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Trying to look in one direction,
It's hard to navigate my own transition.

Many times, I see myself like no other, could I be your sister or your brother? So, then why should I even bother?

My feelings about myself appear difficult for others to comprehend as this has become my own rollercoaster to the sweet, bitter end.

It is not only a mindset of my own personal avenues that I must navigate but they are, also, my own internal processes to which I contemplate and separate.

The push pull of my internal devices appears harmful at times. Feelings of not being happy, called confused, or it's a just phase are word salad moments committing a series of crimes.

I know these interpretations that live inside of me, and I know that the choices that I make can either set me free or keep me locked up forever. Ying-yang in every mindful corner of the room.

I heard a saying the other day that said, "Broken crayons still color". First, I was at odds with this. Because was I really broken? Was my crayon wrapper torn off? Am I being labeled these things from distant voices?

These become unreliable truths made up in feeble minds. Not understanding the differences among us all. It is not creating comfortable realities for us to travel though. Their choices will define them and my choices will define me.

Do I struggle at times? For the most part, yes!!

But you know something.
I am ok with that.
I am ok making my own choices, and I am ok being the person I want to be. That is something that cannot be taken away.

Any transition in life can come with its own set of difficulties. How we navigate them will be the determining factors of our success in all that we do.
Ayla Grey Aug 24
Elegantly without mistep put up the dish
Tremorlessly clean the mess of a mind
Upon the sacred fall outs make a wish
Ask the universe for freedom to be mine

Find yourself before you heed all that's broken
Be careful to not step on the glass shards
Try and try to be there try and listen
So that maybe you can mend broke hearts

Be there when his whole world comes down
Greet him without a sympathetic sigh
Trust your arm to hold him close
Because Into your shoulder he'll cry

Fight the unseen battle walls
Crack your imposing glass ceiling
Because no matter how many times you fall
You'll never get a risen feeling

Tell him you'll be ok for him
So long as he himself is ok
And sometimes you'll have to lie to him
Because he desperately needs you to stay

Fight through the worst of mental storms
Ignore everything that causes you pain
And when the worst of news has formed
You tell them that you're ok
Heidi Franke Jun 11
Where is your Ok line?
Lay upon the asphalt of your tender life?

Does this line fall straight or
Wander like a rivers ebb?

Does your OK line look away from Native children of America forced to give up their language with a safety pin in their tongue?

Or does your voice remain silent, letting white paint on black dictate another's worth but your very own, into the hands of righteous power.

Does your OK line follow blindly with conformity from false prophets who seek to control your mind making it easy for you to turn away from suffering?

My OK line seeks for equality, self-determination, and soothing suffering
With my voice and pictures that will never be silenced in a democracy but will be sold to the highest bidder in a dictatorship.

How silence kills and you suffer less believing you are somehow more disserving. You are as equal as the stone stuck in the sole of your shoe.

Remember the discomfort is equal for all. That's the OK line. We are equal; stone, thorn, blade and heart. Bleed, but bleed less in company of a powerless generation who votes the OK line towards freedom of choice. None will be free from our last breath.
Parking lot recently paved with black asphalt, with added yellow parking stripes. What caught my eye was the lone thing straight line drawn all the way to the end to mark where the yellow line should end. That small line said, "OK Line" with squiggled line below to add emphasis to the cimment. Took a black end white photo. It remains stuck in my mind until today
Ken Pepiton Apr 24
Adapting re
voluntary reading
to the future, when we've
nothing to do so, sub-con
science frictions call all men liars.

I am by no means chief,
I came from the Calebland Productions,
early Eighties,
Macintosh and Appletalk, and Silicon Beach
grand brainstorms insisting if we heat it
the entire idea of dust as us and our mites…
just willing to revolve with the planets will
enough all those old winds that twisted
like we did last summer,
wind up like
those ones, wow, so real.

Northwest Passage is open, and yet,
none acknowledge life in full control,
something literarily evolving
where the crawdads eat the corpses,
Bayou Blue, Barrios and Pepitons,
cheri mio, we had some fun,
we all sung, on that by
you seem to agree, we won.
we won the evolutionary war,
mankind, wombed and un,
ever so long ago, none knew, we did

but time is a bit of a Ouranos cycle,
looks like a great ocean churning gyre,

of which the last swirling tide reminder
fit to an old spider web designer,
loser backslider
with a gambling wife,
who took a chance on me,
what do we see, but what we get,
generously, love is there
for the looking for,
and for remembering finding, and
really, when a man

from the molds
that made our we this kind of old man,
an individuated
NPC, in a cast of thousands,
acting stand in assistant to the
assisting intelligence time accounting,
massive messaging, is a thing
are you aware…?
your connection can self correct,
your bluetooth can whistle
in your ear,
eh,
we made it up.
The loss, we, laughed and made it all up.
Just being doing the right thing, and thinking we share some mindspace.
I took the time you were not using otherwise, and made this mindtimespace.
Zack Ripley Mar 11
It seems like it's getting harder to know
if it's OK to say or do something these days. Maybe it's because I'm getting older.
Maybe it's because I care more.
Regardless of why, I must admit I find myself somewhere between sad and scared.
Sad and scared that I can't keep up.
Sad and scared that I'm slowing down.
Maybe you are too. If that's the case,
I'll tell you what I've been telling myself
when I feel this way: it's healthy to be sad.
It's healthy to be afraid.
And if you're being healthy,
you don't have to feel guilty
or let it ruin your day.
Ken Pepiton Nov 2022
Sell me some good news,
I am open to buy,
what can I do if I've no wish to be, but
the acceptor of the grace,
undeserved, unearned favor, good luck
at the very least.
I wish to be happy among happy folk.
All I bring is my joy
in the being at all, able to make it up,
on demand, my joy,
as a strength,
a will not to weep over missed best chances/
I did not earn my joy through right use ,
it came with the package.
I came into this world, the winner
in the life I examined, after living a while,

to determine the worth of living
by no will of my own, I occurred
raw material, into a story with all ya'll init,
or destined to be
as my future catches up with us all…

that's what prophets say poets do, see, look ahead,
see
what could happen, if we stick to the plan,
which
we lack. Right, this is comic relief, nothing serious,
a gravity issue, perhaps, apophrenia kicking up
all things seeming
not to fit, as fit as was once imagined, hmmm.
What good can one do... in a ready made universe... be good. I guessed.
apophenia (n.)
"tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things," 1961, from German Apophänie, said to have been coined 1958 by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad, from Greek apophainein "to show, make known, show by reasoning, produce evidence," from apo- "from" (see apo-) + phainein " to show, cause to appear" (from PIE root *bha- (1) "to shine").
#ok
louella Sep 2022
don’t waste your time trying to impress someone with higher status or nicer clothes or a prettier face.
they won’t acknowledge you anyway.

stop wasting your time, hung up on love that you crave.
being in high school and never having a boyfriend is totally ok.
you aren’t unlikeable just because you’re single, i can promise you that.
  
crush culture will make you wanna spill your guts out.

don’t make people your villains just because you envy them and their skeletal structure.

i know it feels as if you’re bathing in a hot spring filled with inexorable anxiety
and i know you wanna escape more than anything else in the entire universe.
this is just a moment.
you have the entire rest of a lifetime for yourself.
just stay strong.

don’t worry about what others think about you.
the only approval you should be seeking is your own; everyone else’s is irrelevant.
who cares if they judge you for such a trivial matter?
they don’t know the real you and if they did, they wouldn’t even look at you funny ever again.

i know you think that you’re not worth it for some reason
but you are worth every laugh shared and every contagious smile,
you are worth the space you occupy in other peoples’ minds.
you might not be brightest star, but you can keep shining.
you don’t have to be a prodigy at everything.
you’re good at things,
you’re talented,
you’re able.

you don’t need to be spotted in crowds.
if you want to remain invisible to the naked eye, go right ahead.
i promise no one is stopping you from keeping your distance.

you don’t have to be loud and crave to be seen to matter in this world.

times can feel like asteroids hitting your planet (and a war threatening it)
summer goes and winter comes and flowers bloom and then go dull.
people are just like seasons;
you don’t need to be happy all the time.

but who knows?
you’ll grow into a fine young lady/man
and no one will know what struggles taunted you when you were in eleventh grade.
besides,
no one thought that neptune had rings when they were there all along;
they were just invisible.


—see, even invisible things can be seen if you capture them with the right camera
my physics teacher told me about the new photo of Neptune’s rings and the concept was too cool to miss out on.

*this is advice for those who have social anxiety and those who don’t feel like they are good at anything or like they belong anywhere. it’s ok to be quiet. it’s ok. you are a beautiful existence :)


  *also, also, i used one of conan gray’s lines from his song crush culture. the third paragraph is not my words!

  *also, also, also, written on 9/22/22
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