The sheep raid my plantation
Bringing down my fences
Eating my crop's
Polluting my air, With bitter taste
Bitter and angry i become
Full of rage...

But.....

In my mind's eye
I know all can be rebuilt
The air can become fresh
And the grass green

The cycle of it all
And all comes back around.....

Again!

i’ve never been religious but i’ve always known how to pray,
words worn down by my tongue like a security blanket.
it’s been years since i’ve thought about what they actually mean;
it’s like my pledge of allegiance, i don’t pray,
i recite.

repetition repetition repetition
my brain’s in fission
i pledge allegiance to the flag--
we only loved behind closed doors
of the united states of america--
i’ve heard if you say something enough times it stops sounding like anything at all
and to the republic for which is stand--
i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you
one nation under god--

i usually leave that part out.
close my mouth, stand silent.

silence is for sinners and we are losing battles of people.

in my history textbook there is a picture
of a man shoving a flower in the barrel of a soldier’s rifle.
just the same,
you’re the kind of person who’d go planting flowers
on the side of the road just to make it prettier,
you’re always wasting your time caring about people
who couldn’t give a **** about you
and it’s probably tragic or something
but words like tragic and poetic are for different people than us.

i am so ******* bad at gentle and you’re deserving of delicate.
i think some people are less impressionable in the way the take up space
than they are in the holes they leave when they’re gone.

i used to imagine that there were phantom versions of myself,
standing everywhere that i have ever stood
like ghosts or maybe more like placeholders.
waiting.
it’s like how when i was a little kid,
i would try to picture what the spot i was standing in
looked like a hundred, a thousand years ago.
who has treked through through the same places
that i go everyday.
i still like to think like that sometimes.
i like to think we leave behind echoes of ourselves
in the places we’ve been.
i like to think that a hundred, a thousand years from now,
there is going to be a little kid trying to do the same,
picturing me standing here.
i still like to think there is a version of me
hanging around in my childhood home, six years old with
missing front teeth.
i still like to think there is a version of me
wandering around all my favorite cities i’ve visited.

by this logic, there is still a version of you
in the room i last saw you in,
still framed by the light pouring in from the window.
by this logic, there is still version of me
in the room i last saw you in… waiting.
for something.

The first time you hear
"Beauty is pain"
Is when your mother is brushing tangles
Out of your hair
You're too young to care

The next time
Is when you're getting your hair done
For an event
Bobby pins everywhere
And this time it sticks

Your legs sting
After you shave them
For the first time
But you remind yourself
Beauty is pain
And go on with your day

You remind yourself again
As you pluck hairs
From your eyebrows
It helps you somehow

Beauty is pain
Your stomach growls
You haven't eaten
Because you want to be skinny
You want to be pretty

Beauty is pain
Is all you hear
When you walk into surgery
To change your face

Beauty is pain
Lingers in the back of your mind
When your boyfriend hits you
For the first time

One day you look in the mirror
All you see is pain
You wonder how it ended up this way

Spoken

Feathers on a crows back are black and sleak
He wears a proud long billed beak
When he goes hunting far and wide and deep
You know the squawk that someone else is ever weak
The colour of the leaves are green and brown and red to me to seep
My mind is out their trying to reach the animal that was caught but no one can never ever speak
I watch the birds on tops of trees to see their prey they have to eat but isn't it horrid to be preyed upon when one moment you're alive then suddenly you are gone and my eyes can see to weep.

Depression isn't a black cloud.
That cliche implies that eventually there'll be a torrential downpour,
And then the cloud will fade away and allow
The sun to shine through, ending that terrible storm.
Depression is a starless night.
An expanse of black where even the stars have abandoned you,
Long since dead, and you try to make sense of the loneliness
In a world where people have turned into zombies.
Thoughtless, repetitive phrases become their instincts.
"Think positively," is the mantra of the dead to the dying.
As though statements turn into directions when the sun goes down,
Like signposts leading us to a brightly-lit land.
But the sky doesn't respond to artificial lights,
And nothing but time can force the sun to return.
Their second statement, under the facade of help,
Is to remind us that day will always follow night,
And no matter how starless and eternal the darkness feels,
The sun will eventually break through the horizon, waving pinks and oranges.
Sadly, not all lifespans are created equal,
And for the many colourful transitions people have seen in the sky,
There are plenty who never see more than black.
Some souls are born at dusk and are dead by pre-dawn,
Never having lived through anything but darkness.
And to the zombies, accepting that fact is the hardest.

Let me love you in Silence,

I want to watch you,
observe all your pores
and spots where fine wrinkles have settled.

I want to see you
dance daintily like a flower
or grunt and hoof your way through space
like a grubby animal.
Either exalted or  halted,
I want to hold you,
to cup your soft surrendered hands just like a clam shell,
and to cocoon
your weary beating body.

Let me love you in silence,
from afar
like a deer
hiding in the forest,
peeking out at the mysteries of the world.

I want to love you deeply
like the ocean loves the land
as she kisses its gentle shores
and runs away all too soon,
called by the moon.

I  lay on the dusted hardwood of our home,
your washing the dishes and the fragrant smell of soap fills the air,
I lay underneath the door frame
tracing my eyes up and down your sweet body, your strong back hunched over.  Hard working arms cleaning,
oh the little love secrets I keep to myself.

I want to run through meadows picking the most vibrant wildflowers
so I may lay them at your feet,
gently
quietly.

This yearning in my soul
words do not know this love,
these intangible feelings exuding.

I want to bathe you
in a claw foot tub
and in the silence
watch your eyes grow wide,
I want to see the wonderment
of a whole galaxy of stars glimmering inside you
before noise ushers such things away
before noise pulls me from this fantasy.
This dream that we are living,
it exists,
I know it does.

You can live it too, please please,
just close your eyes
and let love linger for a moment
feel loves sweet breathe
as she breathes in silence,
as she breathes
inside of you
and inside of me.