Whenever you're feeling down.
You just need a clown.
to release you from frown.
living in this wicked town.
to mask your loneliness,
to free up your heavy bones.
mesmerize you in pure bliss,
in his talkative humorous tones.
to tickle your thoughts,
and pass through your worries.
to make you feel at home,
inhibitions will be buried.
with this magical tricks
the medicinal antics.
talents he mastered and shared
jokes you found candid.
never a single dull moment,
a clown is all you need.
happiness that a friend, acquaintance,
or lover can never give

how lonely sits
the city says
lamentations

guess this mouse has what you americans call post traumatic
stress disorder,
think of it more like
a path for the
eyes.

one where eyes are finally forced away
from the works of hands
by the knock knock
knocking on
heaven's door,
everybody's saying,
hodi hapa? something's
wrong if no one's answering; tonight.

my neighbor whose
name is eej (for
real) came to
the hut with
his friend.

i said do you
have siblings
he said
i did

oh

said i

you are living
my worst nightmare
one thing about an african

childhood, they say fatalism, you say you
would think about death too
and who knows

what you'd
look
like

tonight by the bagel van i said bunkle
i gotta problem
what's your problem said he
well i think i'm not wearing enough colors
no said he you're missing a bright splash in the orange red family

who knows what we all look like
inside the infinite space
of our souls

wonder if
blue means purity or
green means beauty
or red means strength
or love
or love

well
we all look
pretty much
the same asleep

hatred doesn't look
different in one
eye or another

but why does
it have to
be in the
eyes of
anyone

this mouse has
been asking
since
child
hood

why
why
why.

the cruelty

but
yet
still
and
for
ever

(you always did care for me yeah
you always did share with me yeah)

you always make me laugh, still

the book of jonah makes me
think of sea legs
and just everything,
you know all
the palm trees
huts, nonvoices
of our lives

the blessings rain down
an ocean sunsetting
on an Ocean sky.

siblings

be strong the
good kind of
dangerous

is
the



fire

Yes, I am your lover, but I won't ever be your friend.
We will never be more than we have ever been.
I've better writing down these words in repentance of my sins.
There's no need to be alarmed; this merely ends where it begins.

No, you're not my lover, but you'll always be my friend.
We will never be as much as we've already been.
You've forced on me this distance and I will break before I bend.
There is cause to be alarmed; you've severed ties that we can't mend.

for the friends i have loved and lost...i am not afraid to say the last thing i have to say to a long time companion...for i know that they have and will hear me...that it is the right and perfect thing to say, because it is me and all of my heart...singing as i go along so that i do not break...

she raised me, as much as my mom and sister did, and i thought i was different...that i wouldn't crack and divide...but i suppose sometimes i am that girl...who falls apart into a ball of tears...because my nanny is like the nervous system for my family, she's just too interconnected, just too big to fail...to fall...

and we always want the fall of our heroines to be graceful and gorgeous...but sometimes it's just bleak and plain...sometimes you watch your mentor, grandmother, caretaker, great friend, nanny die slowly...though it kills you and you fight for her with all this nervous frightened energy, this what will i do without her...

so i let my heart sing...because it hears her, it knows her, it is as much in tune with her as anyone else it loves...i let it be happy to honor what she wants...it's the closest i can come to praying...letting my heart sing and joy and bounce...letting it loose to the terror of my own embarrassment...

i will miss this, i will miss you...you kept the light on in the last homely house...i know that this will break my heart into so many pieces i will never find them all...there will always be holes the size and shape of you...

That the way your golden waves fall
in the most effortless pattern is entrancing.
That you have a surprising beauty,
and the intensity
you have when you study something really
hard only enhances your features.
That in those times,
I only make funny faces at you
so it’s not weird that I’m looking.

I let you see the scary cobweb-filled
corners of my soul that night
we stayed up for hours, talking about things
strangers never talk
about,

that you’re still the only one
I’ve admitted some of those things to.
That all I want to do is
impress you, that just once,
I want you to look at me the way you look at her, love
leaking out of every orifice. I said

I hated you and that we were never friends,
but I never told you that those six weeks
we didn’t talk caused me physical
pain; your silence was like acid, burning
a hole through my chest, devouring
everything in its path.

I told you the first time
I heard you sing how much I love
your voice, but I never told you the
power your words hold. That it really did hurt
when you forgot about me at Christmas. That

the selfish part of me wants you
to need me in your life as much as
I need you. That you have so many qualities
I wish I was strong enough
to possess. That I really do care
that she’s good enough
to drunkenly kiss, and so is
the boy who almost raped you,
but I’m still not.

That I might see you as more than a friend
I still can’t really tell myself.

You wanted to learn
from the book of my life,
so here is a tale or two
that made me the way I am.

When I was about 12,
I was a man of the world
with all the knowledge
I needed to know
and nobody could tell me I was wrong.
It wasn't until a fateful night
with a good friend of mine
that I knew how wrong I was.
No child should ever
have to be exposed to death,
but that is a fact of life that one can't escape from
and on that night
I was no exception.
To come home to my mother in tears
was anything but reassuring.
I asked her "What's wrong mama?"
with my reassuring tone,
not a doubt in my mind that
any problem afoot
was nothing more than
a small speed bump.
It was when she told me to speak to my father
that a worry arose.
I stepped into his room, and the silence struck me;
a hit that could have knocked a hole in a brick wall.
But I was stronger than a brick wall.
Or so I thought.
"Hey pops, what's going on?"

Now, I must say that
up to this point in time,
my father has been nothing but
a sign of masculinity;
the tree with which the apples grew from.
But as my father raised his head,
eyes glistening in through the darkness of the room
I could see the thick tracings of
the first real sorrow I've seen my father in.
He was broken, like the slurred words coming from his mouth
He's dead.
and as those words,
those horrible fucking words left his mouth,
the foundation that he had built
crumbled down.

He raised his hands towards me
asking, needing to embrace me.
And I walked away.
I left the broken man to sulk alone.
Now, I'll have you know that I love my father
and I would die for him.
But as he broke, I shattered.

Later that night,
I found him alone
in the grave
he had dug himself earlier,
and I hugged him.
I hugged him harder than I've hugged anything in my life
I hugged him, not for my sake, but so he could know how his father felt
when he hugged him.

. . .

By the time I was fourteen
I had found love.
It's funny to think how ridiculous this sounds,
but this love was an honest love. (for me at least)
We had been together for long enough to know
that in my youthful state of mind
I could picture myself with nobody else.
But, as the long line of history showed before me,
young love is never true love.
However, when I walked up the stairs,
to hear nothing
I was nothing but startled.

I can still remember that feeling;
when time slowed,
the world around me freezing as the doorknob
twisted in my hand
and the door swung up.

To say I was angry
would be wrong.
I wasn't angry.
I would like to say I
was hurt,
but to be honest,
I could feel nothing.
The natural Novocaine of heart-break
filled my veins
as I sway her lips with his,
fitting in the mold that I created.

As I descended the stairs
and walked past her mother, asking
"What's wrong love?"
feeling the sarcasm ooze out of her mouth
I laughed.
Laughed and laughed and laughed.
Not to hide the pain,
but just to feel again.
But my nerves were burnt,
and would stay that way for quite some time.

. . .

Fast forward to the spring
of my sixteenth year of life.
The summer was alive in me and in you.
I remember the sun shining in your hair,
and I remember the way the water flowed
past the rocks under the bridge.
I remember sitting in the yard
of someone else's house
when our lips first met
when the connection was there
and was there to stay.
And I remember laying in the grass
in your back yard
with our hands locked
and our eyes pointed up
at the sky above us
where our heads were.
I remember you asking me
if I knew what I wanted to do with myself.
I don't remember what I said,
but I remember thinking
that there is nothing I wanted more
than to do what I was doing
at that exact moment in time.

And I remember leaving.
And I remember never returning.
I remember the nights alone
waiting for your word,
knowing you were waiting for mine,
and never getting them.
I remember spending day after day
tracing your face next to mine in that grass
and making the record player skip
with the words you said to me.
I remember thinking of all the things I wish I said to you
while I still had the chance
and kicking myself for saying the things I had said to you.
And I remember wishing to hold your hand,
and kiss you lips
and thinking that I never could again.

. . .

But now I am here
where I never thought I'd be
And I'd just like to tell you
that once you have read this,
all other tales and stories I own
are now yours to hear.
My book is open to you.

she's sick of being made to feel
like a worthless
piece of shit

like she's not ever
good enough for anyone
or anything for that matter

she's sick

of her parents
trying to take away
everything that she loves

she's tired

of never being the best friend
of never helping enough
of never being worth it

she's exhausted

of being average
at everything
even the one thing she thought she was good at

she's sick

of her "best friend"
taking everything away from her
to leave her broken and crying

she's tired

of the one person she trusted
backstabbing her, not letting her forget
seeing her as something she tried to hard to leave behind

she doesn't want
to cry herself to sleep
every night

she doesn't want
to remember anything she did wrong
in those late hours before dawn

she can't put up with this
much longer

so she'll
wet her quill

and in that neat handwriting
the teachers always admired
she'll write the following:

"I'm sorry for being a burden"

and as her tears

r
o
l
l
down her face
and her hand shakes

she'll fold it up
in that neat fashion

she'll carefully tuck it into
her top drawer

and she'll climb
down

the stairway to hell