It’s all become a metaphor
And I can’t stand it no more
Can I feel something tangible
At once?

Can I feel bearable?
Can the distance

Between pain and romance
Stop?

Can time
Take a break

Can I not be late
To work or to
Self actualization

Can I stop growing for a bit
Only cancer never sleeps
Like this.

And I’d rather be cancer free
And eat barbecue ribs.

I’m more of a Gemini anyways
That’s why I talk about the days
I travel

To unravel
The depths of my soul
And learn to release control
To make the world a mirror
So I can see myself clearer

Can I sleep? A bit is enough
To make me less rough

Can I please rest
Because at this point giving my best
Looks like white flags

And I lost the point of the poem anyways

The ******* flag got in my face
But maybe that is the whole point
Maybe that’s how you learn grace
And make life more of a joint
Operation

I don’t need to know everything
About everything or tweak
All because now I can’t sleep
The body maybe’s just adapting
To what the soul is never lacking
Peace, a steady life and love
Because to hate they’re a disease
And if it means I have to cough
The rage out of me
So be it.

_M

You look to be happy to escape the sadness
And seek inner peace to run from the madness
You sprint towards pleasure so pain will not reach you
You wish to be free so you don’t follow through
With any commitments, you don’t think that freedom
Is simply a tool to build your own kingdom
But all craftsmen know that to build anything
You take wood from the woods and you alchemise it
You may not want this, but this is where truth lies
When you reject half of life, the other half dies.

A busway stops at a certain station
People come through
Then walk off
And the cycle repeats itself
Its the same bus .
Just different people
various stories and lives
I long to know
But will never be able to

The bus on the ****:

an illuminated room --


through water and night.

I heard three but there were more
languages in play, some silently running
through their viewpoints of a day so far.

Where we came from was uncertain.
Clouds of intent ,we had drifted from
indifferent mornings to find ourselves

funnelled for a few minutes into this
shared space. Going forward, diversity
meant nothing.For different reasons

we all needed the same destination.


Tony Noon

I got on the bus alone today
and almost no one else was on it.

As it neared our campus the setting sun
hit the window so right, sending a golden corona
across the dusty seats,
bathing us all in this brilliant golden light.
Brown eyes turned to honey, blue ones to oceans—
a handful of minor gods and goddesses
on their way to class,
in sweatpants and backpacks.
It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

None of us wanted to pull the cord to stop,
but finally, someone did,
and I had to get off.
I feel alive on the bus, I feel alone at midnight.
I am the princess of the bus.

I make my boyfriend Aiden worse without intending to.
I make a lot of things worse without intending to.
I think that if I just spent a lifetime on the bus,
circling round and round at around 6:30 p.m.
I would cause a lot less harm on this planet.
But someone always pulls the cord, even if I don’t.

Aidan won’t pull the cord and neither will I.
We might be riding this bus for a long time yet.

On the bus we greet,

knowing each other's faces --


knowing nothing more.

I met him at a dust-bowl bus station
In Mobile, where buses wore dust trail capes.
Roaches clicked in the water fountain basin.

With charisma he denounced
The muddled spray of birth and spring,
The spermy apocalypse brought forth by an
Army of mad babies with syphilis-splintered brains.

He had gambled for three nights,
Wonder and reason backing his chips —
Small blind, big blind.
He had the shoulders of a man who locks the door
And hides the key — an invisible traveling carnival
Trailed his gait on a pace-worn floor.

Bed bugs had made Braille of his arm.
He was going off to a camp south of Cabbage Town
Where he would sweat beneath the sun,
Surrender beneath the stars,
And dream of the ten women he’d made.

He told me he hated knowing he was in control,
And that it was the saddest part of the darkest hour.

"I have a hundred photos lined up to be posted.
I edit them, I think about them, and I let them be.
I let them be in my gallery for the right time.

And the right time never comes.

Days become months, and months at times turn into years.
But the right time never comes.

I don't know why!

But it is alright!

It is alright because I am not in a race, nor am I in a hurry to tell my story.
I don't mind waiting at the stop like this bus.
I don't mind being forgotten about
Or just not talked about for days.

But I, in my own way, after making those stops, I will carve my road ahead.
Uncover the true beauty of my story
In the most unusual way.
Just like how sunlight lights up a simple road and makes patterns with the help of shadows.

Shadows have their own ways.
Shadows glorify those pretty rays.