Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Hi Tonto, what’s up?

How Butthead.

Tonto, why do say how?

Why white man say hi?

I don’t know Tonto, maybe it’s slang for hello.

Funny, white man put the word hell in greeting
Then convert to hi, which mean way up there.
Human being say how instead.
Means same thing.
Means, how high is hell.

Oh come on Tonto, you’re pulling my leg.

Tonto no pullem leg, Tonto tellem truth like totem pole.

Speaking of totem pole, Tonto, why do you call it a totem pole?

Cause no matter where human being go
He tote truth and pole with him so remember
From where human being come.

OK, tell me the story of your totem pole.

The lowest level on totem pole about time
When male part of human beings was slave to
The females of tribe.
Male have power but woman have strength.
Strength and power not same thing.
Strength beats power always.
Man have to use power to serve woman’s strength.
Woman was Goddess, ruled supreme over
All human beings.
Time was peaceful, never need warriors.
No one equal but opportunity for all.
Then woman have boy child.
This one boy child was bad seed and not mind.
Before long, boy child drive all crazy.
Strength tell power to take boy child into woods.
Boy child survive and sometimes sneak back into camp.
Boy child steal what he need to survive.
Sometimes, boy child dress like woman,
Sometimes like man.
Strength scared of boy child.
Power see strength afraid.
Power say, man protect woman from devil boy child.
Woman agree.
Man gain power, woman lose strength.
Man see that lie gives him control.
Woman now become servant.
Man continue lie for many moons.
Man appoint another man as shaman
Or religious leader to continue lie.
Male become more powerful as woman
Depend on man’s God to protect her from devil.
Many moons later, woman forget she Goddess.
Male just meant to serve – but now he in charge.

That’s a neat story Tonto.
But I know it isn’t true.

How?

Oh, now I get it, that’s why you say – how.

Yes, men greet other men by saying how
As reminder of how we overcame women’s strength.

But it’s a fairy tale, Tonto.

What make you say that, Butthead?

Ok, if it is true what happened to the child that
Was put out and left in the woods to die.

Devil child became white man. He lose all his color.
You, Butthead, you are truth of human beings’ story.
Human beings no longer live in peace.
Man have power but still have no strength.
Woman give up strength for security and protection.
Earth still in turmoil.
Will always be in turmoil until man learn what
Woman already know.
Might does not equal right.
No two people are equal.
But all human beings deserve equal opportunity.
Your kind, Butthead, you part of bad seed.
You perpetuate the lie that man make good leader.
Only woman have sense enough to lead.
Man too busy beating chest and fighting
For females to know how to lead.
But woman, in her the hope of the next generation lives.
But as long as Butthead on top of totem pole,
Human beings live afraid of devil.
Fear rules, not with strength but with power.
World remain always in heap big mess.
Man beats chest and control females.
All because of the threat of the bad seed
Hidden somewhere out there in the woods.
Boy child should have got **** beat.
Boy child become Butthead instead.
Forgive me for my trespasses as I forgive those.....
Outwardly I am a titanium barrier, inwardly, a net of strings hold me together within confining my true self to my mind. The metaphoric needle posed between thumb and forefinger, sewing patch after patch across my ruined skin, holding in the things that threaten to burst. The thread is my self value, thin and dissolving.
Watching in the shattering mirror, who I am, as tears and blood slip past trembling fingers.  Reaching upwards towards light, but I drown in the darkness. I am swallowed by hopeless misery.
Floundering and toiling in the shadows of my own faith and nearly forgotten beliefs.
Sorrow floods me, consuming in a cold fire that doesn’t burn, but freezes to the core.
Refracting shards of light that escape like a song. They fall like a melody from my lips.
While the heat of the world swirls around me in shades of blue and black. I am bruised and ask "why do I hate myself?"
I never have an answer. Only the memories of a life so beyond dysfunctional that I have to resort to story writing to make believe a happy ending, never truly believing in it.

What were these whispered words that squirmed and infiltrated my mind, what are those lost secrets and memories left to fade away. Tormented, still I remain silent. Suffering quietly. Wondering if I'll go down without a fight, or would I take my own life. It is the loss of my humanity. I transcend in definition, no longer resembling who I was.  Silver tears, dripping from the eyes of the moon, as if such a cold distant satellite mourns for and with me.

Fear remains, as it always does, clutching my heart in an iron grasp. Despite the freedom of a new life, my knees are buckling, I’m poised to run, as if there were a place to escape to. Walls arise on all sides. I am locked in a box, where I hide away from the world, and I become, cold and distant as the moon. Fighting myself endlessly.
Hide everything I am from the world, and put it out of sight of myself, I don't dare to confront it.
I ask myself again. "Why do I hate?" I know a vague answer to it this time. I have allowed the evil and cruelty of a despondent life before this one to shape me, even after my resurrection, despite my belief and faith. I had let it consume me.
My heart, a thousand splinters of ice, would once break, even if it was looked at, or touched, cracked and shatter repeatedly. I only watch, making no attempt to heal myself. Content with viewing my own nails clashing with soft flesh that gives way to pain and agony. Slicing into cold abysmal depths, bleeding a metaphoric spectrum of ****** colors into my veins that then spill down the drain of my heart.

I wonder if there is any capacity within me, for the remnants of a shimmering soul to return to hope?   I'd abandoned love and hope for so long, had they dissipated completely. Do I dare to uncover such a startling miserable revelation?
My voice catches in my chest, as I sing halfheartedly for my freedom. To be released from my anguish. My voice not carrying past my lips, stolen by the wind of despair circulating around me.
I had changed, believed myself worthless and ugly. Melancholy, a kaleidoscope of emotions contrasting with one another. Dripping together to create the painting of my life. Magnificent, yet lonely and sad. Like forlorn splatter-paint tears down the side of eroding walls.

I was told once that I was shiny on the outside, and dull on the inside. Gilded. I want to change that. I cannot hide the scars I have been dealt, nor can I conceal the ones I've inflicted to my own body. I remember each slice to the skin with shame. That I had knowingly marred perfect flesh.
"What value could I possibly have if I'm constantly looked down upon?"  I pose questions like this to myself.
Everything they say makes me feel worthless, like I'm not supposed to be here.
Maybe I'm not, I wasn’t supposed to live was I?
“Worthless. Freak. Stupid.”
Do these words define me?
Are they who I am?
I am a shadow, As I sink into the depths of my own insignificance I stare speculatively, emptily up at the opalescent translucence far above me. I’ve always been worthless,  but now I am nameless. I’ve never been to solid in my own emotions, right now I don’t know what to feel anymore. Where and what is joy? What happened to the light?
I dissolve into toxicity and an almost chemical stasis of depression, seeping into my heart with the thickness of sick black tar, dragging me farther than I’ve ever been beneath the surface.

I become nothing, for that is what I presume I always was, nothing. Only a mirage burning holes into the fabric of lonely hearts longing, a haunting memory left to torment into seclusion and sorrow.
An empty shell of what once was a girl with dreams, is all that remains to decay in the dark. While the shudder of sobs dies down into a tempest of self loathing.
An incandescent nightmare, flares out like the petals of a blossoming flower, they unfurl and cover the dystopia of eloquently disfigured words that curl and uncoil, only to surround the wounds of me that pour from a inky black liquid that has replaced the blood in my veins.
The push and pull of the sorrow and hope mixing into the discordant symphony of life. The sound that is the melody of me.
 May 2017 John Stevens
Eliot York
and a bell in its place
to some, no doubt,
a disgrace

it was to me, i must admit
but new light shines
in place of it

our front page is new,
brighter than ever
and now made by you

trending was all the rage
but (we all knew it) the algorithm
couldn't hold the stage

so now he'll do his part
to get your poem out in front
but that's just the start

next it's up to the community,
a repost, a heart or a plucky thumb
dare I say, it's up to you and me
The latest: new icons, yay, a hot new front page, now created by U, and thumbs up/down on poems.

Comments welcome. **

Support Hey-yo Poet-tree, please. http://hellopoetry.com/support/
 May 2017 John Stevens
Cné
What is the sky
but a canvas for clouds?
What is a city
but a canvas for crowds?
What is the meadow
so verdant and green
but a canvas for sheep
a pastoral scene?
What is the ocean
with reflections so blue,
than a canvas for sails
as they drift into view?
I think I shall paint...
I remember once hearing,
this sentence when I was young.
That if you really, truly loves someone,
then they're never really gone.
So I loved you like an ocean.
More than the eye could ever possibly see.
And after you left, I did remember you.
But realized, who would ever remember me?
To the boy I fell in love with,

When I came up with the idea to write you this I didn't realize how hard it could be to begin, as I have so many thoughts and as we both know I'm not very organized in my thinking.

I guess I should probably start with the obvious, I miss you. If I didn't I wouldn't keep writing about you like this. I miss stupid little things, like goofy overtired conversations and the way sitting too close made my arms itch if I was wearing short sleeves. I even miss the things I often hated like League of Legends, and you screaming at your friend when I was trying to sleep, and the way your room was always too warm to actually be comfortable.

I guess the second thing would probably be that I'm sorry... For everything. I'm sorry I hurt you and that I never realized how hard it was on you to constantly have to worry about me. I'm sorry I never left my comfort zone enough to keep you interested, and most importantly I'm sorry I was never able to find a way to convince you not to go.

And the third would be thank you. You showed me what it is like to feel love and loss and everything in between. You made me finally feel happy enough to want to live my life to the fullest. You showed me parts of myself I didn't even know existed. You changed my life for the better and even though you are gone and moving on from me, I will always be grateful that we crossed paths.

To my first love,

I hope that you are doing okay. I know you've had some ups and downs in the past few months, and please remember that I am just a phone call away and always will be. I know its really hard for you to ask for help, but if you ever just want someone to sit with you in silence, or take out as a distraction or anything else please don't hesitate to call on me because I won't hesitate to come.  

I also hope you are eating, watching you shrink before my eyes kind of says otherwise, but still I hope you are staying healthy(ish).

Equally importantly, I hope you are happy, and I mean truly happy in your life. I hope you fall in love with someone who deserves the love you are capable of giving, love that not even I was worthy of receiving.

To the boy my family also ended up falling in love with,

My mom still asks about you. She still tells me "I always liked that boy, and I know you don't go backwards but he may be worthy of an exception to the rule." That is pretty much her way of telling me she misses you.

To the boy I thought I could replace,

I couldn't.

To the boy I wish I could move past,

I can't.

To the boy who has moved past me,

I'm happy for you, I wish you the best, and I'm glad we are at the very least friends still.

So, to the boy I fell in love with,

Know that despite my best efforts I never fell back out of love with you, and am starting to doubt that I ever truly will.
I love you, and I always will.
Next page