Nothing hurt my eyes any more

than seeing the

strongest girl I know

cry.



Then why wasn't I?



The golden light loomed over us

as we were told

our bedrooms could change

soon,



for a brick building in the city

was about to serve no more.

And my only bit of hope

balanced on the promise

my parents will do their very best

Did you notice the sky was gray?

Did you notice their shoes today?

Did you notice those old rocks?

Did you notice your own thoughts?

Do you notice the wind in you hair?

Did you notice the birds over there?

Did you notice how you smile?

Did you notice your clothing style?

Did you notice the apple tree?

Did you notice the grass was green?

Did you notice the teacher's pants?

Did you notice the minute hand?

Did you notice the shade of their eyes?

Did you notice how you cry?

Did you notice the cleaning staff?

Did you notice your neighbor's laugh?

Did you notice?

When the day rains

The sky is crying tears

Tears that have fallen

For thousands of years



Tears of billions of souls

The sky cries them all

Some of them are yours and mine

So let them fall, just fall



The sky picked them all up

From the ground where I wept

Let fall the ones formed from

The pillow upon which I have slept



Allow these despaired waters

To wash away your pain

As you cry your own tears

That will soon become rain



Rain is the name

We call the sky

When the dark clouds fold

And it starts to cry



And soon the long-kept sorrows

Will all be washed away

As the rain sprinkles your face

On a wet crying day



A rainy day

Washes the pain.

Dodge the scythe of Death!

Scamper from the claws of ghosts

Watch your companions die and

you live alone



Misery!

define, can thee?

Death took her scythe to reap

You with the form of shark's teeth

In water you drowned

With shrieking sounds

While shredding knives made

you bleed



And in water I woke

Dripping sweat and tears

But at least now I know

I love you so dear

Tomorrow's coming
soon

I ache to say it to

somebody

but I can't say it

to myself

Ah yes,

if I ignore it long enough

soon I will be freed

O such sweet Liberty!

Pain and Liberty walk hand in hand

But Pain cheats her with Lust



A mess

is made when I Love

Perhaps I should see

What waiting brings me

To see what seed flies on my land

and what it yields: I will and must

My bags weren't big enough

Raised by parents and friends

An ocean away from my heart



But my heart lived elsewhere, too

In a young woman

A moral, passionate, thoughtful

woman.



A heart lying on the frosty grass

The frozen balcony

Overlooking the city



A heart in America

With an unpredicted love

Concreted by a brass ring



A heart in the ocean

Where I flew over

To a new destiny

My teacher sent a packet home
Of Sumerians to Ancient Rome
They told me I should study well
And right before the ringing bell
Said I will do alright

Then gave me a website to visit
With every unit all listed
From biospheres to light reactions
They said that I should just relax and
That I will do just fine

How far away you are!

and yet how close I make you!

I lie on the floor and whisper

my darkest thoughts

my best thoughts

to my mind's ghost of you

Your flesh is like blankets

your lips feel like pillows

the cotton resembles the touch of your hair

and the voice of you

is mine shot softly through the air

I need music

My earbuds are broken

Sometimes they work

And sometimes static

Really makes one

Appreciate it more

And crave it so

But just can't have it

A table lined with women

and girls

and gray chairs with wool

on which

clothes of the color of stars on

American evil

that the sweetest

most innocent thing

was cloaked in and

sat with curiosity

Just how long have I to wait

For that single word:

"Hey"

Spin does the hour hand

Spent filling a sieve with

sand

All those months where everyday

I watch Life simply fly

away

Is it true that one day I can

Hold a friend's warm

hand

So many long lonely days

And nothing can I really say

And not much I can do but

wait.

Living in Autumn, light lovingly lies on the leaves and illuminates them like lampshades with a layer of shadow luring behind luster. This liberal contract of luminosity level leaves the lesson that lightless loneliness shall not leave lest losing light and love.

O how jealousy is your aura

that blinds my life aspirations

and the impetus of love



You know always what to say

what she feels and thinks

and comforts flawlessly



Her love blankets you like wool

like sheep during winter;

you never get cold



O jealousy is your radiance

but my pity is also shed

for you are a pitiful thing



Though take you do such admiration!

loved you are by almost law,

You are yet mere imagination

and are not really felt at all

19 truths



1. Black-eyed peas do not work

2. There's nobody to kiss tonight

3. I can't open or drink champagne

4. Resolutions rarely happen

5. It's only just another day

6. I'm always awake at midnight, anyway

7. Tomorrow comes fast when older

8. Staying up is nothing special

9. Our calendar is meaningless

10. I needed sleep tonight

11. Our family is sick of each other by now

12. I've been too lazy

13. 365 days ago I cut myself the first time

14. I've changed, maybe for the better

15. I made my own dictionary

16. I don't know why I'm treating this day as important

17. School's halfway through

18. And basically everything seems dead, superficial, and meaningless

19. But I don't care

Give me sugar

For the bitterness in my mouth

The rain in my eyes

The bricks in my nose

The ice in my touch

The sporadic bells in my ear



Give me sugar

I don't need it

I want it

I want it to strip out of the stuffy costume

I wear everyday

To be high on the chemical

Enough to be normal

No, enough to act normal



Give me sugar

For the fissure in my heart

I know I don't need it

I just desperately want it

Future is a script written within my head

with no facts of which are proven right or wrong

And the Past is only as corruptly read

like a bird gulping it's spring morning song



But Present's not stable; undefined instead,

as ice is a liquid, be shattered and strong

Soars with the bullet, from the chamber it fled

and moves like a snail pushing itself along

The twister had calmed to winds still sleek

They created beautiful art

I wished from this practice a path to relief

Alas such relief is too far

What do you expect from a broken heart?



I have hid my art behind a screen

Deciphering, some of you are

Some of you probably know it's me

And may keep your distance quite large

I'm not surprised for my morale is scarred



I may take rest from this for a week

For writing these are getting hard

My welfare and writing seems too bleak

Internally I'm ripped apart

It seems my mind will be forever dark

Play it cool

Like a fool

'Til year's flown

Last chance blown

Insanity

Define, can thee

An eagle bound to Earth

its feathers tethered to

the ground.

His cry would break glass;

None paid heed, the sound



He used the weight for reps

Flap, flap to make his wings

stronger.

The rock that holds him

will soon no longer.



Burden subsided, he

soars high up in the

sky free.

And heaviness leaves

him to be happy.



But strength had

never come

freely.

Stress is building up like snow

I'll write something better

tomorrow



I need to stop procrastinating.

It always seems the easiest

for them to come to you.

But I must pause

lest forget

to flip the script, too.

The

little boy

runs through my room

Get out you little gnat!

He never knows when to stop

Never stops

Oh! he just loves to laugh and live life like it's a lively joke.

He has the eyes of mine

The hair of mine



Not a single thought of what's to come

Blissful ignorance to what he was

Leaving me to wonder how

All he loves is here and now



And then he does

He leaves my room and fades

Wondrously he walks through warm air and wanes into wisps of wind

Now I

Now I miss that air greatly

And I slump back in bed

In my cage of

consciousness

trapped

Why

Does my sad mind belie my life

In such a way like that of flames?

For

The side of mine that cries I try

With much in vain to flick away

Though

Inside it hides, alive in spite

The hutch that reins it far from day

Slow

My pace down to 90 steps a minute

Slow

My whistling to 90 beats a minute

Slow

My mind down to 90 thoughts a minute



Slow

And see the vast and cloudy sky

Slow

And hear the ruined silence in the rest

Slow

And hope that nothing's as bad as I see it



Slow

Appreciate the plain and gray

Slow

Whistle to my own blues

Slow

Hope that I didn't **** love up

We are

the people driving the streets

the reporters we love and hate

We are

the surgeons, the murderers

the rebels, the senators

We are

the protesters and police of state



We are

the painters with wondrous galleries

the athletes in the Hall of Fame

We are

the poets, the con artists

the impoverished, the satirists

We are

the forgotten with no face forlorn with name



We are

the dead and the children of life

the writers of what the future's for

and so as infants we will rise

when we haven't parents anymore

Her vocals strum

and hum

a tone of great familiarity

The crisp and warm and sharp

voice of her mouth as she reads

Poetry



Cadence of flies

that rise

and fall and flutter through void

like waves that pound on my ear

and stings the air when she reads

Poetry



But would the air

compare

with that if she played my words?

and match the golden light of the

hanging lamp above us both?



Us both immersed

in words

of others and pain of others

while we look across at each other

and listen as my

sister

reads

Poetry

Hundred degrees

Under the blistering heat

And all I feel is cold



A melodramatic

Extreme problematic

Most of what I'm told



Vacant feeling

Empathy failing

My cracked and hardened soul



A lone old stone-cold soul

It's weird how last year

I cried because I'd

A soul sheared alone



And yet now I've felt

Quite fine when I try

For true solitude



Strange 'tis: I find bliss

In wind that did spin

The storm of great form

I wonder if I had lived somewhere

other than Rochester.

(Minneapolis?)

What would I be?



I can not help but

keep longing for that air

OH! all the air that's there!



I'm old.

And the ******* millennials are

pouring over and I am just

stuck.

Who will I be?

after all this fire

surrenders to dusk?



But the silent air screams

LOUDEST

in my ears.

However I can't fight back

for Life's too powerful

and I am left with water

so much black water

that can not be drained.



It was the most important decision

in my life and for all those around me.

I swear my feet land by my decision

but I can not help but wonder

what would I be?

if I had lived somewhere

other than Rochester?

Perfect for jackets;

live rainbows laced with gold that

fills my library.

I drew.

I drew with the shapes I've learned to make everything of.

These shapes could be used

On a canvas absent of boundaries

And I drew

I drew of love, and hope, and suicide

An art that depicted loss, and solitude, and desperation

And all of this and nothing changed;

I knew not one thing more

Except I was given another thought

To pile upon the mountain of them

That drowns the whole sea of them

And soars through the air that was clouded with them



The thought?



It was love

That I had hoped

As I once contemplated suicide



The cure of loss

Of people and solitude

That made me living desperation



I would say I like to only think about things instead

But if I were to once listen to my feelings,

Well,

I would say not one single lie was etched here.

A crescent moon was outshined by all the lights

Even the noise of my own thoughts was almost drowned

It was freezing

Near zero, wasn't it?

There was actual ice in the river!

But my body felt aflame

And it just took half a second.

We have a lasagna that's been sitting in there since 6 o' clock

And for three hours since you've been doing homework

I know we just has it two days ago

But our fridge just broke and our freezer, too

And buying a new one is so much money

That your father is working from dawn to dusk for

At a workplace that is about to be boarded up

While your brother over here is being an utter ******

And our houses is falling apart

We have no working dishwasher

My shop isn't selling

Your grandmother's dying across the Atlantic

The other is flipping through jobs

And our sinks don't work

And our tub is leaking

The car's making weird sounds

And our garage is collapsing

The oven's malfunctioning

And our driveway's cracking

And 4 years from now I'll be paying to the colleges

That will steal two parts of my soul.

So please, dear daughter, let us go eat some lasagna.

My hormones

I despise them

Happiness

They accept none





I have ran

But not away

Out of sight

But not of mind

Still it stays although I try



Why I flee

From the misery

I create

With thoughts sedate

I do see how it's insane



Insanity

(Define, can thee?)

Does describe

All that incites

Acts of me to run and hide



Tooth crescents

Outshine darkness

Like the Moon

But yet it soon

Be destined uncovers gloom



Nervous eyes

Poetry writes

Itself and

Block off it can't

Silent cries nothing can stand



Oh! poems

The rules of them

None. But still

I fail to spill

Emotions that slowly ****





Insane is it?

To run from things to sate the cave

For fear of drowning again?

You say insane?

I have blocked it twice more before

So pushed light from going in?

It is insane?

Do things that I have done a ton

And wish for a different end?

Open doors lined in a hall

Walked through two and took a fall

Peered through the next one I saw

Ask if I should go at all

And risk having a third fall

I figured I should not stall

Defying my fearful call

If again I hit a wall;

Be shot down and forced to crawl,

There are more doors in the hall

I plan to walk through them all

'Til I find my tree grows tall

old faces.

new experiences?



I was expecting

when I

moisturized the soil

when I

shined upon it light

and planted

the seed....



I was ready.

It didn't grow.

But I'll give it time.

For I know it

takes it

(Even though I can't

stand it)



So I'll just wait.

I have patience.



I'm still waiting.

All year Life sat on the curb

With infant Love in hands

But a hurricane came roaring by

And washed his child away



After the storm Despair came by

And sat down next to Life

Then Anger and Anxiety followed

Which caused him quite some strife



And old companion was there also

Named Insecurity

He appeared at the unlucky times

In a mirror Life did see



Regret and Shame came behind

And made Life bitter cold

Believed he didn't deserve beauty

Condemned to live alone



Later on Loved walked by

Older but still a child

Life and his heavy group got up

And ran after her like wild



But Love was not grown up and she

Was not ready for the world

So she and Life were torn apart

While in dark the latter was hurled



Life cried out and begged for Death

To appear to come and take him

He pulled a string around his throat

And awaited asphyxiation



But Death sent Fear to her brother

And Fear went to take Life's hand

The ligature was ripped right off

And the air returned like sand



Despair made no haste to leave

But did so in the end

She left her children for her place:

Heartache and Isolation



Love walked by the curb again

Young, but more mature

But life was much more hesitant

To chase such bright pasture



Fear who had stayed so long

And spared Life fear of Death

With Anxiety he hit Life so hard

And gave his mind no rest



From Love came imperfect Beauty

And from her came Modesty

"Such a wonderful thing," sighed Life

"Is better off without me."

A leaf makes shingles cave over

A pin will knock a tightrope walker

And a hair overflows the water beaker



A's cut from B by a line of fleas

while string divides it from C

In vain one may be slain with pain

while working hard does thee



The weight of rock can't be forgot

Even through fervent pulls of wrought

No gain will rain as bane's sustained;

Pulling such weight makes wings distraught



For a breath may shake the house

An iron spring will snap the mouse

And towels can tear with a single douse

I made a map over the summer to an unknown treasure.

I didn't know how long the trail was.

Wednesday I left the map for a jewel I see in the grass.

Why?

I was hungry with no food.

I don't even know if the gem is fake or cheap

But yet I left the map to find out the jewel's worth.

I had a fear of a fire

That would melt my heart

which would pour through the lids of my eyes.

An energy to push the Invisible



But this morning I saw a new side



A flame that was warm but didn't burn.

Helping wash away and

Release the air



I'm falling

Or am I floating?



And then I saw what was missing.

And then I saw what I missed.



The piece of my world to keep it whole



Will I land? Or won't I? I'm close to it now.

Will I land?

Or won't I?



And the thing that I felt when I saw the new side

Was what was in the sky when I saw the Earth

I've a library full of memories

With a key for every one

Play the key watch me lose

My senses into the sun



The moments of silence

And I walk among the shelves

Wandering these lost times

I can hurt or cure myself



The first few notes begin to play

My heart begins to race

I redden as she looks at me

With a smile on her face



Across the table from me

With ice cream in her hand

Two years and I still miss her;

But she's no longer my best friend



The first verse rings in my ear

Before it's even there

I see the Pennsylvania hills

And feel the humid air



Listening to my music

Gazing through the window a lot

Hours I'm stuffed in the car

Listening to my thoughts



Now the bridge has come

Walking away from my home

Tears are in my mother's eyes

As she sees how far we've grown



It's my first year of middle school

And I'm a nervous wreck

The future is so cloudy

I don't know what to expect



The tempo builds and he is there

My first ans closest friend

We play together in the sandbox

But our bond was soon to end



It's the last base drop

And the winter's a sharp chill

I have a sled under my arm

As I look far down Cobb's Hill



The final keys are struck

My hand ***** into a fist

As I feel the rushing anger

And see the blood on my wrist



Only a few more seconds

The song is almost done

I feel the breeze as I bike

Under the scarlet sun

Anxiety's a ball of liquid iron

Eternally freezing from the inside out

Fit a layer of stone!

Sprinkle some grasses and trees for decoration

Pretty thing on the surface from outer space

But in the surface, a cold hell

Smoke and trash and debris

From internal wars fought before

Volcanoes that at times erupt

The fire brewing at the core

That little piece of

glass

had the power to pull

everything in me

down

Walk through the streets of Germany

Don't remember the sounds

Of the morning greeting town

Or of the brick path under me



Walk along the bronze statue bold

Bought in air to freeze hell

A trifle with walnut smell

Go to wherever I was told



Walk up all the apartment stairs

In coats, each cheese and breads

Then curl up into be my bed

And fall asleep without a care



Don't remember the stores or parks

Of wood and brick and stone

Or the nighttime view alone

And the icy sky full of stars



The plush of bedspread white and clean

Sharp windowsill cacti

The breeze blowing ice

Streams icicles on balconies

The meadow was that of much beyond compare

Outlined by a blue line that cut off the air

Hardest soft brown eyes that set off a flare

The heat was worth being exactly right there

My Reason and Sense, the water did not spare

Until the sun set, and left the land all bare

Left me with nothing but at darkness to stare

And building wishes for the curtain to tear



But the Moon had risen, with luring brightness

Gave light to the water: then full with darkness

A colorful face crafted with such finesse

Such a light through my black; I could not wish less

Finite or not; loved the feeling regardless

But I was cursed at the same time I was blessed

Moons don't always shine, and it caused my great stress

So I parted the Moon, which I think it best

I'm thankful it had been there, nevertheless



I parted the Moon; the sun began to rise

And so did the flutter of the butterflies

And heated that which could have turned into ice

Roses in a field that was soaked in gold dye

Like the hue of the sun that flew through the sky

But I've forgot the joy I feel when I fly

And now I wonder, "Should I even try?"

'Cause each Day just leaves me with tears I can't cry

A clock whose beat is tuned out

clicks its seconds like rocks

pounding and falling on each other;

the little patter of piles of stones



The train whistles its trumpet

as the wheels click and clack

on the track of iron bars and wood

and roars like a lion of steel



Crunching of her foot on the stairs

of old creaking planks of spruce

and padding of coarse carpet

before the creaking of rusty hinges



The wind resembles the humming

of the alien fridge, so native

Both strum chords of one note

to the ignored beat of the clock



So I sit.

Eighty years old
with frazzled white hair,
Sad because I
am pining for air