The circus is here
For all of America and the world to experience.

Hats off to you, Mr. Clown
Seated in the Oval Office,

Juggling our country
As if it is a toy for your own amusement
Dropping ***** everywhere.

You sit there with arms crossed,
Your pockets full
Your heart depleted.

Rich in dollars
Poor in spirit.

You are the fool
Ready to jump from cliff to cliff
Taking our country with you,

Never looking back
To see the sewage you leave
In your muddy tracks.

You are the itching powder
That gives our country a scaly rash.

You are orange dye
In a well-preserved tube of poison
Ingested by fools
Rejected by those with common sense.

You pretend to love women
Secretly fearing them
Knowing that if it weren’t for a woman
You would not be here.

You, the all-powerful king would not exist
If it weren’t for a woman.
So, you must show them who is boss
Because you are so **** afraid of them,
Of your own loss of control.

You fill up your angry gut
With know-it-all tactics
And then you crap all over the sick
With your insurance plan for the rich.

You knock down people with preexisting conditions,
People that can’t afford a bottle of Insulin,
Heart surgery,
Cancer medication.

You knock down babies and children
Diagnosed with lifelong illnesses
They fall prey to your ugly world of disillusionment.

You help the insurance companies
Handing them a free pass,
a pass that lets people die
If their wallet isn’t deep enough.

You just nod in approval
As the large companies thrive
Murdering the sick with their indifference.

You know nothing about people
The people who make up this world
The people who count
And you blame everybody but yourself.

You bathe daily in your power
Yet you leave such a stench
An odor of greed,
Obnoxiousness,
Racism
and Homophobia.

You drip profusely with your own self-importance
As you clumsily trip over your giant orange ego
As it follows you everywhere
From tweet to tweet
From fiasco to fiasco.

You leave the public With jaws wide open
The White House becomes an unprofessional screening
For your larger-than-life Reality TV show
As you continually play games with our country and world.

We chuckle at the daily puppet show
At your do-gooders and cabinet members,
As they are dragged across the floor
Right into your madness
Hanging on for dear life
To your fickle coattails.

We watch daily
As you slowly implode from the inside out
Your ice-cold exterior doing little to reassure us
That you are not simply insane.






2017 Stacey Handler

A young girl growing up
must always remember
her inner child.

Her inner child lies deep within
waiting to come out and play
help her shed her grown-up skin for a day.

A woman needs to laugh
find her playful self
longing to come back into the playground.

When times are challenging
she must look deep within
her inner child will always be there.

Her inner child will always welcome her back
to those magic gateways of childlike wonder
sometimes forgotten.

Her inner child can take her hand
help her find her path when she is lost
give her guidance along the way.

Her inner child waits in dreams
on all womanly highways
the roads leading her back to herself.


© 2014 Stacey Handler

I can feel it coming on once again
The little tickle inside of me
The child that needs to come out and play
The devilish grin permeating my face.

Once it begins
It seems to never end
The expression of my silly side
My quirky side unleashed.

My giggles are colorful marbles
Falling down an echoing staircase
Earshot spectators get quite a show
Pulled into the vortex of my laughter.

I know it must end
The nonstop hysteria
The cleansing of my body and mind
The cure for what ails me.

There is no anguish
As the laughter cascades from within my being
The pit of my stomach
The confines of my throat.

It feels like therapy
Letting it all out,
I feel the rush of life in my veins
As I laugh away all the soot in my soul.




Copyright 2015 Stacey Handler

There you are,
I can barely see you
Lost in the fog
On the other side of the platform.

How did we miss the connection?
Why are you standing over there?
You are so far away from me.

You ran away quickly
I watched in slow motion
As you darted behind my rainbow
To your familiar darkness.

Radiating my light
Turned you to dark stone
A mere statue that stood frozen
In the halls of my memory.

Could barely grasp your ticklish flesh
As you disappeared into smoke
**** mirages
A private oasis for you alone.

I could not reach you
As the smoke took you to safety
From my colorful world
My rainbow connection.

For just a moment
I felt the smile of friendship
Your numbness wiped the smile away
Put us to sleep in an instant.

Two ships
Choppy waves
Tickling caresses
Laughter for you
Tears for me.

We passed each other in the night
On the internet highway
On the end of a phone line
On the other side of a table
On a spinning carousel of anxious feathers.

The pain is so familiar
Like an airport farewell
A wave from the train station
The hello turned goodbye.

So, tell me again,
How did we miss the connection?

Where do feelings go
When the train speeds away?





Copyright 2018 Stacey Handler

You are a flame inside me
Flickering,
Teasing,
Caressing,
Smoldering.

You are far away
Yet so close
Teetering on the edge of my imagination.

The yearning is the knowing
The mere knowledge of you
That you are existing somewhere
Somewhere my reality can’t touch.

My words spill out of me
Like candy from a piñata
Pages and pages
Poems scattered about like hungry pigeons.

You make me so hungry
So eager to express
To spill my inner self onto empty pages.

You are my muse
My cruel inspiration
The tears staining my pillow.

I am dancing on a cloud
Unnoticed by you
As you live your life
Unaware of mine.

My words are endless
My thoughts knowing no bounds
As I imagine your eyes
Penetrating through me.

You are my fantasy
My never forever
My drug of choice.

You are the fuel that keeps me writing,
Feeling,
Expressing.

You are my special light
Turning on inside me
When all my creativity is turned off.

I want to ravish you
Bite the buttons off your shirt
Loosen your necktie
Drown in your eyes without a life jacket.

You are my muse crush
The smile on my face
The pain in my heart
The hello that never comes
The inevitable goodbye.



© 2014 Stacey Handler

Every now and then, there is a person
Brightening the universe everyday
Someone who is always thinking of others
Selfless,
Often sacrificing their own needs for those of others
That person is my mom.

My mom is the sun that spills in
When I have a rainy day
My mom is the one who is there
With a hug and words that make everything okay.

My mom has seen many cracks in her life
Yet she keeps it all together
Mending those cracks with her powerful love
Giving all of herself to her children and grandchildren
And anyone else lucky enough to have her in their lives.

My mom is not an ordinary mom
She is a gift from the stars
From a magical place way beyond this Earth.

Her love envelops me
Making me a better person
A wiser adult.

When I think of love
Her face is the first thing I see
When I feel that warm safe feeling
I think of my mom.

My mom remains the light
At the end of a very long tunnel
As the earth changes and life disappoints
She is the one constant star in my solar system.


2015 Stacey Handler

Oh, My Muse,
Staring at me through distant stars
Through laughter and tears
Through the hallways of my mind.

Oh, how you pierce me
A cactus in my desert,
How you sting me
A jellyfish in my unstill waters.

How you tickle me
As my pen tickles the sky,
Endless inspirations
Stanzas forever flowing free.

How you grab me
From away and afar
Confuse me
With the thunderstorms in your eyes.

If only it tickled forever
Didn’t hurt as you bring me to my knees,
If only I could fly to you like a bird
Land safely in your arms.

But no, it is not to be so!
You are words on my page, Sweet fire,
Caressing the armpits of my unwritten phrases,
The constant party going on inside me.

I must go to the party
Even when I am frozen, Afraid,
Exhausted from endless pokes of inspiration
Tickles that I wish would never stop.

I must fall free my sweet Muse,
Into the abyss of whispering pages
Where my darkness meets the light
Where you wait for me always.




Copyright 2018 Stacey Handler

Hello again
We meet under familiar circumstances
Where the air in my heart is brisk.

You are white and empty
An open road for me to travel
To fill with trees and leaves of gold.

I can be silly,
Laugh as if I were a child
Until I am a child of wonder once again.

I can be a dancer
Moving about with grace
Fall on my *** without a single care.

I can be fake
Play with my words
Until my words make me real once again.

I can tell you my secrets
Like how his smile makes me blush
How it rips the socks from my feet.

I can be barefoot
Laugh as the grass tickles my feet
Nobody will hear me, unless I deem it so.

My body can be naked
My soul can be shaded in black
My heart painted with splashes of silver sunlight.

My soul can be an onion
Peeled layer by layer
As thoughts begin to form like bubbling ripples on the water.

My thoughts are boundless children
Laughing, crying, singing,
Being.

My thoughts are womanly
Sultry, intoxicating, liberating
Painted in red lipstick.

I can admit my fears
That fear can be beautiful
The unexplored path to self-expression.

My tears can be my pool
Where I can swim deeper into myself
Maybe even get lost out at sea.

I can call to the wild
To the untamed native inside me
Longing to be heard.

I can be a fool
A reckless rebel
A wide-eyed kid running free in a candy store.

I can be me
Ticklish, silly, deadly serious
And everything in between.

My mind is forever the soaring acrobat
Flipping, slipping and sliding to my own internal rhythm
Until I am but a song.

I am a canvas
As the paint splashes onto my bare skin
Scribbling phrases from my heart all over my womanly frame.

I fall onto the pristine white page,
My body spreading around the colors of my thoughts
Until the page is saturated with everything I am.




© 2012 Stacey Handler

The mere wiggle of my fingers
The stroke of a feather
And it all begins.

First there’s the tickling
Then there’s the tears
the ship leaving my emotional ocean
you leaving me empty,
feather still in my hand.

Connection of joy
Laughter, squirming flesh
Togetherness briefly
Pain wickedly lingering.

Tickling stains the moment
Tears stain my cheeks
Your exiting footsteps quickening their pace
My heart slowly sinking.

As the tickling ends
Your coldness begins
A faucet abruptly turned off
A story with pages torn out.

Echoing laughter remains,
I wipe away my tear stains
As you vanish into the dust.





2018 Stacey Handler