People

I want to write about people. Which is funny. And weird. And sort of senseless, maybe, but that’s what I want to do. I want to always write about people. I want to write about the way they fall in love, the way their eyes can be read, the way they fall and then get up and then fall again, just to get right back up—and it’s so wonderful. So incredibly wonderful and amazing, that they take their own species for granted—and they cant see how great they can be.

I believe in humanity. I believe in our art and our science and the way we sing and cry and believe and create and destroy—and live. We are marvelous. With everything that we are, we were born to be elaborate, and colored slightly outside of the lines. We’re not really the ground or the sky, but we are everything in between.

Just give us chance.

Stop making us feel like our reality can be so small that it can be bottled up.

Lets stop making us feel like our reality can be so small that it can be bottled up.

Why I Picked English Literature as a Major

To be completely and utterly frank, I do not have a logical reason as to why I picked English Literature as my major—I really don’t. But I do have a list of matters that made me feel like I should probably major in English Literature and their senseless, probably—and weird. But yes. Here it goes.

I picked English Literature as my major, because words are so beautiful, and undermined, and powerful—and when they come together, they create something so incredibly beyond this entire universe. And I’m one of the naïve little kids who cant seem to let go of the little big things, so I chose English Literature as a major.

I also secretly want to be an author, I want to be fearless like them. I want to allow the universe to dwell inside of my core, and read me. See me as I am. I want to be able to share not a piece of me—but me as a whole. Because, see, the thing about authors is that their immortal. They’re there, even after their dead, still alive in between black and white text—and I so desperately want to be so brave, like them. Quietly.  I want to be able to touch others, without touching them; I want to influence change; I want to run inside of their minds—and God, I sound like a psychopath, but that doesn’t matter, because they all were!

Maybe they weren’t proud, and maybe they didn’t know it, but their the roots that ground our trees, and we’re only standing because of them—and I want to be a part of that army.

See I’m eighteen, and maybe ill regret it when I’m 28, but for now, all I know is that Science and Math and Business and Media and politics, all of these are the basis of our survival, but the poetry and the novels and the plays—they give us reason to need to survive; they’re the humanity’s gigantic driving force; because goddammit, as sinful as this may sound, there is no party without music; no memorable movie without a beautiful plot; no excellent politician without a quote or two advocating world peace. This may sound like it may not have anything to do with literature, but without poetry, there would have been no music; without plays, there would have been no movies; and without figurative language and wordplay, there would have been no politician.

These are really horrible examples, but hell, they made the world go round.  

Poems on My Skin

I died the day I let them write

Their poetry on my flesh,
 with my own blood.

And when I told them they were wrong,

They looked at me like
I couldn’t understand my own skin,
and they said “How could we be?”

I let them write their heavy poetry

On my flesh with my own blood
And I died

I am a puppet, with its soul

Somewhere in the heavens,

Looking down at what it had
left behind, and thinking

“Well what a beautiful mess--
I let them steal its humanity."

I let them steal my humanity,

But I will get it back.

I don’t know how, but I will rise

Again.

See, I may not know how to write poetry,

And I don’t think I can,

But this is more than a poem—

No, this is a message to the Them:

I will write poetry on my own flesh,

And it will be in gold.

It will be my own gold.

Rise

My dream is to write an anthem to my youth. In it, I’ll glorify our messes; I’ll sing to the kids who dream; I’ll write it all for the generation who was taught to falter, but didn’t.

For so long we’ve been repeatedly told that we cannot be anything beyond our simple boundaries, and we’ve lived sort of religiously with the idea that we are not made for greatness, and that we cannot be it. And, frankly, it’s pretty exhausting. To continually hear that we are lazy and selfish, when—if we tried—we could be unstoppable. We could—We are made of cosmos; we might envelope into ourselves, when we are not ourselves, but when we are ourselves, we are the sun.

We need to stop teaching these kids—us—our generation—that conformity is the only way to success; That the media is our only means to understanding our entirety; That in order to be wonderful, we must fit into a mold that we cannot fit into, and I’ve said this a hundred thousand times already.

So shut up, and rise.  

Strictly Human.

They hate me because I have never been ashamed of the sins that I have made. If I ever decide to be ashamed of them, then on that day, I lose my humanity. But because I am Human— and strictly human— I choose to carry my flaws on my hands and on my face. Here I am. With all my scars and my mistakes. Take what you want, and hate what you resent, but spare me the judgements: You are just as human as I am; Just as disgustingly humane, and beautifully faulted.

This is to My Youth.

To the Fallen, the Tragedies and the Misfits:

You were born to be everything more,

And nothing less

Than a carefully crafted

Wonderful mess.

You are a part of the Youth,

Who is dead and alive,

Intelligent and misunderstood,

Vibrant and dull,

Quiet and loud;

A paradox, within a paradox.

You are important.

You are unimportant.

You are significant.

You are insignificant.

You are whatever you choose to be.

The mold that was crafted for you,

Is not your mold at all.

You are a part of the Youth.

And we are reckless,

And we are insane.

We are hurricanes,

And many other storms.

But we are not—

We never will be

Clear blue skies.

And goddammit,

We’re proud.

Always.