Jamming on skype, just turn off the video for better sound quality ;)

On patience...

Patience is a fleeting thing
It flies away on fairy wings
It dances, prances across the show
disappears, an afterglow

The fury that doth takes it's place
a windy road, a fiery chase!
An argument that no one wins
between you and your kin

You slam the door
(just in your head)
And throw yourself
Upon your bed

Deep breaths you try
to gulp them in
but they're waiting upstairs
those sharks with fins

Little do they even know
how you view them
Don't let it show
Because at night you lie awake
And wish them well
For your own future elderly self's sake

On the deep water...

On the deep water
I sail
I sail and see
my imagination prancing around on the waves
full of life
full of stimulation
full of energy
Life

On the deep water
I sail
I sail and do
all the things I want to
I laugh and cry, and cook
I sleep and dance and free my voice
I live
Life

On the deep water
there are things
or lack of things
that busyness
that bustling
the city
the roads
Life

Romance on hold
Brother on hold
Sister on hold
Lifestyle on hold
Housing on hold
Life...
Not on hold

Where is the love

     I float around from place to place, first on purpose, but then the momentum keeps me going even though I thought I had put on the brakes. 5 countries, 10 cities, and 60 different roommates. It began with my desire to find something, never really sure what or who it was. And it continues in my desire to find love and closeness in family because perhaps that is tied to the answer that I am looking for.
     Being around my grandparents makes feel feel truly and completely loved and cared for. A feeling that I had always hoped to get from a partner, but have not been able to find. Not necessarily because of the partners' lack, although that is perhaps a factor, but also because of my own inability to feel loved. I know that it is a problem for me, but with my grandparents I am able to allow myself to feel love, truly and completely. Their love is a caring love, a wholesome love, an uncomplicated love.
     Parents are another story, it's messy and difficult, too close, too much. Their needs and mine clashing in the tedium of everyday life while growing up. Now, having grown up, still trying to sort out the shaky moments and their meanings. Trying to come to peace with the difficult to make room for the laughter and the fun and wanting to be able to feel their love too.
     I'm not sure why I doubted my parent's love for me. I used to tell my mother that she didn't really love me all the time and when I was older and my father told me in a letter that he did, I found myself surprised. I don't blame them, but I'd like to understand what happened better. I want to change my thinking because logically I am sure their love exists and sometimes I am able to feel it. Is it just normal to have such conflict with parents?
     I don't feel ready to have children or be in a committed relationship until I sort it out. How can I teach a small person to feel love when I don't know how? How can I make another feel my love when I can't feel theirs? How can I even stay interested in a relationship when sometimes I don't feel loved? How do I find my love?
     One day at a time I do. I find love when I speak up for myself, when I voice my opinions, when I sing out loud, when I dance freely, when I exercise, eat well and resist foods that irritate my stomach. When I write, when I read books that I enjoy, when I allow myself to feel compliments, when I love, when I am loving.

Shira - Handlebars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zEXuunPlJ0

contributed by: Katie Sage

The Distance...

I thought that I knew all the things that I do to be alright

I play the guitar and I look very far into the distance

I play the guitar and I do my art out into the distance

I've a bunch of different colours and it's all from the heart

And I ride my bike till I feel like I'm in flight

And I dodge all the cars, I could make it to mars

And when I sing my song, my feelings move along

In the distance

Building Blocks

There's a limit to how much we know

A hindrance to creating a flow

Of building ideas to a towering size

Them toppling down to our surprise

Start at the basics, one at a time

Using your skills and using your rhymes

It doesn't matter, all you can see

Will be irrelevant faster than

one

two

.....

Internet killed my romance

I'm sure many people will disagree, in fact their force is growing in numbers, but this whole online meeting and dating and getting married situation just doesn't jive with how I always imagined romance. My first instinct is sadness. But maybe my fairytale of romance needs to die, in fact I'm sure it does, and it's sad and slow and it's painful, but it's reality man. Romance is a crock of s***. All of the versions of romance that I grew up with got me nowhere and did me a disservice. If I only had reality in mind then I would have been a lot less disappointed overall.
Romance is trying hard. Romance is perseverance in the face of obstacle. To work hard for a relationship is the glue that holds it together...right? At what point should you stop trying? When they're a drug addict?, when they're verbally abusing you?, when you 'feel' like it?
Romance is addictive, it's mysterious, it's always OUT OF REACH. And it won't let me stop wondering what I'm doing wrong. Because there must be something.
Never satisfied; always thinking it could be better. What about that cute guy? I'm sure that we would be great together and there would be no problems even though he's a drug addict, alcoholic...he'll just magically give it all up if only I were with him...right?
Love conquers all. Love will change your partner so that they magically suit you perfectly. Your soul mate should just appear and everything should just work out and how come I can't give up this fantasy even though I'm nearing 30?
I thought I would be married by now even though I had rehearsed to many along the way that I didn't know if I believed in marriage. It felt assumed and I don't like assumptions, but secretly I assumed to myself. But I'm not, not even close, not even a glimmer in my future. And I don't want to make that my aim or my goal. Ideally I want to be happy with myself and by myself, like my mother told me all my life I should be. Not that she ever has been.
I want to love something else other than men, like art, music, culture. I want to obsess about it as much as I obsessed about boys growing up. I felt like I wasted so much energy worrying about being sexually attractive that I didn't even really start my life until more recently.
I don't know how to care about something that is not human as passionately, although I do love animals and plants and water. But I'm not 'in love' with those things. So get to know them more intimately???