Here's My Advice by Christina Osborn

Here’s my advice: don’t reach for the stars.  Bear with me, I know that apathy is scary and we all feel wasted and wanting sometimes but take your eyes off the skies and look instead at the ground.  It sounds insane but if you focus your brain on the heaven that is the present you will never lose sight of the road that is the right road for you and all of your endeavors.  Here’s my advice:  find out what you want.  If it’s playing or working or staying at home or painting or making a scene or dressing up in black and green or masturbating or eating or drinking or navel gazing, it’s what you want.   if it’s what you want, no one has a right to taunt you or tell you you’re making a mistake or losing your way.  Your way is your own, and no one’s path is the same.  Here’s my advice: play the best hand you possibly can.  We’re all set up with a few good licks, and in a short time you’ll learn the tricks you’ve had since before thought or time or walking the line.  If you’ve got great legs or a beautiful mind or a flair with a pair of scissors or a passion for lizards, by God, run with it.  Run through your life holding that thing hard to you, like it’s the last day of existence and all the resistance has fallen into the dust.  Here’s my advice: Lose something every now and then, it’s good to clean house and clean head and maybe in a corner of the garage or a box or a bag you’ll find a thing you haven’t seen for a while that brings you back your smile and reminds you of childhood dreams and how possible it all seemed.  Here’s my advice: know yourself well.  Put yourself through hell if you have to in order to learn what kind of person is walking around in your shoes.  Ask those questions that people don’t want to hear the answers to.  Here’s my advice:  stop making nice, and start living life.  Universal popularity is a pure insanity and the more famous you are, the further you fall from that particular star, the more people who know your name, the less likely you are to win the game without stomping on a few fingers and toes but it’s okay, because everyone knows it’s cold and lonely in space, and to reach that star, you get frozen or burned or scarred for life.  So here’s my advice: don’t reach for the stars, reach for the phone or a pile of clothes or a pen or a knife or a guitar or a fight or a place to call home.  Reach for yourself and hold onto what you find.

Wait 'Til I Forget by Christina Osborn

Wait until I forget

The sound of the wind in the fruit trees

Before you take me home

I want them to loom in my memory while I’m out on my own

I’ll remember that they’re better than the others I encounter

In my travels

Better by the year and eventually those others will disappear

And I’ll return to you, my orchard, only to find

You’ve stayed the same

Wait until I forget

The warmth of long summer rains

Before you take me walking

I want to be surprised when I feel the sun and the sky starts opening

It’ll be better than before because it’s raining on me

Then and there

And eventually I’ll disappear

Returning to the dust I was only to find

The rain still rains the same

Wait until I forget

The name of our hero

Before you read that book to me

I want to think disaster is still a possibility

And it’ll be deeper than the last time

Because I’ll feel like I’ve heard it but can’t remember where

And eventually we’ll disappear

But the words are here and always will be

And despite the wears of world and change we find

The story still reads the same.