I blame you for making me write all these sonnets
I tried to make the best of it, but five?
How in the ******* world am I supposed to write five?
Doesn’t each sonnet take the course of a week?
And it definitely seems that we don’t have five weeks
To write five pristine perfect sonnets
I’d rather read fifty poems than write five of these stupid things
I’d like the meet the man who decided these poems
Had to be fourteen lines, stylized rhymes
I’d say, go to hell with you and this torturous format
Instead of making me write these many poems
All in the same style, all droaning on in my mind
Like an endless treadmill of poem-writing
I say I’ll do better on the next assignment, but truthfully
I’m improvising

Her eyes to me, they glisten sweet
Like 800 metres below.
In caverns deep, sapphire clean
Highlights of wave and shore.

Carnation petals in the sand,
Delicate, untouched.
Wind come by and blend them in,
To match her sun kissed skin.

Those beach wave curls that light the sky
Bounced perfectly at the waist.
Of blonde and brown with slight pink flicks
They set her eyes on fire.

Those eyes to me, spread kindness and see
The beauty that life desires.
With those lips that twitch, although flaked and dry
It's her soul that's content with mine.

My Senior English Research Paper Proposal:
I propose to talk about how society and school can affect the youth of America.
I propose to talk about how much we all don't want to talk about this.
How depression becomes common in teenagers and youth isn’t just an emotional problem- it’s societal one.
How we’re told to bury emotions, not to cry but to move on and play the game. But we only get so long before we realize it doesn’t mean anything.
Useless grades for a useless world.
Words that having no meaning besides the ones that we put behind them.
How we teach kids to be quick to laugh at the expense of others and take nothing serious because nothing matters- and how we do that without hesitation because everything matters.
How we bury everything so deep.
How that begins to hurt and overflow.
How we tell them it's all in their heads.
How they’ll outgrow it.
How we push kids to be older than they are.
How kids are shown limited paths in life when the world itself is limitless. It gives zero ***** about how we live.
How kids out of fear and loneliness turn on each other.
How we are all so desperately looking for a connection in this world but draw closer in because people are dangerous and loneliness is safe.
How we are all selfish and eventually lose the ones we love.
How love is a concept and construct warped so far that we can’t perceive it any more yet we all desparetly are told to seek it out.
How loneliness can ****.
How the depression and suicide rates of kids sky rocket in high school because puberty hits and chemicals go wild and you wake up and see that you don’t have anyone who cares about you for you,
how your heroes are nothing more than **** ups like you,
and how there is no point to anything but work and death.
How the point was supposed to be communication and other people, but we washed that out of system.
Stay quiet in class rooms. No passing notes. Ignore your neighbor. Be afraid of everyone on the buses. Loners look cooler. No one really cares about you.
And how that can **** someone, those three simple words:
“No one cares.”
And how we laugh about things that aren't funny, how apathetic we become and how we try to pretend we’re okay with that because if we don’t we’ll look weak.
How we as a society have turned kindness and caring into weakness.
How ****** up we all are.
Let's talk about that.

Dear,

A lot has changed in the last year and a half
since the day God decided to scoop you up from our ember-warm hometown
and swallow you whole about sixty years earlier than any of us would have ever prayed for.
We would have all given up our one gold-embellished chance to write the center-spread
ecstatically collected our own blood and sweat and knuckles met with writers-cramps
if that meant watching wrinkles sprout permanently across your forehead
roots of trees burying themselves into the grooves of your smile lines.
We would have sacrificed all that hard-earned pain
that stain issues one through four
and that old putrid-beige colored couch
that we hated so much but clandestinely found comfort in leaning our heavy heads on still
in the crook of its homely, familiar shoulder
thinking that we were Shakespeare's apprentices
through fluttering eyelids
creating clusters of words that had to have been New York Times worthy—we were sure
although we knew the furthest we could really go is the furthest your laugh could carry across a room
and that's still pretty far—we could all spit shake and swear—
because I can still hear it sometimes all the way down here
where each tendon in my body is capable of feeling solidity
where I am haunted by uhtceare, wondering if you're too cold
where halos don't exist outside of dreams
not even when the sun is a cracked egg and dripping onto tables, the roofs of cars
not even then is anything brighter than the whites of your lively eyes
and I think you'd like to know that we're still thinking about you
that I can't think about white anymore without thinking about the vulgarity of bathtubs
and your hate for poems that include contractions—I'm sorry I've let you down
but I think you'd like to know that I've finally stopped having nightmares
and even the thinnest-skinned of us all, you know which one,
has been able to convince himself that the embrace of the Earth
just isn't the place for you anymore
that you've already outgrown all of us at fifteen-years-old
and we're sorry for not believing sooner that poetry can save the world.

G'day from prison!*
(before I knew he lives on):

I see you there, My Maple.

Your little skirts; your peroxide hair.  Sweet, quiet Maple... I see your fishnet, maroon, little sweater. How I loved that thrift-store garment; it gave purpose to us both. For you, an excuse to see, without being seen. A voyeuristic excuse, for myself, to see without being seen.

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know this.

I picture your starkness. Dark, ten year old Maple. Listening with wide eyes - as I validated you.

As no one else had before.

I nurtured that Goth infatuation that no one wanted, fed you music: your Evanescence covet. Your black fingernails... Even then, I understood what no one else could.

Yummy, tasty, Maple.

How good you smelled; how fresh you smelled. Clean, and sad. Searching for reassurance. Searching eye's, searching for me.

Searching for someone. Anyone. A real person; content to SEE you, and love you anyways. Not like the rest; all of them - who'd only ever cast you aside - pick you last - call you names, spit in your face, lock you out and alienate you; who’d kick and shove you.
The *someones behind why you, at age ten, began to wish you were dead.
I was there, and I was your best friend.

Me.

I was the best friend you'll  ever have. Someone who loved an anomaly, and understood, and loved you best; over your mother - your sister - I told you I had a crush; a crush for only you.

10 years have lived and died between us.

10 years without me.

And the weight of time has yet to alleviate.

You still wish you were dead.

I still feel your warmth; the little bundle of you.

You.

You in your cozy, blue bed, with your
curious eyes and porcelain face. I would slip five dollar bills under your pillow; tell you, “I’ve hidden something secret.”  

I adorned you with money, pampered you with special trinkets, allowed rare privileges disproved by your mother... A mother who hadn’t a clue you’d worshipped angry rap since the age of eight. She didn’t know. You idolized Eminem. She’d yet to learn his name. You wanted to see 8 Mile; your mother said no – Rated R – so it was our little secret.

But you betrayed our secrets, didn't you?

We have no secrets anymore.



I see you there.

The soft, supple skin of your back . . . of your stomach . . . and of what lay below.

“What’s down there?” I’d inquired.

So enamored, exploring the secrets of your little body.

My demure, sad Maple.

I was your one and only true companion.

I was your one, and only friend.

Yet, here, in this cell, you will never see your best friend again.

You will never have a best friend again.

For in this cell, I have nothing left, but to remember.

I have nothing left but to write.

All my love, my presents, my company. All to end up here.

Here, behind bars.

And the weight of time has yet to alleviate.

You still wish you were dead.

But you and I - we've become synonymous.

Together, forever.

Just as I said, ten years ago. For, no matter what, my existence will always define you; and yours - you will define mine.

Forever.

You'll never be rid of me, and you can never leave me.

For I'll never leave you.

Our bond is solidified.

Perpetually.

Together forever.

Ten years. Eleven, twelve. The calendars change, but you and I? We’re right where we left each other.

So you'll never be anything. Anything at all. Anything else but mine.

The weight of time won't ever alleviate.

And you STILL wish you were dead.

- Thomas Gregory Brown, G'day from prison

• College is hard.**

And that’s the list of things they don’t tell you in College.

Times over
you should be *done by now
I really hope you managed to *write
your assignment just in time
I honestly hope it went well
and that you won't dwell
and keep on asking yourself
did I do well enough?
did I write the right thing?

No matter how much I praise you
you probably won't believe it
'Cause you never believe you're good enough
Never believe that you're worth praising
Never believe that you're smart
or that you're right in what you're saying

I told you a thousand times already
that it's true what I say,
I'll swear it on my mother's grave
but still you don't believe me.

And my thoughts tend to be enclosed to myself
     For only my head to place them upon a shelf
To think as I please
     And develop an idea that may or may not appease,
These people do understand how this process works
     Policies created and all that lurks
Before you and I, in a different place
     Subject to locking lips and showing face --
When it came to thinking what you believe
     You were forced to leave
'Welcome home' they would say
     'This could never feel like home' considering all the games
      they play--
Off the shelf my thoughts will roll
     My words spoken, content, without paying a toll

(My) Dear(est) Romeo,
I pray that hopefully, right now, you’re living peacefully and doing your best in everything. Truthfully, I wish that we could meet sooner, maybe around this week or on my birthday, or perhaps on a memorable date like Christmas or New Year’s Day. I can’t wait to see you and spend time with you, going on cheesy dates where we exchange lame puns, go on food and road trips, play sports and camp under the stars. I beg of you not to kiss any girl before we meet because I am saving myself for you, besides the fact that I am an envious and possessive person, so please be careful unless you want to end up in my collection of bitter poems. Right now and in the future, you must know that you and our future are the inspiration to why I do my best in everything I do, and I hope it goes the same for you. Please understand when it comes to the time that my career in the future will consume most of my attention, and I’ll understand your priorities as well, so don’t get mad when we ignore each other for a while—it will be good because the distance will remind us how much we miss each other. I hope you seek God the way I seek Him and believe that He would connect our threads one day, in His time. I know there are so many questions you ask and answers you want to know, but please remember to live one day at a time and at its fullest. Enjoy what’s around you at this moment—when the time comes that we meet, I promise to cherish every moment we’ll have together. But for now, let us live well and follow God’s will for us, so I’ll be seeing you soon.
Yours truly,
(Your) Juliet

LIVE


Live,

I live for today.

Villages, towns, cities, countries, continents, regions,

Every place you go, someone lives for today.


LOVE


Love,

On Christmas, on your birthday, with your family, there should be love.

Very good.

Everybody should feel love.


LAUGH


Laugh,

Anybody can do it!

Us even.

Good laughs and evil laughs.

Hiding your laugh is hiding yourself in a way.