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 May 2014 Max Evans
kylie
my father and i were drinking orange juice at
two thirty in the morning when he turned to me and said,
“i never taught you that you could be anything you
wanted to be because the truth is that you can’t,”
and i decided he was right when i realized i was too
right-brained to work a nine-to-five job and that i’d rather
destroy a computer and call it art than create one and
call it science.

but maybe he was only thinking about the big picture,
and by now i’ve realized that the big picture is never
the most important and that the small scribblings that
mainly go unnoticed matter the most and i thought
back to when a tenth grade teacher had asked me a
simple question and expected a simple response,

and while i had given her a real answer, she claimed it
to be unrealistic and the corner of her lip twitched as she
tried to suppress a laugh, but i wasn’t laughing because
what’s so wrong about saying that, “maybe i want to be
your favorite constellation?” because it’s true —

and, “i want to be the goosebumps on your arms when you
hear your favorite song performed live. i want to be the aching in your
ribs after you’ve laughed too hard, your favorite Sunday dinner,
a constant reminder that you are beautiful and that you are
kind and that you don’t need anybody else to make you happy.
i want to be compassion. i want to be sympathy, treachery,
creativity. i want to be the reason you wake up in the middle
of the night without really understanding why. i want to be
the question, an answer, a hundred possibilities.”

she asked me what i wanted to be, and i told her i wanted
to be everything — and maybe other people don't know how
to feel the same way that i know how to feel,  and maybe that's
because we spend so much time teaching kids how to compute
and to quote instead of how to express and emote and i find that
to be very disappointing.
a scholarship poem

030
 Dec 2013 Max Evans
Sophia Fagone
I have this thing..
It's called bipolar disorder
Okay, okay, go ahead and make stupid jokes now.
Yeah let me tell you something
I'm different
You're different
We are all different
I get mad, I get upset, I get happy, and I get confused
But doesn't everyone?
Life is hard enough, now you are adding a label to mine.
You are packing me and all my emotions up into a tiny bottle of prescription pills
The only other pills I've taken, haven't been prescribed.
Am I not allowed to express myself? Be me? Show my emotions?
No. Everyone thinks I'm having a manic episode.
How come?
The label.
That label on my body doesn't say "Bipolar Disorder"
It says "Crazy"
Ice blue eyes
Sharp as the serrated edges of a chainsaw blade
Carving my frozen heart
To conform to your fringerprints

Feather soft lips
Rose colored by nature
Speak words of silk
To dress my **** perception
Of what happiness could be

Golden straw hair
The farmer of flowing cornstalks
They bloom the scent of revival
A harvest moon illuminates their beauty

Wine bubbles burst
Pops replaced with giggling
A drunken serenade
To pull whiskey breathed sailors
Near their soon sunken imagination
Premonitions showing their fantasy

A toast to the woman
Who shall teach bronze haired children
With her brilliance
Coupled with cunning of their father
May she be happy in my dreams
Where she has yet to emerge
From it's dreary depths
There was a woman in my dreams last night and I have never seen her before, but my lord she was flawless.
Seeing faded memories of faded nights
Lying on faded baby blue sheets
The inoxication of two styrofoam cups
Feeling heavy in hands made of feathers

Eyelids the weight of the world compressing onto cheeksbones dried on tongues of new sneakers
Float away
Away
Away
To a world unknown
The cartographer of your own mind

Pick up the next sip
Let it be your map
The thickness sliding to your stomach
The river to bring you home
Ferryman collects no fair from pain filled travelers

Close your eyes
Let the purple jungles captivate you
Your baby blue eyes are the way home

Call me a runaway
There are archers in rooftops 270 meters to my east
They account for the wind
They feel the humidity as the air condensates on the back of their neck
Crawling down their spine
They inhale
Let out their carbon in a slow steady sigh
Their target is at the door to my dorm room

My door creeks open
The archers let the cord to their payment slide down the mountainous ridges on the end of their fingers
One archers whispers "for freedom"
The arrow soars to the window that lets light pour onto my covers

Glass shatters
The thud of a body falls to the floor
I sit up
A thousand grasshoppers replace my bones
The hairs on my arms are attentive

The lights illuminate my illusions
I stare at my own body on the floor
I fall to my knees
Meeting my eyes to the dead stare so familiar in mirrors
Finally
This monster is dead

A ****** arrow stands from his forehead
From his toes to his hair, he falls to ashes
The broken window letting in a breeze that vaccums the ashes from the room
All that's left
An arrow stuck to my floor

The arrow penetrates a photograph
I lift the picture to take a closer look
A hole covers the eyes
What gives it away is the smile
The complection

Finally
This monster is dead
Smokey alleyways once lead me to a steel door
Only thing that lead my way
An ambient red light
The haunting sound of your voice

Large steel door, cold as the winter you protect your secrets from
What lies behind you

Whisper the name of a young woman strong as the smile she bears
The lock clicks ever so slightly

Open the cold barrier to bright light and a warm breeze
like the warmth of your eyes

There, in the middle of the warmth of the suns rays
There is a single cloud

I have found serenity

Your name is the key to sanctuary

Let me continue to whisper
 Jun 2013 Max Evans
Sarah Camacho
ninety-eight degrees.
one single minute of blood rushing to the heart.
calmly, you turn away
and resume your day.
i'm aware that your pulse
is more regular than mine.

you flashed a brilliant smile
and forced your thoughts upon my own.
my heart was a lovely red
and the sky was my home.

soon later, i saw the darkness you saw in others.
this darkness is quite the affliction.
it is a prescription gone horribly wrong;
costly and effective in ways i wasn't aware.

you see, it is a drug
but it is more so a shovel.
eyes shut, i create my own spot within the earth.

not six feet, not ten, not thirty
but a quaint place exculsively
for my ninety-eight degrees
and my darkness.

subconciously, i've allowed layer upon layer of earth
to compact upon me until i could not feel
one single minute of blood rushing to the heart.

ah, but your obligation has saved me.
you reminded me of how
my ninety-eight degrees, my darkness, and my blood
flows ultimately the same as everyone elses.

you must be a saint to leave me in this quaint spot,
beneath these compact layers of earth.
you set me down gingerly
and strode away with my heart.
my body is here,
but my mind is in the dark.

so thank you for allowing
these roots to wrap themselves around my back.
what an astounding notion
to paint my heart black.
for now i see the benefit in the game.
flying is overrated,
and to feel is a shame.
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