Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

a forgotten thing...

Forgetting fear is a mundane thing these days...you wonder back to the days where it was a palpable force justifying every action or inaction...and that feeling is a ghost in your chest...constricting only lightly...how do you walk back to that same fear voluntarily unless you're a masochist...you don't...you just don't.

I don't know people...I don't know them....I've given up trying to put them in little boxes with labels...every day I discover that everyone is different...unpredictable...unpredictably beautiful...they can say the most beautiful things offhandedly that you make feel blessed in the simple innocence of it...I don't know people...I like that I don't know them...every moment is a discovery...how a grim serious lip curls up in a smile so vacant and precious...how without knowing their eyes turn to the sky unwittingly sending a prayer...how they look for themselves in their greatest enemies to find a friend...a comrade...I don't know people...how they teach each other subtle things without a word being exchanged...how a touch and a cringe says so much and nothing at all...how fear and faith are two sides of the same coin...

I don't know people...I don't know them...but I relish this journey which unravels each day...although I know there is no end and I have forgotten where this began...

not the end

A Brilliant Perfect Blue

It shouldn't be this hard...coming back to normalcy....to a fabricated world of artificial light and faked joy. Lies have evolved here where the simple truth of humanity can be bought and sold for a tuppence. From where I stand the balancing act lost its footing a long long time ago. The day a child goes starving in one end of the world where another fight obesity at the other end where people mop dried earth to recover dwindling drops of water when some frown at the occasional rain that falls... We forget the blessings of life...the cobble that I walk on now feels like heaven to my feet....feet that for a few weeks forgot the blackness of deprived earth...soulless earth....earth of forgotten mud...my feet embrace the cobbles....the puddles....the salty sweet wind and the hush of the leaves....my skin devours it like a starving infant...like the many starving infants...my soul craves the string that bind it to the earth...the trees...the wind...the wisdom of the stars that speak of hope in this end of the world....only this end of the world...god gives you the strength to endure...and with that strength you will teach endurance to others...The god of all things small and plentiful....the god of hope in a tired child...the god of rivers that faithfully flow to the unseen ocean....the gods they hold on to with such passion...an unseen self beyond their selves...

Its not the same this normalcy I will soon take for granted...the pendulous days and nights that bring a falsified charm to a falsified existence....until I return to darkness carrying hopefully the smallest light...and pray that it will suffice...for now...

The Much I See

life has value only in the beholders of life...these past few weeks disappearing and finding places on earth that never should be inhabited...where darkness thrive in the excruciating light of the sun...puts life into blinding perspective...every bruise...every scratch...every grazing bullet...chips away any armor that was built through the years...what's left...the soul...again...can only be saved by a strong will to survive...where there is no water there can only be hell...and to hell we must return...to self inflicted torture without which we cannot find piece...we will not find piece...one must not ever find piece...

I'm Renting...

I'm renting out my soul for a day

to buy back your life

I'm going to take the hunger away

make a fool of death's wiles

I'm going to find a place where your heart

Can finally learn to beat

Going to take back your memories

and create a brand new day

I'm going to breath in to you

Every breath I take

I'm renting out my soul today

For tomorrow may be too late

All my Life and Every Day After....

All these days...these years...these moments...have led me to this one single day...a day I reclaimed as my own....when I fell in love....in love with this world...every part of it...the white, the black, the grey. I reclaimed that day that was taken...and found me. And I refuse to be sad for this comes with a no return....no return...to love from a distance everything I've loved about my country...to stand so far and hear the voices that have fed me all my life...and to know I will carry that, carry them within me and so will my children...and I know lessons now worth teaching and a I have now a love worth giving. I have learnt...no...I have been taught. By the simple things...vulnerability, nobility, strength. And I will not be afraid to be afraid...for in this moment I have learnt to love all my life and every day after...