Category: Uncategorized

To my love, oh for now and forever,
Our love was blessed with luck as if an endeavor.
But our hearts were solid and shined so bright,
Breaking through the twilight;
Always together, and always in sight.
So now do you remember, oh the times that we had?
Every waking moment, every day, we were glad.
I never wanted it to end, always wanted to stand by you,
Since nothing else really mattered since our debut.
For me it was you without adieu.
Forget me not, oh, how could I forget?
We were to be together from the moment we met.
Underneath the stars, warm in the cold weather,
Floating on our dreams like a cloud on a feather;
Yes, we were to be together.
Look in your heart, and oh you can see,
The joy and happiness that was meant to be.
Ask yourself what is plain and clear,
Please ask yourself and respond my dear,
Please believe, as I am sincere.

To whom I once was, oh once I could stand,
Now lost in the darkness searching for your hand,
But like an apparition – it just seeps through,
Oh, I don’t know if I ever knew you;
‘Cause now uncertainty is all that’s true.
Given all the time, oh the time we thought was there,
You looked into my eyes – told me to feel no despair
Taken by the crime of love’s constrain,
Forgetting all the time and letting in the pain;
Oblivious to that we were always singing in the rain.
The happier I can be, oh, the less I can recall.
Let it all go when I thought I had it all.
Forgot everyone and everyone forgot all about me,
All that remains is the past’s debris.
Oblivion is where I am – lost in a dead sea.
Happiness was it, oh, was that what it’s called?
Because in my case I was simply appalled,
While falling into the deepest abyss,
All I could remember is that they say ignorance is bliss.
I won’t ever miss your kiss.

Whatever happened, oh whoever are, whatever the matter,
Doesn’t really matter because all truths are merely lies of shatter.
Today I cannot bring back tomorrow,
As what was taken was no borrow,
Oblivion forgets the sorrow.

Perfumed clouds that echo twilight
lassoing the tongue,
seducing with full bodies –
I revel in your varied moods.

Darjeeling plies me
in its golden-tipped softness bittersweet.
I sink into the lusty hairy contours
of lapsang souchoung, curled like
smoke around my lips.
I fly into thought through the bold
humbleness of genmai green,
its toasty astringency a shroud
of knowledge.
Ceylon and I glide moonwards,
its thick body brittle, heaving and heavy.
Osmanthus floats me through the islanded
stream perfumed.
I cling with Assam and Nilgiri to high steep cliffs of days.

But I always come home again
and curl into nights dancing with the misty
loveliness of jasmine –
soft and shiny silver cloud.

Tiny tantrum
on my plate,
magenta-mad
bub of bad,

yapper, you
blister, you
hard-hot knot of yowl,
ounce of ow,

little cuss
in combat,
you’re the peeve,
the hidden pearl.

Here’s to the freshman in the kelly green pantsuit
channeling her inner Hillary as
she struts down the hallway
schedule in hand, in search of a
cinderblock classroom;

Blessed is the sophomore
who came in from the rain in
mirrored sunglasses and
Jim Morrison vintage polyester shirt
strolling past the
laughing “Fuck yeah” boys—
junior football players who
stumble unapologetically into
English classes
massacring the vernacular in
grins and grimaces,
slapping backs and saluting teachers.

Praise be to the senior sporting
a glittering tiara and black combat boots
with no trace of irony,
her eyes thick and heavy with
kohl black eyeliner (she’s under there somewhere),
and the brave boy boasting a
hopeful Harvard sweatshirt on the
first day of a new school year.

Let’s hear it for the girl in the cropped
I vampires tee, next to
the gaggle of girls in summer sundresses and Converse,
carefully orchestrating pretty and
nonchalant like a curated bouquet of
wildflowers.

I salute the stragglers who can’t zip up
their hoodies high enough to hide behind,
the ashen-faced fashion acolytes wearing
too much highlighter over too plucked brows,
the confused wanderers who show up to
second semester’s period seven class
six months early.

They come in all shapes and sizes and colors
with names as unusual as Astoria,
common as John,
complicated as
“Curtis Allen Conway-Carpenter III
but you can call me ‘Alex.’”

Sports socks and gym bags and backpacks
AirPods and laptops and composition notebooks
lipsticks and coffee cups and stainless-steel water jugs;
Some spilling out of bustiers and others clad in
Pokémon pajama pants.

There is a place for all here in
this temple of my familiar,
This stream of dreams and drudgery,
180 days a year

Grandma grew daylilies
along the east side
of the Jordan Drive house,
and every day in June they
bloomed like little orange
firework bursts,
their faces uplifted to the sun,
a single day of life,
brilliant, bright, vibrant,
a marmalade retinue of glorious buds
peeled back like tangerine rind,
fluttering in the early summer breeze,
hapless but happy.
They were the backdrop of my
halcyon days:
tossing that speckled ball
fished from a wire cage
at the Ben Franklin,
sloshing in the little inflatable pool,
dodging that long, green snake of a hose,
plucking and munching garden tomatoes,
corralling crickets
into mayonnaise jars,
riding on Grandpa’s lap
aboard the lawnmower,
cutting across that emerald acre,
resplendent,
unburdened,
sated.
And so, I have transplanted
their ocher progeny
in the eastern corner of my home,
their faces upturned to the same sun,
too-brief lives splendid
and pure,
and each June morning
when I gaze upon their enclave
at the foot of the screened porch,
they whisper to me,
not in words
but echoes
of continuity,
souvenirs
of the continuum,
remembrances
of the infinity
of my daylily childhood

You, water,
object of my praise.
Oh, wondrous clouds,
plush beyond measure.
I want to admire you for
hours with my gaze.
Oh, crystalline taste-inexorable pleasure.
Lustrous beads that form an
endless expanse
oceans alive
with undulating motions.

Oceans of endless
depth, infinitely clear
particles shield light from
the dark depths all humans know.
Lustrous beads that bond together,
a mirage which wavers,
a hallucination
leading us off
the cliff of sorrow.

Lustrous beads create
impenetrable fog.
I’m senseless, unaware
of what lies
right in front of me,
blind to the truth
right under my nose.
The revelation remains restrained,
reticent due to nagging thoughts.

Lustrous beads pour
down
down
down-
a torrent that
floods, drowns,
and embraces me.
A mirror into my soul.
A gateway
to my assurances.
An introspection
to my insecurities.

You could drown me,
boil me,
freeze me,
and I need that.
You don’t scare me.
You relieve me.

I need you
to quench my thirst
down my throat-
but how,
how can I ask for you?
We scrutinize
your impurities,
traces of viruses
and algae.

But the pure water,
the clean water,
portrays our
best selves,
reflections not clouded
by impurities.

Why is it so hard
to find water
in our dry society,
though it’s in all of us?

Endless abundance,
yet so sparse,
an unnoticed sight:
the wonders of water.

In my bag I carry
Annotated Four Quartets,
Do not write or read a single thing

Nor think of you when my
Legs rush in-between cars
Water gets inside of my shoes and
In the brim of my long skirt

This is not a walkable city after all;
I used to think,
Trauma defined me

But sitting at this swing-bench
Looking at the sun-bathed deck
People playing on the water
Laughing, splashing at each other
I am no longer linked to you

Trauma may not efface
Just like grief
But I will grow
Around it

An olive tree
Spreading its roots
Around the stones
Making their way
Into the warm soil;
Whatever we call home
Will reach me

Stripped to the waist
you wield your mighty hammer,
turning molten metal
into works of art.

How sad it is
others could not see beyond
your unsightly visage,
your poor crippled legs.

Even your wife,
bound to you against her will,
despised you, betrayed you,
plotted against you.

Yet Gods used you –
to make their thrones, their armour,
their crowns and thunderbolts,
your skills knew no bounds.

I would have liked
to have met you, Hephaestus,
watch you wield that hammer,
thrust those tongs in fire.

God of the Forge,
gone but never forgotten,
I hope it helps to know
your legend lives on.

Lumi, I write to you
With squinting eyes
Under the pale reflection of the moon
And the torturing cold of the north
I write in blue
Shaky? — yes but my hand complies
Although my thoughts lie strewn
I’ll still pen them forth.

Lumi, I write to you
From many nights in that tiny room
The gathered garner of our amity
When you were nothing but illumination
And I wrote and read and drew,
On the floor were always scattered pieces of a student’s workloom
But you were a lifeless embody of directing luminosity
Your forty eyes in this room were Haven.

Lumi, I write to you
With two fingers married to your switch
Cursing NEPA in between gritted teeth,
I also rue the days I let you fall
And I know an ode to you is overdue
Your glass and tiny bulbs, O’ such luminous distich
I never thought of the day I would sit in the dark and seethe
Knowing a flick of your switch wouldn’t turn you on, at all.

i love you.
your orange hues amaze me.
Please. Don’t die.

i adore you.
God blessed you with speckles
of white in the rim of your wings.
Please. Don’t go.

Even though I laid eyes on you
for a mere second,
I was hypnotized by your beauty.
All butterflies are unique —
but you, darling, stand out amongst them all.

There will never be another like you.

Which is why
I would even beg to God,
who decides to give and take away,
to keep you for a little longer.
The ones who haven’t been born
need to see how beautiful you are.

So please…
I love you.
I adore you.
Please. Don’t die.

Please. Don’t go.

— Leslie Rwigyema