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 Dec 2017
Meadow
It's hard to be a dreamer
To live everyday
Fantasizing about a life
You'll likely never see

It's hard to be a dreamer
Because that dream turns to hope
And we run down a path
That's almost always a dead end

It's hard to be a dreamer
Because there are too many of us
For us all to be successful
But not enough
For us to all be understood

It's hard to be a dreamer
Because we cling to a life
That others can't see
And prove others right
When we don't achieve

It's hard to be a dreamer
Because we are the most susceptible
To heartbreak

But still we dream
 Dec 2017
Evan Stephens
The first thing that happens
is the world collapses.
That is, it reduces down
but only I seem to notice.
Everything becomes flatter,
the depth stripped away
like rotted lumber,
like when they gut a building
but leave the historic facade,
and I feel like I'm limping
postcard to postcard
until eventually like I'm peering
into a discarded diorama,
where everything is smaller
than it should be,
the crudest copy of itself, and
everything is bounded
by shoebox limits
I can sense them everywhere.

The second thing that happens
is that I avoid everyone.
I avoid my mother on Christmas,
I can't look my therapist in her eye,
I cancel a date because
I can't handle the contact.
I touch my skin and it's like
touching paper that's been creased
hundreds of times -
old pulp that frays and splits.

The third thing that happens
is that I lose interest.
I put in whatever minimums
the day requires
and not a scratch more.
I put my mail aside
and watch crows
gather on the branch,
facing the valley,
black eye to black eye,
base wings folded against
the sleek unbearable body.

The last thing that happens
is that life cheapens.
It's hard not to notice,
since the papers and the news
and everybody's phone
blasts forth the parade of death.
No one is spared, children,
animals, the happy, the hale.
And soon these thoughts -
that life ends without reason,
that God has retreated from the world,
that no step is worthwhile -
begin to bleed in my head.
They lead to the paralysis
of a patient wrapped in gauze,
leaving only the eyes free to move
and notice the great black wing
that scythes into the valley,
feathers dark as stout,
the sun setting in its usual
incompetent way, the wing
so graceful that it might be
the only beautiful thing,
falling out of sight,
into nothingness,
down the *****
into the stale dusk,
into the exact center
of a limitless depression.
 Dec 2017
Mahlon Muringa
Life, like a mist
One minute you're born,
Next minute you're worn.

One minute you're there,
Next minute you're dead.

One minute you're laughing,
Next minute they're crying.

You have a time of your life,
Next minute its the last of your life.

You praise God for the day,
Next minute they are praying u don't get dead.

It feels good to be alive,
Next they are wishing you were alive.

You touch hearts of the living,
Next u leave a wound to the living.

Life.

— The End —