In order to perceive yourself as worthy;

How many more achievements must you accomplish?
How many more ‘wins’ must you have?

How many more followers must you have?
How many more likes must you have?
How famous must you be?

How many more characters must you create?
How many more images of yourself must you envision?
How many more masks must you wear?

How many more versions of the ‘self’ you need to create?
How many more ‘to become’(s) must you be?

How many more times must you reinvent yourself?
How many more times must you meet yourself?

How many more of your parts must you hide, silence, ignore, suppress, and crush?

What more must you consume to come to know your worth?
What more must you pretend to be till you allow yourself to ‘just’ be as you are?

There is no amount of ‘doing’ that elevates your self worth
There is no amount of sins that can ever depreciate your worth

The ‘self’ is eternal
The human’s ’worth’ is a sacred eternal gift
A gift that can never be robbed

In this acceptance
There is no longer a chase to actualise the true authentic self into this world

In this acceptance
The magnificent self emerges

Thank you for being here.

By NwK

She is at the front the stage Scared and frightened by the unblinking gaze
Her heart beats wild,too fast and too loud
She is freaking out beneath the crowd

Then the soft murmurs begin, but
She hears them
All of their silent whispers
She wants to shrink, yet
She stands
Waiting for the ground to open

Her mother, disappointed, sighs
Her father,angered,his eyes tight
Her siblings worried, rivals smiling
Judgemental looks on every face

Her breathing increased
All she hears are their demands
"Be better, be the best"
Their voices stuck to her head
Tears starts flowing
She failed
Again she failed

She ran off to the back of the stage
Into the shadows she has always been

Singing by the wayside
Bellowing in the trees
Lovely like a turtle dove
Lives my hopes and dreams

Far away in the mountains
Buried in a box
My hopes and dreams lie dormant
Gated by the locks

Singing hallelujah
To the once gorgeous mural
Can't distinguish paintings
From extreme peril

But the hopes are beautiful like oceans
And they look like stained glass
And although they might be oblivious
They smell like cut grass

see, when I was a kid, people called me bright
I considered them right, kept my goals in sight
by 20, I realized life was going to be a long fight
the kid with a bright future has lost all his might

lost my footing one day and never recovered
I could blame forced isolation, but I was the one
who kicked up the dirt, the one who threw away his shot
who tried to put the blame on others when he fell short

I was supposed to rule the world, make it my own
stand on top of a cliff, the world upon my feet
but I fell before I reached the peak,
I was never even in sight of the throne

see, the thing about falling off a cliff
is you know you're falling
but how do you stop the tumbling?
my God, this life's numbing.

Days by day as the world still continues spinning, where has it been all the time gone by? It’s feel like there’s nothing can be change now, it’s like you stuck in time but all the time has been left wasted without realizing it, what in the world that you want to live in?

Day by day as my life has been gone, I didn’t realize until it’s too late for me to catch it, it’s like the room are getting smaller and the lights getting dim, I’ve got nowhere to go, nowhere to live, nowhere to love nowhere else but me, I feel so hopeless and so empty, my life has gone away as my future is…

Days gone forever and my life is still empty, I think I’m giving up my life to whatsoever, I don’t want any future to come for me, all I can think everyday and every time is the death that will be always as a promise…

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Those Who Stereotype “These Professors”

                                                   Exodus 20:16

These professors

Dr. Moriarty was a PFC on certain Pacific islands
Who could bayonet an enemy
Clear a jammed machine gun under fire
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
And work out subtle textual analyses

These professors

Dr. Chambers was a retired colonel of Marines
A natty little man in blazer and bowtie
Who could bayonet an enemy
See his pals blown to pieces next to him
Deconstruct the minutiae of energy distribution
And toss a foul-mouthed football player out on his sorry ***

These professors

Dr. Dale was a butcher until his thirties
When he entered college for the first time
He knew your hamburger from the outside in
The economics of building a business
He probably could have bench-pressed a Ford Fiesta
And when he spoke of Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge
You could feel the air of The Lake Country

These professors

“These professors” were complete men
Strong in war and word and wisdom and work
Unlike envious Unferths who learn life only second-hand
                    From Fox News and John Wayne movies
                    And closed loops of echoing InterGossip sites