sparks are spilling
from your eyes
you sprinkle them
around,
ignite our hearts
in scorching waves,
we drown

can there be one
you'll save;
what fate awaits
survivors reaching shore;
they go to war
and time will tell
who burns out
and who
remains

(amongst the embers
a victor shall be named)

and even though
I never cease to burn
the last to stand
I see too late
the game is rigged
and charcoal hands
with ashes cold return

The take off
You start your life wanting to be a mom
Like a lot of little girls
Then as you get older and you see your mom working you realize you can’t just be a mom
So you want to be a vet
you get to middle school
and you see that being a vet is too much work with the grades you have
You decided you want to be famous
Look through all the thing you can be famous for
Realize you cannot sing
You have a very strong tell
And you laugh when you try to be serious
So acting is out
And you weren’t born with a body like Kim K’s
Or born with the money to get it
Come to the idea that you can’t be famous if you aren’t like other famous people
Settle for the idea you’ll be working some menial job you’ll hate
Just like your mom and dad
Just like your aunts and uncles
Just like everyone else in your family
Realize you love writing
Like no one else in your family
Pencil and paper always near by
And if not
You have three different journal apps on your phone
and four on your laptop
Along with two poetry blogs
And the hope you had for starting a book
The hope that started in 2014
that hasn’t been messed with
Realize you want to really write a book
And be the poet lauriet
Realize your dreams of being famous aren’t that far away
Come to the shocking reality that you cannot support yourself on just this book
Decide you want to be an easthation
A word you cannot even spell
So you can wax peoples legs and arms
And parts of people you don’t want to see
Go through your last year of high school
Get put back into carters class
See how this teacher has changed your life
Opened you from your shell
See that you have made real progress
Not just in your writing but through that
You have become a better person
See that the take off
Started when you realized that you wanted to be a teacher

The first thinkers were poets
Naming Mother Earth
Beginning symbolic thinking
Of nature, death and birth

Though themes are often repeated
Love, Beauty and God
Poetry in the guise of Religion
A prophet or a fraud

The poet resurrects the Primitive
Through allegory and similes
Disarming the unknown like explorers
Sublime Prophets and Visionaries

They must lay bare those treasured images
That must be expressed
Unraveling and revealing the sounds
At each soul’s behest

Encompassing the entire Cosmos
So lyrical the beat
The poet’s excitement flows outward
Laid at the Reader’s feet

So original, individual
She won’t examine or explain
Letting go the festering feelings
Disturbances in her brain

He exposes his dark, wounded psyche
Just to release and express
Such capacity to see and compare
Hyperbole at its best

I love, I hate, I suffer
A special dance in rhythm and rhyme
The poet as a buffer
Lessening the pain and sting of time

Laden with symbol and feelings
She gives you sweet relief
From something urgent, revealing
Confusion to belief

Through a cinematic kind of seeing
The poet purges to transform
By leaping through Alice’s looking glass
She never was one to conform

Quite intolerant of convention
Just like The Mad Hatter
His passions immune to all logic
In syncopated patter

Jamming up the poet’s mind
Struggling for expression
Seeking order out of chaos
An infantile regression

Cleaving to his imaginary world
The poet breaks out into words
Creating sound paintings to be unfurled
So his own agony is blurred

She succumbs to storms of passion
With instinctive techniques
Rhymes and rhythm still in fashion
Out of hand flows mystique

The poet mines from his unconscious
The Reader is not blind
For every single line and symbol
Means something to the mind

Causing an inner liberation
Enlightenment or flight
It is a matter of life and death
When darkness turns to light.

400 years America ,
For 400 years America, we've been playing this game of cat and mouse, and for 400 years America, you refuse to give us the keys to the house.
For 400 years America , we've been asking to be free, and for 400 years America , you sat there and you promised me, all the freedom I could ask for , for just a small fee
For 400 years America , we've been paying that small fee in sweat, and a concenratred mixture of tears and blood
For over  400 years America , we've had to watch our people bleed , for over 400 years America , you've literally scorched and scathered and destroyed our seed.
For over 400 years America our sons, daughters, fathers , mothers have bled and for over 400 years tear after tear was shed
The flags that represent you, make you free . But the same flags that represent you, don't represent me. The flags that say "all men are created equal" considered me an animal and there seemed to never be a sequel.
400 years later and still "no refuge can save, the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave" I am not blind, don't need a stick or a stave, I am not foolish, I see the road that you page

It ends,
fast and fragile the same way it started.
You get your handshake,
you get your piece of paper
and your four sentences worth of memories
that add up to a fifteen-second walk across a stage.  

All the important people say they're proud of you,
all your friends-
all your friends of friends say they'll miss you.
You toast them to a new beginning;
you smile your way into a new place.

Everything is different now,
four years go by and when it's over it all hits you at once.
Nothing is the same anymore,
everything has changed.

Now you must grow up,
the celebration ends,
the milestone passes,
now you must move on.