Stone and I figured that it wasn't too big of a deal - perhaps more importantly, I'd hoped she'd forgotten about it after the time elapse. So I moved my dresser out from the corner and made a little secret place (between my bed and dresser where no one could see me from the door so I'd have time to stash the book if necessary) for me to read Harry Potter. And that is precisely what I did. As I was 9 or 10 and my attention span minimal, it took me some time to get through the book. Before I could finish, and without my knowledge, my mother had gone to see the first movie (I think she was curious what all the hype was about). And, even more astonishingly, she decided that the books weren't inappropriate or blaspheming, devil-worshiping atrocity that many a news article had led her to believe. So she rented the first two movies, watched them with us and gave us her permission to read the books. With her blessing, I quickly finished the rest of the first novel and then proceeded to devour the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th.

My 14th birthday party was dedicated to the 4th movie. I stayed up all night reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and finished it in approximately 14 hours. I've reread the books many, many times. I've spent hours reading articles, watching interviews, and surfing the web for HP-related things. The past 9 years of my life have been spent either reading one of the books, watching one of the movies, or eagerly anticipating the release of the next installment. I love Harry Potter.

But besides being a world-renowned (at least, I should be) Harry Potter expert, what has the series done for me? I mean, I've spent all this time investing myself in it - have I gotten anything in return? To that I would answer with a most emphatic yes.

At the surface level, just as my 9 year-old self knew, after reading the books, I had something in common with a lot of people that I could talk about. But beyond helping me get friends, Harry Potter was the spark that ignited my love of reading and my life was changed from that point on. While I was waiting for the 6th book to come out, I got my hands on as many books as I could to pass the time. My parents would have to tell me to stop reading and go outside for awhile. I was ravenous for good books and spent a lot of time at the library looking for new ones to read. Some were better than others, but no matter the quality, I finished them all. I could not be stopped. And this avid reading and insatiable appetite for books led to my, if I do say so myself, exceptional vocabulary and, nowadays, my (almost) career.

But that's not where the story ends. More than anything, Harry Potter helped me to step into the world of my own imagination. It made it ok for me to be imaginative and I ran with that permission. From that, many a thing has been born: my penchant for fiction writing, my vivid dreams, and my boisterous daydreams. For all of these reasons, Harry Potter has played a huge role in shaping who I am today; it was the key that unlocked the door to so many things for me.

So, in precisely 48 hours I will be bouncing up and down in my seat, waiting for the premiere of the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - the beginning of the end of an era in my life. With that, I would just like to send out an enormous Thank You! to Jo Rowling and her wonderful imagination. Without her, I wouldn't be where I am today.

Writing

It's weird, my poetry writing process. There will be a span of time where poems just literally flow from my fingers on to the page and then, all of a sudden, they stop. After the poetry slam I felt like I couldn't possibly have any more poems to write; I had no ideas, no inspiration. And for the longest time, there was nothing. But now, the words are bouncing around again. The phrases keep dancing across my mind and it's all I can do to not write them down somewhere, somehow. But college life gets in the way of that a lot. I never have the time, never feel in the mood, never just sit down and do it. So those words just keep ricocheting off the sides of my skull, building up. And at some point, I'm going to have no other choice but to write them all down.

Stay tuned.

A Love Poem

Sorry about the awkward spacing. It's what happens when I copy from Word...

A Love Poem

A fellow young poet

Once told me

“I don’t like love poems

They aren’t my cup of tea.”

Which I thought

Was a little sacrilegious

In the world of poetry

See, love poems

Are where it all started

Those poets who delved

Into worlds uncharted

And poured out their love

With hearts unguarded

Their hands dances across

As their emotion seeped

Into the page

All because of love

Because of the woman

Who walks in beauty like the night

Or who is far more rare

Than any belied by false compare

Those poets were the first

To make their mark

But not the last

To feel the spark

To be compelled to write

About love

There was the man

Who took the road less traveled

He was in love with

Taking chance

And, without a backward glance

Walked into the romance of

The unknown path

A love poem to life

Then there’s Shel Silverstein

Who loved nothing more

Than to make children laugh

With poems of the

Messy bedroom floor

Love poems to laughter

And Mr. Hughes

Whose poem for English B

Helped the world to see

That we’re not that different

You and me

Love poems to equality

And there a thousands more

Who found things to adore

Who wrote poems and rhymes

About far better times

In our world love looks

A lot more like lust

And wild-eyed men

Fight over the broken

Pieces of trust

So give me a love poem

I’d take it any day

Over an outlook on this world

That seems so gray

Give me a love poem

One that rings true

And maybe we can make

This world anew

Now on a scale

From 1 to over trusting

I’m pretty fucking naïve

But this is something

I’m willing to believe

Love is alive

I have no doubt

And that is something

To write a poem about

Generation Y

This is a poem that I'm considering for the Slam coming up this week. Let me know what you think and if there are any editing comments you have. Thanks!

Generation Y

Inspired by Howl by Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds

Of my generation

Seeking something

Worth something

Trying to weed through

The trash in a world

Where anything

That you no longer

Need is trash

Trying to weed through

To find the treasure

I saw the best minds

Of my generation

Self-medicating

Swallowing their sorrows

In a shot of whiskey

A shot of Smirnoff

A shot of – is that alcohol?

Hand it over

I saw the sons

Of my generation

Desperately trying to fill

The male ideal

Doing massive feats

Of masculinity

To avoid the possibility

That they aren’t

Good enough

I saw the daughters

Of my generation

Poking and pulling

Changing and rearranging

Afraid to grow old

Hoping to fit

The Beauty Mold

The best minds

Of my generation

Are quietly destroying themselves

In search of something

Of interest

They are longing

For meaning

A significance that

Lies beyond the surface

They are trying

To build a world

Of their own

A brighter world,

A cleaner world

A better world

A world that will

Shatter the shallow

Expectations of

Our forbearers

and the naysayers

the ones who whisper

doubt about our potential

I saw the best minds

Of my generation

Waiting for a rebirth of wonder

Chasing after beauty and truth

And full of an unassailable hope

What is Beauty? & Unrequited

These are two poems I recently wrote and need some help with editing. Please give me your thoughts.

What Is Beauty?

(I'm debating cutting this first stanza)
No one ever told me
That I was beautiful
Not in a way that
I’d believe it
See, it’s hard to believe
Words spoken out of empty obligation
Or misplaced jealousy
Because for every boy that said it,
I heard an alternate motive
And anytime a girl told me
“you’re so pretty” because I had
Some trait that was “better”
Than theirs, I was sitting
Wishing I had their eyes,
Skins, lips, body, laugh
Because no one ever told me
That I was beautiful

How do we define beauty?
Is it in the plastic smiles
Plastered on the plastic faces
Of the plastic people?
Is it the obsessively toned,
Tan bodies of the self-obsessed?
Or the painted skin on the
Painted faces of the girls
Too scared to move should
Their painted masterpiece
Sweat off and show
What’s underneath

Is beauty what’s shown to us
By the media, by those who came before us
Is beauty confined by
Societal restrictions?

See my definition of flawless
Is a girl who flaunts her blemishes
Her every imperfection
And dares the world
To take her as she is

And my idea of sexy
Is walking into a room
And caring more about
The people in it
Than what they’re thinking of you

And beauty is acceptance
It’s looking in the mirror
And saying “I am beautiful.
This zit. Beautiful.
These teeth, they’re beautiful.
This nose, beautiful
These eyes, beautiful.
This crazy, unruly hair. Beautiful.”
All of these things are beautiful
Because they make me, me.

I’m here to tell you something
Something that I believe
From the bottom of my soul:
You are beautiful.

And it doesn’t matter
What you see slapped on
The magazines or projected
On the tv
Because that’s not beauty,
That’s business



Unrequited

this poem is for anyone
who has ever loved someone
for those of us who
understand the fuss
of unrequited love
we get it,
we've been there

we brought you soup
when you were sick
we were there when
you needed a ride
we held your hand
through the 32 stitches
above your left eyebrow

we were you sympathy date
to that dinner event
and pretended to unwillingly consent
while all the while
we were thinking about how
great we could be

this is for the people
who know what it's like
to be perpetually in the
"friend zone"

we're the ones
who would move
Heaven and earth
for an hour of your time

we went on long walks
had deep talks
ad waited for
opportunity to knock

this is for anyone
who's listened to you
talk about the other
person for hours
because we love
the sound of your voice

we jumped at the chance
to be with you
and silently wished
you'd see through
our unsteady facade

this is for the people
who've sat by and watched
as you were with
the wrong one, wrong one, wrong one
all the while knowing
we're the right one

we were there for you whenever
you needed us and prayed someday
you'd realize we were forever

this poem is for anyone
who's stayed up all night
thinking about
what it could be like
what it would be like
what it should be like

For the unrequited lovers
because there's something
beautiful in the way
the ocean refuses
to stop kissing the shore
no matter how many
times it's turned away

for those of us
who loved the people
who never knew or
understood what we
would do for them

this poem is for anyone
who has ever loved someone

Full of Beauty

The world is full of beauty
when the sunlight pours through the leaves of the trees
onto the soft, cool grass

The world is full of beauty
when the moon rests contently in the dark folds of the sky
and the winking stars laugh as they dance in the Heavens

The world is full of beauty
when a baby laughs and leans forward toward the
loving arms of its mother

The world is full of beauty
when a woman runs into the lonely arms of a man
and they embrace; safe, secure, home at last

And the world is full of beauty
when a lamenting cry pierces the grieving air
and there is no comfort in solitude

The world is full of beauty
when bloody battles forever
change the face of the Earth

The world is a beautiful place -
we sing, love, laugh, dance
fell pain, anger, hunger, thirst
and live

The world is full of beauty.