You shake your head
as if the truth will fall right out of your ears the same way it entered
because you don't want to believe it.
You're so caught up in your own 'opinion' that you can't even open your mind up to the possibility you might be wrong.
You are given facts, statistics, news stories, yet you are unable to listen to reason.

While the straight white male ahead of me shakes his head at the possibility of being privileged,
A mother mourns over the loss of her son, a black man shot by a cop for no reason other than fear of his skin color,
another woman is silenced by her ****** through sharp threats in a dark closet,
my own mind flips back to when my aunt was disowned by most of her family for loving a woman.

Yet you, who can drive past a cop on the highway without breaking  a sweat,
can walk down the street at night alone without breaking a sweat,
can show your parents your lover without breaking a sweat,
think that you aren't any more lucky than the other people I listed prior.
Oh, if you only knew how to open your mind, just slightly, instead of shake the truth out.
Lying to yourself only makes it worse when you realize the truth.

How come anger is so strong?
Why won’t it just let me move on?
Instead of forgiveness and understanding,
Anger is still standing in my way.
I say that “it’s okay”,
Because being mad and hurt
Only makes it worse.

If I move on,
If I step aside,
Will anger let me by?
Will it let me fly on my own
Without holding me down and
Suffocating me with tears,
With lies going into my ears
and coming out my pen.
I don’t want to love them again,
but that doesn’t mean I have to remain
dripping in anger, hurt, regret
I really want to change my mindset!
But...
          not quite yet.

Have you ever felt sad?
You’re depressed!
Have you ever been worried?
You have anxiety!
Is your room clean?
You have OCD!
Do you feel like yourself?
You have DID!
Have you ever talked to yourself?
You have schizophrenia!
Are you happy, then sad?
You’re bipolar!
Do you eat enough?
You’re anorexic!
Do you think about death?
You’re suicidal!

Hearing theses scenarios on television
Causes severe, even lethal, tunnel vision.

Out on a drive with me
It all starts out the same
The second that I turn the key
It turns into a game.

First, on the radio:
The song has to be just right
Especially not advertisements,
Sometimes they keep me from sleeping at night.

After that, I sit and think
And think and think some more
But the more I think, the more I ask
What is this all for?

Hey! No time for crises!
Let’s play games!
How many cars can you stack?
Anything to keep my brain tame.

But I’ve already thought of that game
So many times
I don’t want to play that game anymore
Repetition is what I most despise.

So I think my thoughts again
They’re even louder now
Stop stop stop stop
But how how how?

My pressure increases on the gas
Zoom zoom zoom
But it’s not because I want to go fast
It’s my head: boom boom boom

It pounds with the same thoughts
Over and over— yet
I can’t just think about something else
I can’t let myself forget

What if I crash the car?
What if I die tonight?
Stop stop please stop
Filling my head with more fright

I take a different way home
I’ve taken that one too many times
Even though it’s a little slower
And there are way too many lights

The water dripping down my neck
Is Chinese water torture
So wipe it off quickly quickly NOW
before you subject yourself to more torture

Torture torture
Driving like this is torture
Stop grinding your teeth, it hurts
You’ve been doing it since your departure

Honest to god, I want it to stop
The repetition is too much
I hate it
I hate it
I hate it
Make it stop.

“We both know how you are with reading into things.” Well... yeah.
I’m a ******* poet;
How else am I gonna figure out what to write about?

If you love me,
Or ever did,
I beg you to stop.
Usually it would be the opposite
But as much as I hate being broken,
I hate being the one to break even more.
Before, I encouraged you to take the leap—
As long as it’s not me,
Be my guest.
I know how much loving in silence hurts,
But if you love me so much you’d understand why I value your silence.

Writers block is just a giant wall
blocking an even rockier path than the one you're on
Once you find a topic,
you can't find the first word,
the first rhyme,
the first line,
the first stanza,
and I throw my hands up in anger
because I end up writing words in order random
or words to make the lines rhyme sandal

My search history is 99%
"words that rhyme with this or that"
Search results: sat, flat, cat
well that doesn't make sense within the context
but ***** making sense or metaphors or deep lore that you have to analyze,
why can't I just write out my feelings without the right rhymes?
I thought poetry was my remedy,
but it's also my demise.