Helium Rudy Francisco Quotes

She asks me to kill the spider. Instead, I get the most peaceful weapons I can find. I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away. If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone, I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy.

The difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground

Some days I forget that my skin is not a panic room.

When you choose to be a poet, you become a place that people walk through and then leave when they are ready

Loving you was the last thing I felt really good at.

you wouldn't let me love both of us at the same time

He sketches you as the antagonist and suddenly his transgressions become deleted scenes. He blames you for his sadness. And this is how the wolf cries boy.

My hobbies include: editing my life story, hiding behind metaphors, and trying to convince my shadow that I’m someone worth following.

Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades.

Youth promises us immortality, but doesn't have the means to uphold its end of the bargain.

And the answer is not every building that shakes will collapse. The answer is not everything that chips will crumble.

I’m just sorry that she had to be your fortune cookie. Broken so you could learn a lesson you already should’ve known.

I hope I haven’t already driven past my greatest moments. I hope there is something beautiful on the horizon that’s just as impatient as I am. Something so eager, it wants to meet me halfway. A moment that is diligently staring at its watch, trembling with nervousness, frustrated, and bursting at the seams, wondering what’s taking me so long to arrive.

Let's sing loudly, offbeat and out of tune. Let the world know we don't care how it sounds because the only key we need is already in the ignition.

If I could I would nail these hands to the edges of stars. I would sacrifice this body to the sky hoping to resurrect as someone spiteful enough to not care about you.

I promise I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly.

They now know solitude does not scare people like us and our absence is something that we are not afraid to give to those who call for it.

I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.

I wonder how long it will take the planet to tell us we can’t live here and the locks are changed.

Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining.

I've never been in the military, but I have a purple heart: I got it from beating myself up over things that I can't fix.

Do you know the human body is approximately sixty percent water? When I walk into a room full of people, all I see is an ocean.

Five: Cupid is irresponsible, and I’m tired of him using me for target practice.

I have an odd fascination with sandcastles and ice sculptures: things that will only last a few moments. That’s also why I fall in love with women who will never love me back.

They now know solitude does not scare people like us

Volcano surfing is a sport in which a person rides down an active volcano at speeds up to 50 miles per hour using nothing but a wooden board. When I heard about this activity, I thought to myself, it must be nice to feel so safe, you have to invent new ways to put yourself in danger.

Tell me how blessed we are to have tragedy / so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. (from 'Complainers')

it must be nice to feel so safe, you have to invent new ways to put yourself in danger.

am learning that this body is not a shotgun. I am learning that this body is not a pistol. I am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy.

The word “repurpose” means to take an object and give it amnesia. It means to make something forget what it’s been trained to do so you can use it for a better reason. I am learning that this body is not a shotgun. I am learning that this body is not a pistol. I am learning that a man is not defined by what he can destroy. I am learning that a person who only knows how to fight can only communicate in violence and that shouldn’t be anyone’s first language. I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.

I wonder how long it took to convince the first rifle that it could hold a note instead of a bullet, but still fire into a crowd and make everyone move

When People Ask How I’m Doing I want to say, my depression is an angry deity, a jealous god a thirsty shadow that wrings my joy like a dishrag and makes juice out of my smile. I want to say, getting out of bed has become a magic trick. I am probably the worst magician I know. I want to say, this sadness is the only clean shirt I have left and my washing machine has been broken for months, but I’d rather not ruin someone’s day with my tragic honesty so instead I treat my face like a pumpkin. I pretend that it’s Halloween. I carve it into something acceptable. I laugh and I say, “I’m doing alright.

Alternatives to “Bae” The one who wins all of the arguments, the keeper of the remote, the girl who turns my stomach into a butterfly nest, the pink Starburst, the one I will always choose first no matter what else is in the pack, the red Kool-Aid, the right amount of sugar, the pulp, the part that makes the juice seem real.

On the day you couldn't hold yourself together anymore, you called for me, voice crackling like two sets of knuckles before an altercation. I found you, looking like a damaged wine glass. I hugged your shatter, I cut all of my fingers trying to jigsaw puzzle you back together. When it was over, you looked at the stains on the carpet and blamed me for making a mess.

They will push you away, tell you to leave, but have no idea how good you are at following instructions.

They now know solitude does not scare people like us and our absence is something that we are not afraid to give to those who call for it.

The word “repurpose” means to take an object and give it amnesia.

Simeona My mother wears her wrinkles the way an ocean wears a wave. She is the only body of water that refuses to let me drown

Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address.

On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

I know that our hands break things just as frequent as we can fix them. And we often forget that sexism / is a family heirloom that we've been passing down for generations. As men, it is important that we start asking ourselves / What will the boys learn from us?

I take my compliments the same way I take my coffee. I don’t drink coffee.

a weapon will always be a weapon but we choose how we fight the war

Why Did You Leave? Because you wouldn’t let me love both of us at the same time.

Love is clumsy, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet.

I bet he pours whiskey on his dreams until they taste like good ideas,

The most destructive instruments can still create a melody worth dancing to.

trying to convince my shadow that I’m someone worth following.

I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike. Scared, but reckless. With no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you.

When you are the only black man in the whole neighborhood, your skin is that one friend who meets everyone before you do. It wears a wife beater and house shoes, it knocks over the neighbor's mailbox, it cusses in front of the kids and plays the music too loud, but you actually don't do any of those things. It's 7 PM. It's Wednesday and you are just walking home.

Instructions Gather your mistakes, rinse them with honesty and self-reflection, let dry until you can see every choice and the regret becomes brittle, cover the entire surface in forgiveness, remind yourself that you are human and this too is a gift.

I enjoy.... laughing for absolutely no reason at all, but I don't allow myself to cry as often as I need to. I have solar-powered confidence and a battery-operated smile. My hobbies include: editing my life story, hiding behind metaphors, and trying to convince my shadow that I'm someone worth following. I don't know much, but I do know this: Heaven is full of music, and God listens to my heartbeat

Remember we are never given anything that we can't handle. When the world crumbles around you, sometimes you gotta look at the wreckage and then build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember that you are still here. The human heart, it beats approximately 4,000 times per hour. And each pulsin' and each throbbin' and each palpitation is a trophy engraved with the words "you are still alive.

And sometimes it all arrives at once. The anxiety, the fear, the voices that scratch your confidence like a chalkboard and somehow all the oxygen in the room suddenly becomes water and you begin to wonder if you have what it takes to grow gills. You wonder if you can blend in with the fish. You wonder if you will ever breathe again. And the answer is not every building that shakes will collapse. The answer is not everything that chips will crumble. The answer is this is temporary and yes, you will.

To anyone who is brave enough to love me, Do you know that the human body is approximately sixty percent water? When I walk into a room full of people all I see is an ocean.

I held you the way a boat holds water.

A moment that is diligently staring at its watch, trembling with nervousness, frustrated, and bursting at the seams, wondering what’s taking me so long to arrive.

When I call you brother, it means you have at least four fists during any fight you can't walk yourself out of.

I don't know much, but I do know this: Heaven is full of music, and God listens to my heartbeat on his iPod. It reminds him that we still got work to do.

So I've never caught a live grenade with my bare hands. So I don't know exactly how it feels, but I imagine it's a lot like getting a text that says, "Hey we really need to talk.

In one of my earliest memories, I am eight years old, I have a fistful of afternoon, and I am asking the summer if it will always be this glorious. I remember taking a deep breath. Trying to get as much July into my lungs as humanly possible and thinking maybe I'd be able to convince it that 31 days just isn't enough.

Tell me a story and let's laugh like it's the only think keeping us alive. Play a song and give the stereo permission to use its outside voice. Let's sing loudly, offbeat and out of tune. Let the world know we don't care how it sounds because the only key we need is already in the ignition. Let the sky turn the windshield into a stage. Watch it dance like he scenery is auditioning to be part of our story. Let's just go. Drive until our troubles phantom in the rearview mirror and we forget the exist, at least for a moment.

To the man standing on the corner holding the sign that said “God hates gays.” I’ve never seen, exactly who it is that you paperclip your knees, meld your hands together and pray to But I think I know what he looks like: I bet your God is about 5’10”. I bet he weighs 185. Probably stands the way a high school diploma does when it’s next to a GED. I bet your god has a mullet. I bet he wears flannel shirts with no sleeves, a fanny pack and says words like “getrdun.” I bet your god—I bet your god—I bet your god watches FOX news, Dog the Bounty Hunter, voted for John McCain, and loves Bill O’Reilly. I bet your god lives in Arizona. I bet his high school served racism in the cafeteria and offered “hate speech” as a second language. I bet he has a swastika inside of his throat, and racial slurs tattooed to his tongue just to make intolerance more comfortable in his mouth. I bet he has a burning cross as a middle finger and Jim Crow underneath his nails. Your god is a confederate flags wet dream conceived on a day when the sky decided to slice her own wrists, I bet your god has a drinking problem. I bet he sees the bottom of the shot glass more often than his own children. I bet he pours whiskey on his dreams until they taste like good ideas, Probably cusses like an electric guitar with Tourette’s plugged into an ocean. I bet he yells like a schizophrenic nail gun, damaging all things that care about him enough to get close. I bet there are angels in Heaven with black eyes and broken halos who claimed they fell down the stairs. I bet your god would’ve made Eve without a mouth and taught her how to spread her legs like a magazine that she will never ever ever be pretty enough to be in. Sooner or later you will realize that you are praying to your own shadow, that you are standing in front of mirrors and are worshipping your own reflection. Your God stole my god’s identity and I bet he’s buying pieces of heaven on eBay. So next time you bend your knees, next time you bow your head I want you to tell your god— that my god is looking for him.

I was 18 wen I started driving I was 18 the first time I was pulled over. It was 2 AM on a Saturday The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror, he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon, and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house. Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man who brings a gun to a food fight. He called me son and I thought to myself, that's an interesting way of pronouncing "boy," He asks for my license and registration, wants to know what I'm doing in this nieghborhood, if the car is stolen, if I have any drugs and most days, I know how to grab my voice by the handle and swing it like a hammer. But instead, I picked it up like a shard of glass. Scared of what might happen if I didn't hold it carefully because I know that this much melanin and that uniform is a plotline to a film that can easily end with a chalk outline baptism, me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags. Once, a friend of a friend asked me why there aren't more black people in the X Games and I said, "You don't get it." Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America. We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives because the old ones have been working for decades. Jim Crow may have left the nest, but our streets are still covered with its feathers. Being black in America is knowing there's a thin line between a traffic stop and the cemetery, it's the way my body tenses up when I hear a police siren in a song, it's the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me, it's the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn't. I don't need to go volcano surfing. Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer drives right past without pulling me over and I realize I'm going to make it home safe. This time.

To anyone who is brave enough to love me,do you know that human body is sixty percent water approximately.So when I walk into a room filled with water all I see is an ocean

The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

The words “I am” are slowly transforming into “I used to be” because every year, the past tense finds a larger house inside the neighborhood of my everyday vernacular.

I was born and raised in California. And here, our models and rivers look like they're on the same diet. Throughout the years, I've watched both get smaller and now I can see their ribs when they exhale. In California, our freeways are decorated with signs that ask us to be careful about how we use the water. They hang like an eviction notice from the environment. I wonder how long it will take the planet to tell us we can't live here and the locks are changed.

I wonder if the next generation will know water the way I did. The way it ruins through the fingers, the way it wrinkles the hands, cools the skin, the way it freezes, flakes and kisses the ground on the cheek. I wonder if my grandkids will ever throw a penny in a fountain and hear it splash

Yesterday, I injured myself and the explanation didn't make sense. I said, "Well, I was walking..." and that was the end of the story. At this age, my body is a stranger that I keep meeting over and over again. The words "I am" are slowly transforming into "I used to be

Yesterday I tripped over my self-esteem, landed on my pride and it shattered like an iPhone with a broken face. Now I can't even tell who's trying to give me a compliment.

Somewhere someone's uncle or father, a man wearing sandals and khaki shorts who says "back in my day" far too often, is on the grill. He is watching the food like he's afraid it'll change its mind about being a meal and decide to run off when no one's looking. The kids are playing a game that they made up themselves and changing the rules every five minutes. Their smiles are so big, you can fit history inside of them and still have room for right now and the future. The adults hate all the new music, but still want the teenagers to teach them the dances. The cupid Shuffle is common ground and the wobble is a peace treaty signed by both generations. There are no rallies today, no blood on this street, no hashtags here, but there is barbecue, potato salad and greens. The only tears you will see is when someone lifts the foil and all the mac and cheese is finished.

Let’s just go. Drive until our troubles phantom in the rearview mirror

Liberty In 1983, illusionist David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. He placed a curtain in front of the monument and when he pulled it down the 3,000-foot statue was no longer there. I think about how this magic trick has become too familiar. Liberty just vanishing without any explanations

When you are the only black man in the whole neighborhood, your skin is that one friend who meets everyone before you do.