Once butterflies
Now nausea
Once faith
Now doubt

I really thought
We could do it again
But I'm always wrong
I'm always the friend

Late at night
On my third wind
I am exactly calm enough
To believe my own thoughts
So to write
A poem,
And exactly nervous enough
To end the poem
Before I ruin it.

Perfection likes to vacation inside my head
And I can’t stand her.

With her bows
And her dresses
And her frilliness....
She knows everything....
She can do anything.....

She's what everyone dreams of.
She's what everyone wants to be.

But,

She's always loved to tag along with Insanity
And of course Insanity drives me crazy.

So self-control tries to control me.

But still insanity pushes her way through to me.

Till I am drowning in her sweet words of comfort.
Wrapped up tight.

In a soft padded room.




© 2013 Kendra Bowman

I asked for a city, you gave me its parts.
I wanted a machine, an unrelenting automaton.
You gave me its people.
You gave me their emotions, their creations, their charity, their sin.
I never asked for all this.
I never asked for the thought-provoking ramblings of a beggar.
I never asked for the rhapsody of a lone saxophone player.
I never asked for the smell of rain on asphalt.
All this,
the thoughts of a young philosopher on a train,
the gaze of a hopeless romantic at a café,
the glimmer in a woman's eyes as a car passes by in the rain,
I asked for an emotionless machine, an unwavering citadel of apathy.
I never asked for this.
I asked for a city, you gave me its parts, *Thank You.

As a young man he took the doctor's pills
Because he was alive but didn't want to be.

As a man he took someone else's  pills
Because he didn't feel alive but wanted to.

As an old man he took his own pills
Because he wanted to stay alive but couldn't help dying.