Snapshots

Poem by Alex Tellez of Cerro Coso Community College
1st Place for College Poetry - 2016 Met Awards

alongside the springs, who foster the roots,
doves of hues & explorations are
always there,
always lingering,
always waiting to enrapture us all, if just for the night.

~

on the eve of the apex, 

i asked myself if i was special

(yet that tore my heart)

and if i would feel true warmth

(it hurts less to disguise our ideas with baseness)

and if this still would last forever

(one can never find that interior balance between right and) real.

~

To follow the love of the heart and the
          moon is the ultimate experience
                    (for the moon’s shied her way into
                              the heart many, many times).
                                        Perhaps they laugh at our breakups,
                                                            our compulsions,
                                                                                our regressive tendencies to idolize;
                                        they know the shtick all too well.
But often, after the peak of drunkenness, they envy us, giving us nothing but snapshots.

Contributor's Note: This poem followed a heavy binge of e. e. cummings poems. The piece is modeled as a triptych depicting the moon and the heart in three realms of nature: the outer (physical), the inner (emotional), and the universal (philosophical).