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michelle reicks Jun 2011
mom
It cost her three and a half dollars to send me this white package filled with a bag of raisinets, a few cheap Valentine’s Day decorations, and a note saying “I’m proud of you”


It meant so much to me
She will really never know
I’m proud of her too
michelle reicks Jun 2011
We teach our kids how to use keyboards
But we can’t make them want to write
Anything meaningful or important
Like (love or peace or hurt or hearts or good or bad or taste,sight,touch,smell
FEEL)


We teach them how to use computers
because we know that most of them
will sit behind a desk for the rest of their lives.
trying to pretend that they are satisfied with themselves
trying to ignore the fact that this paycheck is just a SLIP of FANCY PAPER with not enough numbers on it.
trying to forget that grey hair they found on their crown in the bathroom that morning,

They’ll sit at their mahogany desk in their black tassel shoes
and think “at least I got a job that I can use my degree for”

But when they went to college,
they always wanted to major in English

But they knew that they couldn’t get a job
With that degree
So they took the easy way out
And studied technology
And now,

They teach kids how to use keyboards on weekends
michelle reicks Jun 2011
Déjenlas ir a sus casas
Sanas y salvas.
Paren la contaminación
En nuestras personas.
Nuestros niños están llorando
Pero hay silencio en los campos
Nuestras personas
Tienen hambre
Déjanlas comer
Nuestras personas
Tienen sed
Déjanlas beber
?Que están haciendo?
Ustedes beben con vasos de cristal
Pero nuestras personas
Beben con las latas sucias.
Nosotros estamos hacienda una función
Pero el público es ciego
Y algunas cierran los ojos
Abran los ojos
Las pesticidas están matándonos
Paren
Y no les importa
Tenemos el poder
De levantarnos.
Vamos a trabajar
Para nuestra libertad.
!Den la libertad!
michelle reicks Jun 2011
We’re running out of time, wasting it
On *** and money and food and sleep.
And we sometimes forget to be happy.
We forget about important things
Like crowns made out of dandelions and kissing in the rain.
But I think I have figured it out.
I had to retrace my steps, start from the beginning

“When I was a kid I used to cut my wrists”

and if that’s not bad enough

I finally grasped that everyone else did too

And I can’t even remember why I wanted to die

But when YOUR daughter is found dead

pumped full of pills

and hate

How do you tell your wife?

do you even remember to cry?

Light up a cigarette

Pour yourself a drink

you try so hard to feel something so you won’t have to think

about the mortgage, the baby, the unemployment checks that stopped

coming last month.

And you’re bored.

But LIFE is not something that you watch.
I get confused when I hear complaints
about the kid next door
because he’s playing his guitar too loud

But his neighbors
never sit and enjoy the music.

There was a dark Friday
When eighteen thousand people were buried or never found in Japan,
and I heard people safe in America saying,
“well, the earth was really overpopulated.”
While I shed a tear for every single soul that would never get to go home again.
And it still didn’t feel like enough.

I’m still trying to figure it out but I know that
We’re just complex connections
of molecules and nerve endings
and blood cells, protons, neutrons.
And we’re NOT going to live forever.

And it’s not our fault that we can’t understand that there is no time to be worried

There is only feeling.
Scared feelings and blue feelings and numb feelings
and the blending of these things,
FEElings

finally create this thing we call love
and no, we don’t understand it.
all we know are
*** and money and food and sleep
and sometimes love gets lost in the days
and no, we don’t always remember that it’s there


I am forced to watch Hate being passed around the circle like a bottle of cheap wine
and everyone takes a sip, because it’s what you do.

And that’s when I plug my ears

contemplating why God didn’t give us instruction manuals

but I’ll try my best to figure it out
michelle reicks Jun 2011
maybe we just got separated
we forgot how to be together
because when I was born you knew how to be my pops

remember when you would say
here
put this belt in each loop while I spin.

and then you would spin,
with your arms out
and I thought you might fly away



and then things got difficult
with me
and you couldn’t- -
wouldn’t figure it out

but thanks for trying now
michelle reicks Jun 2011
The very second I placed the
tip of my pencil on this sheet
of paper,
      I ruined it.
This piece of paper could have been
used for so many things.

A legal document
a beautiful origami crane
or a fire to keep someone’s someone warm.

But it was inevitable that I
would be the one to ruin this
sheet of paper. To press hard
and make thick grey lines inbetween
theblueones. To run my hand
back and forth, smudging these
pointless ******* words
and here they are.
michelle reicks Jun 2011
I had a dream
about a terrifying woman
that kidnapped children
and cut off their faces
and glued the faces onto dolls

she had an entire house full of rooms with half child half doll horrors

and she would lick their cheeks and eyelids
with a crazy look in her eye
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