The sheep in wolf's clothing,
The fraud the fake-
Does that bundle of grey fur,
Hide the mistakes you make?

Sing of sleep little sheep,
Or are you still awake?
Do those howls and growls
leave you too frightened to shake?

You've got them convinced,
So let's hope for your sake,
That they'll never realize,
And that you'll catch a break

Like a monster
wearing my own skin,
I question yet again
whether the cries I upend
are signs of intelligence or
the incoherent utterances
of an imposter begging
to be let in.

daughters of pageant queens
like them you
             want
          me
       to
   be

i come from a broken gallery
on display for
                           no
                               one
                                      to
                                           see

My writing will never be nice.
It will never have rhyme or reason or hold iambic pentameter.
It is not typewritten on aged paper bought from a small bookstore, carried home hurriedly under a black coat in a downpour.
My experiences are not universal,
on the contrary,
they are painfully singular stories.
My writing will never be featured in a book,
or on the front page of a trusted source,
it will be buried away in a desk,
dormant with the other scraps of musings once cherished.
I am not one like Keats, Byron, Frost, Dickinson, or Poe,
I, for all intents and purposes, am a fawn lost in the forest,
admiring the sights and sounds around me,
listening to those wise ones who can describe them in such perfect tone.
It would be fair to say that I am not even a poet,
I am simply a brain that thinks,
A body that moves,
And a soul that feels that very special something.

I'm sorry, I'm not who you believe I am,
I'm sorry that what you know's not true.
I love you, and I don't wanna let you down;
don't wanna let you see the pieces,
the shambles of my life.

I'm functional when you're around,
my problems hidden 'neath the rug,
under the chair.
I'm functional when you're around,
but I crumble when you're not there.

My papers are scattered all around my room,
My dishes are piled on the floor,
I can't sleep cause the nightmares keep on comin'
And by day I'm just so tired,
and ready to give in.

But I'm functional when you're around,
my problems hidden 'neath the rug,
under the chair.
I'm functional when you're around,
but I crumble when you're not there.

I know that you'd care about the mess I've made.
I know that you'd wanna help me through.
You love me, but I'm so ashamed of this,
you can't see these tangled threads here,
I cannot let you in.

So I'm functional when you're around,
my problems hidden 'neath the rug,
under the chair.
I'm functional when you're around,
but I crumble when you're not there.

but I crumble
when you're not
there.

All this time I was looking for art

I didn’t think it could be
these words
Twisting and writhing in their effort to
escape and
Making shapes
Those strange distortions

The words that slip
So easily from my thoughts
Into my ears
But trip
When they reach my tongue

These silent prayers
These words unsung

They barely cross my mind

It pretends to be one of us, but it’s not quite human.

It masquerades as a person, wearing skin that
mimics our flesh, with joints designed to rotate and
glide like ours. It listens to the changing cadences
and tones of our voices, measures our temperatures
and respiration and blinking rates, and then reacts.
And when it behaves, it does so on accumulated
data, learned and converted into best practices.

But it does not have fantasies. It fills its shoes
with synthetic muscle and steel but never wears
another’s. It does not look at birds and wishes
to fly, nor looks to the moon in hopes of someday
making the lengthy trek to wander the gray crust.

It pretends to be one of us, but it’s not quite human.

Not yet.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow | Alek the Poet