August 12, 1993

This is the third diary I have written in
This diary must be famous
So maybe oneday
Someone will hear or at least read my story
By the way my name is Rebeka
Weird spelling right?

August 13, 1993

Just heard some bad news...
I'm pregnant
I can't believe it
16 years old and pregnant!
The "father" is a dead beat
Ran after I said I might be
I can't keep the child
I don't know what to do

August 15, 1993

I wrote my first poem
One of my friends said it would help
Didn't really
I just wrote and wrote
I almost wrote a book
I wonder what I'm going to do with this child
Aborting it would be painful
Giving it up is almost impossible
Having it is unlikely
I have so much going for me

April 20, 1993

Found out one of my friends loves me
He knows I'm pregnant
He said he would help me
He always has a plan
Maybe I can be happy with him
I don't know
I don't want to bring him down
Diary...what should I do?

April 23, 1993

Still no reply?
I forgot I'm asking an inanimate object
To answer a question
I was forced to ask because of my stupidity
I have poor taste in men
I'm now called distastefully
Rebecca the 16 year old pregnant whore
My boyfriend is really annoyed with it
I hope I can love him as much as he loves me

April 30, 1993

I cut myself
The girls at school keep harrassing me
I can't take this
I forgot how many weeks I am now
I just want this baby out
I don't want it
It's causing to much stress
Diary...help me please

September 18, 1993

I lost you for a while
Can't believe you were right here
Underneath my bed covered by my favorite shirt
That now I can't wear anymore
I look like a cow
School is horrid
I almost beat one of my teachers with a textbook
He called me "Rebecow"

September 21, 1993

I just got dumped by the man I love
He said I didn't love him enough
That I was wieghing him down
I can't believe this
I haven't stopped crying since 12 last night
Why does everything have to go wrong with me?
Am I that broken?
That big of a fuck up?

September 29, 1993

I have just successfully planned my suicide
The title of this diary says "Diary Of Broken Souls"
It should say "Diary Of Suicidal Souls"
I just read the other 402 other entries
That many people...dead...murdered...by cruelty
Might as well join them
My bullshit is just about the same

October 8, 1993

Halloween is just around the corner
And with it comes my death
No more baby
No more mother bitching
No more father crying at the sight of me
Well the tears will be for a different reason now
I'll write my last entry on Halloween

October 31, 1993

Today is the day
Finally coming to an end
I'll kill this baby first
Swallow a shit load of pain killers
Throw in a couple anti-depressants
Noose is tied just perfectly
I have it hanging over the school entry way
A little memorial for the girls at school
All the students actually
Who have called me names
Criticized me for this shit
Well good bye bitches
Sorry Diary you didn't get to know me
I'll be memorialized in these pages
Somebody will know what it's like
To be 16, pregnant, and depressed from all of it

You weren't what i expected to get this morning when i ordered
a coffee
my mouth dropped open when i saw those familiar glasses
and you thought i didn't recognize you
Apparently you've been around,
i didn't know
not that we were that close... but
it would've been nice to be informed.
Today seemed different.
My coffee seemed more bitter than usual
and they gave me the wrong bagel.
I wish i could've asked you more,
all i know is that you live in Virginia now,
lucky them.
I want to know what happened,
every now and then ill check your face book but its still
the same
post from two years ago saying that you'll be back in
the summer
but you didn't come back.
...
now its been 2 years and here you are.
You say you're coming back in August
but does that mean for good
or visiting.
i want to know.

I have this ache, Doctor. And so far, no amount of drugs or drink have been able to cure it. Where does it hurt, you ask? Why right here, Doctor. Right here in my chest.  It started feeling odd when I saw HER for the first time. It was a Thursday; August eighteenth of two thousand eleven I believe. I remember her perfectly, for I had not, and have not, seen anybody more beautiful in my life. Her auburn hair was  streaked with red and waterfalled  perfectly over her delicate shoulders, that were on that day cloaked in a blue jacket. Her long graceful fingers bloomed from slender palms and were crowned with an elegant black nail polish with a cracked silver finish. To this day, I have never so much as imagined anybody more perfect than her. So what's my problem? Well Doctor, she hates me. I can see it glint in her dark eyes every time she looks at me. Why is this? Why I have not the slightest idea. All I have ever been was polite to her. All I have ever been was kind. When she shivers I give her my jacket, regardless of how cold I am at the time. When she is hungry, I use my last dime to feed her. I do everything in my power to make her happy, make her laugh when pain adds weight to her shoulders. But I guess it just wasn't enough in the end. What do you prescribe, did you say? An entire bottle of pain pills and a slash down each wrist? That sounds about right. Thank you, my dear Doctor.

This is not a poem.

I just discovered I have Taylor Swift Syndrome. The subject matter of my poems seem to always be my life's tragic dismay at the hands of an "ain't shit" man. I  thus must sorrowfully self-diagnose myself with ,  as well as possibly be the first to officially coin the term, Taylor Swift Syndrome.

What is the cure you ask?

Simply taking control of my actions and not writing bitter ass "why don't you love me" poems. Most specifically my continued volunteering of my heart to people who I know are incapable of nurturing it in the way is so desires and then proceeding to bitch and moan through my creative talent about them not doing what I know they are unable to do  MUST STOP!!

Treatment you said?

A complete subject matter shift of my poetry for the next 3 to 9 month, I'm honestly unsure of how long it will take but if 9 months is enough time to create a human being it is surely enough time to change a mindset. From this point until either August 2013 or February 2014 I shall no longer be a he woman, man hater poet.

Let the journey begin.

-Dr. Rab.

as a bundle of batik cloth
you carried me
slung across your shoulders
a mess of curls and hungry crying
you sing me words I don’t understand

after the rain
you sweep the fallen leaves
with one arm against your back
and the weight of shadows you could not leave
at home

sleepy faced in a bowl of morning cereal
your fingers braid my bed head
with bright blue ribbons
that intertwine our worlds together
and then apart

red faced
shoes unlaced
i stumble through the door
tripping on sentences
you say nothing
but tuck me in

back in her homeland
she left her two children
only to gain two more
and when i leave for snow this August
i will be leaving not just one mother
but two

Not the drip of freeway from Pittsburgh but a rough trundle
on chalk roads as flaxen skies shade to molten celluloid
and I can still see them

flash in August fields like a crop of traffic lights
they flare as hay-bale paparazzi or

floaters in the humour and hang
careless in unseasonable decadence

so I’ll pass from the frigid, processed air
and join them in their closeness.

No buzz but a minor hum coming from the
moment’s luminosity and then they’re gone
making good on thunder’s empty promise.

January Colours

In the winter garden
of the Villa del Parma
by the artist’s studio
green grass turns vert de terre
and the stone walls
a wet mouse’s back
grounding neutral – but calm,
soothing like calamine
in today’s mizzle,
a permanent dimpsey,
fine drenching drizzle,
almost invisible, yet
saturating skylights
with evidence of rain.

February Colours

In the kitchen’s borrowed light,
dear Grace makes bread  
on the mahogany table,
her palma gray dress
bringing the outside in.

Whilst next door, inside
Vanessa’s garden room
the French windows
firmly shut out this
season’s bitter weather.

There, in the stone jar
beside her desk,
branches of heather;
Erica for winter’s retreat,
Calluna for spring’s expectation.

Tea awaits in Duncan’s domain.
Set amongst the books and murals,
Spode’s best bone china  
turning a porcelain pink
as the hearth’s fire burns bright..

Today
in this house
a very Bloomsbury tone,
a truly Charleston Gray.

March Colours

Not quite daffodil
Not yet spring
Lancaster Yellow
Was Nancy’s shade

For the drawing room
Walls of Kelmarsh Hall
And its high plastered ceiling
Of blue ground blue.

Playing cat’s paw
Like the monkey she was
Two drab husbands paid
For the gardens she made,
For haphazard luxuriance.

Society decorator, partner
In paper and paint,
She’d walk the grounds
Of her Palladian gem
Conjuring for the catalogue
Such ingenious labels:

Brassica and Cooking Apple
Green to be seen
In gardens and orchards
Grown to be greens.

April Colours

It would be churlish
to expect, a folly to believe,
that green leaves would  
cover the trees just yet.

But blossom will:
clusters of flowers,
Damson white,
Cherry red,
Middleton pink,

And at the fields’ edge
Primroses dayroom yellow,
a convalescent colour
healing the hedgerows
of winter’s afflictions.

Clouds storm Salisbury Plain,
and as a skimming stone
on water, touch, rise, touch
and fall behind horizon’s rim.
Where it goes - no one knows.

Far (far) from the Madding Crowd
Hardy’s concordant cove at Lulworth
blue by the cold sea, clear in the crystal air,
still taut with spring.

May Colours

A spring day
In Suffield Green,
The sky is cook’s blue,
The clouds pointing white.

In this village near Norwich
Lives Marcel Manouna
Thawbed and babouched
With lemurs and llamas,
Leopards and duck,
And more . . .

This small menagerie
Is Marcel’s only luxury
A curious curiosity
In a Norfolk village
Near to Norwich.

So, on this
Blossoming
Spring day
Marcel’s blue grey
Parrot James
Perched on a gate
Squawks the refrain

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!

June

Thrownware
earth red
thrown off the hump
the Japanese way.
Inside hand does the work,
keeps it alive.
Outside hand holds the clay
and critically tweaks.
Touch, press, hold, release
Scooting, patting, spin!
Centering: the act
precedes all others
on the potter’s wheel.
Centering: the day
the sun climbs highest
in our hemisphere.
And then affix the glaze
in colours of summer:
Stone blue
Cabbage white
Print-room yellow
Saxon green
Rectory red
And fire!

July Colours

I see you
by the dix blue
asters in the Grey Walk
via the Pear Pond,
a circuit of surprises
past the Witches House,
the Radicchio View,
to the beautifully manicured
Orangery lawns, then the
East and West Rills of
Gertrude’s Great Plat.

And under that pea green hat
you wear, my mistress dear,
though your face may be April
there’s July in your eyes of such grace.

I see you wander at will
down the cinder rose path
‘neath the drawing-room blue sky.

August Colours

Out on the wet sand
Mark and Sarah
take their morning stroll.
He, barefoot in a blazer,
She, linen-light in a wide-brimmed straw,
Together they survey
their (very) elegant home,
Colonial British,
Classic traditional,
a retreat in Olive County, Florida:
white sandy beaches,
playful porpoises,
gentle manatees.

It’s an everfine August day
humid and hot
in the hurricane season.
But later they’ll picnic on
Brinjal Baigan Bharta
in the Chinese Blue sea-view
dining room fashioned
by doyen designer
Leta Austin Foster
who ‘loves to bring the ocean inside.
I adore the colour blue,’ she says,
‘though gray is my favourite.’

September

A perfect day
at the Castle of Mey
beckons.
Watching the rising sun
disperse the morning mists,
the Duchess sits
by the window
in the Breakfast Room.
Green leaves have yet to give way
to autumn colours but the air
is seasonably cool, September fresh.

William is fishing the Warriner’s Pool,
curling casts with a Highlander fly.
She waits; dressed in Power Blue
silk, Citron tights,
a shawl of India Yellow
draped over her shoulders.
But there he is, crossing the home beat,
Lucy, her pale hound at his heels,
a dead salmon in his bag.

October Colours

At Berrington
blue, clear skies,
chill mornings
before the first frosts
and the apples ripe for picking
(place a cupped hand under the fruit
and gently ‘clunch’).

Henry Holland’s hall -
just ‘the perfect place to live’.
From the Picture Gallery
redolent in portraits
and naval scenes,
the view looks beyond
Capability’s parkland
to Brecon’s Beacons.

At the fourteen-acre pool
trees, cane and reed
mirror in the still water
where Common Kingfishers,
blue green with fowler pink feet
vie with Grey Herons,
funereal grey,
to ruffle this autumn scene.

November Colours

In pigeon light
this damp day
settles itself
into lamp-room grey.

The trees intone
farewell farewell:
An autumnal valedictory
to reluctant leaves.

Yet a few remain
bold coloured

Porphry Pink
Fox Red
Fowler
Sudbury Yellow

hanging by a thread
they turn in the stillest air.

Then fall
Then fall

December Colours

Green smoke from damp leaves
float from gardens’ bonfires,
rise in the silver Blackened sky.

Close by the tall railings,
fast to lichened walls
we walk cold winter streets

to the warm world of home, where
shadows thrown by the parlour fire
dance on the wainscot, flicker from the hearth.

Hanging from our welcome door
see how incarnadine the berries are
on this hollyed wreath of polished leaves.

I want to write,
I want to write freely,
I want to express my thoughts on paper so freely that they flow from me,
I want to type my fingers bloody with feelings and emotions,
I want to live and breathe poetry,
I want all of my words to be read and heard and to be poetry,
I want my words to express all of the beauty in this world,
I want the world not to do my words justice,
Words are the world’s details,
Detailing every aspect,
And looking at it all in retrospect a complete picture of all that is beautiful,
Pretty words, poetry, a complete picture,
A complete picture of you,
You are the expression that paints a picture in my mind that I look at when I'm feeling down,
So, when I lay in this cold bed I can think of you and it warms my icy heart,
You see, I want to write, because every time I write I find a new way to describe your stunning looks,
Flashy white-toothed smile,
And your kick ass legs that stretch for miles and miles.
I want to write because every time I write I discover a little bit more,
Find new ways to describe you,
And I want to write because when I do I find out how much more I can love you

By Kevin Michael @August 16, 2012

a broken span of time
a voice echoes in my mind
a feeling reverberates in my soul
but the song ends before i can glean even a
fraction of the meaning

a broken span of time
spent in the icebound train of thought
a memory of a girl smiling
but its in reality a neatly carved lie
demented self
she sits sweating against the wall
panting "fuck...fuck...fuck..."
as she rubs herself
then she left without a word
having done the last of her stuff
she pants harder and harder "fuck....fuck...fuck..."

a jester in the august sun
laughing at himself in a broken span of time
between yesteryear and now
the old man sits on  a pile of rust
carefully spinning a net in which to catch his breath

hes just like us
trying to capture
to hold in onto love which so often slipped thru his
desperate fingers

all i can do
is whisper
"fuck....fuck....fuck...."

Written August 29th, 2011

the gun in the city is attached to the emotion
that the city brings itself,yeah i do suppose,
but that's all good, cuz without eachother we go more than bored
and if you wanna argue that just realize what we do to the people in those prisons that we cant afford

i'm sick of it,
sick of guilt, sick of the blame
sick of the people all around me who complain but then don't have the nerve to stand and do what it takes
someone will have to fill my tracks cuz I won't be here long
and even now I can't do it by myself so I need all of you to join along
whether it be writing to the beat or writing in the street
just doing something good opens so much more potential
i can't tell you how many times i got high from just planting a tree though
I know we can't be perfect, and we'll always have problems, i believe in humanity in fact so much I know when it's best to just lay off.
  and
i know you feel like the worlds to small
but we're in space
and I know I've done the same thing and I know babe, that this can last for days
if you could measure the amount of energy you take to grudge
you can manifest it love and turn it all into hugs
or another sort of good that does something for someone let it come around again
but the kicking and screaming, all the fighting and fuss and lying is why some people give up trying