"You can do whatever you want!
She proclaimed
A thousand eyes peered at her
scornful, disdainful
It was a motto they'd heard often,

"You can" had lived longer
Than any of their friends
It was etched onto their brains
Next to the minimum skills for the low-wage job they held
and the worries about getting food on the table

"Do whatever" echoed
Through broken doors,
Creeped in the cracks between
Grafitti plastered walls,
trash-strewn streets were nothing thrived.

"You want" whispered
In the silence between gun shots,
Hospital beeps, loud televisions, squawking carts
Slapping them awake when they fell asleep after
Working 20 hour shifts

"Just follow your dreams" she continued
(Not that you can anyway because you'll
Never be treated equally, never be given
The attention you need, never be lucky)

"Remember, everything is a choice!"

Options are not included.

This is not a critique
It is not an attack
But if you treat each word as a bullet
Then you are bound to bleed

My mother she tells me
That color does not matter
That white just means that
they are lacking pigments,
science really.

When I come home crying
My mother she tells me
If they mock me,
it's only because they are jealous

When I sit alone at lunch
My mother she tells me
If they avoid me,
It's only because they are jealous

When I have no one to invite to my graduation
My mother she tells me
If they do not come,
It's only because they are jealous

What are they so jealous of?

Words can only be repeated so many times
before they lose meaning
And I'm afraid
That my mother's words
Ring hollow in my ears

Pencil lapsed over paper, strokes struck blank.

Curves raced up and down the stairs, lines longed to curve.
Loops eloped to a wedding
Spirals sprung out,
Dashes dashed,
Crosses squares with circles
Triangles jumped over rectangles
Ovals wove throughout

Dot was left to point out
The empty blank around him

Touch was left senseless, confined to a single, gray sheet

Vision squealed
Cornered by hard lines, transparent materials and cruel facts

Hearing despaired, assaulted by
squeaks, squawks spears
piercing relentlessly

Taste strived to differentiate,
bland it seems, could have multiple types
from desperate to demure and back again

Brain sighed.
It had accepted defeat.

The final yawn covered the room,
rest finally arrived.

My mother wanders into the fancy party,
A bull in the china shop,

Her eyes are saucers as she watches
Waiters enslaved to the night

Unidentified identities lie behind masks
She's afraid


Not unsmart she repeats
Not uncultured
Not uncivilized

Not un (is) not un (is) not un (is)
A meter, a harmony, a rhyme
Meaning inherent

Buried the sleeping bags
(Bodies inside)

Ate concrete blocks
Drank tangled wires

Welcome to the Jungle
South of Ithaca.

Smashed bottles
Shattered illusions

Shoved tires
(Inside ground)

Welcome to the Jungle
South of Ithaca.