I accept this award for all the other writers who
weave stories through finer mesh with deeper complexity
and with a genius of the human psychology.
I feel as though someone may have bought this award for me.
Although, out of respect for the possibility that a phrase of mine
may have reached out to another,
I accept this on behalf of all of us who speak to one another
through words and characters that tell the hidden thoughts of our own lives. If any grouping of words I have written pierced into your core enough to stir your spirit giving you the feeling that you knew me and I knew you, that we were kin or kindred, then I accept the award in honor of that moment.

My ranking was 115 out of 300 or so
people at the high school I attended in
Kansas. Ineffectual. By most standards.

The university denied me membership into
the honors community, blacklisted by peers,
ignored, forgotten like a transient looking through
the cafe window at the revelers eating and drinking.

young voices contributing to publications, singing
thoughts, shaping the tenor of future days, heralded
like shining angels transcendant of mortals, supremacy
allowed to decide the shape of our cities, schools, feelings.

Entrusted with the duty to chisel our lives into a shape, the approval to think for us, or be the catalyst of our own thoughts, or rather simply, the winners who wrote it best, they ran faster, they ranked higher, they knew more.

Not one of them my voice. my voice was silence,
shoved back by the bouncer
at the threshold of influence.

Words floated inward, I witnessed the streams
of phrases float passed me on soundwaves,
reaching the ears of luminaries, academicians, renegade thinkers.
crowds rallied, wept, and devoured the ideas embedded in the poems, essays, articles allowed to reach the readers of the day.
Minds opened, wealth shifted, a flight towards a new horizon saw people preparing for the liftoff.

Yet, nothing changed.

The wounded continued to bleed upon the sidewalks
outside my apartment. Tiny children ignorantly ran past schools
refusing to walk inside. Men and Women preferred to dance viciously, like celebrating heathens, rejoicing in their ****** rituals, unashamed to entice one another into poverty.

SHOULD things even change?

Would the presence of my voice even make a microscopic difference? What vanity did I carry that imagined one hope
of a thought birthed from my mind might create the tipping point for human recovery? Wouldn't it be better to remain silent and let the masters continue with their work? Let the fittest push me out of their way, leaving me in the trench to camp and rebuild my primitive shelter. I will die soon enough. My dust enriching the soil as best it can, preparing the earth for tomorrow's crop of leaders.

I am sitting here, or lying there, yes, across this bed, penning in my diary as the tropical winds off the Argentinian jungles
breeze through my curls and a whisper tickles up my thighs.

I have left the din of sorrowland,
I have taken flight into the drifting clouds,
I sit atop a cottony cumulus, bouncing surrounded by delight,
for I have found love.

There is a window through which I climbed
out towards an edge that promised me
pain and painted lights and desperation too sweet
to pass up the taste, a lust, a danger, a disaster
of life and I wandered happily out towards it's calling song.

Singing repeated songs, the strong arms of men,
playing around and around as I sifted through the moments
of thought and image flashing in day by day.
a young woman swept up in the transience of the traveling musician.

The tornado that lifted me out of my shelter
never did settle me, and I fly still, gazing down upon the
distant patterns of grids and circles, laughing
with a miraculous hysteria,
at what the breeze blows in each day.

Springtime awakens the concerto of fliers,
fluttering awake, rejoicing in their strength,
They sing to sound the morning and life itself,
calling through thin airs, while the cicadas sleep,
dominating the cathedral with their sunrise choir.

And you, as you rise, are showered by their concert.

It's funny when you look back
to find out you have been erased
from the lives you thought you'd
played a role in. Who will remember
me? Did I even exist? There is no one
around me to remember I am alive. I
disappeared from the memory books,
covered up, erased.

I will die alone
closed eyes remembering
how it felt when he
chose me to be the
girl he called each night.

dying alone with the wind
blowing maybe.

A fire might burn and
I hope there is someone I know
holding my hand or wiping my brow.

I will die alone, all these days,
these faded blue jean years,
brown boots dirt. Music soothing,
I hear Noah Gundersen singing my death.
He sways the tunes of woe,
I hope my death sounds like his song.