The other kids are not alone
They are stable and they sit
Encased in Friday afternoon's sweet infinity
Sitting, smoking, talking, bonding
Making connections, weaving friendship
Understanding each other, simply being together
They are creating something
That I am not a part of

I am here alone
Typing
Making connections to shadows
And understanding the language of wind.

I wish humans didn't depend on others
I wish I didn't need them
I wish I didn't yearn for what they have
But I do.

Si vous croyez haha
Que c'est marrant, mignon
D'être jeune et vif, detrompez-vous detrompez-vous
Si vous pensez que la jeunesse c'est le printemps vert et joli
Fleurs et petales, cuicui et gouttes de pluie
Non non, détrompez vous
C'est l'orage et le tonnerre
Oui la jeunesse c'est chiant
Mais alors vraiment tres chiant!
Si vous trouvez ca marrant
D'etre sans cesse enfoui dans la brume
Sans savoir, sans comprendre
Sans direction, sans but, sans chemin
Si vous trouvez ca marrant
D'avoir un cerveau de foudre
La jeunesse, c'est pour vous!

Et puis etre adulte,
C'est pas mieux, non non!
L'automne, feuilles d'espoirs qui tombent
Et qui craquellent sous le poids de regrets
Le mensonge qu'on donne aux gamins
Qu'etre adulte, c'est trop bien
Des mensonges, des mensonges!
Detrompez-vous detrompez-vous
Les factures, les impots, le boulot, la famille
Le vin, les clopes, le stress et l'ennui

Et la vieillesse,
C'est pas mieux!
Le os recouverts de glace
Qui crépitent et craquellent a chaque mouvement
Qui grincent comme un plancher épuisé
Les bras pendant comme des branches mortes
Le scalp chauve, et lisse comme un étang glacé
Non la vieillesse,
C'est pas mieux
Les lèvres qui bavent, les mains qui tremblent
Les pensées qui se pâment, les souvenirs qui clinquent ensemble
Le cerveau qui chancelle et s'écroule
Tout comme le corps qui chancelle
Et s'écroule

Despite my buttoned-up blouses
and combed hair and glasses
I'm a feral creature.
Crouched, stunned, frightened
licking her own
wounds
and struggling to survive,
to learn how to defend herself
out in the jungle.

I'm savage
and I tend to burrow
into the deepest, darkest
caves of myself.

I'm running through the forest,
wild, dazed, confused,
with my slamming heart
my violet animal veins throbbing.

Don't try to tame me,
please, just
get me bandages, I’m bleeding
I'm wounded, I don't know
if I can endure
much longer.

The city sleeps alone tonight
Alone again, between black sheets
Tomorrow night she will shed her cloak
And become a harlot
Donning the gaudy jewelry
Of neon signs and lit cigarettes

I been strollin down by the riverbed
Searchin for answers
Shifting the rocks, the pebbles and stones
Trying to dig up the secrets and unknowns
But the ripples never speak
The ferns never reply, that's the natural technique
Only silence
As the water slips and shimmies on by

I been walkin on the beach
Searchin for answers
Under the sun I wander and roam
Diggin the sand, kickin the foam
Tryin to unearth
The secrets of the world's worth
But the sand barely whispers, the foam only scorns
Only silence
As the tide shies away and mourns

I been crossin every desert
Searchin for answers
Climbing the dunes and braving the storms
The scorching heat, the flies in swarms
I couldn't understand what they were tryin to preach
And the solace of water remained always out of reach
-Never an oasis
Only a mirage

There is so much you don't know about a person
so much some do not speak of
Some secrets
are best left untold
and some secrets have simply gotten too heavy
to lift

This is not your fault
but you could have done more
You could've made my days a little bit easier
if you'd tried
But now you cannot reverse this
I'm sorry
I cannot come back.
Never.

I am no longer here because I was shattered
I deserve
credit for my courage,
for having endured so long

The only explanation I can give
is that I was a glitch.
That's all I ever felt myself to be.

The insensitive
are best suited to this world
and I am not strong enough
to endure my own presence.

I can only beg of you,
beg you to remember
To love yourselves
love those who surround you
Hold hands and know
that every person carries
a secret, untold struggle
(some are harder to survive than others
-I'm so sorry,
I had to)
Remember me
but most importantly
remember what I've been trying so hard to teach you.
Love
Tonight, today, tomorrow
Love
No matter the price.

Poems are stupid,
So corny
So pompous
So pretentious! feigning to express what we all know is inexpressible
Personally, I hate my poems
They're absurd, gaudy and shallow, and I know it
Yet something keeps me coming back
Sometimes against my will
An invisible force pushes me, violently or softly, it depends
And I can't keep from writing these little pieces of folly

One day
When my hair is graying, face is creasing
My husband will be at work
His apathy slowly increasing
And making him a rude ****.
My kids will be at school being fed empty knowledge
Preparing for college
And the TV set will be blaring
I won't be caring
About the static noise filling the beige room,
The news guy speaking of terror and gloom
A blue glare will reflect on the brown stained couch
On which I will be sitting, with a woebegone and wistful slouch
And my brain will drift, slowly searching memory files
Going back for years and endless miles
**rest of poem redirected

There's a pounding in my head
Too sick to be alive, too astir to be dead
Everything is hazy, shifting into distant lands
A nervous shaking in my hands
Am I hot or cold?
I feel so vulnerable and young, yet so sickly and old
There's a ringing in my ears
And I can't stop my tears
As fuzzy thoughts, bated breath
Feel like impending death
My brain is melting, I'm losing my wits
The spinning never quits
Everything is muddled, whispered despair
I'm done, finished, this is too much to bear
Maybe I should just...drift away...
Maybe I should let my head gently sway....
The shaking stops
The darkness drops
I don't fight it, I don't try to flee
The liquid waves of malaise carry me
To somewhere deep within the abyss of my brain
And everything disappears, the confusion and pain
But it's transient, it doesn't last
Consciousness comes back with a blast
The waves wash me back ashore,
But I still feel wobbly to the core
My ebbing spirit  did revive,
Though I'm too weak to feel alive

Hope is a sharpened feather
It's wispy and frail
Yet can be twisted to jab
Like a salient nail
Shoved in to wound, to pierce and to stab
With shrewd falsehood, deceit, distorted belief
Hope can lead to faith, but it can misguide
It can bring joy, but it can cause grief
When taken from the faulty side

Her lips are painted
Cheeks are tainted
Cherry red
Cloaked in leopard, high heels clacking
The men whistle,
Whisper to each other, mira, mira
She's alluring on the streets

At night she comes home
To her fish and fake Mondrian
In between blue sheets
She sleeps alone

Lovely on the streets when the sun is shining bright
Lonely in her bed in the middle of the night

I've whispered so many words
Across oceans or cliffs or crowded classrooms
But the questions were never answered
And the echos never returned

I've wandered through so many avenues and dead streets
And tried to see things in the faces or the bricks
But nothing appeared

Yes, I rambled through the city
The old mill, the church, the plaza
I prowled the boulevards and roads
I searched the crowds, the houses, the stores
Thinking that something
Could be hiding there
I thought wrong
I found nothing, I found nobody

I've climbed so many trees and mountains
Only to reach the top and realize
The top was no better than the bottom

I've written so many poems
But they are always inadequate,
Never what I'm looking for
Never quite reaching whatever it is I'm looking for

I am always trying to catch something
Looking for something
Trying to follow some invisible tangent
I can feel it
It has to be there
I know it is
It's out there, out of reach
Unfound,
Waiting, boiling
Right under the surface

I will never give up

I'm afraid of growing up
-I've already grown too much
I want to say, stop
I know too much already, I've seen too many things
Please stop
Before it's too late
Before I get Reality, but a reality that has faded away
Before my judgement is warped but I don't give a ****
Too long on earth, that's it, that's what I fear
Telling, living
A story told too often
Losing myself
With no place to go, no surprise, no wonder
Dirtied with life

Now
I have had enough
Of living beneath the debris
In the low shadows
I am sick
Of living small and hidden
In the cupboards of life
Sick of going through the hallways
Unseen, unoticed
I no longer want to be invisible
I want to emerge
From behind the veil,
Push the curtains aside
I am claiming the crown
I want sunlight and nightfall
To belong to me
I want the beams to bend at my fingertips
I want the wind to submit to me
I want to be immortal
I want to be the captain
But the problem is,
I am less and less
And nothing
Yet still aching for something
Still reaching for what I can't obtain

Oh nights like these
When 10 little white pills
Snarl like the teeth of a spoiled child
The sadness and forbidden surrender
To sleep and easy satisfaction
Become overwhelming.
It becomes the books on my bookcase
My big nose and thin wrists,
It becomes my parents ugly, angry whispers seeping through the heating vents
All the envelopes hidden under my bed
It becomes every question I haven't answered, and every word I was too weak to say
Old chapels covered in dark vines
It becomes big, it becomes huge,
It becomes mountains, it becomes oceans
Continents, nations, the sky, the galaxy
It becomes
10
little
white pills

Days like this
When deception follows sorrow
And grief follows anger
When the face becomes hideous
Beastlike with savage redness
And rough and dry
When the gold necklace
Becomes glued to the chest
With so many tears
And the salt remains on the neck and cheeks-
The speckled aftermath of rage
Days like this
When the cage is closing in
Tighter, tighter, the bars gnawing my skin
When everything is parched, brittle
The throat, the eyes, the thoughts
The night consumes itself
No remembrance of sleep, no memory of peace
Waking up to the same life
Same acerbity of disgust
Waking up to the mirror
Reflecting everything

There is no relief

He's lying in bed paralyzed
It's made me all so fragilized
White walls, blue box, and twisted head
On the silver hospital bed
He says no words, just garbled sounds
His jowls shake like a basset hound's
He points to what he wants
On the little paper, nothing to flaunt
Images, memories, all they do is haunt
What do you think of when you lie
In bed, when your only future is to die?
While life races by, a baby is born
Without a grandfather, will the child be forlorn?

In life there are barriers
That cannot be broken

There are oceans
That cannot be crossed

There are envelopes
Doomed to remain forever unsealed
With letters doomed to remain forever unsent, unread

There are mountains
That cannot be climbed

There are secrets
That will themselves to remain forever unspoken

There are stars
That cannot be reached

These are just some of the many things
One has to admit in order to become Adult

Insomnia, always
The bewitched course of unending nights
Bitter nights swallowed in haste
I only want the comfort
Of the nest of arms to carry me
Through the tides of terror
That rise and ebb in the dark
I only want to be held
So I can endure the dreams of oblivion

My eyes burn with the glare
Of too many long nights’ vigils
Watching the winged insomnia fluttering about
From one thought
To the other
Every stream of consciousness
Every chain of thought
Loosened and undone
By Night’s hungry hands

This is the way
Hope falters
Ebbing like a dying flame

This is the way
Innocence is lost
With whispers
And secrets

This is the way
A girl loses her mind
In silence

This is the way
Pain exists
In the shadows
Of the soul

This is the way
A life can end
An accumulation of sorrow
And the cage closing in

If only I could name
My fear, my darkness
That haunting shadow
Measure it, weigh it
With inches, pounds, milligrams
If only I could give it substance
Speak it out, find the words
If I dared break the silence
Woven of silent submission
If I dared shatter the texture
Of this solid web of lies
If I dared bust through this black wall
And come forth to the night
I would still be alone
But would I remain invisible?

I wish I could convert those who
think poetry is silly, or annoying.
I wish I could take them by the hand and lead them
through the words
preach, exhort and say look, listen
watch the pictures the words paint
and hear the music, the endless melodies
please
I wish I could baptize
those who scorn the beauty
and turn the non-believers into the devout







                                                                      Maybe I'll be a teacher

I remember the night
On the dock, bathed by holy water
He placed me amongst angels
Touched my cheek
Resurrected me
Kissed me and whispered
*Consider yourself baptized by the dark
I've been sanctified by you

The death plant comes creeping in the door crack
Slithering and wrapping around all that is near
It clings and adheres to everything close
I keep cutting it but it keeps coming back
I keep snipping the leaves, black at the tips
Turning upwards like sinister lips
And trimming the edges but it just
keeps
coming
back

Smoking cigarettes
Is like slipping a noose from a small, new-born tree around your neck
And then diligently watering it every day.

Your greatest fear
Is* to push the daisies
Mine
Is to sleep with the fishes

A little boy pulls
A little girl's hair
Because an oyster turns to pearl
The sand which annoys it

Hope

Please don't write
If it doesn't come bursting out of you
Please don't write
If it doesn't ooze out of your every pore, whether you be willing or not
Please don't write
If the feelings you speak of
Aren't truly your own
Or if you had to use a rhyme dictionary, or a thesaurus
Please don't write
If it doesn't seem like the words are molten lava
And are burning you
And writing is the only way to keep from getting scorched
Please don't write
If you're doing it for others
I beg of you
Please don't write
If the words don't barge through your fingers
And detonate in your brain.
If the sentence fragments don't erupt and fly out
And gush forth
And you don't feel that you need to put it all down before they pop and shatter your insides
Then please
Don't write