Captain America
Every time I swoon when I see that shield
And not just because the actor is hot
Because his heroics stop my heart
I’ve taken the quizzes
Taken every test
Researched the blogs, the books, the films
Determined he is my guardian angel
My soul
My mind
Follow his footsteps
Little man taking the hits
Rolling with the punches
Making those around me feel lit
Mingling with demons and metal men for lunches
I want to be everything that represents him
But he does not represent his name
Not america, roger
But what america is meant to represent, roger
He is not the original 13 colonies, roger
Or north america, roger
Zarahemla, roger
Nephi lehi, roger
But he is Steve, roger
Holding the torch passed by a martyr, roger
Wearing stripes and stars like a crown, roger
Surrounding all those who draw breath with an ancient shield, roger
He is almost a modern Christ in a mortal mind, roger
He is what I wish to be
But sadly I’m not an allegory
I’m not God
But I want to be

We’ve all done this I’m sure
We’ve gotten a chocolate bunny for easter and we’ve taken away it’s protective layers
Taken it out of the box
We rip off the ears first
We jokingly laugh, oh no my bunny can’t hear anymore
We later move to the eyes and rip off the individual sugar dot
Oh no my bunny is blind he’ll never see again
We take away their sugar carrot
Oh I guess they’ll go hungry
We rip of it’s head
Laughing at our headless bunnies
Then we eat all the rest
And uh oh my bunny’s dead


I wonder if that’s how terrorist think
If they see everyone in the world as chocolate bunnies ready to be ripped into chunks
When in interrogation rooms with
Women, children,
fathers and sons, waiting to be questioned
They just see large chocolate bunnies
a fondue of sweat running down their faces, and
When they feel the need for pleasure they take the bunny’s ears
Uh oh now that man can’t hear
They rip the eyes away
Oh  now that women can’t see
They take away the small carrots
Oh no now that child is hungry
They rip each chunk away until
Uh oh they're dead
I think that’s the only way the terrorist
mad men , immoral human beings
can live with themselves
Is seeing everyone as chocolate bunnies
So much easier to melt down and mold into something of their liking
Or bunnies living with the one purpose of being consumed
And I wonder if that is what sometimes their victims picture themselves as
Because chocolate bunnies don’t have minds or hearts
They can’t feel the pain
They can’t feel the shock of the bodies ;littered on the ground
So they won’t see their own tinted blood flowing out
So they won’t see their homes burned down.
I wonder what would happen if we could stop seeing chocolate bunnies
Would we see human beings
Or would we just see some other sugary thing
Waiting to be consumed
Because sometimes I think I’m gummy bear
Just waiting to no longer have a head

So close but so far
So close but so far
Top to bottom bottom to top
Top to bottom
Bottom to top
We can’t seem to reach the middle
It’s either bottom or top
Precarious pedestals
Or compacting boxes
You either choose where you stand or it’s chosen for you
It’s a wonder why we never truly choose where we end up
When all that's stopping us is ourselves
We think ourselves lacking
So instead of creating ideas we latch onto those already in front of us
thinking that if we don’t grab
quick enough we'll drown in
an ocean of our own making
We grab it and hold fast
dumping the colors of the one singular idea over us hoping it’s permanent
Becoming dissatisfied every time we realize it isn’t
And when we see some other thing we want to be it’s then we think that the paint is too permanent to remove from our skin, too late to change the traits we’ve adapted for ourselves
Using those traits as tickets to our direct flights
To get higher above the trials of life
Spending so much time in the clouds
Blurring our view of reality down below so all we see is the singular creation of the sky
And the moment we find the ground
We don’t feel solid
Don’t know how to root
We stay like cactus not able to reach down far enough
Exposed to everything arounds us
Growing spines and needles
Just so all the people around us won’t weather us away
Sometimes a few make their way through our shells, settle close to our centers
But when they leave we become hollow
No roots to root us to being a part of the earth
Only enough to know we are something to be used
We never realize that our residents never left
That we have been residing too
Cactus inside cactus
All looking through the same eyes
So close yet so far
Everyone’s vision  skewed
Optical lenses all focusing wrong
Those with 20’ 20 vision practically blind
Everyone wearing prescriptions
That only seem to block out everything five feet in front of them
Most see pedestals rising high
Wealth, power, fame, beauty all so close
But what if they are the ones too far
It is all those who seem far that are close
So all the world watches as the earth spins in reverse
And if we went in reverse wouldn’t that make sense
Spread more kindness instead of hate
Peace instead of war
Sit down with a stranger not fearing who or what they may be
Running not afraid that any second we’ll run over the edge
If the world worked in reverse
Would we live instead of deceiving ourselves into living

In the end we are all so far from home
But we are all so close to together

What do you want to do, they ask me?
I want to teach U.S History. I reply
Professor? They ask
No middle school
You know that doesn’t pay well is their last answer to me

Don’t they think I know that
I ask them the same question,
What do you want to do?
They reply: Lawyer, doctor, politician.
They give me answers underlined with dollar signs
They don’t know what their passion is so they
Peruse the merchandise, and look for the one with the biggest price tag,

In my school there are academies
Where you train in your future profession
Is it a wonder that everyone runs to the medical field
Because of the long line of zero’s on it’s room number
While they all sprinted, I casually walked to the one with the big fat zero on it’s doormat.

What do I want to do, what do I want to be?
I want to be a zero dollar teacher.
I want to be a broken gumball machine
With no need for shiny quarters, continually shoving out chewy spheres of knowledge
Spheres of joy, spheres of wisdom, spheres of truth.
I know I don’t make much green
But I’ll make a million smiles
I’ll be payed in laughter and gratitude.Which I’ll earn from the things I have taught, and have been taught to me. While you map out the brain as gray, I’ll be mapping out the U.S.A
And while you stare at frowning faces, I’m gonna look at thirty or so smiling faces
When you go home to your mansion to grumble on your throne of a couch
I’ll be in my cottage thinking of how blessed life can be,
I know I don’t get paid much.
Because I only cost
Zero dollars and zero point zero zero cents.

You’ve read the words a million times
Seen it from novel to novel
You read about the daughters
And those they love
The ones who got sick
They hope
And hope and hope
then things go bad
And the only one who can still hope are the daughters
I’ve read their words from all across the decades
Sympathized with their pain
With their grief
With their internal struggles
But I never empathized with them
And in the past
I had this thought
In my head like a sticky note adhered to the fridge
Stuck there right next to the grocery list and the kindergarten artwork
It read
I would never be a daughter

Then the words leapt off the pages
Of the hundreds of novels
Inserted themselves into my narrative
Gluing themselves to my skin,
I tried to rip them off myself
But they peeled off my skin with their literary fingers
Taking some of my skin with them as they launched and
Ripped the sticky note off my cerebral refrigerator
I became a daughter

Sometimes I still can’t believe that word is a part of my life now
Cancer
And I understand what these daughters have felt
That it feels wrong that I should be the one feeling hurt
It is those I love that are sick and I am healthy with no physical ailment on me
No tumors or scars under my skin
But I feel as if they are in my heart
There is a tumor there and it won’t be removed
Because how could one ever remove a metaphorical tumor
Why does it hurt?
Is it because of the chemo
Cherishing the Hope that Everyone is Mostly Optimistic
Devoting myself to keeping everyone else in balance
Holding the weight of the world even though I could easily just let it go and crush
Every horrible thing in this life
But it became a part of me when that word entered my life
I can’t make it separate, make it leave, can’t stop being who I was born to be
Someone to hold the weight
Except one
One weight that ain’t no metaphorical tumor

The person I love is sick
The novels have inserted their words into my narrative
I just hope I can revise their endings
And move cancer into the index
The credits
anything
instead of having  the last page read
the end

But, then I see the one I love stand strong
As everyone says this is the end
She won’t pretend that this it
Because it isn’t
She takes the pen into her own hand and erased what the world had written
And writes the end of part one
The end to this chapter in a long happy saga called
life
And she writes to the daughter
I'll see again
when you finish part one
In your wonderful fairy tale book

Life is one long escalator ride
We step on at birth and keep riding up to the unforeseeable top
Packed like sardines into one aile
As children we let our hands glide across the moving rails
Until we notice others shunning the handles and we let go
Surrounded by TV screens on both sides
3D glasses letting us see different things
See the events, the moments, the accomplishments
The sorrows, the pains
It sends some into a panic.
You can see their faces go slack
Their legs wobble and shake
They try to run down on stairs moving up
Pushing and shoving  people  just to try to get away from the events witnessed on LED screens
Why don’t they realize?
There's no one waiting at the bottom
But those who wait, who get  through the screens that send chills to new meanings
Those who reach the top of the escalator ride
reach the top floor to eternity

Little smiling boy
I remember when you would smile all the time
Your widespread grin a bowl full of sunshine
Your teeth like colorful lucky charms,the dimples of your cheeks surrounding them with cool white milk
I know there were those times
When you would scream and cry
When the demons locked in your genetic code
Played bumper cars in your brain
Making bruises all over your cerebral cortex
Scratches and scrapes to mark up your amygdala
But when the cars would halt you would smile
Little smiling boy, oh how I remember how you made me smile
The way you would hug me little smiling boy
Paint joy onto my features
Fill your smile with laughter
At whispered inside jokes that only a brother and sister could share

Little smiling boy
You grew up so fast
The demons soon got tired and you shut down their theme park and built one of your own
Little smiling boy made me smile with pride
Pride as only an older sibling can
Smiling watching little smiling boy write his name on the lines
Not one letter skewed, almost as if his hands were a typewriter
As little smiling boy reads, rolls words off his tongue that were held back too long,
Little smiling boy reciting every species on the planet as if nature was his second nature
Little smiling boy joining his classmates
Raising his hands up high in glorious victory
happy

But smiles fade
Little smiling boy you may still smile, but it’s not the same
Why? Why do you frown so much little smiling boy?
Let your smile sag, becoming a mask
black fabric to cover your features so the world can’t find you
And when they want to find the reason  that you hide you reveal the face of a predator
snarling and fangs, leaving at least one scar on their minds
before the mask comes up again
You may still tell me jokes little smiling boy
Ones that you find on your distraction box
But all your jokes do his hit me with darts
Your words hitting closer and closer to the middle of my cork center
I pluck each needle out of my body
Each one stings
Echoing it’s origin

Little smiling boy, you still smile
But your smile scares me
Strikes fear in my heart
You smirk down on those who are hurting
Little smiling boy smiles at those down on their knees
Little smiling boy see’s red and smiles, but not at the luck it holds, but the misfortune
He see’s death and smiles, but not with respect or a solemn gaze
Little smiling boy, do you smile inside?
When you face stares at me blank, your tongue tearing my heart over and over
Do you frown inside, little smiling boy?
When you lie through bared teeth
Saying “ I do love you”, right after you’ve left me to stitch my heart back together again
Pulling out shredded threads from previous mends
Stitching with dental floss, just to see if it will hold out longer
If it may make my heart fresh and new like mint
When I see you little smiling boy, you still smile,
But it scares me
You grin while I grieve
Grieve that I can’t stop loving my abuser
That I can’t run away from your ocean
That all I can do is plunge in and drown a thousand lifetimes over
I see you grin open wide  holding  rows of sharp metal
Ready to gouge everyone near with their prickling words
When did this happen?
When did you stop smiling?
Was it amidst the years of puberty, the extra boosts of testosterone it gave?
From the things you watched in your distraction box, the images I didn’t want you to see?
All I want is you
Little smiling boy
Wrap me in your arms again,
Hug me, hold me, promise you’ll never hurt me, promise you’ll never leave me
Please learn how to smile sunshine again, little smiling boy
Because little smiling girls need their little smiling boys
Or else they can’t smile