DISCOVER LITERATURE 7:24 PM



There are few books that I've ever read that stand out in my mind like this short novel The Alchemist by Paulo Cohelho. In fact, my copy is now well worn in with corners folded to mark quotes that touched a place inside I had forgotten existed, and the names of my friends descending the inside of the front cover. After finishing the book it had been passes from friend to friend with only one requirement, to sign their names to the cover. Our lives are now all linked within the pages. Each of us moved deeply by Coelho's hauntingly beautiful words and ideas. It won't take long to read but the impression it leaves will drift with you as you move through the phases of your life. I have just one request if you take my advice and let this book help you to become a better version of yourself... pass it on.  xo


A few outstanding quotes from the book:
  • "When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."
  • "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of it's dreams, because ever second of the search is a second's encounter with eternity"
  • " To realize ones destiny is a person's only obligation"

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. ~Marsha Norman 7:12 PM

I'd like to offer you a bit of advice. Write down your dreams. If you wake up from a dream in the middle of the night (good or bad) write it down! Keep a notebook by your bed so that you can jot down a few things about your dream so that you can remember it in the morning. Why? Your dreams can tell you more about how you're feeling about situations than you would like to admit to yourself. Need help understanding? Check out some suggested meanings at sites like this.Just try it... Sweet dreams xo.


A Key to A Silent World

A hollow world lies waiting
behind heavy eyelids
an empty shell waiting to be filled
with memories
and people without faces
floating like smoke
through the night air of your brain
familiar landscapes extending beyond the vast nothingness
lie dormant and unused
until the dream begins
a key to a silent world

Listen to this- Powerspace - Sleep everyone...

DISCOVER WISDOM 6:52 PM


This quote is one of my favorites. I find myself thinking about it from time to time. I didn't write it (I wish i was brilliant enough to come up with something so breathtaking) it's actually from the show Everwood. I hope you enjoy is as much as I do. Xo



The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm not sure who the first person was who said that. Probably Shakespeare. Or Maybe Sting. But at the moment, it's the sentence that best explains my tragic flaw: my inability to change.
I Don't think I'm alone in this. The more I get to know other people, the more i realize it's kind of everyone's flaw. Staying exactly the same for as long as possible, standing perfectly still... It feels safer Somehow. And if you are suffering, at lest the pain is familiar. Because if you took that leap of faith, went outside the box, did something unexpected... who knows what other pain might be out there, waiting for you. Chances are it could be even worse.
So you maintain the status quo. Choose the road already traveled and it doesn't seem that bad. Not as far as flaws go. You're not a drug addict. You're not killing anyone... except maybe yourself a little.
When we finally do change, I don't think it happens like an earthquake or an explosion, where al of a sudden we're like this different person. I think It's smaller than that. The kind of thing most people wouldn't even notice unless they looked at us really close. Which, thank God, they never do.
But you notice it. Inside you that change feels like a world of difference. And you hope this is it. This is the person you get to be forever... That you'll never have to change again.



 
Listen to this.
Augustana - Sweet and Low


If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown 6:43 PM

The Moment After



The moment after
when the curtain closes for the last time
the last bow has been taken
the last line has been sung
and there are only the echos of that claps that once filled the room
you look around at these people that have become your family
those you thought you couldn't spend another moment with
and you realize that you want
just one more performance
just one more encore
and you could sleep well
you look at their faces and find the same thoughts in their eyes
this thing that controlled you life
is gone
You are free and yet tied to it at the same time
the moment after
all that's left is the show-tune
that plays through your brain
its over
the curtains are closed



Listen to this- Limbeck- In ohio on some steps




Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth 1:02 AM

Write. It doesn't matter if you just jot strings of thought onto the back of a napkin, I can almost guarantee that you will discover something about yourself if you look over your work closely. You may just discover that you are more amazing than you ever thought you were. xo



Boxes of journals
Bindings torn
words dripping from between the pages
spilling out onto the floor

photographs retaining courageous smiles
while books lay waiting
lining closet shelves

a CD set to repeat 
pours inspiration through the speakers
ruffling the sheets of paper in my lap
coaxing my pen across the page
Disguising me as someone who has something to say



Discover music, Listen to- The Iry- December (part.2)

DISCOVER ART =] 12:13 AM







Kurt Halsey = An AMAZING artist who's work inspired many many of my poems.

Make a wish xo 11:50 PM


I promise that there is always someone out there who sees you for how beautiful you really are.xo

The Dandelion

A nothing
simple and yellow
regular
regarded as a weed
a nobody in a sea of familiarity.
Somehow
this burst of yellow
transforms
into a breath full
of wishes
picked instead of pulled
so careful not to lose a single strand
in fear that it could have been the one
that would have made his dreams 
come true.
The dandelion
no longer ignored
carries dreams up to God
in a breeze fit for a rose.



Listen to- Valencia- From the moment I wake up

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem. ~David Carradine 11:30 PM

There were many times in my life where I was a chameleon. I have always been an expert at knowing exactly what other people need and being it... especially for a boy. 9 times out of 10 it ended in tears and i was more confused about who i was than ever. So what's the lesson? Be yourself, always. I promise you will love yourself more in the end. xo

Act Natural


Act natural 
the words that guarantee 
that you'll be something you're not
together on a stage
you play the person they all want you to be


But a play
built on false feelings
false smiles
false beliefs
can only last so long


Sooner or later the natural will creep in
little by little
line by line
and tear apart your act


that's when the truth
covered loosely in with lines
is discovered


and it's the truth
that may leave you unaccompanied


A play, turned soliloquy





Listen to - Ingrid Michealson -  Breakable


Where are you? 8:05 PM

I always wanted some brooding songwriter to find my poems sweep me off my feet and turn me into his muse. I would be anything but ordinary then... little did I know then that I didn't need a songwriter's love to make me feel extraordinary, sometimes i do a pretty good job of that myself. xo


He'd fumble hid fingers absentmindedly
through brown tussled hair
as he searched for the perfect melody
to bring my words alive
stone washed jeans
would lay crumpled on the hardwood floor
next to to bright red shoes
that he taps to keep time.
He'd peer down at my poems
a curve on his lips
as he picked at the strings of his old guitar
swaying forth 
my words dripping like molasses
from between his teeth
He'd peer up
crinkling his nose in a laugh
as he watched me dance



Listen to this- Augustana- Sunday Best

Is love always enough? 7:58 PM

I promised I wouldn't tell you so much about myself that you wouldn't be able to mold my poems into your own, but i don't think it will do any harm to inform you that I have a bit of a Messiah Complex. In other words, I want to save the world. Scratch that - I feel the NEED  to save the world. Many of you may feel the same, but girls let me tell you, someday you will run into something or someone that you will want so desperately to change for the better and you will run into a wall. DON'T LET IT HARDEN YOU. It's okay not to be able to fix it all by yourself, that's a lesson I've learned the hard way. Sometimes you just have to wait until they are ready to help themselves too. No matter what, stay passionate and loving - the world needs more people like you.xo


Run

So run
leave the faint odors of nicotine and rum
to twist in the tense air behind you
run away from this life that compressed you
making you smaller than you should have become
run
run to the safety of a false reality
let it hold your hands
cradle you
let it supply you with it's passing strength
as it tells you everything you want to hear
You Run
Run to your sinless room
you sit in silence
letting thick smoke curl around you
letting it fill your lungs with charcoal comfort
keeping an eye all the while
on the doors that you've slammed shut
checking to make sure the
 "Do not disturb signs" that you've hung
Haven't slipped from their place.
In your mind
you have every right
to leave us all behind
so run





Discover music - Rob Blackledge - Broadway

Discover Poetry. 7:14 PM

Here is another of my favorite poems. This one is by Kim Addonizo. It's a poem that i often quote in my thoughts when I read something terrible in the news. Just because we are young doesn't mean we don't feel these tragedies just as deeply as everyone else. I think it's a struggle in our day an age not to be hardened by the world around us, but we will always have a bit of innocence in our hearts. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.xo


Knowledge

Even when you know what people are capable of,
even when you pride yourself on knowing,
on not evading history, or the news,
or any of the quotidian, minor, but still endlessly apparent
and relevant examples of human cruelty- even now
there are times it strikes you anew, as though
you'd spent your whole life believing that humanity 
was fundamentally good, as though you'd never thought,
like Schopenhauer, that it was all blind, impersonal will,
never chanted perversely, almost gleefully.
the clear-sighted adjectives learned from Hobbes-
solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short-
even now you're sometimes stunned to hear
of some terrible act that sends you reeling off, too overwhelmed
even to weep, and then you realize that your innocence,
which you had thought no longer existed,
did, in fact, exist - that somewhere underneath your cynicism
you still held out hoe. But that hope has been shattered now,
irreparably, or so it seems, and you have to go on, afraid
that there is more to know, that one day you will know it.



Listen to this- Brett Dennen - Aint No Reason

Message in a bottle 7:07 PM

Sometimes I just want to scream "I'm ALOWED TO BE ANGRY!!!!!" at the top of my lungs. But I never do... I just seal my words away - And kill the jerk with kindness ...xo



Bottled Up

I need my words to scream
to leap off colorless paper and 
thrash around the room
commanding your attention

But for now 
I'll trap them with a cork in a transparent bottle
(the paper in with these poison words)
and toss them to a relentless sea
letting the angry waves
force them into submission
while I remain silent


Listen to this - Ani Difranco - Untouchable Face

Sent to... 6:55 PM

In my creative writing class in high school we had to write Tankas - Japanese Poems- These were my attempts as writing some of my own. I wrote them in the forms of letters to people that i couldn't find a way to vocalize my feelings to. I've always been much better at setting my emotions in print. I encourage you to try some of your own. xo




Sent to a friend when I am at a loss of words

My voice
trapped in a bottle
my words crying to get out
but they'll never reach your ears
trapped behind an inch on glass



Sent to a Boy who won't listen to this confused girl

like a maze
you set me up
for a few dead ends
it takes too much effort
to try and win this game



Listen to this - Rachel Yamagata - Reasons Why

Perfection has it's flaws 6:42 PM

Because even that which seems perfect has it's flaws. It's just a matter of getting out in time. xo

The Slow burn.

You looked into my eyes
         I laughed
trying to distract you from 
all that Im not.
Poison drips from
perfect lips
stopping bullets as they race down my cheeks
you whipe them away 
with fingers still crossed in their lies.
A city of angels
watch us from above
whispering blame
for this mess they allowed
shrugging
nothing's as perfect as we're told.
We're just lights
fighting off darkness
far beneath their feet
two lives
Slowly burning to the groud




Listen to - Joshua Radin - What if you

The sun is setting.. 6:33 PM


I was in the back seat of a car in december when i saw the most beautiful sunset reflecting in the giant windows of a building close to my school. I wrote this poem in my head that night...





Aren't Sunsets Supposed to Bring Closure?xo




The sun is setting
red-orange bouncing off the windows and road
some song about us
or what i thought was us is playing
I turn it up and listen to the words
it's as if I'm listening to a memory
that's only half true
somewhere in the chorus 
i stop seeing the road
the way you read without seeing the words
when did something I went so long without 
become a necessity?
Turn signals flash, corners are turned,
and yet somehow i drive
but I'm not there
I'm lost somewhere in verse three
with the promises and memories
I faintly hear the song end
and the announcers says something about a new song
but I just turn it off
not wanting one more thing to associate with you
the sun still setting
I break the silence
with a s hollow sounding verse three
and as the red orange bounces off my windows
I don't need you any less...



Listen to this - Goo Goo Dolls - Acoustic No. 3

Discover Poetry. 6:19 PM

A breath of fresh air <3

This isn't my poem, but it's one of my favorites of all time. I sometimes read it out loud to myself in my room. The words are warm in my throat and yet they bounce of my tongue with an edge of ice. It's beautiful and yet sad. I imagine an older woman watching a child dancing in the waves, so innocent and free. And she must look back on her life and wish she had grasped on to her innocence just a moment longer. She knows so much yet she knows its of no use to warn the young girl, she has to make the mistakes herself. She lets the girl be innocent and full of hope for the world for as long as she can. Don't be in a hurry to grow up. Stay young and innocent at heart - don't let life harden you. xo

To a child dancing in the wind


DANCE there upon the shore
what need have you to care
for wind or water's roar?
And tumble out our hair
that the salt drops have wet:
Being young you have not known
the fool's triumph, nor yet
love lost as soon as won,
nor the best laborer dead
and all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
the monstrous crying of the wind? 


Has no one said those daring
kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
the moths are when they are burned,
I could have warned you, but you are young
so we speak in a different tongue.

O you will take whatever's offered
and dream that all the worlds a friend,
suffer as your mother suffered,
be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young
and i speak a barbarous tongue

-John Donne



 Listen to this - Eliza Gilkyson - Coast

Watching him change 4:19 PM

I changed one word in this poem as i typed it up today... the word It was changed to I. I realized now that as much as I detested the idea of trying to  mold the one you love into something that resembles your idea of perfection, i have done it as well. It just hurts more when the changes pull a person you love and respect further and further away from how you once saw them. Girls, love yourself enough not to change for a boyfriend, but KNOW that you shouldn't try to change him too much either. He's not a toy... you better hope he doesn't snap out of the trance he's in and treat your heart like one. xo



To Change Him


she pressed the cup to his lips
forcing poison to slide past his tongue
down his throat
to his soul
where it would meet with 
all she didn't want him to be

He drank eagerly
hoping to transform 
into "the one"

the poison reached his soul
-dri
      pp
          ing
Change-
I cried out for him
but he was gone
lost in her pleased smile




 
Listen to -Trespassers William -What could I say


Because we ALL know what It's like to be alone 3:50 PM


Alone on the beach 



She sits alone
Consumed by darkness
Her knees pulled up to her chin
For once she felt stable
In the comfort of the soft sand
A dancing wave
Tickles her curled toes
While the murmur of the water
soothes her heavy heart, dragging
some of her hurt away 
In its strong undertow
A seagull 
the only other spirit around
circles ivory
against the ashy sky,  dancing
along with the rhythm
of the soft cool breeze as it entertains
the tall grass
the shadow of an old boat
bobs somewhere in the distance
and the dimly lit moon comforts her
as she cries
but the dancing wave claims her tears as its own
and the wind plays an encore to its melody
long after she has left the beach





Listen to Sia- Breathe Me




the ocean still has those tears... good thing too - i don't need them. xo

POEM ONE. 3:11 PM


This is hard for me to make myself so vulnerable by posting little pieces of my heart on here..  Please be gentle with me, some of these poems that I'm posting are sitting on wounds that have only now begun to heal. I just want to put these out there so that if other girls need something to cling onto as a way to represent how they feel they will be able to. I can only hope that some of you are inspired to trust your words to convey your soul as well. Deep Breaths.... Here i Go. xo

Crossing Phone Lines

The sky bleeds charcoal 
as your voice soaks my ear
I whisper secrets to a friend that I can't see
believing in the promises of the faceless
trusting that you'll make it all okay-
that you'll hold the ladder steady
but as the sun comes up your empty words scatter like shadows on the lawn
and I dangle helplessly
knowing that if forced to make a choice
you'd leave me scrambling for the exit


And here it comes
another attempt to begin an ending
another desperate plea that escapes my lips
but somehow this feels like your last try
the last attack from the conflicted

The rug pulled out from under me
I hit the ground
and strain for your hand
the one that always had enough room for me
but it's gone
dialing another number
stealing back the promises 
and giving them to her


the darkness lifts
revealing tears
I said I'd never shed for you
and as they cary me off to a restless sleep 
I clutch the phone in my hand
listening for the call 
deep down


I knew would never come




Discover music (My other coping mechanism) Listen to Meiko - Boys with Girlfriends

Well - This is who I am 2:51 PM

Hi,

I'm Katie. 
A 19 year old education major at Miami University of Ohio.
I started to describe myself but no matter how I wrote it I felt  I sounded insincere, so instead, I will let you imagine who I am as you read. Let me be whomever my words make you believe I am.
I bet you and I aren't all that different at all.  

My reasons for starting this blog are simple. I have years and years of poems stored up. At times all I had to cope with my emotions were these strings of words and thoughts. I need some place to put them so that they don't fade away into some dark corner of my past. I'm not claiming they are good or even moving, but at the time they were the most honest way of expressing the most important events in my life.

More importantly - I know at times I felt so very very alone. If one of you can find some sort of meaning from my poem that helps you then I've accomplished my job. I often found out little truths about myself in other people's poetry. Take my words, TWIST THEM, make them yours. Ha I'm not saying plagiarize them at any means just find yourself in them. Because I know if you are a girl you will or have at one time felt like that awkward shy little girl who just wants to be loved for who you are. Don't worry if you are that girl right now =] life will move on and there are so many amazing surprises up ahead! I'm not saying you'll never be the awkward girl again, but you will LIVE. So go out there and LIVE! Let life fill you will passion and love. If you get hurt it just lets you know that you are out there experiencing this beautiful world we live in.

Lastly, I want you all to know that when you feel so full there is no room to wiggle around and straighten out the clutter you should write! You don't have to be a poet, you just have to have a heart and a soul and some sort of writing device. Try it, you'll thank me later.

sorry about my ramblings.... I promise future posts will be much more coherent - and filled with much more poetry, art, music, literature, quotes, and other things that have filled me with inspiration and have gotten me through the years. 
.Love. 
xo