Writing and taking pictures.
Those are the only two things I do for myself.
I feel like I can finally breathe.
It's amusing how unleashing inner creativity
can make you feel whole.
Like a child, learning to color their world for the first time.
Out of the womb, taking your first breaths.
Or taking your first breaths,
after feeling like you've been suffocated for months.
As an "adult"
being cast inside a 'box'
I've learned to fall in love with the beauty
of others art.
And basque in the comfort of my own.

A Note to Self
Never Settle for less than you can be.
Never Settle for less than you can give.
You can live strong.
You can live with passion.
Yes, live strong, my dear!
Live Strong!

I could never paint with a steady hand,
creating a piece bright enough to light a dark city was like tying shoes without laces
I briefly remember my first grade year.
My heart, beating blood red as roses, told me to bloom as far as the sky could reach.
In art class, I’d scribble some old beaten down crayons across printer paper
Hoping to create sunshine from nothing but sticks of wax

It felt like only yesterday my friends and I didn’t know
our fingers from our thumbs, or our neighbors from our critics.
We were too oblivious to understand that it was impossible to perform
a concert to a crowd facing backwards.
Too frozen in a field full of snow,
to realize that our creativity would soon be abolished by the opinions of society.

Society, a word I didn’t hear until around sixth grade
I quit drawing flowers because the heart that once told me to bloom
warned me that my petals would soon be picked apart by the people standing around me.
Crayola boxes, once filled with spirit and embodiment, somehow lost their color.
Playing with bubbles in the backyard until the sunset had turned into endless nights
In the kitchen studying textbooks until my mind could no longer function
My luminous peace of mind now dulled by what they call “reality”

Yesterday, I threw all of my pennies in a wishing well.
My knees now bruised from entreating the world to hold their prisms up to the sun,
hoping they’d discover the hidden hues that Imagination may transfuse,
The philosophy, of one’s youth.

Been too long since I have created,
Since i've drawn or wrote owt celebrated.
Having a breakdown to reality,
Working out how life is meant to be,
Unshakled mind but still not free,
I now make sense of the things I see.
Open mind does lead to free thought,
Free from the sick indoctrined fort.
Free thought leads to controversy,
When spoke folk try belittling me.
Words are the most dangerous tool,
To brainwash those who learn at school,
Make us obey each fascist rule.
Why can't we all open our eyes
To all the enslavement and lies?
Why get angry at those awake,
Who care for you for goodness sake.
Instead of cussing those in power,
You insult those while in moods sour.
Laughing, oppressing piece of mind,
With tyrannical words far from kind.
Outrage seething from closed brains,
Not folks faulght, we have been trained.
To regurgitate the lie and do not think,
And let them mould our mind to shrink.
Dissmiss the real with a curse and wink,
Is this what you really want in life?
To let greed and hate and fear run rife?
To stop humans thinking for self,
To keep the slave masters in wealth,
Staying downtrod for there good health?
All roads lead to Rome it's said,
And we're walking roads that they tred.
His story not history,
No truth wrote, why can't you see?
No Darwinism or big bang
No cells turned fish who did evolve
No axles for us to spin,
The puzzles there for us to solve
We can't let the demons win.

Kate Longshaw

I haven't written in a while.
Not properly. Not like this.

My pain died, with love being the brave warrior that killed it -
                                                                         and one I am thankful for. It's just a shame my creativity was linked to it, but what a fair price to pay.

At the end of the day?

I am happy.

Can you gently sense, another person's pain?
If you felt the depth, would it ever be the same?

Are you aware of how much they might hide?
Can you comprehend, the fragments that have died?

Do you try to listen, to the words that they don't speak?
Do you see their fight for freedom, and compassion that they seek?

Do you decipher, that vacant look in their eyes?
Do you justify your judgement then forget to question why?

The detail is the void and the truth is the lies
Often misunderstood, as is your look of clear surprise

If you walked those seven years, whilst wearing their shoes
The rain would fall hard, the sun you would lose

Would you find the strength to rise again every day?
Or would you stay locked inside , too afraid to say?

The blinking cursor
forever fading in and out,
mocking me
for my inability to create.
The words don't come
as they once did.
Blink. Blink.
It's daring me not
to stop typing,
so I don't.
Words flow.
Ideas flow.

Who can tell if any of it
is any good anymore?