You require at least three similes.
A metaphor or two.
This section needs more sibilance,
and another allegory on alliteration too.

Creative writing
now a standardized test
where a poet seems
to do slightly poorer than the rest.

You receive a checklist, told
bye and buy the book.
Drain away the colours upon your pencil
or face the examiners sickle and hook.

Creative writing
now a slog a convoluted use and reuse
of that which
"improves"
your descriptions and inscriptions.

You need a conclusion.


something befitting a happy end.
Try anything smart
and a bad grade i'll be "sure to send."

You come from a line of pleading
heavy enough to slam the door, dampen the folds of flannel sheets or
a furrowed brow.

'More' I hear your glossy eyes breathe.
They've been softened by endless searching
Scan after scan.
We've made a game of it.
We readily laugh at our preposterousness
believing love could grasp and stay, the last shriveled grape on a branch
smaller than the others.
Sweeter, too.

What we have precedes us, I say
Grimacing since I don't know exactly what I mean by that.

Once, in a dream, I walked down a corridor adorned with empty picture frames. It ended at a desert clearing, laced beneath a silver sky.
My ears alerted me first: before me lay a jumping cactus before me, embracing a teary coyote softly whimpering a prayer as thousands of needles sunk more securely into its fur.
I laughed and still couldn't tell you why.
I held my hand more closely to the shadowy breath, every release a firm match to my own.
Either to help it or endure its hateful bicuspid sink into my rigid flesh
I waved my hand faithfully before the dog.
Diverted, the stab of the plant wounded me instead.
I awoke, floating down a gushing claret river
The blood shimmering beneath me was my own.
My jaw split slightly enough to taste the salty tang of my demise.
Looking down, the once-pale tunic I wore was stained, candied.

I open my eyes to see your patient breath escape, confirming the truthful slumber I pray for you.
I expect you are told to say the most, so I tell myself through your waiting ear:
Love is irrevocably illusory.

She was the one with curly hair,
If you played with fire,
You'd get the demon eyed glare.

Emptiness
isn't loneliness
or sadness

it's not a feeling
feeling nothing
it's feeling something
that something's nothing

it's a pain
that drags you down
it's suffoca'in'
an attempt to drown

it controls how you feel
so controls nothing
yet somehow
controls everything

it's not a feeling
feeling nothing
it's feeling something
that something's nothing

it follows, it hollows
**no meaning, to being

i saw you in my sleep
and i kissed you like i couldn't breathe
but you were never mine to keep
our love just wasn't meant to be

In a white room
thirty people
empty and plain
yet full and lively
everyone different
everyone same
stuck in a system
for hours every day
preparing for a future
that may not exist
existence destroyed
by being uncreative

in a white room
thirty people
just numbers
in a system
different numbers
but no name