A question, a query for you,
and a word for every writer
who ever penned a poem or
who wrote a rhyme, if you'll
permit me the time to ask.

Why do you write?

What compels you to put
pen to paper, put pencil
to parcel in such a way?
What drives you to do
these things or to
write these words that
may never be read?

It's a query, a quandary
that'll get a hundred
answers depending on
who you choose to ask,
but certain themes
will show their faces.

Whether it's to outpour pain,
or to try and bring joy,
a kind of temporary glee,
to someone who might need it,
or just as a way to tell
a story of the heart or mind,
you'll find a connecting bind.

People who write want to invoke.
They want to invoke emotions,
or invoke thoughts in minds,
or invoke inspiration in souls,
or invoke true love in heart.
The goal is to invoke, and
to connect with the words one writes.
It's an impulse universal,
a goal of us creatures social.

I know that would be my answer,
if I asked myself the same.
If just one word out of one poem
out of the hundreds to be written
could connect to just one person
in the entire world and inspire
them to write something greater
than I could ever hope to conspire,
then I'd know that I had made it,
and that I could retire and die young,
cause through the words I wrote,
I'd possess a life eternal.

For to write is to invoke is to connect is to inspire is to live,
is to be human.

And in death we long for life....

My heart
is swinging back and forth
between all the poignant memories
and the breaths of
ethereal emotions
of a soul
ablaze.

© Kishamore

These tears are familiar to me,
during the span of the sleepless nights,
they make their presence known.

I'm scared.
I pull the covers over me and
there's only darkness.
I chant His name and
pray for this place to become holy.

I'm tormented.
A tired soul.
A wounded spirit.
I've only tried my best.
Whatever that was.

I continue reciting the Name.
Like a child without a parent,
I seek direction.
Dictation
I take down the words
I hear in my head.

A weird structure.
A confused guy.
I need to work harder.
I need to work faster.

I know not what I say,
I know now what I mean.
Wordplay
It's fun and takes me out
of my own self-awareness.

Honesty
that's all that ever mattered.
I write to myself.
Use your words wisely.
Let them speak.
Let them express for you.
Let them flow and
flow with them.
Go with the dream,
go with it.

When I was ten,
It didn't matter that my legs weren't hairless;
I was just a girl -
It was shameless.

That was the year it all ended,
And suddenly,
I was supposed to be a woman.
Suddenly my legs
And all the spaces in between
Weren't mine, but his.

When I turned fifteen,
I thought he wanted my new hairless legs;
I thought being a woman
Would make him love me
And the woman I was going to be.
But I was a girl.
I was shameless.

And it was easy to pretend I wanted it,
Easy to pretend that I wanted what hurt.
It was easy,
It was shameless,
Until I was crying on the bathroom floor,
Missing a period.

And that was just the thing -
That my own blood was a sin.
I couldn't bleed,
Because being a woman was wrong.
And I thought that's what he wanted,
I thought that's what he wanted all along.

He wanted me to be a woman
When it was his hands on my thighs,
His hands on my waist,
His hands covering my eyes.

He wanted me to be a woman until I was:
Until I had hair on my legs
And all the spaces in between.
And suddenly I was supposed to be ten,
I was supposed to be a girl,
I was supposed to be shameless.

I wasn't a woman;
I was small.
I was young.
And it hurt.

As I near twenty years,
I think of being ten,
I think of being fifteen,
And I feel no different.
I'm still small,
I still curl up on my bedroom floor.
I still have pink walls
And red painted toes
Because I'm a girl,
And that's the worst of it all.