I don't feel beautiful inside anymore. I don't look at myself in the mirror these days.People no longer tell me about the twinkle in my eyes. I don't feel good about being dressed up anymore. I no longer smile randomly. I don't have anything to look forward to. You are going farther and farther away, because the light at the end of the tunnel keeps getting dimmer and dimmer every second.
Maybe you are the light.
Maybe you are more.

Blue flowered in the warm sun of winter
pungent fragrance wafts splendorous
smallish leaves, grow deeply green
with a sun-ward slant they lean
hum and sing with bees
reaching ever upward
wild, their fingers untamed
vigorous, they flourish
lushly in the lane
our hands grow green stained
here in a dream field
handfuls of rosemary
we steal

A year older, a year wiser

A wisdom always in the making
Nourished by experience
Vitaminized by failures
Strengthened by aspirations
Built on the foundation of hope!

Year after year
Brick after brick
Wiser
Cemented by determination
Watered by dreams
Cracked by blows
Repaired by a mason
Working round the clock
Anointing healing!

Get up man.

You are a year older
But a year wiser

And the fruits of this wisdom
Often unseen
Oftener unknown
Ripen inside
And then no more just yours
Scatter in the surround
Beget nurseries of wisdom
Building, vitaminizing, strengthening
Repairing healing
Your foundation
Your hope!

I refuse to apologize for the things I've written.
I refuse to apologize for telling truths amongst the cacophony in rhymes, or rhythms, or word *****.
I refuse to not own this brain, to regret my depression, to swallow my anxiety with a pill.
I will not lie, as my family expands and my brain reconforms to standards I forgot, it gets harder to dig up the person that bled for these words.
She and I aren't the same anymore, but we belong to the same body.
So I call on her when I need her, let myself really feel everything, my alter ego: the poet.
As my boyfriend's family asks me what I do for fun, I try not to lie. To say that I pour words from my soul is distasteful. So I joke "I'm a poet of sorts, a writer."
And they look at me with frightened eyes, so I do not tell them this is what I want to do for a living.
I do not tell them about the razor blades beneath my bed at age 16, or the ****** assault at 20.
I do not tell them inside this head is a mess that is desperately hiding.
But I do not disown her. My mess. My poet heart.

Men speak of evil. How do they know it so? Men speak of the evil that lives down below? They might give it colors and maybe a face? But its only fear standing in its place.
Men speak of angels to oppose devils down below. But they only punish men who knew evil as friend not foe.
Men speak of evil as a man or as a thing. Something that's been given life by a greater being.
Evil is a act, not one of god.
Men may speak of evil but they don't truly understand, evil is committed by the deeds of thy own hand.
no demon will credit himself of you, the evil that you do? That is a choice made by you.

Swift, the rain in colors grey
black the daylight whisked away
by steely skies, charcoal smudged
the ashen clouds amid blowing winds
surreal this field, this pelted land
the scream of hurried birds, that scatter

The terrible thing about poets is we're all sadistic masochists.
We all want to read about heartache, and we all want to write about the demons that haunt us in our worst hours.
We never talk about our happiness, our productive days and nights where we slept enough.
We drown in each other's depression so nicely, a swimming pool of lonely writers, ink pooling around us each because we always carry pens in our pockets.
No one wants to know how happy we are. How our boring mundane human life of doing dishes and vacuuming the carpet went.
We all want to stick the knives in a little deeper, to draw out a little more of each other's blood. Because honestly, our poetry has always been written in blood, sweat, and tears.
That's the thing about poets. We'd rather be miserable and have something to write about than be happy and have nothing to write about.

To separate from youth,

The mind mastered
And a brazen flame forwards
The march

Watching all innocence
Fade, devoured by time
And taking every moment

Watching the son become
The father in a blank slate

While knowing the woman
Under the sun, every day
A work of progress.

hello there chellovecks and forellas
appy polly logies for the chepooka
for i am only a devotchka
begging for a malenky lomtick of jeezny

droogies and nadsats
everyone who owns a pair of ookos
listen up to
your humble narrator

bring me a pletcho platch
and a polyclef
to open up the sun.