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My mama's eyes say " these are lean times,"
But when she speaks there is no shame,
we will make do.
Yet there is the shadow of fear in the set of her mouth.
It is a fear I might almost understand.
She is afraid, not that we will lose what we have,
but that someday,
I will ask for more,
more to see,
more to read,
more to learn,
more to feel,
more to dream about,
and hope for,
and she will have to be the one to say no, "these are lean times."
This is more of an outline of what I want to develop, ideas and criticism are welcome.
Each morning as I brush my teeth I crack open my skull and allow the world to gorge on my brain.
I lay my thoughts on a table and watch as people dawning forks and knives pick through the vittles of my mind.
They dive in with the blind enthusiasm of a fat man near lunch time passing a McDonalds,
With no care to the actual contents of their mouths just the meaningless relief of being full again.
And each day they devour my ideas with the entitled right a kid feels towards cake on his birthday,
Not grateful just sure that by being born he deserves this.
And the soup **** in me wonders,
Maybe if they crawled to me in defeat, an anorexic succumbing to the lure of chocolate,
Or with genuine interest, a food critic sampling the gourmet fare,
I would be happy…
Or feel a little less used.
I mean most days I just want to feed myself and I don’t know how my brain turned into a free soup kitchen.
And I guess I just have to choose whether or not to hand my ideas out like bagged lunches or can them up with preserves.
But I cannot decide because it doesn’t make sense.
They resent the hand that feeds them,
But feel robbed of human rights if denied a meal.
And no one really cares about the cook anyway.
Yet each morning I brush my teeth and crack open my skull, wondering if today it will make me feel a little more full.
I tried to imagine leaving,
And all I could think of was coming back.
It’s not so much that the idea of departure frightens me,
I can easily imagine existing somewhere else,
I just cannot picture my home existing without me,
Call me self centered if you will.
Just answer me this,
What would become of my room?
There is so much of me in there,
Permanent fixtures that would annoy anyone.
My friends painted on the walls,
Ink staining my carpet,
The broken power outlets, used to such extent that all cords must be at a certain angle to work,
To me these things mean home,
To anyone else they would be annoyance in need of repair.
I think of all the effort it would take to expel my presence from my room,
The repainting, recarpeting, redoing, just to get me out,
Would it be worth the effort?
Then I think of the holes I’ll leave behind me.
The books I’ll have to take with me,
Because leaving even one dog-eared whether worn volume is an utter impossibility.
That alone will leave my room nearly empty.
What about the smell of a freshly baked dessert
Will my pie tins be forced into early retirement?
Or even worse,
Will my lovely dishes be sold?
Given to someone who doesn’t appreciate their scorch marks and abundant cracks.
Will my parents try to fill my rickety bookshelf with their own alien tombs?
The thought disgust me, like if someone else were to use my toothbrush.
But worse than the holes I’ll leave are the things I cannot take with me,
The view from my window,
The prodigal richness of my meadow in spring,
The sledding hill in winter.
For every season, very month, practically everyday there is some joy,
Will I ever be able to recover from the loss?
Yet the core of my being seems to call me away,
Begs me to ascend beyond this cluttered and twisted reminiscence of childhood,
This broken version of a shrinking paradise, to small, to old, to painfully familiar.
Is that what home really,
Somewhere so lived in you cannot bear to leave,
or comprehend staying?
Title suggestions?
Retrograded renegade
Bluntly severed runaway
Recomposing rogue of ruin
Rotting in the righteous rain
After the leaves and acorns
Yet before the frost and snow
They say it's only confusion
Artwork by Vincent Van Gogh
Through the blurs of unsettled motion
Vaguely with cloud covered eyes I see
A struggle to remember whatever happened
Interrupted by foreign memories
Not something from which you recover
Not something the curers can find
A plague without satisfaction
This is no cure for the colorless mind

--Christian J. Clark
Possibly the most emotional & cryptic piece I've ever written about myself
They say that sin is how you get in
Who knew it would be my escape?
I'll shed this skin and leave it behind
I'm coming home to claim my fate

I'm not a failure if I fail to quit
Hidden deep behind the veil
Vapor vexed in winter winds
Ignorance is a chosen cell

It's easy getting into Hell
Getting out's a different story
I have my ticket, I'm leaving now
I'm coming home to claim my glory

Fearing shadows I face the sun
Torrential raindrops build the flood
You can't erase these burning feelings
These veins do flow with ink, not blood

--Christian J. Clark
Alone with no hope.
No hope of somehow,
getting better.
So alone, it hurts
Trying so hard, so hard
to make it work.
To make it better,
to make it stop.
Broken, so broken
there is no chance
of fixing it.
With no will to fix it.
Broken, Shattered,
with no hope.
Damaged beyond repair.
and sadly I no longer care.
Fixed, broken,
It doesn't matter,
because in the end,
I'm still alone.
In the winter months you
are expensive for when
we fight and you won't talk
to me, I can't pick you
flowers from the wild, I
must purchase them from the
grocery.  These means, which
may seem a bit like a
ploy, will soon make a well-
deserved grin take hold, but
I wonder if these means
will get stale, or if I
can keep this up when we're
old.  So why is it that
when summer comes each year
you tell me that you want
some time alone?  Every
year I can't have both cash
and love--you're out of sync
with the flowers I've grown.
Don't steal.
I am consumed by your presence
the tap tap of a nibbled pencil
the long legs languidly sprawled
the silent sighs and scribbled sketches

And I envy your indifference

If only I, too, could master
the art of being aloof.
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