You fire at will without thinking
Thinking is only believing when it’s real
It’s real when it’s not
Sixty years in the making
You came to this land you proclaimed
Sixty years ago
It was peaceful with no remorse
All those who seen each other hugged and shake-
Hands they known to be as one humanity

As minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years gone
We seen lives treated like ants
New leaders were conjoined to unite nations
They say “We are only peacemakers.”
They’re the ones making the weapons
They’re the ones who keep killing
As a retaliation of self defense
But who started it?
Who robbed the land when it was beautiful
Who continued the ways of ******?
Who repetitively inhere the Massacre?

You fire rockets like it’s the Fourth of July
You even celebrated standing there with elation
Is this humanity? Is this right?
Is this the peace that nations conjoined to create?
'They' pay their taxes for you to commit crimes?
Is this the world we really wanted to live in?

Do you really believe-
They’ll use their own flesh & blood as their shields?
They’re in an open-air prison
In no rhyme nor reason will make them falter
They don’t believe in power
Only in power of faith and hope it’ll end
Yes.
It will end.
One day.

When that day comes
What you preached with your accusations
Your fake cries
Your fervid pretense of justice
Your deaths that you started
Your ‘media’ that corrupts minds that were blinded-
By your mendacity, armed with treachery
With pure dejection & cowardice

*The whole world will know then
Who brought upon pain
Who suffered the prolong unfeigned pain

Monkey bars/Deep scars
Shooting stars/Chasing cars
Apple pies/Broken cries
Bright skies/Teary eyes
Birthday cake/Smile's fake
Easy bake/Heart break
Matching games/Lighter flames
Picture frames/Lovers names
Car seats/Lonely streets
Candy sweets/****** sheets
Mommy's hug/Addictive drug
Lady bug/ Shoulder shrug
Candy shop/Speeding cop
Lollipop/Tear drop
Play toys/White noise
The child enjoys/The teen destroys

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

Dearest Reader,


My name is Margot Dylan, and I'm a pariah.

On the 16th of April, I told my mother that I was gay. She threw the clay mug that I made for her before she found out I was gay, against the floral, peeling wallpaper mess of a wall, in our kitchen. The decaffeinated peppermint green tea left a wonderful aroma that almost cleansed the room of the stench of 'lesbian'.

I met Dylan Dunham a few days after that, and, a few days later, she was the first girl that I ever loved.

Dylan wore a red flannel jacket, and was a butch and sometimes a *****-but I loved her even at her tomboy cruelest.

Dylan smoked a cigarette that smelled like lonerism, and she looked at me like she didn't care. My heart skipped a beat, as cliche as it sounds, whenever she would remove the cigarette from her mouth, exhale, and look at me as smoke traveled up her face. I looked at her and knew that she was everything that I wasn't, and everything that I wanted.

Dylan was Dianne, before and after school. Dylan was Dianne, who wore floral dresses and lipstick and who ditched her butch clothing in her locker before leaving. Dylan was Dianne, who was straight and who thought Tyler Wesson, from church, was cute. Dylan was Dianne, who had a short hair cut because of track and field, because she explained that she ran a faster time with less hair. Dylan was Dianne, who didn't associate with me before or after school because her parents knew that I was gay.

During school hours, the only thing Dylan did keep from Dianne was the lipstick. I was envious of the cigarette because of it's burgundy stains. We would stand in a stall, as she looked across from me, after each drag. She frequently offered her cigarettes, but I refused because I only let love **** me. If she ever brought alcohol, sometimes she'd kiss me. I told her that I loved her and she said, "I know."

The only thing that Dylan kept from me was my heart, before she started to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom with Annie Way.


I wish you the best moments so they can overcome the worst,

Margot Dylan

The problem is
People only see as far as the last sentence in the newspaper article.
They see that my best friend stabbed his father.
They see that he was planning it.
They see that he failed in his attempt to **** him.
They see that at 1:30 am he was arrested at the scene.
They see he will be tried as an adult for premeditated attempted ******.
They don't see anything else.

At our little brothers baseball games we would search for quarters to get airheads.
On the bus we would share stories about our latest failures.
He was trying to get sober.
He had failed to **** himself twice.
He had serious mental problems that everyone underestimated
He needed help.
He didn't get it.

He's alone in a juvenile detention center, isolated.
Mentally unstable and yet again without a support system.
Doomed for the rest of his life.

So excuse me when i tell you to shove it up your ***
When you say that i should stay away in fear of being remembered
Because all he'll do is remember you forgot him when he needed you most.

these ***** eyes, they testify
all the things that bring us further down
and into wasted days of pseudo-hate
and promises of bitterness which dissipates
after summers' days dwindle
out of tune with our heart strings

it leaves us here in surmise of
all the things we sing along together
low and behold
we're still singing the same song either way

like a candle; fire lit at both ends
we meet across a river without a bridge
and hold on tight as we take the plunge
somewhere getting lost beneath the river bed
between these flowing streams of time we live within

and oh
all i want to do is find you there
swimming peacefully waiting to exhale
all the bad things you sigh in bated breath
and still my greatest dream is to breathe you in