How do you spit acid and warp the way
Perception soaks up reality
And then stroll up like you have curls
And didn’t steal that poor kids candy?
Demanding I start handling
All the cracks in your porcelain heart?
Thinking you can catch me
And make me who I was before
You tore my wings off and broke
Every promise you ever made.
Think you could have made me stay
In the pouring rain, endure the dark.
But the things you said and the way you say
Makes people think differently, when
It just don’t quite line up.
It kills me , draws on my old pains
And feels strange to turn you down.
But I can’t stick around and listen to your *******.
It’s you….
Or me…
And I have friends who’ll miss me.
And you make me lose hope in humanity,
Oh yeah and grip on my sanity.
Find someone else to blink your
Big
Blue
Eyes at.

I wish it were simple enough that I could cry
And stamp my feet at it,
let my eyes catch fire and my chest implode
To the beating of my agry fist.
Make there way the easy way,
but
I no more know there is a way
then I know there is a purpose.
Everything is a half shadow dripping from the elusive
And enigmatic nature of the unknown.
And you can not scream or stomp
At the silent,
Or the invisible,
You cannot pound your fist over a shadow,
You can’t bellow at the top of your lungs
Over things that reside under your own skin
And wreak havoc between the walls of your own head.

   If you have accompanied loneliness
   A little longer than bliss
   i have to remember your feeling this
   hell, you can sit here with the rest
   of us to attest
   to the greatest wall of them all,
              for a generation raised on the temptations
              of instant gratification,  
              throwing fits over adds
              aired on there favorite stations,
              we were never prepared to deal with
              overwhelming  alienation.
                        ­        I want to scream over
                                oceans of silence
                                not cheap ways to appease
                                desires  born
                                out of isolation
                                look into the pain of your eyes
                                and screech my defiance.
                                find a real friend in alliance.
                                in all the fast race days,
                                welling in pressure and change
                                          were forgetting our ways to find
                                          a person and stay.
                                          every one cries, screams and pleads
                                          every ones dieting and fighting
                                          wanting the exact same things
                                          every ones to busy walking away
                                          too look at each other
And whisper
"I want you to stay"

her cold stair,
blank nostalgia draped with silent intentions
scalds me when her name is mentioned,
behind strained wishes,
taunted behind distant wants,
all caught up in my broken heart
subsides in my stomach tied in knots
all delicately laid in such a way
as to barricade  who I was
from getting to who I wanted to be
while day after day I strained looking
and trying, hoping and crying
until the moment I burst forth
in glorious flame they called me phoenix
I remembered my name
I gathered my strength mustered
every ounce of my courage and
let them go, tiped the scale, domino
tore the seem of my reality, gave my self
some room to grow.

He said
I don’t understand
I’m so simple,
Your complicated
To you everything crosses over
All of it is interrelated.
I am into linear thinking
After this happens
This is created.
Keep lines from touching
Situations separated.
He takes a step forward
Foot hitting hot pavement
Pointing to squares of the sidewalk,
Ones split down the middle
The other shattered
An asymmetrical lace
Like pattern.
And what he really said
Was simply
“this ones you and this ones me”
But that’s what he wanted me to see.
And I saw all the situations
I had thought the exact same thing
And how to him this conversation
Probably seemed like random conversation
Without a place or destination,
He’s probably wondering
Why it would leave me sad,
Smiling and laughing because I cant explain
All the things the sidewalk means,
Describe the point where
Every crack happens to meet.
And I don’t think a single thing leads to
Any other single thing.
And to me that seems...... complicated.

I.
My parents don't drink.
They have their masters.
They both have jobs so that I don't have to.
They raised me the Christian way.
We eat as a family every night.
We live in a neighborhood where violence is ostracized.
To my friends, my house is the place for comfort.
They tell me not to take it for granted
just because I'm used to it.

So I took a walk through my house,
making sure not to take my life for granted.

Through the kitchen,
I remember the unrelenting fist curled around my wrist,
the ice blue eyes that I used to see as gray,
the tight lips and the seething words.
I shake my hand as I remember the bloodlessness,
the purple swelling as eyes welled with tears,
the way I raced out only to find that I could not open the door to escape,
with one hand broken and the other unable to curl around the ****.

Down the hallway,
I reach up to massage my neck,
for the memory of choked tears
never leaves;
the sudden unforgiving fist
the strength with which a five-year-old could not compete.
My body swings from the neck down,
and the fist released as the arm powered me onto the floor of my room.

II.
I catch my foot on the dining room chair I used to hold in front of myself,
growing up a fighter.
When I learned to defend myself with the strength of age and experience,
the strangling fist became biting words.
When I gave up the religion under which I was raised,
I was told that I must not love that fist or those words,
that I took my life for granted.
I was told that I was the key to our family's unity.
I was told to grow up.

I don't drink.
I get good grades.
I find money for college so they don't have to.
I believe in loving everyone like Jesus did.
I make dinner when they don't have time.
I never bring home fighting friends.
To my friends, I make my parents proud.
They ask me how we have such a good relationship,
they ooh and aah at our affection.

But you don't love me.
I am your failure.
I am your tax break.
I grew up a fighter,
and you gave up.

III.
I used to fight for you,
but they say indifference is worse than anger for a reason.

My mother used to wonder,
where did these bruises come from?
I always shrugged,
telling myself,
I'll deal with this alone.

I'll get a reaction somewhere else.
And that fist, those words,
became teenage promiscuity.
The sweet, unmerciful clutch,
the never ending cycle of discontent,
miscommunication and misunderstanding
and the familiar feeling of not being able to escape.

And every time,
as feelings of decreased personal value were overwhelmed by temporary pleasure,
I sunk deeper into that comfort.

You don't love me.
And I don't want you to.

I wonder how bright my tears shimmered
Refracting your flickering light,
I wonder what thoughts had filtered,
Through your changing mind that night.
Your smile builds me upright,
Until it quivers and I fall
To pieces under nightlights
Until morning sooths and calms.
But nothing feels quite as right
As crying in your arms,
While laughing at our fears
Pretending nothings wrong,
Pretending that you would stay forever,
Until the day you’ve gone.
Every night without your light
Just seems to dark and long.