I delete almost every word I write
As though I can eradicate the feeling.
But I can't. It doesn't work.
Nothing changes. And nothing feels right.

I don't know what it's like to be you
But for me,
I am sitting in this room,
With all the people I love,
And I want to cry myself to sleep in the middle of the day.

They don't notice that I'm here
But the second I go to leave they cry out.
I'm the elf on the shelf,
Or the cookies you leave out for Santa.
You know he won't eat them, I mean,
**** - he's not even real.
But you can't not have them there.
That would be wrong.
I am your favourite piece of furniture.

Discard me, and get it over and done with.
It's more humane than making me sit here and watch you live your life.

Would you like to be in my movie
I'm going to make you a star
You'll be my leading lady
Feel free to come as you are

It will be billed as a comedy
With a bit of romance in the mix
We'll have oodles of fun in the making
I'll even put you on my A-list

When we're not busy in the filming
We can both go over our lines
Where you tell me you love me
And I'll repeat back in kind

It will have its share of sequels
I'm thinking more than 4 or 5
We might even make the cover of People
That way we'll know we've arrived

So let's try and set up a meeting
Discuss over dinner what we can do
About you being in my hit movie
Where I'll make a star out of you

The first thinkers were poets
Naming Mother Earth
Beginning symbolic thinking
Of nature, death and birth

Though themes are often repeated
Love, Beauty and God
Poetry in the guise of Religion
A prophet or a fraud

The poet resurrects the Primitive
Through allegory and similes
Disarming the unknown like explorers
Sublime Prophets and Visionaries

They must lay bare those treasured images
That must be expressed
Unraveling and revealing the sounds
At each soul’s behest

Encompassing the entire Cosmos
So lyrical the beat
The poet’s excitement flows outward
Laid at the Reader’s feet

So original, individual
She won’t examine or explain
Letting go the festering feelings
Disturbances in her brain

He exposes his dark, wounded psyche
Just to release and express
Such capacity to see and compare
Hyperbole at its best

I love, I hate, I suffer
A special dance in rhythm and rhyme
The poet as a buffer
Lessening the pain and sting of time

Laden with symbol and feelings
She gives you sweet relief
From something urgent, revealing
Confusion to belief

Through a cinematic kind of seeing
The poet purges to transform
By leaping through Alice’s looking glass
She never was one to conform

Quite intolerant of convention
Just like The Mad Hatter
His passions immune to all logic
In syncopated patter

Jamming up the poet’s mind
Struggling for expression
Seeking order out of chaos
An infantile regression

Cleaving to his imaginary world
The poet breaks out into words
Creating sound paintings to be unfurled
So his own agony is blurred

She succumbs to storms of passion
With instinctive techniques
Rhymes and rhythm still in fashion
Out of hand flows mystique

The poet mines from his unconscious
The Reader is not blind
For every single line and symbol
Means something to the mind

Causing an inner liberation
Enlightenment or flight
It is a matter of life and death
When darkness turns to light.

I'm the missing boat
    In the widest ocean
      I'm the little hope
          In the biggest war
              I'm left alone
            Like little girl's doll
         The girl grown old
    The doll left at home
 All alone

                      They will rise
Watching me sinking
                     They will fight
Watching me crying
                              But soon
                         I will go on
when they're already gone

Being born with an abusive family isn’t a fun experience to live through.
You can survive but barely.
It’s like maggots eating away at flesh.
The flesh is your heart.
Maggots are the words.
You can tell me you understand what it’s like.
Do you?
You do?
Tell me how it feels to be put down for being called fat.
Tell me how it feels to be put down for trying to be an influence!
Tell me.
How it feels.
To be put down for who I am by “family”!
You don’t know.

Expressing who I am keeps me calm and secure.
Expressing but then being judged for acting like myself is such a hard feeling to bare.
Tell me what it’s like to lose a friend that you told all your secrets to.
Tell me what it’s like for you to come home to a drunken father.
Tell me what it’s like to come home crying because the kids on the bus made of you for having daddy problems.
Tell me what it’s like to endure physical pain from the inside out.
Tell me what it’s like to come home to your brothers telling you... “Dad’s in the hospital.”
You... do not know.

Depression with anxiety, hurt, and vicious pain are like a mixture of a freshly opened wound and salt.
It stings away at you until you’re no more.
Until you believe that you are worthless.
Until you believe that you can’t go on any further!

Is it right for someone to be discriminated for their color?
Is it right to stand by and listen to **** and suicidal jokes?
I’ve done it.
I’ve stood by because I was too afraid of what they would say to me.
How they would react.
What tiny little things they would use against me.
How does it feel to know how I feel now?
What will you do to me?
Hurt me?
It’s far too late for that.

You didn’t know…
That I have been through so much even though I smile.
That I take everything I have to say and bottle it up inside.
That I have tried to tell you but you just don't understand!

You don’t know what it feels like to be buried in a casket of darkness and fear.
Do you?
You do?
Tell me!
Tell me how it feels when others insult you.
Tell me.
Explain it to me!
Explain what it feels like to be but down for every little minor thing about you!
You… do not … know.

My daddy forgot my name
Long before he died
Although he always kept
That twinkle in his eye

They call it dementia
But I myself call it hell
For all that we went through
And just how bad it felt

I watched him walk around
As he picked on walls
Trying his very best
At wiping something off

I still wonder to this day
What it is he thought
In his imaginary space
Or if he thought at all

Life brought to him the battle
And to life he brought the fight
But as any good soldier knows
There will come a time

Where in the heat of war
There is no winning side
It takes away the best in life
Whether you live or you die

I wish he was here to tell
How much I'm missing him
But I missed my daddy
Long before he left