2 minute Misery

2 minute Misery 11.19.2013

Written after being stopped in traffic. There was a school girl no more 
than 15 years old, sitting on a bench about 2 meters from my car, just 
writing in her notebook.

Bench side girl, legs crossed, heart and soul likewise guarded.

Line after line in the notebook, page after page unseen.

You gaze out in front, seeing everything, taking it all in through a filter.

A pause sets in, years on your face, but still just a girl.

Flat, white paper becomes a crumpled ball.

Mashed in your hand, I see pain…..such unecessary pain.

You lay down your notebook, but keep up your defenses.


For some reason, this girl really brought out the social worker
in me. I wanted to talk to her, and ask her if she was alright.
I wanted to ask her why she hated what she was writing about to 
the point where she needed to crumble up the paper and discard it.
She looked alone, isolated from something, and long in years even
though she was a teenager. For some reason she stayed with me long 
after traffic began to move again. It was a moment for me and she 
was 2 minutes of misery.

Beauty. Where ARE You?

Beauty is something we have forgotten to notice. Like the gradual passing of Autumn, we sometimes forget it was even there, trees go bare, do we even care?

Beauty used to be everything, in everything, made instruments sing. We used to care so much about the strokes of a brush, causing the hush, making viewers blush. Is it even there?

Beauty. Where did you go? Did you run and hide? Are you there below? Don’t you know? You are the seed that helps life grow. You are the glow, the early snow, you are the young lovers in throw.

Beauty has taken the back seat. Sitting alone, nobody remembers. Wasting away, nobody values her. There are the occasional fighters, and for them, I support. A beauty cohort.

Beauty, you’re worth it. And yet, an entire land with amnesia to one of the most important and worth while aspects of life…forgets. Beauty should be on the front page, in our words, how we treat the least of these. Beauty should take back the canvas, the soundboard, the page. Beauty should infuse how we love, how we create, how we care. Beauty should freely be.

Before, beauty arrived in true form, flowing lightly, like a leaf in a storm. Beauty surrounds, in sounds, beneath mounds, it abounds in Love. In the foregrounds of smiles, resounds in profiles. Beauty camps out with joy, with awesome wonder, emotion deploy, morning whisper.

What is beauty to you? Is it the rise of new day glow? Water bending beneath its flow? Din of cities turned down low? Heavy blankets in December snow? What is beautiful?, I want to know. Ask me, and I will echo. Hearing your voice say hello, the emotion in waiting till tomorrow, moving from much too fast to wonderfully slow.

Beauty, you’re the invisible phenomenon. You’re everywhere, but no one can see you anymore, feel you anymore, care about you anymore. I write to remember, I love so that you’re close, I read so that you remain alive. Beauty, come back.

An American Outpour on New Zealand

New Zealand. Mighty, New Zealand.
With each breath you crest another wave,
Runners jog the beaches you pave,
And often forget tourists crave,
New Zealand. Mighty, New Zealand.
Your beauty is unlike anything I know,
From buildings & mountains high, to ocean floors below,
Your people use love, kindness, and pride to sow,
New Zealand. Mighty, New Zealand.
Rich with culture, stories, and lore,
From Middle Earth to the Hakas roar,
A country that beckons you to explore,
New Zealand. Mighty, New Zealand.
Whose roads I intend to roam,
With enough adventures to fill a tome,
A land this foreigner now calls home,
New Zealand. Mighty, Gentle New Zealand.


An Appropriate Lament


Today, I found out that a friend of mine lost her parents in a bus accident in Kenya. I wrote this, because I didn’t know how else to properly handle the news.

“Sorry for your loss” is all I could say.

Hollow words for a hollow day.

Empty inside, lost, confused.

Caught off guard, happiness refused.


This is what I imagine must be happening inside.

I can only assume, as I never have tried,

To imagine a life without those that I love.

To imagine them now at peace above.


I feel helpless, without words, and wrecked.

I stare out the window and quietly reflect.

Emotions for a friend I only just met.

An appropriate lament.


So it’s with a heavy heart that I console my friend,

Whose loss is beyond what I can comprehend.

I pray, and I hope, that we celebrate them both

That this become our promise, our vow, our oath.

Light 6.28.12

[written on my porch between 5am-8am]

Light is an interesting thing. It has the ability to sing and the skill to sting. What I mean is that light can make aware beauty in everything, but it can also uncover many ugly things, dirty things, uncomfortable things. Light gives power to the eye, and takes it away from the lie. Deception lies in the darkness, which the light melts away; like a slow decay. The light has a say. Dark had its day. Now the horizon blooms. Where black and blue reside, now firey orange looms. Consuming everything it touches, yellow beams of truth. What in the blackness seemed unsure, now doesn’t seem so aloof. It’s fully morning now, no darkness to call. Like a bad memory, dissolved from it all. And the light that remains gives a golden hue, to highlight the life in a day anew.