I have been in a queue all my life
Waiting in line
Everyone else is waiting too
When I feel like I am getting close
There's another reason to let someone in front
A reason to put other people first
So I stay here
Waiting
Even when people cut the line
Jump in front and force me back
I tell myself
They must just need it more than me
I don't want to be selfish
But selflessness is getting me nowhere

the timing of time for you and i was off

maybe the universe was trying to tell us something
or maybe it was trying to save us

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may **** me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Do you ever feel
Like
   you
      might
         be
            falling?
Do you ever think
                            That
                         you
                     won't
                   be
             able
          to
      get
  back
up?
Fight that feeling
A
n
d
And take the
                    st
                    ai
                  ­  rs
                      to the top floor.

we're all so worthless
you know it

you're everchanging
not so everlasting

throwing cigarettes on your bedroom floor
you're so numb you can't feel the cold

where's the ceiling
always falling to the floor

there's just something
special about you

can't figure it out
I get chills

I want to look like you
move like you do

visions and side effects
I know you will break my heart first
but I can break it twice

today I’m gonna make it

getting done with the stuff I left for days or a week, reading a book once again that I excitedly flipped every page, losing a grip on a string of a blue balloon, today I’m gonna spend all of my pennies to my unrequited wish, similarly to a black hole that keeps gnawing my heart; this is what it cost.

Today I’m gonna find out why they are calling us “black swans”. I will make their blood drain, we will dance at them until their eyes glow green. Today I’m gonna make it, but not the girl who cried wolf at night.

you can break my heart
if I can break yours

back to back
we don't see eye to eye

if God hates me
I hate him too

angel boy your wings are suffocating
I can't breathe

you can see inside
don't reach out

I can see you falling
will you ignore me now

find my soul
give it a home

we won't survive
the burden

your guilty conscious
is killing us all

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
is.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.