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 Oct 2015 Kai
Joshua Haines
I have swallowed so much of other's blood that I have forgotten that I have bled, too.
With the world shuffling past,
I have became transfixed with the movements of my idols,
forgetting that my feet have left footprints that have, will, and always be buried under the sedimentary memories that I waited to smother me.

Sometimes I can feel my body buckle under the weight of all the dreams I've dared to dreamt.

Under the moon and on top of the world,
I understand that I am inbetween and will always be.
Ashland, Wisconsin
 Sep 2015 Kai
Silence
I'm in love with a boy I've kissed once.
Who I know I'm bound to never kiss again.

I'm in love with a boy I've kissed twice.
First one so sweet.
Second one so bitter.

I'm in love with a boy I've kissed three times.
Each for the words 'I love you.'

I'm in love with a boy I've kissed four times.
Each one better than the last.  

I'm in love with a boy I've never kissed.
 Sep 2015 Kai
Elise
rolling fog
 Sep 2015 Kai
Elise
sitting on top of the world
literally and figuratively
looking over a valley so gorgeous
i wasn't even sure it was real
sitting next to a girl i barely knew
whose smile warmed the chilled air around us
i watched the rolling fog
form and disband shapes
taking my thoughts with it
a moment so pure
it will stay frozen in time
not even the rolling fog
could sweep away the memory
of a simple, silent moment
spent with the beautiful girl
that i barely knew
Written 8/28/15 on a backpacking trip to Mt. Townsend in Washington after watching the fog roll through a valley.
 Aug 2015 Kai
Joshua Haines
Tortured people tell themselves the past never happened.
They sit and reminisce about memories that they created.

Their hands are brown and worn down,
looking like a sibling of the ground that will eventually be a tomb for their bodies.

The teeth are fake and so are the smiles.
Hair falls off like rusty leaves brushed by a breeze, warning of the death of winter.
Limbs turn into string, ******* hang, and guts grow; like pregnant, stray cats.

Whenever they die, their houses will be eaten by their children, and not even a piece of gristle or a picture frame will be left.

The house will be nothing but a sun-dried ribcage:
a discarded postcard with the address marked out.

The children will sit and talk of their parents, repressing the abuse and the inability to meet expectations.

The children will work in sterile cubicles, thankful that their hands will not be stamped by calluses, yet knowing their fathers would not approve.

The children will open up the dust-blanketed boxes and stare at old family pictures, not able to recognize the people who smile and have perfect posture.

The children will lay in bed with their spouses and say, to no one in particular,
'Why was it never enough?
What did I do?

Was it me?'

The children will be tortured by these words,
by lives that weren't in technicolor,
by the paranoia of being tolerated instead of liked,
by the anxiety that a paid-off house
and nice car couldn't alleviate,
by themselves.

The children will retire and will have realized that they worked their entire lives just to enjoy ten years.
Their hair follicles will let go of strands and locks,
like a dandelion being stripped by the wind.

The enamel on their teeth will corrode and, before long, they will be thankful for the sensitivity of their teeth because the coldness of senior-citizen-discounted ice cream will be one of the few things they will be able to feel, let alone put a genuine smile on their face.

They will sit on their recliners, stare at their keyboard-kissed fingers and tell themselves the past never happened.

Because that's what tortured people do.
Ashland, Wisconsin
 Aug 2015 Kai
Olga Valerevna
there's nothing more unusual than syllables and tones
the movements of the tongue that you can feel with all your bones
if we could be their master what a world we would create
a frequency identical to humans and their ways
where someone else's stories can be ones to call your own
the art of you believing you would never be alone
but even as you speak there is a purple on your words
the portrait of a shadow that should not have been disturbed
for while you're sleeping steady there's a face that's on the loose
with cadency unrivaled and a notion for the noose
the case is in the details, in the smallest of the small
and what is most important - we may never see it all
a feeling is a feeling but a purpose is the sea
so put it all together - it was real for you and me
reality
 Aug 2015 Kai
Joshua Haines
Old men fascinated by teen *****
and the hues harnessed by high school hips,
I ask you to look at something corrupted:
yourself, this town, this world.

The town's lumber supplier has died
and daughters fight over dollars.

Greasy haired women, wearing denim,
smoking menthols and bruised with cheap make-up,
stand on fractured sidewalks.

I walk, wearing a Native American-ized fleece,
the Chippewa crush their cigarettes
and blink like lizards at me
because I wear bastardization,
but wash it.

Half the town smokes,
and if you ask the pastor,
the whole town smokes
because everyone's going to hell.


All the girls read John Green
and flip the pages because it's a cheaper escape than a bus ticket.

Plato said that everything changes
and nothing stands still;
these people will suffer,
their bodies will break down,
and they will die --
but what never changes is their hope
in eventual death.

What cannot change is my hope
in something more.
Ashland, Wisconsin
 Aug 2015 Kai
Joshua Haines
Ashland
 Aug 2015 Kai
Joshua Haines
The sky looks like cigarette ashes in a puddle of milk,
and I, almost 22, am unsatisfied that I have not won a Pulitzer.

And I, on the borderline of delusion and confidence, am unsatisfied I am not crazy or cocky enough to submit to The New Yorker.

I hear the voices of the pastors,
telling me that God heals all.

They say 'He' is the only absolute.

The people raise their hands towards the water-stained ceiling,
as if He'll push his arms through the copper-colored scabs and save them.

Grabbing their wrists and cooing,
I am the remedy to the anxiety of death.

I am six foot one and French, Irish, Cherokee,
some sort of Anglo-Saxon,
and a lost **** in a drowning garden.

I think about all those who had to ****,
in order to make my cheekbones,
eyebrows, lips, and ****.

I think about how I'm good at *** and bad when it comes to forgiving too easily.

I wonder how I can sweat on another body,
but only feel naked when I have to be myself.

I watch the elderly chant words:
******, ******, ****, and Half-Breed.
I study if their dry lips reflect the hate in their eyes.

Not all are like this,
but I am surrounded by tables of them,
as I pretend to be Christian,
just to get ahead.

I don't speak,
just sit like an unfilled bubble,
waiting to be marked out by graphite.
I feel like a *******,
I wish I had a Pulitzer.

The sky looks like a stretched grape,
covered in kisses of ******.
And I, white American conformist,
am unsatisfied
that I have succumbed to the American Dream.

I wish I had a Pulitzer,
I wish I had my mom and dad.
Ashland, Wisconsin
 Aug 2015 Kai
Joshua Haines
Well, we were the History club rejects,
focusing on the effects
of being us
instead of in a book.

Two college drop-outs,
calling in shout-outs
to our friends,
hoping that it affected
how we looked.

Our dads would sleep in,
and our moms were crying
until a quarter past noon --
and we knew
if we didn't start trying,
that would be us, soon.

We were the starving artists,
painting fruit we couldn't afford.
Hoping each brushstroke of an artichoke
would be fruitful to our wallet,
or at least strike a chord.

Two love-loss orphans,
dreaming of morphing
into something or someone else.
But they told us
to remove that fluff
from our head
and put it on the shelves.

We were the film club fanatics,
studying the dynamics
of how to be a pretend person.
We wanted to be
a Wes Anderson flick,
but we were never any thing
other than who we were
and that's what made us sick.

And I swear I miss the desperation:
I'm nostalgic for yesterday's conversations.
Special thanks to Noah Baumbach for the title and the line.
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