April is the cruellest month,

breeding restless souls too eager for what winter could not offer.

Sugared dreams all morphed into splintered ropes. We didn't expect it-
it hit us hard, like those great typhoons that wash islands onto shores of continents.

So we swam. As fast as we could, or else they'd catch us and brainwash us all over again.
We had to get away,
get away,
get away
lest it be too late.

There is still time, my friends. The Nile River does not drain so quickly.
Let's lay down our swords, put down the oars.
Some things are worth fighting for, but some things no more.

Maybe it's time to take our lives, and wrap them, zip them,
bind them up with strings of resignation
and ship them downstream on a big, black ferry to fate's floating hands.

We'll sing much of the night, and drift west in the fall.

Timeglass

Today

a current-less node, a stagnant junction
a hanging cliff
pending, fester, pending, fester
waiting, waiting, listless and restless
to fall into some shallow depth,
the rusted glass of

Tomorrow-
hanging orbs and blurry dreams
seafoampearlsmarblesilk;
undivulged paths hold something
eternal. And
Ticking hands and sinking sands
will justify

Today.

Ten Days....

....to decide on the next four years of my life.

Ten days
to weigh options, balance pros and cons, to try to take a stab at what my future five years ahead is going to be like.
Ten days
to make an irrevocable decision
Ten days
to script my life
Ten days
to justify my past twelve years
Ten days
Ten days
Ten days

I've never wanted to see my future. Somehow, the thought of knowing exactly what my future holds in store for me has always terrified me. But right now, I really wish I had a more concrete idea.

Ten days left, and I need to make the right decision.

Sick-Day Thoughts

-As much of a coffee junkie that I am, I will say this admittedly: Coffee is an ego booster.
It symbolizes either a) a refined and cultured individual (if you're European), or b) a driven, fast-paced person (if you're American), or c) an addict (if you really are a caffeine addict). But see, what I've found in my life so far is that people usually drink coffee to give the impression that they're in categories a or b, whether they really are or not. It just feels good to walk into public with a cup of Starbucks in your hand, which is why a lot of people do it.

-I have immense respect for people who can write quality free-verse poetry. It gives me a kick when I log onto a site and end up reading something like this:
"The fire of love
burns through my soul
painfully...."

Don't get me wrong- I'm no great shake at writing free-verse either, which is why I avoid it. Besides, I think rhymed and metered poetry sounds better. I usually associate those who write free-verse with those who are too lazy to bother rhyming and metering their poetry, because it's pretty hard. But there are some people who can make their free-verse sound like music, and those are the people I really envy. There are quite of few of these people on the blogosphere, I've found.

-I can't, for the life of me, understand the American desire to get tan. There are lots of things about American culture that I don't understand, but that's probably one of the tops on the list. What on earth are people thinking when they lay out in the sun with tanning oil for hours and hours to return home in pain, crispy burnt, and with a 70% higher chance of getting cancer? To what purpose?! To look browner in their youth, and more wrinkled and saggy in their old age?
Let me redefine insanity for you here.....

-Speaking of America.... I love when vehement socialism-haters don't realize that America has been exhibiting so much socialist behavior for a very long time already. For example, college tuition-
wait, I'm not even going to get into that. I'm too busy/sick to spend time on a political-economic rant.

A Stranger's Lamentation

----------

Oh, little girl, where have you left
To go in these harsh fields of snow,
When summer suns no more shed light
To your transparent eyes' dim glow?

When church bells chime like brazen calls
To war, and laughter sounds like rain
That runs in deep, red river tracks,
Like those on your pale cheeks did stain.

Gone, you'll be, into the Netherworlds-
We'll watch you silently
And they will wave their handkerchiefs
And weep while from this earth you flee.

Like swallows through the autumn sky
You'll flee; like dandelion seeds
Adrift, while we still tread this ground
Our heavy feet, our weighty needs.

But you are safe now, little girl,
Inside your hollow, dry cocoon.
But why won't you take me with you?
Oh, please won't you come take me soon?

From the Galleries...

I was told that my blog was getting increasingly depressing as of late, which is not how I want my readers to feel. I'm going to lighten the mood.

I often browse my photo archive to look at pictures from the four countries I visited last summer, because I can't really get enough of them. It's just so mindblowing to me that there are places so beautiful that exist in the world. WHY DON'T I LIVE IN THESE PLACES? One day, my friends, one day. To all my European comrades, you guys really are fortunate, so don't take it too much for granted.

I've been accused of being a Europhile, but how could one not be after looking at places like these?



Oh, and today is my birthday.

Champs-Elysees, Paris

Jardin de Louxembourg, Paris

Art print vendor, Paris

Paris paris paris

....and again

Schloss Linderhoff in Germany

I can't remember where, Germany

Heidelberg, Germany

Strasbourg, Alsace region

Maulbronn monastery, Germany

German Alps, Austria

Strasbourg

Old monastery ruins, Germany?

Heidelberg

Black Forest, Germany

Overtrodden Roads

It felt so familiar: the sound of silence and darkness and crickets past-midnight, the smell of the musky air transitioning from winter to spring, the sparse orange streetlights, the rocks and asphalt crunching under my light steps.

Even the question of Why am I doing this? was familiar as it flashed through my head. And it irritated me more that even though I asked that question, I still did it. You have no self-control, I chastised myself angrily.

I could walk that path in my sleep, those dark, winding roads, with my heartbeat pounding far too loudly in the silent darkness in sync with my steps.

It was crazy that even though so few things ever got me excited, this was something that always did. It was the only thing that ever made me giddy like a child on Christmas morning, the only thing I could spend days anticipating, and it was crazy that it still had that effect on me,
even though I knew that things were different.
Even though I knew it was a bad idea. Even though I knew it would crush my spirits and I'd spend the next couple weeks recuperating from it.

Only you could ever do that to me. One glance and I'd be reeling, tripping, falling, crashing,
burning. Suffering.
Yet I was willing to endure that. Isn't that how drug addicts are? It's pitiful that I behave exactly as those that I scorn. Absolutely pitiful.

It's pitiful that I knew I was breaking down everything I'd built up as I knocked on the glass, pitiful that I knew, even before walking that far in the cold with a fever and a cough,
pitiful that I knew, even before you turned your head away like that,

that I'd return sick, sad, crushed to a pulp, and wishing with every bone in my body
that I had never trekked that road again.

I Want to Sink Your Swagger.

You.
Yes, you.

You with the fiery, constant laugh, with that air about you that screams Yes! My life is handed to me on a solid gold platter and it's great!

It's interesting how I used to be jealous of people like you. I've never really been much of a jealous person, but man, did I used to be jealous of people like you.

The people who wake up on the sunny side of town everyday and use a megaphone to broadcast it to those who don't. The people who have cocktail parties for Christmas, who get presents on every holiday and have their parents hide eggs for them on Easter, the people who have easygoing, happy lives full of happy friends and happy family and drift swiftly with the current.

I'm not jealous anymore. Nowhere close. What reason would I have to envy you-

you whose innocent smile shows that you've never known what it's like to fight your hardest and still lose,
you who never had to beat against the current for anything,
never been shoved on the front lines without mommy and daddy there to take blows for you,
you who are not capable of being alone because you've never been before,
with a perfect, glass bubble molded around you by other people because they think they're doing what's best for you,

you, skipping through life convinced that your happiness grants you some god-given immunity to everything else that either you don't see or you've chosen not to look at.


Well, Little Miss Sunshine, let me tell you something:
There's a big, cruel world out there waiting to destroy people just like you.
You don't have to believe me, because maybe you'll get away. But what if you don't?


If you think your life is perfect, then you're not thinking very hard.

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood....

.... and I, sorry that I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
to chase you down one as far as I could
until I bent in mind and bones.

And then took the other
because I couldn't catch up. Thanks a lot
for making me feel slow-
I thought I was for so many years.
To think that I ever thought that...

And in that morning equally lay
the reason those paths had ever split
Oh, if I could only go back to that day!
I'd kick your ass and spare myself.
Yet knowing how way leads onto way
I doubt I'll ever have reason to come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
I was totally brainwashed way back then.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
realize just now that
it was about time.




Somedays, I feel poetic and artistic. Today is not one of those days. Sorry, Frost.