Just done with the calm of ice,
Lake waters, frigid,
Wind-lashed,
Writhe in fury,
White manes frothing.

Crouching on the shoreline,
I catch angled crashes,
Waves smashing rock,
******* shore lines,
Immortalize water's pulling shift
Wood and shells and moss,
Rearing high and slammed
Against the boundaries.

Ageless elements waging war:
Wind, water, and land,
Disrupting, tangling peace,
Superciliously ignoring
My transient observation
Of the winds of spring.

'YOU'RE NO PROPHET (YOU'RE BARELY A POET)', BY PERSON I
"O woe, O why--" --O what a way to live!
Never finding what you hunt, scarcely saying what you mean,
with the audacity to worship those who can;
adoring all that's good, or brave, or noble; learning nothing.
Shameless indignity is the boldest you get:
compare them speaking their hearts against
the postmodern cowardice in all that you are.

Language is a gift you abuse:
you may as well have abandoned your voice;
paragraphs wasted on your camouflage of choice.
Half-built cities on foundations of beige-coloured water --
you keep the imagery pretty and the metaphor alluding to just about anything.

You're scared to speak if it's not been said before.
You're ashamed to speak if it's all been said before.
Reluctant to be original! Embarrassed to be derivative!
The shame is in the fact you don't bother!!
Would you say it matters if it's all been thought before?
Voiced before? Done before? Does it wound your pride
to know that your actions are barely yours?
Does it shatter your resolve, seeing your face in my words?

Omit the omnipresent and stay oblivious to obvious.
Can we call it thorough? -- this solitary hunt for truth?
-- almost commendable, almost fruitful,
had you only checked the blind-spot under your nostrils.

'MEANWHILE, IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD...', BY PERSON II
So... 'just shut up and say it'? Wow, noted. Thanks.
Tonight's been a blast.
You'd hate it.

Every turn, I take...

I felt the trench of heaving suddeness
I felt the simple rush, to rush

I felt a clash!
With wants, and following the flow
And no;
They are not aligned

One is sacrificing, one is true
And it's exasperatingly terrifying

To listen intently

Lichtenstein crashed into Monet's garden under the mistaken impression that a pulse of pop would compliment the oil on water, but instead his WHAAM missed its target and his POW wept hot, bleaching the aqua white with noise and ripping the lilies to shreds.
'Oh, Claude,' he cried, 'it's a masterpiece!'

Beyond the sunlit smoke and spellbound parks,
Beyond the tongue tied smiles and piercing dark;
Beyond burning wrists and icy stings
Beyond poems that made love to awful things;
The story is painfully simple.

You really loved someone;
Someone didn't love you.

SUBURBAN CACOPHONY
is a mother yelling over the sound of the dishwasher
hanging grapes that dry against the yolk-orange wall
the local boy with mud under his nails
and the girl that smells like new york city
loud sunlight upon the hush still river
brown rust eating up white paint
father's office suit in the back of his dusty Jeep
screeching tires that tear past red-light lines
blood red sprinkles on the roadside's white daisies
birthday cake swallowed in tears

don't let these worlds collide,
they say -
for it only brings chaos
suburban cacophony hurts your ears
with a truth ugly to the eyes
leaves an imprint
like a sharp pendant pressed to the chest