Shillings.

What You Need To Know.

Whenever you have an honest conversation with someone for the first time, and you really look at them, do you notice the strange way the muscles in their faces pull and stretch as soon as they let their guard down?

Once I catch it -that minuscule moment of vulnerability- I realize that this person has, at one point in life, looked in the mirror and questioned the entire purpose of his/her creation. From that moment on, I'll always try to draw out the conversation just to see that tiny detail again and I become so captivated, almost to the point of madness. I guess it's the idea of something so trivial altering the edifice of perfection altogether.  I just want them to get in my head and realize how important they really are.

After which, a mental note becomes permanently tucked away in one of my brain pockets, and  I never look at that person without those feelings suddenly resurfacing. I believe this is what they call sentimentalism.

We're all intricate and so amazingly simple all at once that it causes my head to spin off its axis from time to time.

Kony 2012

"KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice."

If you can go on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Livejournal, Wordpress, Blogger, Google Plus, reddit or whatever you kids sign up for nowadays, then you have access to the whole world. Don't take this for granted.

For an Amorous Lady.

'Most mammals like caresses, in the sense in which we usually take the word, whereas other creatures, even tame snakes, prefer giving to receiving them.'  From a natural-history book.

The pensive gnu, the staid aardvark,

Accept caresses in the dark;

The bear, equipped with paw and snout;

Would rather take than dish it out.

But snakes, both poisonous and garter,

In love are never known to barter;

The worm, though dank, is sensitive:

His noble nature bids him to give.

But you, my dearest, have a soul

Encompassing fish, flesh, and fowl.

When amorous arts we would pursue,

You can, with pleasure, bill or coo.

You are, in truth, one in a million,

At once mammalian and reptilian.

-Theodore Roethke.

I liked how this one had a bit of science to back it up. Love poems for today because fiction is a weekend thing.

Hello, I'm...

What if I had a different name?

Gilda. A name too foreign for tropical heat. A lick at the roof of my mouth. A sigh at the end, if we're getting into phonetics.

What about Hannah? With my skin like Indian dye. A palindrome. Three alphabets mirrored.

Luna. The moon. A reflection of pure brilliance, but never anything more than a replica of light.

Names. An nonexchangeable birthday present you are forced to-
parade around on your first day of school,
reveal at that party you didn't want to go to,
lazily scribble on your worldly posessions.

No matter how much we bend or break, it's our names that stay with us. When we leave, our names will watch over our graves.

So it's only fair that we should have a say in what that name should be, don't you think?