the sickle moon scythes
through clouds wrinkled by old age...
starlit souls escape

snowflakes spin
around the tip of my cigarette
a cold galaxy
at the edge of my breath

(published in Dark Pens issue 1)

"Angels can't be black, stupid" she said to me
And she said it so matter-of-factly
To the eight year old boy with a figurine
That his mother gave him, looking so kindly
And I didn't know of her words nonsensicle
But everywhere I looked, in books, store windows and tv specials
I saw that angels in serenity with floating halos
And all of them were white

So I was down, not surprisingly
Because think of how mad or sad you'd be
To find Heaven's hosts had no minorities
And that an angel could not be made of me
And angrier I became as on tears I choke
To be the **** of that little girl's joke
And to find all the words my mother spoke
Might be only lies and fairy tales

And with my head planted on my desk
The angel next to me did rest
As my teacher saw my distress
And question my obvious bitterness
I shrugged her off and her query grew
"Nik Bland, what in the world's eating you?"
And I told her what that girl and the whole world knew
About the fable of my figurine

And she listened to my childlike woes
As tears streamed down, sobs did grow
And she nodded as I said I did not know
A single place in the bible where minorities showed
A trace and she went up to the class
And spoke that, scientifically, in the past
It's been shown that the brown skinned and blacks
Were the colors of the first of the human race

So that sparked a fire within my mind
To realize that if humankind
Found a way to travel back in time
They might be seeing an ethnic Adam and Eve
And she showed me on the map the Middle East
And my heart rate slightly increased
To see it held Israel and Bethlehem, doubts then ceased
As I saw the mixed skin color of their people

And as the class pondered this, she came to me
And told me very quietly
Of her and her Christianity
And of Jesus, whose chose his mixed coloring
And with tears in her eyes, she put that angel in my hands
And to me that I must understand
That God looks past the color of the man
For He painted us all

And Christian or not, you must admittedly
Say that the world is a piece of artistry
That is incomparable to any man has in the making
And that we are all living here equally
And show we pass on, some soon than most
But with belief in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
That eight year old boy could proudly boast
About the angel, so serene... and black

Her heart stopped for a little while and I swore I heard her smile
As I spoke to her thousands of miles away
She told me of her smiles and frowns, brought me through her ups and downs
Bringing me right to here and up to date
Sitting, pondering such things as cheese *****, waterfalls, and angel wings
And I laid there in the dark, just listening
Hearing people pass her by, I watched her laugh and heard her cry
With truths and lies, like tears on her cheek, glistening
For her fibs lied in her saying that love was fluff, a made up thing
And she would not, could not see her in that light
But I knew more than she let on, the girl who knew those words were wrong
A romantic hiding in the dead of night

A spaceman among all the stars, a long way from a blue sky
With lullabies inside recordings that are from long ago
Seeing reds of gas clouds through the window as they pass me by
The hum of the engines as they pass by many a moon's glow

And my eyes have seen all the wonders over and under multiple suns
As I travel each corner faster than the wink of an eye
Watching a dazzling ballet perform every day for a crowd of one
Shedding firework tears and sending me off with untold goodbyes

Fret not, I've yet to forget the grassy knoll that I once knew
In the days before the rocket's roar in the days long past
Within dreams I do dwell in the metal shell past the skies of blue
And the view of that blue marble someday just might be my last

26 letters arranged and rearranged
when don’t form poetry can drive you deranged

when work they form tales
that can your senses assail

they take you to a different place
and bring out emotions you can’t trace

they can make you smile, cry and laugh
the power in a few paragraphs

they can move you to the depths of your soul
thats the magic of the poets role

I am a dot on Seurat’s canvas.

You told me that I wouldn’t be respected if I used Times New Roman, well maybe I don’t write to be respected. Maybe I write in Times New Roman because I like to read in it.

I could write in Wingdings. Would that make you happy? Would that make me stand out?

I don’t write with words I don’t understand and I don’t embellish nature to sounds pretty. Times New Roman isn’t trying to impress anybody and neither am I.

I am writing about what is real and I am writing about how I feel and I don’t need your opinion and I don’t want to hear your spiel.

Did that make me stand out?

Our eco-friendly toothbrushes sit together in the cup on the counter but today I didn’t brush my teeth. The snow is great. Want to know why, because the snow doesn’t give a **** how anybody else feels and it doesn’t ***** its feelings all over twitter. The snow knows that nobody cares.

The snow never says “anyways” or “whatever” or “oh god”  and the snow doesn’t undermine what I have to say. The snow is cold and it *****, but at least it doesn’t question me. It doesn’t ask me if I need space. Nope. It just keeps snowing.

The snow and I are on good terms. It isn’t polite and it doesn’t try to be anything that it is not. It doesn’t cook barley with kale and it definitely doesn’t pretend to like it.