Look at me I'm beautiful
Just don't look at my face
Or my body or personality
Or any of my mistakes

Just Look at me I'm beautiful
But don't look at anything I've done
Anything I despise and hate
Just to earn your love

look LOOK I'm beautiful
Just look at anything which I've dealt
But it's hard to say I'm beautiful
When I can't love myself

i heard my mom laugh
and it sounded like a cry
a lonely, desperate, desolate cry
and maybe it is because it was.
because we all laugh so as not to cry.

I didn't start the war.
I swear it wasn't me!
I was sitting in my bedroom
listening to music and drinking tea.

I have no reason to fight,
to **** or retaliate.
I despise violence.
And I also meditate.

I don't follow the news,
I'd say they rather follow me.
That is my only crime,
that I feel for the killed.

And yes, I cried when I saw
a woman holding her dead child,
her eyes were red from scream
to the silence of the sky.

Yes, I cried when I saw it,
I couldn't stop my tears.
That is my only crime,
that I feel for the killed.

i dont like the feelings you give me
like discarded gifts with ripped wrapping paper,
a "sorry" and a promise for more later.
anger builds like a carpenter early in the morning
restructuring and stabilizing walls i put up
for people like you, and i knew but here i am.
always relying on the world outside myself
to lend a hand. and *******, can i breathe please?
suffocating on everything you think i should be
where's the spiritual audit?
where's karma?
where's the righteous accounting for being everything i said i was, for not doing the things you think i did, and for not dying.
no cameras to show how ****** up this all is,
no one to hold my hand tightly as they say what i really needed to hear two years ago:
NOT THIS ONE.

I cry for countless things
For birds with broken wings
For toys left by growing kids
For discarded wedding rings

I cry for characters on screen
Personas I've never truly seen
Whose stories echo familiar
With wisdom that I might glean

I cry for broken hearts
For unsuccessful starts
For fields of wildflowers
That are staked then ripped apart

I cry for rivers that can't be crossed
I cry for things not yet lost
And even within remarkable love
I cry, knowing what love will cost

I have a friend who cries
For rose-tinted skies
For the first looks given
From a newborn babies eyes

She cries for happy endings
And noble, generous spending
She cries for torn friendships
That are slowly but surely mending

She cries from staggering laughter
Or jumbled kitchen disasters
Or while attempting obscure talents
That we both know she never will master

I think it's something special
To have tears so freely deployed
At the sight of heartbreak and beauty alike
What a gift, to cry for joy.

What I see in her brings tears to my eyes
I crave that untethered jubilee
And in my longing, I realize
The beginnings of it in me

A wilting aster
Questioned Death
Whose body surrounded
With field of flowers—
Would they cry?
They answered,
Yes, though
You wouldn't know why.

I wake up creaking,
stiff and wanting to cry,
from pain or sadness,
I'm not sure.
I wake up not here:
still dancing in lilac fields
where nothing seems to matter,
where you disappear
and my stress follows.
I wake up not wanting to;
wishing I could turn over
and rock myself back to oblivion.
I wake up cursing
and I know it's a new day.
I know the sun comes back around
but fate seems like a *******
and it won't let me in
am I going to be great
or am I just here?
I wake up waiting.