The king ordered silence,
No more song, no more dace,
No more daft scratching of that pen.

So I know just what I'll do,
I'll strike him over the head with my lute,
Then he will be silent too.

Every splash of ink,
Every drag of this pen.

Is another gift in the face of common man,
An honor that is art to the human soul.

For if not for this music,
Spirits would grow old, crumbling in the cold.

Oftentimes,
A poet doesn't lift their pen daily,
It's better to write nothing,
Than force something out.

As well for the fact,
Some things are best left unsaid,
This world is a rocky streambed.

good friends will give you pens
and let you cry about the same thing
over and over
like it's the first time they've heard it

deaf eyes, blind ears, pens down!

two of my English Teachers,
from high school and college
from way way back when,
i requested, critiqued my poems,
cause they could, ex-teachers...et al

They said:
Your emails are too short,
your poems are too long,
we recommend that your
quit this, do what we say:

pens down!

Your poems are travelogues
to places in your mind, we’ve
got no interest in visiting, Egypt
and Exile, cemeteries in a privy,
time to get a new travel agency!!!

Your imagery, ars obscura to us,
everyone but you, despite too many
copious notes, which proves our point,
you need to
smile more and write less.

Just because you’ve got creases,
lines all across your face, doesn’t
mean any wisdom came with them,
nor did you listen in our classes,
we suggest, resolutely, give it a rest.

all the best, & do  not ask again

I gave the boy with the pretty frame-worthy eyes a pen the other day in class,

I switched the top of the black one I gave him to the blue that I used, and vice verse-a giving him a blue-black pen and me a black-blue one.

To him, in that moment,
I was just goofing off in class instead of listening to the teacher yap,

But to me, the pens and the colors meant something,
The day I made that blue-black pen, I was trying to make me and him,
The blue me, the black him, and together, us.
It was my heart,
And me giving him the blue-black pen was in a way, me giving him my love.

Maybe he missed the message in between the lines, or maybe he chose to by pass it,
Or maybe,
What I thought we had going on, was a delusion,
Maybe it was only one sided, and the connection was all in my head,

Perhaps I should’ve left the pens alone,
leaving my feelings unknown, and the lack of reciprocation would’ve hurt a little less,
But now my heart aches,
Especially whenever I see that cursed blue-black pen.

Pens
were made
to remind me
that I still have something
to hold on to.

Pages
do exist
to make me understand
that they lived
for me to continue.

Words
are there
to show to me
that I am not alone.

Poetry
has its own ways
of telling me
that I am home.

there are days
i only feel like a burden.
someone who fills backseats
so that someone could be at the front.
and the weight of my own bones
are too heavy for a family name to carry.
heavy enough to crush a sorry girl.
my breaths are sometimes apologies
people refuse to hear.
im sorry if i am this way.
i wish i could be something more.