Can you feel the power coursing through you,
disguised as adrenaline,
when you swing your arm and before the blow even hits,
you feel all your anger and frustration fade, so now all you want is to fight?
You wanna kick and pitch a fit,
till your old ****** arms
are covered up by new scars,
but nothing like that matters because you're the last man standing.
Maybe the other boy, curled up on the ground now
with his arms thrown over his head,
broke your nose and made it even more crooked than before,
but you're the little freak who no one thought could win.
But you entered in
from a world where everyone called you ****
to be the freak who everyone only saw as a ****,
thin-shouldered and quieter than the boys he fought.

Maybe your quietness and meek, weak, malnourished look fooled you and all of them,
for look into your eyes in the mirror and see the gold and brown fighting through the green sheen,
the fire for everything you hate, all the things you're hitting and spitting on when you're through with them,
and when you stare into your own eyes you might recognize yourself.

Don't be fooled, boy, you're weak and you're sick,
your arms aren't thick
which muscle and dark hair,
and nothing about you is real,
with fabricated reactions and premeditated sentences,
all programmed into your brain, which fights itself in its confusion,
screaming, and smoking from the fight with itself, about what should be happening with your emptiness and with your bony chest.

Boy, you're hardly that,
just a *** who stares after the other guys,
but you're not sure if you're gay, because you really just want to be just like them.
Boy, at least you fall for pretty girls,
shorter and daintier than you, with more mellow hearts but stronger emotions,
and passions for poetry (not the kind you possess, rooted in your inability for expressions)
and always with love for another boy, a real boy to grow into a man.

I remember my dreams of a holy place,
a library where I ran, just a little boy with other boys,
with a great stained glass window filling up the space
on the pointed ceiling above the sacred text
that left me perplexed
and mouthing a few syllables when I could understand,
and wishing to feel the soft cloth on my head,
over a short haircut that I didn't have.

I can't truly say if it was a dream,
but I remember walking outside into the desert with those little boys, feeling jealous of their kippahs,
and eventually we stopped at what I thought might be like a stream,
but was only a canal in the wasteland.
The tumbleweeds whispered and rattled,
but no snakes slid out of them with a tail that rattled quite the same.

I grew up though, far away now,
with the heavy weight of knowledge on my back
and the feeling of sweat on my brow.
I have heard a lot, and that soundless world where I spent all of my time looking and none of my time listening
is gone. I listen and I look now,
and I tell a girl about my observations
while she marvels and tells me what to do with them,
but there is nothing much to become
when despite my ambition
I hold myself back with the most unholy things.

i have been here for a very long time since the start
i have been watching everyone
charge at us
with sticks, stone, weapons and words
giants, gas, fire, fury
bombs and chains

but they vanished. or they learnt to love us
some study us like aliens
because they are fascinated
(but aren't we all fascinated in mysteries?)

i am as confused as them
i should be gone
but i rose like a pheonix from fire.
everyone says it's a miracle. but they don't tell me
why am i here?

After the most abhorrent violence,
during times of misery and sorrow,
a wise man will sit in a dark room
and reflect on his truths.
In rage, he will curl his fingers
into the tightest fists.
In sadness, he will weep
for all that has been lost.
In his chair, the wise man will drink
his whiskey, and then he will stand up
and fight back against the hate.

-Ron Gavalik

Sonya's house society's yearly sunlight
goddesses tree modern buried **** in
Queens radio ground grandmother Eli's
invisible table breath kissing daughters
stranger lightning friend standing her
Jewish tongue on end on Jewish dawn streets
where Barbie lights her farts on fire w/
witch teen angel teeth car on the beach,
cute brain shadows of quantum paradise 
turning free unknown Korean shaman's
forever wind gold & lucky calling hairy
bathroom Bibles peeing straight uphill;
understanding why sacred temples are
burning virgins alive who are not dying