"Alleviation."

This is going to be my first attempt at reaching colorless relief to replace the life in my weakened words.
Alleviation is throwing metaphors off cliffs onto rocks that only exist where tears land and sorrow drifts.
The blue, crashing waves no longer have a beach to meet and form one unique thing of creativity. My written words won't fade, just retreat into the fragmented complexes of their conception where not even my eyes can see.
Writers often fill voids with inconceivable metaphors and stitch their intangible fingers to their borders of reality where dull grays collide with colorful colorless colors that only a Best Friend could comprehend.
Behold, yeah, there is life in the unseen. Piano keys in waterfalls and poetry in the rivers that proceed.
Behold, yeah, laughter is the only sensation in life that will never deceive.
I need my Best Friend, alleviation is joking louder than the worlds' lies.
I'll never see him again but the pulse of our every memory replaces the hurt of distance. Closed eyes ironically light the unseen but outstretched hands do not bring him closer. Photographs are barren dimensions that defy concepts of shapes to sculptors and colors to painters. Insignificant, candid moments need not be recreated; they've never faded, never retreated, each remain stitched to bone, stitched to heart, stitched to leather.
The first insight into forever.
I'm terrified of hilarious scenarios, falling in love, Bull Terriers, I need my Best Friend to laugh at others' misfortunes and talk shit.
I need a new word for "loneliness", this kind of emotion is beyond any feeling I've ever felt. It feeds the crows perched in my home in nests of memories, spreading their wings, happy because I cry with the lights off.
Alleviation is not a process.
I'll tell my wife, my sons, I never recovered from the hardest heartbreak.
Fuck alleviation, my words have lost their counterpart, fuck my metaphors.
I need to hold her hand, I appreciate beauty more now.
The first insight into forever, I only want a life of beauty and laughter.
Justin, breed for me a female Boston Terrier who can sow together this separated beach and bury rocks that once existed where tears land and sorrow drifts.
This is going to be my last attempt at reaching colorless relief to replace the grief of losing my Best Friend.

For Justin.

If you knew Justin, either put one in the air, drink an Arnold Palmer, or bump some Bob Marley for him.
Something I learned from him was to always stand up for yourself. That doesn't mean fighting or talking shit back, just don't take any shit from anyone and always keep it real. Speak up for yourself, cut that shy shit out and speak louder than everyone else. Don't hold anything back.

Best In Peace.

I don't even know how to begin describing how I've felt since losing my best friend, Justin Ford. If I did find the words, I wouldn't say them, I wouldn't write them. The pain is too personal, it's something I don't want any of my friends to feel. I've been depressed before, and this isn't some fuckin depression. It's been 2 weeks since he passed and his funeral was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to endure in my life. They say time heals all wounds but I'm not believing that weak shit. I've never been so close to anyone so it's hard to comprehend that, for the rest of my life, he won't be there. He was one of the reasons I started writing, one of the reasons I became funnier, stopped being insecure, stopped giving a fuck of what others think about me...It was just all love. You're supposed to be the Best Man at your best friends Wedding, Godfather to their kids and shit, but never the Paul Bearer to his funeral. "It sucks" is an understatement.

Rest In Peace, Justin.
I love you, fag.

Dedan, Kevin, Same Thing.

21-year-old nose picker.

"Postponed Breathing"

There has been this interrupted urge amplifying internally as it waits to be heard.
My conscience critter, once complacent and calm, now roars, now it itches, now it has evolved into a petrified passion and now it has developed a mind of it's own with a brain for love and spinal cord for beauty. It hasn't learned a language but the messages traverse neurons and fill them with electricity.
There's no reason I should be this young hosting a monster this big, inpatient and compounding a drug with the neglected love dripping from the honeycomb in the middle of my chest. It's encapsulating the emotion in pure anxiety and saleing dimebags to the intangible parts of me. [My conscience was first in line, accompanied by my demeanor and every stable memory.]
Now, with the combined effort of anticipation, they each lie overdosed in my lungs because she keeps saying "soon". She doesn't know that, for me, "soon" is asthma and I can't bare another fucking attack.
I don't know if it's me or the monster, but the air has seemed to have lost its purpose so I've postponed breathing, I've relieved my lungs to store incomplete metaphors, awaiting full maturity once they reach my tongue, once they become heard, once they are molded and understood.
The lifespan of my words is not a length, it's an interrupted urge traversing neurons and filling them with electricity, it's a heart-seeking warmth in the honeycomb of my chest, it's not-yet-stable due to her fragmented beauty that has yet to be appreciated, placed together, and held in certainty.
Certainty should last forever, as should the intangible parts of me who have postponed breathing in anticipation of "now".
There's no reason I should be this young suffering anxiety attacks in the form of petrified passion. As catastrophic as this catabolic monster seems, it remains dormant because "now" is not the time.
The honeycomb in the middle of my chest needs to focus on passing a drug test.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm about 80% done with my book. I've changed the name to "The Reticent Genius & I'm Proud To Tell My Mother". I have been doing a lot of writing but I don't want to share all of it because then why the hell would you buy my book?
I wrote the first line of this piece around the time I turned 21 but I've been feeling this for a loooong tiiime. It feels good to finally get it written out.

Respect.

Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery.

There's never a day that I go without listening to music. I have a bunch of Pandora stations playing through my iPhone in my car, while I'm at work and while I'm studying. There's been a lot of new music that I'm feeling (OFWGKTADGAF, Florence+The Machine, Kid Cudi) and I'm always staying true to 'Pac, BIG, Em, The Smiths, Nas... But lately I've been zoning in on the feeling of complacency that Bob Marley creates throughout each song.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go put on "Is This Love" and TELL ME YOU DON'T START BOUNCING YOUR SHOULDERS AND/OR CLAPPING YOUR HANDS! HAHAHA that shit is me! How many of you have never sang "Jammin'" outloud in your best Jamaican accent?

Bob is the perfect remedy to those who are DONE with this weak-ass "rap" playing on Power 106. Bob doesn't have any lame punchlines, doesn't talk about getting pussy, he's not about ballin' out, know what I mean? If he was walking today, he'd never be courtside of any NBA games, no fuckin Super Bowl Halftime show, none of that shit. I swear, he was all about LOVE. No one can tell me Bob Marley is dead because no artist can make me feel the way he can. Everything is OKAY when "No Woman No Cry" is on, it's like- fuck ALL the pressures, the midterms, 5-page essays, all the pharmacy math, just everything. Listening to Bob Marley helps me write my poetry with a clear mind and keeps me on that thin line from completely dropping my Pharmacy career and just WRITE.

Emancipate yourself from Mental Slavery. This to me means keep all that is real and natural within yourself in your head, don't let anyone else tell you how to feel and don't let anything unneccesary influence your personality. Everyday you're going to encounter someone with a different attitude than you but you must not let it affect you or the way you're going.

Listen to more Bob Marley.

"In this bright future, you can forget your past"

Do You Remember?

"Do you remember when we first met? I sure do.
It was some time in early September
You were lazy about it, you made me wait around
I was so crazy about you I didn't mind
I was late for class, I locked my bike to yours
It wasn't hard to find ‒ you painted flowers on it
I guess that I was afraid that if you rolled away
You might not roll back my direction real soon.
I was crazy about you then and now
The craziest thing of all,Over ten years have gone by
And you're still mine,We're locked in time
Let's rewind"

This has always been one of my favorite Jack Johnson songs but now it seems to have a little more meaning.

Here's the video

Untitled.

You spend weekends splitting those you trust and those you love and those you despise into a deck of 51 cards and shuffle until it seems impossible that 2 will touch, and alas, your final card fits.
Great risks yield the rewards of romantic Monday night dinners, $9 mimosas with your father, and blissful humility. Everything is comprehensible with strings of imagination attached, securely double knotted or at times let loose for an overcast atmosphere of dreams and unique interpretations.
We lay on our backs and hold the hands of children as the colors of our visions drift but never fade. If it's euphoria you crave, find your parade.
There is art hidden in the world created through disturbances and phenomenas with mood and depth, until we attempt to measure it with the word "beauty", simultaneously reducing it to common understanding and categorizing it along with other abused interpretations such as love, prostituted for an exchange.
We are all inventors is our own right, drafting unique emotions and interpreting them as amicable monsters, encouraging self-destruction for the revitalization of character.
The problem herein lies within the fleeting feeling of anguish disguised as life and as vivid as a child dropping their slice of cake on the floor. Artists have no color on their palette to paint this pain. Sleeping visions on canvas yield interpretations; the cake never lands, tears fall faster and that fleeting feeling is melancholy replacing gravity. Use shoe strings to keep from floating away. Imagination and other true things never expire.

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
—
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Gárcia Márquez

Karma.

One of my biggest beliefs is Karma. I don't talk alot about my religion and I respect every religion in the world. When I look back on my life I don't want to recall the days that I wasted so I try to do a little something nice, no matter how miniscule the act is, every day. At first I started with small compliments, getting a burger and Coke for homeless people...Now I go to Starbucks in hopes of starting a chain of random acts of kindness. I order my coffee, and after I pay for mine, I pay for the person behind me. I don't care for recognition, it's not like I'm trying to impress a cute girl behind me. It's not like that. It's the fact that this KINDNESS is hard to find. It's RARE.

This post is less about the act of kindness but more about the tiny coincidences that have strengthened my beliefs. You see, I ordered 2 drinks for the total of $8.40. I didn't care how much I would've had to pay for the person behind me but I was shocked when it was only $2.15!It could've been 9, 10, $12 but MY God saw I wanted to do something nice so he didn't break my wallet and only put it at $2.15. That's the way I think, that's the way I believe. Small coincidences with greater meaning.

Habte's Imagination.

This is one of my 2nd Graders, Habte. One of the reasons I love working with kids is because they remind me so much of myself at that age and even right now.

I'M BACK!

I do have to extend a small apology for being gone for that time.
A lot of people have been asking me to post up more poetry but the thing is, I've been finishing up my first book so publishing has replaced blogging.

I'm less than a month away from completing everything. The (working) tittle is "My Sculpture of Genius/And I'm Proud To Tell My Mother". 100 pages, "back and forth."

To make up for being gone, I'm going to post some of my recent work right now.

Her-icane

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
—
Looking for Alaska, John Green

Psychology Response.

In every community in society, there are hidden and visible prejudices, de facto segregation, conflicting attitudes, roles, labels and perceptions that generally create tension thus making everyone against each other. There is a common sense of aggression and indifference to strangers everywhere. We have quickly become desensitized and "cold" to those who are unfamiliar.

However much individuality seems to be expressed is only as admission of conformity because we all want to fit in and belong to a group. Being seen as "unique" is often interpreted as odd or strange. Identity is no longer what it used to be. Today, we just want to belong to the popular culture and unknowingly sacrifice individuality. In fact, what becomes of us is deindividuation. We let the contemporary cultures influence our behaviors and appearance. Less attention is given to our futures because society influences us to become "weekend warriors" and avid party goers.

Laid-back attitudes are ubiquitous and are potential plagues for the younger generations. The acceptance of mediocrity has become the popular standard; that which takes more dedication and harder work seems more and more absurd or extraordinary. It is upon our ability to be social that determines how we feel about ourselves. If it seems our contemporaries can only have a good time under an influence then we will undoubtedly join them.