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 Apr 2016 Angie S
Baylie Allison
We’re under a vast illusion.
Somewhere along the line we
came under this impression and
somehow we think that
we’ll always have it all together.
Always have all of our
strings wrapped
perfectly around one finger.

That the earth will always
spin the right way.
That the weight of the
metaphorical world won’t tip our
planet’s axis .2 centimeters to the right,
uprooting the ground from
underneath of all of us
suddenly and all at once
the balances shift,
Kristallnacht.
A German word.
It means, simply,
Crystal night.
The night of broken glass.
The night of broken people and
shards of lives.
The night everything fell
apart, suddenly and
all at once
the scales re-arranged themselves,
Kristallnacht.
Mid-way into a thousand year
reign of 12 years.
The end of the beginning and the
beginning of the end.
The definition of destruction and the
physical representation of a
bubbling and spontaneous
hatred.

You see, we’re under a vast illusion.
We think that the world will
always look this way,
That we’ll always be
young forever.

You see, she used to run through
meadows, picking
wildflowers and daisies,
blowing dandelions and making
carefree wishes.
Running barefoot,
arms splayed out,
heart all akimbo through
fields of forget-me-nots,
singing about how he loves her,
loves her not.
Not a care in the world.
Then the riots started and
she couldn’t explain why
the meadow she used to
run in was suddenly full of
stones with names tattooed on the
front with a date.

Overnight, the balances
shifted and that 6 year old
girl seemed to age 10 years.

She saw it all.
Beautiful faces, beautiful minds.
She saw the world fall apart like
fluttering hearts and
butterfly wings at midnight.
People coming back together
in a huddle of broken
promises and forgotten hallelujahs.
A 1000 year reign cut short.
She saw the end of the
world as she knew it.
Saw the careless hatred
decimate her carefree meadow
of daisies.

She began to sing a new song.
Picked a handful of
forget-me-nots and
chose to love
like she did
before the night the world ended.
 Apr 2016 Angie S
Jenna
Girl: (n.) A young female
A stupid, vulnerable being

I don’t want your ranking on a scale from one to ten,
or your whispered accusations: ****, *****, *****.
I don’t want to be catcalled by boys who think they’re men
or your hand in my back pocket and told I’m a tease or a bore.

I don’t get to keep my last name because marriage is the only way,
instead I get a dress code to halt your prying eyes.
I don’t get to walk around at night, sometimes not even during the day,
instead I get a lower pay and am told wage gaps are lies.

So, thank you, society. Thanks for teaching me fast.
Thank you for molding me into this tight plaster cast.
 Apr 2016 Angie S
Gillian Drake
Where do the sunbathed birds go?
I want to know because I'm bleached pale
with the winters woes
and I want out of this cage.
I want to sunbathe were the birds might be,
with their twittering tweetles
and the promise of spring that is so soon around the corner.
Here the weather is just as bi-polar as I believe myself to be.
I'm a self proclaimed doctor with a self proclaimed condition,
and I am prescribing myself a day in the sunshine.
I can't wait to be where the robins lay their eggs,
where the sparrows fly with a glint of their tail left behind them,
and where that indistinguishable "too big for its britches" bird
finds himself his next meal... slowly...
So please, can you give me any directions
to where the sunbathed birds go?
heard some nice poetry today and felt the itch to write something.
I picked a flower in May just to watch her blossom all for myself
Beautiful and brilliant I sat her in a glass on a shelf
I added water so she wouldn't go dry
Magnificence such as hers I couldn't let die
I watched as she grew
Time flew and flew
Her petals orange and blue like a vanilla sky
As she prospered and danced I noticed a change
Something very strange that caught my eye
Her stems became vines intertwined simultaneously with my poetry and life
In place of green,
She overflowed out of the glass in white sheets of paper
And it was there she made her illustration so divine
A perfect drawing of a heart
That turned out to be mine
After fifty years
I slipped into the school.

Madame Bela was visibly pleased
The classroom was too empty
Now I've one to do maths with


No less happy was Auntie Aloka
My favorite student is back
She lifted me up and said with a kiss
So vacant felt my class of English
Without a boy from olden times
Sweetly singing nursery rhymes


My eyes searched her and before long
Miss Jaya spoke in her softest tongue
I'm so glad to see his face
Sans him Bengali class was all emptiness


And there he was the only Sir
Amiyo Baboo the sports teacher
Isn't this the boy never won my trust
For always being in every race last


Fifty years haven't changed a bit
Either their age or their spirit
And surely the fun was doubly more
When I stood before the school mirror.
 Apr 2016 Angie S
Gaffer
I told her marriage was an institution.
She went mental.
I consoled myself with shooting the tortoise.
It was for the best.
There was no way it would win the greyhound derby.
She was beyond reason.
I was bringing it out of its shell.
I sort of laughed uncontrollably.
She didn’t.
She actually was trying to bring it out of its shell.
I suggested mad passionate love.
She wanted chocolates.
How about a toffee crisp and a fumble.
How about you dropping dead.
Who would pick up your pills if I dropped dead.
I would pick up my own pills.
What, you don’t know what day of the week it was last Thursday.
I was in love last Thursday.
Not with me.
No, with the pet shop owner
You do know he’s married.
He was leaving her for me.
He’s married to a bloke.
They’re both leaving their wives for me.
Is this about the tortoise.
What tortoise.
Never mind, let's get married.
Just now.
Yes, we can get married in the chemist shop
Somehow that makes sense.
What about children.
You could get them at the supermarket.
Three for two.
They hide them behind the screens now.
Children.
No silly, the alcohol I think.
They don’t hide the chocolates.
Did you really shoot the tortoise.
Yes, but the bullet bounced off its shell.
That’s good.
Not really, the pet shop owner was holding it.
 Apr 2016 Angie S
Sjr1000
I don't know what I'm doing
I don't know what I'm feeling
I don't know where I'm going
I don't know who I'm being
I'm overwhelmed,
frustrated,
I can't cope

These are the slogans
I repeat to myself
Over and over again

Oh yeah

I'm a failure too
I've lived this life
What did I do?
What do I have to
show for it?

These facts about myself
are the one thing
I'm very positive about.

I repeat these slogans
day in and day out
always wondering
what I'm so
depressed about

I bury my head in these sands

Suffocating
Smothering
choking on anxiety
in my own
advertising slogans
on my private airwaves

To complicate
matters
worse
just because we think something
doesn't make it true
that goes for
self worth too.

But

Mindfulness
stands
watching the passing cars
from a freeway overpass
like our racing thoughts
not holding on
not making them go away,
in peace
simply
letting them
be.
States of mind are transitory, come and go.
 Apr 2016 Angie S
Penguinie
A flower sat deep in a mountain hole,
he kept his goals sacred and his petals whole.
They said he was a dreamer,
that had kept his feelings in and became a little meaner.

He was as nice as an angel,
well at first that's what it seemed.
Because he became a flower,
in what he wanted as a dream.

Then one day as he bloomed,
a fish that looked like the sky,
put a cast of magic into his eye,
and just as soon as death came apon him,
just like the wind,
you can never, ever predict its course.
**(Based on the character Asriel Dreemurr from the game Undertale by Toby Fox)
 Apr 2016 Angie S
David N Juboor
If I were a teacher,

I'd teach plagiarism
Like a patent office.
I'd teach publication
Like plagiarism,
And I'll proofread
Any paper that properly
Cites their sources.

I'd teach every
Kid from age X to Y
That if I can't
Lift them as
High as they
Want to go
Than somebody
Else
Can.

I would be the man,
That teaches subjects
Like I'm their King,
And I'd spread
Knowledge to every
Acre of my empire
I'd teach anything.

See,
I'd teach chemistry
By making the reaction of
Why and How
Always synthesize
Wow.

I'd be a catalyst
For positive change
By keeping every
School-yard bully
and kid that's always picked last
Around after class
To teach them physics,

Like if you have mass
And you take up space
Then you ******* matter.

I'd put the cool
in Coulombs.
I'd be so electrostatic
About magnetic fields
You could feel my fluxin'
Energy in the hallway.

I'd say
His story,
And Her story,
And everyone in-between's story,
Is about the day their parents met.

I'd teach ***-ed
Like it's about the
Day their parents met.
And it wouldn't be weird
It'd be beautiful.
Because anybody falling
In love is beautiful.

And speaking of beautiful:

Mathemagics,
Would no longer
Be a bottomless hat
But a bird.
With feathers and wings
And things that always
Find their way home.

I'd transform
The Fourier of
Our foundations
With equations
Of equality
Like you,
And I are
Always equal to
Us.

It'll be cake
To be genius.
....Or pie
Or whatever else is rational
In this situation.

And I
Would measure intelligence
With the answer to the question
Of why we are alive.

I'd standardize
Every test
By removing
Any box that
Takes us
Further apart

I would make art
Combining every
Color from East to West
In a masterpiece
That every child can draw
We'll call it "human"

I would solve
World hunger
And war,
And every other problem
That stems from greed
With answers to the
Questions that I still
Don't know

But I would show
Everyone whose ever
Made you hurt
That a broken heart
Has still got the
Courage to beat

Because it's their words
Where the heart breathes
Where the heart bleeds
Where the heart sleeps

And it's our dreams
That keep us awake
In the wake of our past

So I'd put every love letter
And box of their ****
On a bonfire, light a match,
And we would watch it burn.

Hell,
If I were a teacher
I'd say there's
So much left
That I've still got
To learn.
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