A night in mid-August
and you can hear them
from your house,
the drums begin
and brass sounds follow
like quietly excited children,
like the two who walk with you
over the hill.

The sun sinks
into evening’s quicksand,
your soggy clock
of adolescence
ticks faster than ever.

Scent of popcorn
excites your nostrils,
grey couples talk soft, slow,
and once your blanket
is draped upon the grass
you see an orb of hollow green
drift sleepily
up, up, over everyone’s heads
and you wish
you were that tiny balloon,
floating far away
toward something new
as each teenage summer
blurs into your brew.

They stole the night
out from beneath their feet
and replaced it
with endless painted black billboards
with cosmic advertisements
that read: tired of those pesky feelings?
then come on down to the real world
and the stars were switched with
fluorescent bulbs and Christmas lights
the clouds are just moving back drops
and the moon a search light
they stole the day
replaced vibrant blue with
coral blue #64
or baby blue
but mostly gray
they beat ambition with baseball bats
and left it for dead in a ditch
on the side of a high way
they took life
and made it banal
a product
Honey I've shrunk the conversation!
they took the world
and all of it's people
but don't let them
mean you

Nothing
I tried as best i could
to call forth
even the vague whisper of a memory

(like words that only reach the
back of your tongue,
a phantom thought
teetering
on the tip of remembrance
above the abyss of
a deeply buried past)

but even those shadows seemed to hide
in the deepest recesses of my subconscious;
teasing thoughts
that played with my conception
of reality
saunter no more
about this playground,
the landscape for my most wild
and torrid fantasies:
my imagination.

For it seems,
without the light touch
of times past,
this darkness,
that i feel
must have resided in me
since the beginning of time,
would never again lift
its heavy shroud
upon my soul
for the much needed
moments of peace this allowed me.

Despair permeated each particle of air I inhaled,
for who am I
if the whole of me
remains intact
only in the scattered minds
of those whose faces
no longer inhabit my dreams?

Truly, I believe the nightmares of this paranoid mind
have succumbed to reality


                                                       ­ for i fear I have, at last, become nothing,

There's a storm coming baby,
We can feel it in our bones
Life's waves crash around us
Making me afraid we'll lose balance
In this salty war zone.
But you say, "don't worry sweetheart,
You're always safe with me"
So I sit with you, my sailor, on our lifeboat
With nothing but an umbrella
And the sunshine in your eyes
Flowers between my toes
And the warmth you make with a sigh
That never seems to get lost in the wind.

No one chooses to be sad
Except for the attention seekers.
I didn't become sad for fun
My doctor even said I might have a form of depression.
It's like you're running up these stairs that never end or
You're trapped in a box and someone says they're trying to help you but
They keep the ladder a secret.
You can't just 'decide' to be happy
Or sad.
The only reason I saw the light was because
Of certain people.
And if you still think that
Sadness is something you just 'decide' to do
Then try to remember how I was in the beginning of the year:
I was happy,
I ran for president,
I had a boyfriend.
i felt so important

All of that is gone.

Who would want to get rid of that?
Not me.

But I'm getting better,
And everything will get better.