This is for all you cat lovers out there, of which I am one!
Don’t Be Too Good
Don’t be too good
You may be fucking up
By being too good
Bitter needs sweet
Sweet needs bitter
Show your true colors
Every once in a while
Surprise yourself!
Say what’s really on your mind
Stop crossing your t’s so perfectly
Stop dotting your i’s just right
If you’re like me
You always knew most of your school masters were vain and full of shit
They taught us things from a book
They demanded we pass all their tests
Not knowing they were failing us
Because you see
Every teacher worth his weight in gold knows that to teach simply means to awaken what is dormant
So go on!
FAIL!
Fail big
Fail medium
Fail small
Just don’t be afraid to try
The biggest failure is when you did nothing with your life
The biggest failures try to stop those of us who are trying
The biggest failures were brain washed as children by their school masters who cracked a wood ruler over their small knuckles because…
They would neither dot their i’s nor cross their t’s to perfection.
Eva Santiago copyright 2013
IN MY TIME…
Too many kids today
Have straight teeth
But crooked morals
People caring too much
Almost obsessing even,
Their little Jimmy-Joe lacks the perfect smile
Little girls getting manis and pedis
When they’d rather be making mud pies and playing in the sand box
Little girls competing in beauty pageants
HOLD ON!!
Wait a damn minute!
If I were from the past
And suddenly awoke from the grave
Come back to earth for a brief spell
What would I think?
The world has certainly gone mad
In my time, famous was the man whose children loved him
Now fathers and children are practically strangers
In my time,the family you built was the legacy you left to your children
Now, families aren’t built with that purpose or intent-they aren’t even built…
In my time, home was where life made up its mind
Now, people live in grand houses surrounded by every creature comfort their hard-earned money can buy
But they forget a house filled with hate,strife discord and anger is hardly a place fit to call home
Eva Santiago copyright 2013
Write Something Terrible and Feel Great!
Let the poem write itself
Let the words flow through your pen
Open your mind
Let your thoughts come out to play
Let the story write itself
The plot is there
The characters already live
Just pluck them from thin air
Let the wound heal itself
Give it attention
Give it great care
Let it breathe in fresh air
Let the puzzle sort itself
Don’t pick up the pieces
You’ll just make a mess
Don’t worry, time sorts out all puzzles
Let the song compose itself
Words have wings
Marry your words to the harmony
Words don’t always need music to sing
Be a canvas to the whole world
Let children fill in the emptiness with their vivid imaginations
Let amateur painters blot out the darkest corners with their unlearned brush strokes
Let seasoned artists mold,shape, create
Something from nothing
Definition out of thin air
Write something terrible and feel great about it
The best art
Comes from many attempts
So at first when you grab the pen, the paper
The paint brush, the canvas
Don’t worry if you’re gonna fuck up
Truth is, you will
But don’t let that keep you
How did we learn to walk?
By first falling flat on our faces
Well, go on then!
Write something terrible and feel great!
Sing and hit the wrong note
And don’t yourself hate
Paint,paint,paint
The canvas doesn’t ever worry
Whether you’ll make a mistake
The stage doesn’t care that you tapped out the wrong beat
Or that once, you had two left feet
The blank pages in the book don’t care about grammatical errors
They trust the writer knows what to delete
So, what are you waiting for?!
Eva Santiago copyright 2013
INCIDENTAL
Life is incidentally,exponentially accidental
Two people meet
Two worlds that were apart now collide
Driving down a long stretch of ribbon like high way late at night to clear his attic of all the messy cob webs; they talked over the air waves for hours about everything and nothing
Her voice kept him awake
Her voice gave him hope
Her voice soothes his raw nerves, frayed from dealing with life’s random, haphazard incidents all by himself
Why did these two meet?
Who the hell cares!
What matters is that they did
So much is spoken one soul to the other through unspoken expressions
Life is incidentally, exponentially accidental
What if these two had met 5,10,20 years ago?
Would the spark be the same as it is now?
Maybe. Maybe not
5,10,20 years ago they were both very different people-
With different goals
With different drives
Time is everything
If there is a big bang theory;these two should receive the Nobel for having created it
Life is incidentally,exponentially accidental
Look for it
The BEST things in life come about through happy little accidents.
But are they accidents?
Or is it perhaps the universe just having a good time aligning your stars?
-Eva Santiago copyright 2013
TWISTED
Life is amazing everyday! When you have a holiday though, it heightens expectation levels. This year I am glad to say, I spent the most wonderful Thanksgiving Day with some of the best people . Being that everyone who came by to share in the turkey meal, is a writer we gathered together after the meal and we played writing games. New friendships were formed, old friendships were reinforced and all of us in my living room felt not so alone for those few hours. I love being a writer and having the opportunity to open my home to others is a plus; having that many writers together in my home for such a special day, well this will go down as one of the most memorable Thanksgivings I have ever had! Today’s post comes from that great evening.
He would fuck with her mind, day in and day out. Over the years this wore on her much like a a slow nagging head ache at first, that eventually turns into a blinding migraine. She never knew where she stood with him and that’s how he’d control her;or at least he was under the impression that he was winning in his wicked, manipulative games. Every damn word she spoke, he’d twist. You know that silly childhood game,Twister? Well, he invented the mind twist. He was the master of it. Just when she thought she was standing on the yellow dots, he’d flip the card board spinner and she’d be fooled once more.
At times she thought she was losing her mind and that’s how he liked it. Then one day after umpteen years of living with the Twisted Mister, who tried to turn her into a Twisted Sister, she woke right up; and decided to flip the old card board spinner on him.. Oh shit! He was sorely pissed when he caught on. Oh hell, she’d broke his spell and now he was truly lost. She walked away one fresh spring morning with her head held high. Her smile, that radiant smile that Twisted Mister tried to permanently vanish from her pretty face, was back on for good. She didn’t have to paint it on anymore-people who saw her could tell she smiled and meant it now. The glimmer in her dark brown eyes had returned too.
She twisted him up all right. Now he stood there tied up in knots like an old, stale sour dough pretzel. He wore on his face a grim expression. He hated her more now than when they first met.
EVA SANTIAGO copyright 2013
Honesty in a poetry performance
If you perform your poetry or are thinking of sharing it in public, please read this thought provoking post!
I attended a workshop a while back on honesty in a poetry performance. As writers, we tend to put the truth or as much of the truth as we can inside our work. As poets who perform, at times we get on stage and somehow the meaning of our writings gets lost in our presentation. The audience doesn’t feel the emotions we are aiming to bring forth because there is a disconnect between what we are saying and the way we are saying it.
The workshop facilitator, RJ Eldridge, asked us to define what honesty is. Among the various answers, someone stated something to the tune of “honesty is fact” (now, that is not word for word because I have terrible memory, but that’s what I got out of their statement). This prompted someone else to point out that honesty is not necessarily restricted to facts alone (and again…
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Fly the Friendly Skies
Have you ever looked up at the sky
There, way up high
Miraculously suspended
The Most amazing of inventions
Held together by nuts and bolts
Painted with pretty logos
Taking us here
Taking us there
Taking us everywhere
Tiny windows all in a row
Heads the size of pins looking out
I see you up there
So jealous of you
Looking down at me sitting here
Stuck on the ground with nowhere to go
But you!
You get to fly!
You’ve got your wings
You are free!
I look up at you
Whoever you are
Right now you shine brighter than any ‘ole star
For you have what I desperately want:
Wings to fly
Where are you headed?
Who the hell cares!
At least you’re going somewhere
A funeral?
A wedding?
You just got divorced?
Starting a new life someplace new?
Perhaps you’re headed for college?
Or maybe a long deserved vacation?
What a marvelous feat
When I fly
I lose myself in the clouds
Once I wandered into a great white forest
Stayed there for three hours
Another time I played hide and seek with a rainbow
I remember dancing with angels
Careful not to step on their wings
They don’t take too kindly to that
I have ridden on elephant’s backs
And followed the course of my wild imagination
I was six when I first flew
Nothing in life back then made sense
Until I stepped into a jet plane
And there was where I got a clue
That day so long ago
I remember thinking:
Angelic beings were my friends
For the first time in my short life
I felt like a real princess
They served me the food I liked
They gave me nice smiles
They gave me a pillow
Even held my hand when I got scared
I fell in love with the friendly skies
I told the creatures in the clouds:
“I will always come back
So long,
Fare thee well
I’ll return!”
And time after time
Though I wish to fly more often
To the friendly skies
I have kept my word!
EVA SANTIAGO copyright 2013
Featured Poet At Provoke Infusion
Dear readers, tomorrow, November 19th, 2013 I will be featuring at Provoke Infusion, a poetry night hosted by the amazing Paloma Solamente at The Coffee House. If you’re local, please join us for a wonderful night of poetry!
https://www.facebook.com/events/395087843927492/?ref=22
-Eva
Eva Santiago 