People power people, and pick their equals.
Ideas, decisions, and what becomes real.
Whether we stand in a line, elections.
Decide who continues on, selection.

The rich become rich only from people’s contributions.
Using their products, services, or through admiration.
Social media, likes, comments, a way to get attention.
Striving to break from conformity, this world’s automation.

Scream, shout, acting strange in public.
Shoot, attack, people turn on each other, frantic.
People become desperate, run out of options.
Detectives try to figure out motives, using caution.

Joker said it best, why so serious?
Wasting time on the small things, getting furious.
When you can turn it around, hear how they feel.
Truly care and help them heal.
Be a friendlier face, selfless.
To those hiding in their shells, helpless.

Maybe everything seems right for a while.
But this world is in chaos, and in need of smiles.

Why so serious?
Smile

daddy used to call me his little warrior
his little princess
his little mulan

princesses have happy endings
so i will have mine too
right?

mulan finds the love of her life
she saves her homeland
my best friend just fell in love with someone else

i stare at my reflection
showing who i am inside
through my smiling facade
all i see is condensed sadness
i see tears

today we learned about the real mulan
she killed herself

i hold a knife
i am my father's princess
but princesses don't all get happy endings

steel meets flesh
blood meets earth

All I really want is to talk to you rather than distract myself with the petty things I do.

I'm almost gone.

A deep hollow in my chest leaches at my sanity leaving me bereft of a connection that could seal up the cracks in my heart from which leak my wounded humanity.

Scrolling through my Facebook feed leaves my hungering for what I really need.

The stupid games and apps light up my phone and make me forget that I'm alone.

Tomorrow creeps into each patchwork day. You can't hold time it slips away.

Each hour is fractured by distraction the sun is sinking before I gain traction.

While I'm not looking I miss the sunset. Time to cushion my head with this night's fret.

I won't sleep tonight, like most. My place is haunted. I'm the ghost.

I drift the twilight between realms with clipped wings and overwhelmed.

Sun and moon chase round about; light blinded eyes, thick-dark-muffled-shout.

That's the way it is at night things look different by starlight.

But which am I the sun or moon; do I give chase or am I pursued?

I won't find the things I seek. I'm stuck like this from week to week.

To be needed is exhausting, but to be not needed is accosting.

I need to hear you hearing me and be realified in that harmony.

Instead of trapped between death and life, I'll be free when I see you seeing that I'm Being. Existence could suffice, yet personhood is reciprocally conferred. Make me a Being like you then you'll be a christ.

What is my name?

You say that you can't read my mind as if I haven't put it down line by line.

I want to know I'm more than heat rising from the pavement to dissipate in the sky. Or else call me Mirage--If you can't see me, feel me, hear me.

I'm already gone.

Sometimes,

I think of taking my hands
And ripping - splitting - cracking,
My ribcage in two.
                                                            ­            
The breastbone splintering apart,
My torso opening like a rotten tree.
The inside hollowed,
Like a lake that has been emptied
 
I've convinced myself that
Fragrant flowers
Would grow there.

That they would grow feverishly
In the gnawing gap
I had created.

And that time would preserve
What I had done.

there is no such thing as a good upstairs neighbor
i'm now convinced of this
it's 3:13 AM and i'm laying in bed wondering if you're doing jumping jacks?
or killing a man?
why is there so much noise?
i thought the carpets on your floor were meant to be a buffer
but i was wrong
you're steps are heavier than my heart
yet, i don't know who you are
i don't know what you look like
i don't know what you sound like
but i'm sure i could identify you by steps alone
i'd like to go to bed
and every time i'm on the brink,
i hear the loudest banging coming from above me
and then when i'm awake and alert
the noise ends and i fall into another state of false security
it's 3:16 AM
i think
my eyes are growing heavy again and i will sleep tonight