It's been so long since I've felt anything. I've closed myself off to the outer world of me.
My inner thoughts speaking quietly, trying to understand the freedom of speech and the right to equality.
The world full  of so much inequity, my goal to just bring together the diversity.
Blacks, whites and every other minority.

Well I suppose that I've been opening up ever so slightly.
Showing the world how I can shine brightly.
Past the land and sky, beyond the line of trees.
If you believe in thinking justly, you can feel as far as the blind can see.

I'm feeling the emotions rise within I, like a storm I am becoming calm within the eye.
Watch the truth unravel into lies.
Still I'm screaming ....

WHY?

Is this what it's like to feel?
I may not comprehend it right now, but it will be alright.
I have expressed enough of me anyhow!

Wild eyes
hands-to-cheeks
mouth wide open—
we know the look
it's so cliché
those ******' marauders
in Hollywood stole it
from the realm of
authentic expression—
yet there she stood
as if rehearsing for
a midday melodrama
patiently awaiting
the studio lighting,
the face powder,
the camera, the action...
but no set crew was coming
there was no show
nor lines to rehearse...
there was only a frozen moment
in which the life she knew
and the life she could not
have foreseen existed at once,
bound together by an
over-played expression of horror.

one more poem
if I may try
just one
more
before I lay
down
and die
for I have cried
some silly words
to rhyme, recite
rewrite
the absurd
I’ve barely been able
to live with myself
let alone
with my thoughts
and no one else
I’ve wrestled
and fought
most of life in my mind
now I empty myself
of my final line
one more written
last one read
so you can bury me now
alone
inside my head

It takes me
perhaps a few minutes,
at most,
to write a poem.

In the brief instant
between
creation and publication,
I am convinced
that this poem cannot be
improved.

But note,
it is never the claim,
that the poem is
any good.

I write
so that I may express
what I had genuinely felt
for a few moments.

What is poetry?
A form of self expression?
A release to the emotions bearing weight on your soul?
A chance at hope in the most dire of times?

I find myself asking these questions as I stray towards words during my visits to rock bottom. When life has once again wronged me, and these emotions are brewing into an unforgiving storm. There are no expectations here. There is no room for outside judgment. It is just me, a pen, and an empty sheet of paper.

So why is it, that through the thunder of this storm, as the rain pelts me to my core, I find myself met with expectations of my own self expression? Trying to mold these feelings into something presentable, acceptable, beautiful, even.

These emotions know no boundary, they feel no sympathy toward the rules of the world, they only crave release from being locked inside for far too long. They are messy, angry, chaotic, uncomfortable. There is no perfect format to present them in. There is no time to mend them into something pleasing. There is only expression.

The darkness of the night,
Silent and elusive for a while,
Returns to me
Like a long lost friend
As my creative juices
Start to flow once again.