She walked in her world
On a ground of cloth
She felt stable
And was very well off

This girl was curious
And liked to tease out the strings
Not carring that her pulling
Was messing with things

The girl grew older
And pulled out more strings faster
The holes forming in the fabric
Seemed to fly past her

Once she knew what was happening
She felt fear and dread
What once was strong fabric
Was now a spider's web

And though she valued
The knowledge she gained
The new veiw of frail heights
Put her mind under strain

She wondered which was better,
Scratching her head:
To walk on unteased cloth
Or a thoroughly pulled web

Crickets chirp
Birds call
Wolves howl
Monkeys shreik
Dolphins whistle
Men speak
Singers sing

*And we write

Water flow throughout me
Down into the earth
Wash away my past life
Awake me in rebirth

Water flow around me
Paint your 3D tapestry
Those otherworldly earthy scenes
Of the rivers, lakes, and seas

Water flow down on me
From upon those clouds so high
Drizzle, drip, and thunder down
From the endless sky

Water flow throughout me
As you move about the world
Moving both slowly and quickly
In motions both meek and bold

Follow your dreams
Unless they're weird
Stand up for yourself
But don't start a fight
Be yourself
Unless you're different
Belive in yourself
But authority is always right

Some people say that mass shootings
Wouldn't happen if both sides had guns
They say that a vigilante crossfire
Can protect our nation's daughters and sons

To those people I will tell
A story told to me by my family
About a situation exactly like that
And what the true outcome would be

There was a woman, one of my cousins
From somewhere on my family tree
I've never met her, but my parents know her
And she is related to me

This young woman met a man
And eventually they were engaged
But what happened next definately was
Where things took a turn for the strange

See, my cousin decided to move four hours away
With her fiance once they were married
This would require her to change her job
And the responses to this were varied

In particular my cousin's boss
Had a rather bizarre objection
When she told him of this, he confessed
That, for her, he harbored an affection

My cousin, of course, moved anyways
Though she and her husband were very concerned
And they were shocked to find her boss stalking her
As into their lives he returned

So her husband went to the local sheriff
And told him what was happening
About how his wife's old boss followed them
To the point where it became maddening

The sheriff told him he would help
That he would look into what could be done
And he also said they'd be safer
If the man got himself a gun

So my cousin's husband did that
Learned how to fire a shot
Then one day the old boss met them
In an empty parking lot

The fighting escalated quickly
To tensions it had never reached before
The man pulled out his gun, and told his wife to run
Into the nearby Wal-Mart store

The boss had brought a gun as well
And this is the ending that I shall tell
A shot to the stomach and a shot to the head
By the end of the night, both men were dead

You will not break my mind
You will not shatter my spirit
Try me as you want and you will find
That I am quite resilient

I'm looking above me
Up into the sky
And thinking about the distance
Between you and I

I'm looking around me
At my pictures with you
And wondering what
Is the right thing to do

I'm looking within me
To see what I can find
Hoping our future
Can be found in my mind

"You shouldn't go there, young child,
For there are things I'd rather you didn't find."

I agreed politely and smiled
And thought "If only you could read my mind."

Do you think I could make it?

No one's watching me right now...
I'm outside and there aren't any guards

I don't even have to show up for another thirty minutes
No one would even think to look for me until then

I could just run off through the trees
And never come back

I could go on the road north
(Probably by hitchhiking)
And be in the international city
Where no one would find me

Why should I stay here?
My peers taunt me
And treat me like a contagion
Those in charge of us
Find me to be a troublemaker
And exclude me from groups for it
And I'm always bored with our work
I finish hours before the day is out

I could just leave this island
And never come back

....I could do it...

....they'd catch me
I can't get off of the base
Without climbing over razor-wire topped fences
Or swimming over open water fully clothed
And if I tried the gate
The gaurd would easily stop me

I could hide inside the complex
But when they've realized I've escaped
The military police will be called
And they will comb the base
Cornering me until I'm surrounded

I'm going to be released in one year, anyways.
I can make it one more year, can't I?

Can I?

I don't have another choice,
Unless someone were to help me
Sneak a sailboat into my escape route

Hold on, girl
It's only one more year

Wait, am I late for class?
I've got to get back
Before they notice that I'm gone

I want to sit with you by the Arby's
And watch the future's lights pass overhead
I want to run together in the breeze
Through the desert with the glow cloud ahead
I want to eat at Big Rico's with you
Maybe we could sneak in some wheat products
I want to find out if we could get through
This town without joining that calm forest
I want to visit the science district
And we can go watch an experiment
We can go to see something artistic
For the stray dog's graffiti is apparent
I want to listen to the radio
And, with you, wonder where else we can go

My favorite juxtaposition
Is when a city goes totally silent
When the widest streets are empty
And the only sounds are quiet

The bustling stores are still closed
And no one else is walking around
The city looks amazingly different
With only a few men in the ground

The buildings stand tall and silent
While those up late tuck in for the night
And the earliest risers have yet to awake
To meet the ever blinking lights

The signs are as bright as ever
And the lights still work 'round the clock
But not a single bike, car, or man
Can be seen on the city block

I stand on the silent street corner
Feeling the moment rush through me
For stunningly empty cities
Are some of my favorite places to be

Like a black anaconda
I lose my breath to your grip
In a moment of delight

How can I ever get to sleep
When my mind is always screaming?
And for what reason should I sleep
When I am always dreaming?

"You used to be so fearless
And now you only think
If what can go wrong.
I wish you'd become fearless again."

Don't you think
That if I could stop fearing
I would?
Do you think
That I like
Being afraid?

I came to a fork
In the one road I knew
A fork unlike others
I had already been through

On each pathway
Stood a strange being
I blinked, rubbing my eyes
Unsure of what I was seeing

I then heard a voice,
Like it came from within,
"How do you know
What is pure and what is sin?

How do you choose?
Are you swayed by the season?
Or are you guided by them,
By belif and by reason?"

Looking ahead of me
Through my internal mayhem
I saw my two guides
Who once worked in tandem

And I began to wonder:
"By whose law do I abide?"
As I thought, so continued
That voice spoke from inside

"In one road stands reason,
And the other, belif
And in this choice
One is your aide, the other a theif."

"So who do I choose?"
I shouted to implore
But that little voice
Left me alone as before

I looked to faith, standing right
Warm and light up ahead
She offered many answers
But claimed knowledge was too much for my head

I stared at reason, standing left
Crisp, clear, and easy to follow
But he offered no definates
Only peices to borrow

So there I stood
Trying to make my thoughts clear
Two full years later
And I still standing here

I sit here alone
Is it daytime, is it night?
It doesn't matter

My claws mark the walls
I must look like a demon
As I scratch my arms

My unruly mane
reaches down my back, touching
My nine wild foxtails

I howl at the wall
My songs, cries, stories, and poems
Are all I have left

I hear with six ears
If I were free, I could fly
With my four giant wings

I recall that night
When my friends fought so bravely
Are they still alive?

But I'm trapped and chained
Even if I use my flames
To try melting Iron

Sometimes father comes
With the acid cups and chains
And sometimes his hands

He called me his child
But even back then, he lied
I'm just his project

I count slaps and thrusts
Staring up at the ceiling
Refusing to speak

What month is it, now?
I have lost my sense of time
In this grey stone cell

I peel my ears up
Some bread comes through my door's slot
It's down in one bite

When I chose my friends
They showed me what feelings were
And showed me the truth

I wish I could sleep
This windowless torture cell
Worsens my nightmares

I wake up shrieking
Waking, sleeping, I don't care
The nightmare goes on

I'll never tell him
Whatever's on or inside me
I won't betray friends

The cell's not all grey
I hear music and voices
That no one else can

Sometimes I dance along
My chain and claws scratching tiles
Laughing on a shreik

There's also Inverse
My photograph negative
The ghost haunting me

Inverse keeps teasing
He points out my every flaw
I hate that he's right

I shreik at Inverse
I'm trapped, half dead, in this cell
Waiting for "father"

I bite at my chain
The door of my cell opens
"Father" comes inside

Life brings us into this world
With no say on our part
And no indication
Of what happens afterwards

Life brings us into this world
Having us just conscious enough
To know that we have no idea
Of our purpose
Or our fate
And having us care just enough
To be terrified and frustrated by that

If you ask me,
Life, or whoever invented it,
Is an *******

I permeate
My presence surounds the land
Regardless of the nation
It is under my hand

I fly
My parts speed around
Creating the wind
Felt by those on the ground

I combine
With sunlight and water
I make earth's food
And with heat, I make fire

I sustain
All men need me to live
And they leave this earth
When I am not there to give

I support
Both plain and mountain
To many men
My presence is certain

I produce
Feeding grass and trees
Giving nutrients to
Men, beasts, and bees

I challenge
Mountains, canyons and deserts
Serve to separate
Great explorers and the lesser

I enclose
My ranges and ravines
Separate lands
preventing wars that might've been

I burn
Sending light to the sky
Warming and burning
Those who pass by

I blaze
Devouring my fuel
Both a force of nature
And man's tool

I simmer
My coals leave a path
Those who don't think
Will suffer my wrath

I flicker
Sending out rays of light
Cooking and torches
Remind men of my might

I float
Like I am being recreated
I exist in the storm
And when it's abated

I rush
Uncontrollable, wild, and free
In rapids and hurricanes
That uproot the strongest trees

I flow
Slow and calm through the marsh
Among mist, birds, and hunters
Both gentle and harsh

I pour
In drissles and sheets from above
Watering the olive tree
And sending away the dove

We come into existance
Unaware that one day
It will be taken from us
As we spiral into a great unknown
(Because life decided to leave eternity a mystery)

In my dream
I was doing just fine
But it would seem
My subconscious crossed a line
People kept asking
About the bruises on my neck
And upon waking
I went to the mirror to check

Your eyes shine brighter
Than the milky way veiwed from Shenandoah
And twinkle more
Than all of the attacks and special effects in anime

My little redheaded cousin
Still in elementary school
Or whatever it's called in Belfast

The news just came in
From the other side of the pool
The Brexit movement has passed

Will little Aoife still be
Able to travel freely southward
To see the rest of her family in Ireland?

I'll have to wait and see
If North Ireland's change will be hard
I have no idea what's being planned

I remember Nonni's hospital room
I remember nights staring at the moon
I remember the smell of pie
I remember leaving junior high
I remember sailing in a storm
I remember rolling backpacks as a norm
I remember airports and planes
I remember speaking with wax vampire fangs
I remember all of the rain
I remember some of my pain
I remember what I can
I hope I remember who I am

I hear something on tv
About some locality unconnected to me
Thirty seconds later, I forget
I cram last minute for a test
Hoping my score is the best
Two months later, I forget
We wage war in foreign lands
And later recoil at what was done by our hands
Ten years later, we forget
A man dies in an accident
With no idea what life meant
A generation later, the world forgets

The year is 180 AD
                                 The year is 2016 CE
        No one cares for the senators
                        Or the news
       The wage gap is growing wider   The country frequently finds itself divided
Threats abound from both within
                                       And outside
              One thousand years
          Of technology and culture
                  Will be lost again
              for one thousand years
             In the midst of a dark age
This is the end of Pax Romana
                       And, if we're not careful
                         The end of our own era

I rubbed a lamp, like the stories
The genie inquired of my wish
Pausing for half a second, I said
"My first wish is to be fearless."

My second wish, I made days later
Making sure I could come up with the right phrase
I told the bottled phantom "I wish
For acceptance and peace through man's race."

For my third and final wish
From this realm of infinities
I asked that I could have the power
To travel anywhere that I please

I've always found it bizzare
How people describe brutality
As animalistic

Did animals create
The nuclear missile
Showers of zyklon B
The middle passage
The inquisition
The gladiator games?

No, these horrors
Are purely man-made

This brutality
Is not animalistic
It is human.

Let the wild animal
You feel like inside
Come out tonight
You don't need to hide
Wether you croon quietly
Or shout at the moon
The time of our freedom
Will arrive soon
Tonight we can run
Tonight we can prance
Tonight we will fly
Tonight we will dance
In the cover of night
We are free to transform
Into our true selves:
The ones who don't conform
We will hunt
We will play
As we can not
In the day
We will be free to say
"I like being this way."

Imagine that it's 2008
And a third grader
Walks to catch a bus

She's small (only three feet tall)
But walks quickly and quietly
As her sister says "wait for us!"

Imagine that, as she nears
The top of the hill
On a drizzly, chilly morning

She looks ahead
And sees a coyote
And remembers the grown-ups warnings

Everyone else
Is too far behind
To see what she can

The coyote and I
Looked at each other
And after a few seconds, he ran

I've never had many
Problems with history class
most of it's pretty interesting
And I find it easy to pass
But the one thing I don't get
The one thing I cannot see
Is why an American high school
Has this curriculum of eurocentricity
We spent three full months
On ancient Greece and Rome
And less than a week
On the Ottomans' home
We spent one month
On Europe's rebirth
And exactly zero days
On Muslim scholars who changed the earth
We spent two full days
On the palace of Versailles
And not a single class
On Mali or Songhai
One month passed
With European exploration
But not a word was uttered
Of Timbuktu's nation
And don't get me started
On Aborigines or Micronesia
In Asia, China and India aside,
You'd think the teacher had amnesia
What I'd really like to know
Is why our curriculum
Spends most of the year
On all things European
In this melting ***
That we call America
It seems that our lesson plans
Need to be a bit fairer

"Another day
And another mass shooting
In America"

When will we notice?
When will this be the headline:

"Another day
Since the last mass shooting
In the world"?

Ten seconds
Everything's normal

Thirty seconds
It's a little better

Fifty seconds
The headiness sets in

Sixty seconds
My chest is on fire

Eighty seconds
I contemplate life and what's after

Ninety seconds
My hand, tingling
Falls from my face
And I gasp in
Relieved
And dissapointed

Someone once said
That fear always works
It's sad, but it's true
So true that it hurts
I wish I were free
To choose who I meet
But mom always told me
To stay quiet on the streets
What if that guy
You met online
Is a hacker-*******?
In all this fear
I'm starting to wonder
If living is worthwhile

The state of the union
Is one of fear
Keep your religon close
And your race dear
We fear terror and crime
We run and hide
But the true monsters
Are the ones inside

Someone once said
We should only fear fear
Because it's the root of our problems
That much is clear
The news
Whips the mob
Into a state of panic
And convinces us
That any change
Will be just catastrophic

The state of the union
Is one of fear
Keep your religon close
And your race dear
We fear disease and shortage
And we can't relax
And no one around
Knows the real facts

I know
That I'm not
Immune to this, either
I'm losing things
I was taught
Would always be there
And honestly
This girl
Is the last one who should talk
I could be called anxious
I can say it
But can I walk?
But even to
A shy, nerdy
Girl like me
The media's
Fear-mongering
Is plain to see
But the media
Only reflects
What polls say we want
So maybe society
Needs to check
What it flaunts

The state of the union
Is one of fear
Keep your religon close
And your race dear
We fear each other
And the outside world
But maybe one day
We'll learn to be bold

Margo Roth Speigelman
Is the girl
I always wished I could be.

In reality,
I'm more
Like Hazel Grace Lancaster
Minus the cancer.

In the end,
I only want
To get out of this paper town
Come to terms with the fault in our stars
And the fact that I'll never find Alaska.

We have
Some of the highest test scores
Some of the highest placing graduates
Some of the more expensive neighborhoods
And our teams and ensembles
Are nationaly recognized

We also have
At least one trafficking incident in every school
At least one suicide per school per year
Drug deals so rampant every student has seen one by the time they graduate
Fights in the hallway almost every day
And school counselors who can tell you all about what classes you're best suited for
But who can't give halfway decent advice for life

Tienes labios rosas
Y pelo *****,
Quiero te besar
Y estar bailando.

My poet, I'm flattered by your attention
But your comments are rather misguided
You are mistaken about my condition
I truly wish your words could be abided
I'm not always quite this fair and gentle
And I'm not, by any means, eternal
Truthfully, sometimes I think I'm mental
Viewed closely, most previous notions fall
I'm not a fair day, I'm a hurricane
Inside my mind, flowers don't stand a chance
I'm sorry if my response gives you pain
But if you find that you still want to dance
I, too, would like to turn another page
And see if we share scenes in this world's stage

I want to breathe in so deeply
My lungs inflate
Break their cage
And let my heart
Along with my feelings, thoughts, fear, and numbness
Fly out
So I hold my breath
And I almost get there

The ink on my palms
Realistic dripping cuts
But in blue and black

Instead of red blood
Art, poetry, and music
Flow in my mind's eye

In a high school parking lot
I waited for the car to pass by
On the roof, a black sparrow
Lay up against the sky
I said "I wish I were like you,
For far away would I fly
Not afraid to take wing
Unafraid to take a dive
Not afraid to live
And not afraid to die."

I'm not laughing because you're wrong
I'm laughing because you're the first person
To get it right

Yes, I am insane

I don't stay up late at night
Because I enjoy sudden mornings
And hazy eleven o'clock headaches

I stay awake
Because I'm afraid
To loose all the time
I was given
And because
My mind is too loud
To get any sleep

I hold my breath
Because then my lungs finally feel full
And the heady onset at fifty seconds
Finally relaxes me

I ignore your normal jokes
And become a hyena
When you talk about groceries

Yes, I'm crazy.
Crazy enough to scratch and bite
Not at attackers
But at myself

Yes, my dear ambassador.
This is insanity
Where reason meets it's inverse reflection
And silence is the loudest sound

"Why does this matter?"
What? What do you mean....
"Why would people be interested in this?
What use would it have in real life?"
I'm not sure
But why should that matter?
Was Einstein thinking of who would care
When he thought up E=MC2
No. He wasn't.
I can tell you for a fact
That when he came up
With his relative theory
He was staring out of his window
And wondering
"What would happen if a man fell down
Inside a rapidly falling elevator?"

OK, but I get that you're trying to emphasize
Why people should care about science
So that the slackers in the class
Might become interested
In the project
So I won't catalog plant species
By concentrations
In different areas

"How will you control this?"
What? What do you mean?
I literally wrote out the variables.
"If you can't make the conditions
Exactly the same,
If you can't make sure
That someone could do exactly as you did,
The experiment isn't viable."

So, you're telling me
That even though
Comparing the air qualities
In different places
To see if any one place has inherently better air quality
Is not a viable experiment
Because if the wether
Is so much as one degree different
When someone else
Tries to test it
It will skew the results
So severely
That no one can
Make heads or tails of it?

Ok, I guess I'll just test stain removers on ink
Because I need a midterm grade

America isn't purple mountains and prairies
It isn't 1930's New York City
It's not marble columns and domes
It isn't crazy politicians and gridlock in Washington

And it certainly isn't Red, White, and Blue. Australia, Russia, Slovakia, and Great Britain are all red, white, and blue.
Heck, they're the exact same shades of red, white, and blue

America is freedom
America is tolerance
America is acceptance

America is about taking your traditions
And mixing them with the traditions of people around you

America is about saying what we want to
And not what someone else wants us to

America is about letting the people take the reigns.
"We the people"
It's the first line of the constitution

It's why we have memorials, marble columns, and congress

It's why people died fighting for it

Don't forget it

America is an ideal
Not a place
Not a person
Not an object

America is as beautiful
As we choose to make it
*what do you want it to look like?

For the love of God
Or karma
The force
Whatever it is that exists out there
Wash this away

Wash away
The melancholic numbness
The sadness that I can't express
Even if I try
To force myself to cry

Wash that feeling
Into the concrete
And leave in my place
A girl
Emptied and free
One who has no knowledge
And no fear
Of this life
Or the next