dear evolution
normally I really like your work
*but today I hate you.

The thunder is the click
The lightning is the flash
The storm takes a picture
For the universe's dash

"See, I've found that not a lot rattles you"*
I can't let it in my surrounding world
From populist risings gaining their roots
To drugs in the school (such as the bus girl)
I've seen school street plays, and blood on hall floors
And news that doesn't care about the truth
I've heard your fights with mom, in and out doors
I've seen infection spread amongst the youth
So call me jaded or darkly funny
But the way I am, you just have to be

The tryant rises over the city
The crowd's minds in wiped obedience
The free-people's prince flees swiftly
His savior anonymously leads him in silence

The elder, masked and cloaked, leads,
Thorns following around him,
the child Prince through the weeds
To hiding on the cliff's rim

Twelve years in the mountain
A youthful wolf looks over the river
Thinking he surely would've been slain
Had the king of thorns been any less swifter

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?

What keeps me off the dating scene
Are the scars that will become seen

I believe in equality
That people should not be authority and subjects
But equals with different skill sets and positions

I believe in advancement
That our world will change over time
That progress will be made
That inventors and artists will create
And leaders and makers will revolutionize

I believe in understanding
That we can learn to understand our world, our place in it, and our fellow humans
That we can gain the knowledge to shape our environment and ourselves

I believe in hope for the future, carpe diem, and in remembering the stories of the past

Let's do this

Some of my friends are filled with fear
Some have no idea how they got here
And while I'm just starting to plan
I'm not daunted by what I don't understand
Since I've been waiting for six and a half years

"You know, I don't think you have
The right
To be angry with me right now."

Maybe I am being irrational
Maybe I am stubborn and a little begrudging
Maybe I am silly
Hormonal
And stupid
but I have the right
*to feel whatever emotion I want to

It's not always wise to trust what you see
Depending on my hairstyle, shoes, clothes, and makeup, I can look twelve or thirty three

Cold hands, warm heart means
I have an instant ice pack
Wherever I go

I don't mind the rain
Sixty degrees and misty
Is perfect weather

People know about
Corned beef and Guinness, but not
The lamb stews and tea

Long walks are the best
Both medieval city streets
And grassy green hills

And I know that there
Is a definite difference
In types of tubers

She has the same taste in music as me
We have a similar fashion sense
We both love science, orchestra, and doodling
We're both insane
We both love anime
There is a mutual possibility of blackmail
We tell each other everything
We like the same youtubers
We both don't always get along with our moms
We both had weird childhoods
We're the perfect lab partners
We love our Science Olympiad team
We both have family in other countries
We both sometimes resent the fact that our dads married our moms

"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

I looked at my planner
To see my schedule in a glimpse
On election day, a month old note read
"Cookie sales and a possible apocalypse"

What do you see?
What do you think of me?
Honors student, violinist
Maybe a future scientist
You'd never guess
When we'd first meet
That the girl I am
Is more than the one you greet
Get to know me
And you might see
The true person beneath
The apearance bequeathed

Yo creo que es
Un poco tanto
Que Cortés
No fui cortes
A las Aztecas

Set of eclipse glasses: about ten dollars
Tin of coffee: also ten dollars
Watching a receding eclipse in a thundering sunshower with family, friends, and an anxious dog while joking about omens and modern politics: priceless

Looking at eyes an icy blue
One and two, claws strike true
Looking at a scene of mess and gore
Three and four, she won't see you anymore
Looking at that devil who once played tricks
Five and six, no wonder she's ******
Eyes start to close as life abates
Seven and eight, the night won't wait
For the love of her family and her friends
Nine and ten, could she ever start again

We'll be coming home tonight
We've seen every sine
A few timely intervals
And I'll make you mine

You'll be tangent to my curves
The approximation will be tight
Like an exponential function
We have infinite domain tonight

You don't need to worry about an x
We've already found our y
Our functions are constant
And the f (x) don't lie

We can carve out our own area
A little sector of secrecy
So as the arc of the night goes on
We'll lie together, parallel, just you and me

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

I love the way that
Library bookshelves quiet
The sound of the world

So that I can search
For my mind's satisfaction
Without the chaos

So that just maybe
My mind can quiet down, too
From its raging roar

Limbo
Is draping across two bus seats
At two in the morning
On an empty highway
Surrounded by vast grasslands
En route to Chicago
And praying to a god
That you don't belive in
That you'll get more
Than two hours of sleep
Or
Failing that
Wifi that actually works
In this silent, half sleeping
Microcosm

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

How great it would be
For you and for me
If we could simply be together
Honest and free

How great it would be
If the world could just see
That we're all human beings
You, them, and me

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

Thank you, A, for showing me
I wasn't the monster they made me out to be
For showing me that, in the end
Even freaks can have some friends

When you first approached me, I thought you were mad
For wanting to befriend someone so unspeakably bad
For a full hour, I thought you were a prank
That you were just there to give my chains a yank

In a way, you were my first friend
Hell, you were the second who didn't leave or betray me in the end
And the first I liked, but didn't see enough
I guess, for me, it was more puppy love

But in seventh grade, in a darkened gym
I sat at an empty table within
With so many seats, I couldn't believe
That you'd voluntarily sit and talk to me

And though we don't talk much anymore
Since I moved away and got more chores
Your memory always shines in my mind
As the first true friend I ever did find

It's kind of funny
I almost didn't have it
But I'm glad I did

'Twas only a year
But everything changed so much
That I'm not the same

I have said little
So caught up in my life that
I have yet to write

Four school principals
But now I am free of that
From FCPS

Rapid fire news
Three different protests aloud
In response to it

And my views have changed
March I did not tell, but then
I joined DSA


I have changed my world
Flipping between three websites
For my social life

I have changed my town
College is hard at times, but
I love it so much

With chosen family
A punk scene and D&D
I don't want to leave

It was not painless
But somehow I got up and
Finally got help

And then I came out
Free from parental meddling
Finally honest

Still I play fiddle
Still I watch Marvel movies
Still the same workplace

But within a year
My worldview has changed so much
And I can't go back

Nor do I want to
In spite of future challenge
I now love my life

So to the new year
No matter what it shall bring
I will be ready

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

Twenty more weeks of high school in all
Twenty more weeks of this ****
It's only 'till June
Let's hope it comes soon
Twenty more weeks of high school in all

I do still love you
But things have been happening
This has to be done

Whatever this is
Its my problem and not yours
I won't drag you in

I hope you're okay
I know we're on good terms, but
I can't help this guilt

I am moving on
But the things this uncovered
Are just starting up

My feelings are these weird little creatures
That can make me want to hide
I sure as hell can't show them to others
So I keep them hidden inside
Except for around a precious few:
My two besties and the poems at my bedside
They are the ones whom I'm comfortable with
And whom I don't feel the need to abide

The moon's outline is always crisper
And the stars seem to multiply
When I'm away from the city air
Beneath a clearer sky
And sometimes I don't notice
(I'm more worried about the bears)
But when I can let my guard slip
I never really want to leave there

Sitting in a large hotel room
Thinking of the competition coming soon
One person in my left has a binder out
The kids across the hall are trying not to shout
Fixing up the gadgets at the last minute
While some play board games in the mindset to win it
It's 11:30 at night, I'm eating cold Chinese
Win or lose, fail or fly, I do as I please
We all cheer when the fourth comes back with ice
This moment is my paradise

Sitting on a mountain the temperature of snow
I eye the massive valley below
The farms and forests make a patchwork quilt
The streets and towns are embroidery of silk
The sun rises, setting the treetops on fire
My campmates wake up slow with some ire
Out here, I'm awed by mother earth's ways
As my friends and I decide how to navigate our days
I don hiking clothes under the day's new light
This moment is my paradise

Summer in full swing, the crickets cry
As twilight yeilds stars in the sky
We wander the camp, the ocean roars in the distance
Masters of our fate, we don't need assistance
Whether at the beachfront, ziplining, or boardwalks
We run like a fox pack, not caring who gawks
As we think of the adventures of the world ahead
There's nowhere I'd like to be instead
As our flip flops crack on the ground the camp comprised
This right here is my paradise

We're running around another big city
So much to see, and I have my group with me
We just got out of our musical clinic
Now it's time to explore the town, see the magic in it
We'll meet up at five, for a dinner at seven
We'll go on a boat and get back at eleven
Right here, right now, we can make our own way
Free from routine, we get to have a say
We're a bit confused, a little underdressed
We still need chaperones, and we're way underslept
Even with all of that, this will more than suffice
This right here is my paradise

Irony is
Needing a bookmark for Fahrenheit 451
Rooting around in your backpack
And the first thing you pull out
Is a fire energy pokemon card

We
Poets
Are by far
The strangest ones
The ones who see rhyme
Where others just see pain
The ones who find darkness where
Others ignore it for the light
The ones who write unabashedly
And yet are still afraid to be themselves
The ones who are childlike in our intentions
But by far more mature in our thoughts and our means
We have to be this way, because being a poet
Is being strange and paradoxical, like life and death

Boba bubbles in our milk tea
Kids in the bathroom getting high
All fashions out in the open
With no dress code to abide
Movies, songs, clothes and parties
"Buy things!" Shout messages to our eyes
Discovering the American ways
From barbecues to facists' ides
Discovering our stance in this world
Making laughter and love on the sly
We'll celebrate our youth as it passes by
Birds of different plumes in an azure sky

Last games with our friends
Before the fall goodbyes
We've got social media on lockdown
Just until our working times
We campaign for people and our earth
Each day we hear more lies
Letting our voices ring out
Under the endless sky

In the summer heat we stroll
Every now and then ducking inside
Most of the prep work is already done
But some college calls still lie to the side
Each day each nation's dystopia grows
And the resistance comes up on the rise
For change, youth, and play are all rising high
In the bright, hot summer sky

The society saw a black and white dichotomy
He saw the world in his own way, a nuanced greyscale
She jumped in and showed him a world of vibrant hue
Together they found the whole EM spectrum
But when they tried to tell their friends, they saw
That they stuck to the two chroma way
Fearing the loss of light, the two
Ran off to those who they had
Been told were savages
They kept on running
Moving until
Finally
They were
Free

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 *******

There's a version of me
Who's smart, pretty, and strong
But she only exists in my mind
In the midst of stories and songs

I think a brick wall would show my feelings towards you
Talking's no use, and fighting isn't, too
And I've tried over, around, under, and through
And now I've stopped talking, because what else I can do

Your motive is hate
Your mood is irate
Your news feed is fake
Your plans aren't my fate