On Regret

No regrets, they say,
Live with no regrets.
For regret is that traitor which feeds on your guilt
And grows exponentially, until
You can no longer come to terms with -
A former version of yourself?
Your current self?

You will not know.

Yet those who do live with regrets,
While they may have questions, forever unanswered,
Strive harder. Run faster.
Mean the things they say more often.

And still they fall, and even worse, fail,
All because of that nagging sensation
Within them that says -

Things could have been different.

No regrets, they say,
And yet we say nothing of those
Who do regret a thing or two.
They seem to be nothing but our bane,
That which we ought to disown or acknowledge
as existent.

Life offers different ways
for us to learn - regret is but one of them.
Should we not, then, take it in
And accept it as it is -

A learning experience,
and not a source of shame?

The Other Side of the Mirror

You walk in the shadows as though you have no other choice.
Alone, terrified, and yet still ignorantly proud,
You will not take a helping hand nor a simple smile
To let you know - you will be just fine.

Inside you know:
There is a world waiting, a world
full of the hope and the warmth you seek so often and yet
Shun from your entire system like a plague.

Why be stubborn?
Why assume this exterior -

A false toughness, without a solid anchor on which
You can latch on your pride.
You do not talk - you only look, and you do as others do,
And still you do not stop and think of
Letting those you mimic in to find the real you.

And when they, who offer so graciously their hands
and hearts to pull you from the dimension
in which you find yourself trapped,
You only smile and walk away.

You live seen and yet untouched
As if there were no other choice.

Declaration of Independence

You can never contain a spirit
That wants to be set free -
It will toss and turn, and struggle until
The chains you have placed are set free.

You can never silence a voice
That wants to be heard:
The tongue is a powerful gift -
Sharp and articulate, it has the ability
To build, to move, to destroy.

You can never control a mind
That wants to be bold,
One that wants to be independent
For so long as one’s will is strong,
The mind remains an inviolable realm.

No hand can stop a free spirit.
Freedom is a force to be reckoned with -
A force which, once broken,
Will wreak havoc
Until the balance is regained.

Isolation

She moves in the shadows in the bright daylight
And roams freely when the moon shines;
She sees all things, hears all things, feels all things
And yet lets no one see her,
Nor hear, nor feel her presence.
She has so much to offer the world -
Her mind is full of bursting ideas,
Her heart is full of bursting love for the world,

And yet
She keeps herself distanced from it,
For she fears the pain -
Pain of rejection,
Pain of loss,
Pain of judgment,
and the most intense fear of all -
The fear of being irrelevant.
She fears all of it.

And so she goes,
Living as if she were nonexistent,
Floating in and out of life with
A heart as precious as gold
And confidence as negligible as a speck of dust.
She remains in the shadows, hidden
Comfortably, comfortably,
Where she remains:

At a distance from the world she so loves.

Dead Art

“Poetry is a dead art”, he says,
Throwing the words without caution.

But every night,
He stares at the moon with longing,
And every day he writes
His destiny with such elegance and regal air
That only poets can.

“Poetry is a dead art”, he says,
Throwing the words at the wind -

Yet he paints every sunset,
Every brush stroke carefully planned, measured,
Every color and texture
Telling a different story from the last.
“Poetry is dead.”

“Poetry is a dead art”, he says,
And yet
He lives and breathes the art.
No poet has a need for words when
Life offers a more effective pen
With which one writes of his joys and sorrows.

Poetry, then -
it is a dead art necessary for the poet to live.