love

Watering my E-Tree with Feelings of Gratitude

This blog is now alive.

I know it now because I have a new feeling. It’s powerful — almost to the point of overwhelming. When I find myself reading through my poems, I can feel the love. Each new piece delivers a fragment of it. A single moment devoted to making sense out of chaos. A fleeting thought now given the highest priority in the world.

With the ultimate goal to be worthy of sharing
Exposing my heart to still feel the world caring
Inspires me to continue through times overbearing

See? This is how it happens. I’ll be writing one thought

And it will turn into a rhyme
Not intentionally
But just on time
As if my inner mind
Broke free
Just to find
A pen to write with
A canvas to fill
A desire to figure out
The meaning of free will

Similar to how plants require sunlight and water, this blog needs sustenance too. Each new post is like a rainfall. Your warm reactions are the accompanying sunshine. Both working together to make up the very fabric and life of my blog, or as I like to call it, my E-Tree.

As I post new content, you become aware that my E-Tree has not died. When you warmly respond to my work, I become aware that my E-Tree is appreciated. With these words, I ping the universe, and with your response, the universe pings back.

I am so grateful.

Don’t bother asking questions
About cups half empty or ones half full
Mine’s overflowing with a moment never dull
Feel the music flowing throughout my soul
Guiding me towards love along with the pursuit to grow
Aware of this blessing to just enjoy the show
Now that I understand and have come to know
That it won’t last forever
Wherever you go
It’s ok to stop for breath, you’re free to take it slow
When facing your own death, you either sit still or you grow
And I write these words so that you can feel it too
That through the chaos you too can be renewed
Misery overwhelming has now been subdued
By gratitude of plenty, appreciating the blues
No longer feeling that there’s nothing left to lose
A moment of love and hate, with an extra one to choose

Thank you for your sunlight. Without it, this blog — our E-Tree — could not exist as it does right now.

 

Learning to Love Amid Modernity

What does humanity mean in the modern age?

Is it Facebook likes
Twitter follows

Replies and hollow
Messages of affection
A reflection of pain
Masked in updates
Notifications
Always able to talk
To new and old friends
But not in person
Separated by screens
Of pixellated writing
Status updates
Often just hiding
The frustration of it all
Building underneath
We’ve built all these walls
Behind the premise of being free
Free to express
Individualistic ideas
To post whatever we wish
From our hopes to our fears
But really we just try to impress our peers
By putting a filter over our heart
To say what we think they’d like to hear

Lets change it
Make it more sincere
Right from the heart
Straight to your ear
We have the power of connection
Whether far or near
Let’s spread the human affection
Compassion meant to share
More than just a link
Or a post to like
Its time to spread the message
That this is life

That as the days and nights roll on by
We can be more than just zombies
Refreshing ad-polluted news feeds
Clickhole sites and lists of pointless things
Let’s not be distracted by a society that thrives on our attention
But rather, lets grow strong
By sharing our affection
Deciding a direction
Finding skills and talents
To form our own expression
Life is the teacher
And class is in session
Until the moment you die
There will be another lesson

Currents of Love and Hate

An incredibly creative and skilled friend wrote to me this morning:

Some days I feel like
A hollow shell of talent.
Nothing to show but
Phenomenal works of drawing
To make the world believe
I have it all figured out.

Still barely woken, I had no quick response. I told her that I know what I wanted to say, just not how to articulate it. Told her to expect a poem sometime later tonight. Fortunately, my pen began to hit paper during my commute into work. Here’s my response:

For every breath in
Is followed by an exhale out
Much like confidence
There is no escape from doubt
But know you’re not alone
In trying to make sense of the unknown
For history has shown
There are currents that direct us
Flows of love and hate that build and wreck us
Each new moment, a blank canvas
An opportunity matched with responsibility
To share the Love with respect and dignity
A touch of humility
As you capture the hearts and minds
Of those in your vicinity
With pen in hand
Imagination is how you break free
And you already know it wont be easy

So let go of the illusion
That it will all make sense
Believe that your heart can and will
Reflect onto life’s canvas
That there’s no way to fully plan this

But we can create
Choose to make today great
Open the eyes to those still in a state
Of disillusionment
That their life is more than a passing moment
Your talent is incredible
Raise your chin and own it
Hold on to these emotions
By putting things in motion

For with your art, you express not your understanding
But rather, your imagination in a world of  your planning

I’m quite fortunate to have a friend in which I get to communicate via poem.

If you like coffee-cup art like this, then totally check out more of her work at:
tumblr: Java Doodles
Facebook: Java Doodles

 

 

Blip

The ability to inspire is much more than saying and writing motivating and uplifting thoughts. An ability to inspire requires the capability to affect the environment of those in your presence.

This text is much like a blip on your radar. Here for this moment, capturing your attention. Soon gone, unless you’ve chosen to keep it in your memory.

Inspiration is the by-product of leading a motivating life. Make no mistake that motivation alone can not be created merely for motivation’s sake. It comes as the consequence of a pursuit in something. A dream or a wish accompanied by the strength and support to bring it to life. To create in the midst of silence.

This writing is a blip.

Something so short and barely graspable, but still a blip.

In these seconds that you spend reading and listening to these dreams of mine, I’m ever so slightly affecting your environment.

If your stream of thought is like a train, let this be the message to derail it and lay a new set of tracks.

Let these words become part of the later version of you who remembers this.

Blip.

—

Riccardo Cuppini – Submarine

 

Remember Our Dreams

Frustrated by mistakes gaining momentum
Feeling bent on
Self destruction
As if I could blow up at any moment
Was so close, but now I’ve thrown it
Blown it
Straight into the wind again
Intentionally just hindering
Capacity to grow, ya know
Recreating my old foes

Now I’m battling woes with prose
Cause I still recognize
An absorbed mind is the ultimate prize
Absent of worry
No concept of time
When lost in the entanglement
Of transforming emotions into rhymes

Remembering this breeze with gratitude persistent
Remember this moment, like the last, here for this instant
Be calm now, internal pain will pass
Remember your wishes
The ones from the beginning
The dream to keep on singing
Keep on living
Despite the desire to throw it all away
Let’s fight together
To make some positive change

—
Moyan Brenn – Dreaming

Emotional Polarity

The highest high you’ve ever felt
Will be matched in intensity with your lowest low
Come to see life as polarity
For no matter where you go
Opposites exist
To balance in flow
You can see it clearly
You already know
That to understand yes
You must think of no
The same holds true
For me and for you
Happiness can only thrive
Alongside sadness too

Recovery Road

Ooo this breeze. The kind you can hear
As it zooms past both your ears
Steering you clear
From insincere
Feelings on life
The weight becomes possible to bear
When seeing you’re not the only one there
This distance between us
Could be miles or the width of a hair
All that matters
Is how much we’ve prepared
To be confident
With collective encouragement
To put our hearts on our sleeves
So we can start again
Seeing every breath as a new turn up at bat
Combining hope for the future with lessons from the past
In an infinite inning
Where the end of every moment
Is the start of a beginning
Bringing
A silence worth singing for
A page worth writing more
Helping spread the message for all those with hearts torn
That you too can be reborn
So hold on to all the love you got left
And be prepared for a journey to recover all the rest

—–

Image Attribution (CC) : Chris Zielecki –  uphill

 

Sidelines of War


Innocent civilians don’t deserve rubble
They deserve jobs and parks
Enjoyed without the trouble
Of separating one body from another
And wonder
When the pain will slumber
Thunder
Man made storms creating hunger
Only concerned with ever sundering
A potentially connected humanity
Instead creating a world in which death is all we see
How do we break free?
Watching war from the sidelines
Firing of distant guns just sound like passing headlines

More news just paralyzes
A mind that refuses to realize that
Through the bias and through the lies
There exists a part of humanity that I despise

Finding no way to reconcile
Today replaced with old denial
That we can’t just love and live a while
Hate and fear create thoughts like bile

So let’s be the generation that can rise above
For if no one is left to teach the world
How will it ever learn the power of love?

Dreams in the Mirror: Part 10

I’m here now
Somebody for you to believe in
I’ve come to start weaving
Together separated threads
Of reality mixed with love and with dread
No longer used to treading on the safer side
Finding it easier to run and to hide
From problems to share yet no one to confide in
When you just want to open up
And renew an inner trust
Between your past, future, and present
States of mind, I’m here to represent the idea
That you can write through your fears
Vocalize the struggle you’ve been fighting for years
Countless tears
For these internal battles are shared
More frequently than you’d expect
We’re all souls drifting
Not knowing what’ll happen next
Whose life can flip upside down
By taking a right turn instead of a left
But not left alone, cause time again has shown
We can connect so long as we’re together
And collectively choose to grow
Finding internal flow
You’ll definitely know
In the realm of self-reflection
Look in the mirror and enjoy the show

—

FIN — I hope you enjoyed!
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Dreams in the Mirror: Part 9

Cause it all begins
The moment you believe
That growth comes from within
As a result of what’s out
And already existing
Without a how-to guide
There’s no predefined listing
On this crazy roller coaster ride
It’s up to you to make up your own life
But know not alone, you got people by your side

Believe in yourself and follow your dreams
Is more than just words for posters and schemes
It’s the core of this mindset, the one behind the scenes

The line between the world and your dreams
Can be blurrier than it seems
We’ve all been saying this
You just have to believe
That who you see in the mirror
Has already been given the impossible power to breath

Already a super hero
To those within your reach

Including your future self
As he’s not as strong as you think
And still needs an internal crutch to hold on to
For when life throws one too many curveballs
So give him something to read
Someone to believe in

Next: Part 10 – 8/13/2014

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