I’m not going to be famous
selling strawberries
writing poems
or preaching till we perish
especially, not through
this poem
your poem
or any we may cherish
considering the pressure I am under
and the number
of one more follower
to follow me
while I’m following your poetry
I may write and write I do
because like you I like them too
and though they may be the best
I know I can be my worst critic
whether I loathe or I like it
I wont lay my pen to rest
with my words and ways
till then, I’ll have my own novels read
and applaud my own plays
and be famous
in my own head

She melted
But melted ice is still H2O
Same girl, different form
Transformed into who she’s always been
Pressure is off when you don’t have to always win
Silly grin, welcome back
Things were looking grim for a while
but she was never lost
Just frozen for a while
Thawed out, there’s the smile
Watch out, joy is leaking in
Sneaking back into that girl
She’s still the same one
who almost gave up when her life had barely begun
But she didn’t change
even if everything else did
And it seems so strange that
She’s stronger now
Now that she melted

"Don't Pick A Fight With A Poet"
by
Madeline Peyroux

When you're walking on the street,
and the people that you meet,
make you want to start a big fight,
'cause they talk as if they're so right.
There is one thing to remember,
in case you haven't heard:
You can **** a mighty emperor,
but you cannot smite a word.

So, don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it's wrong or it's right,
there's a lesson in life,
and to learn it, you have to give in,
cause the poet knows you can't win.

When you're twitching at the bar,
No one knows who you are,
and you want to prove them all wrong,
you think you are so strong.
You can try to make them listen.
You can try to be the boss,
but the storyteller is the one
who calls the toss.

So, don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it is wrong or it's right,
Whether it's wrong or it's right
there'll be a lesson tonight,
and to learn it you'll have to give in,
'cause a poet knows you can't win.

Over there in the corner with a Cheshire grin
making rhyme out of broken hearts
cryin' the hymn.
And two tokes from a good time,
a toast away from fist flying,
congregating the world
with a paper and pen.

Don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it's wrong or right,
there's a lesson in life,
and to learn it, you'll have to give in,
cause a poet knows, you can't win.

Madeline Peyroux

Art is a creature—built

from bones of failure, tied

with tendons of tireless days, wrapped

by fiber upon fiber of hopeful nights, filled

with blood of laughter and despair, pumped

by a heart in a beloved cage, neglected

at the behest of a brain—crawling

through a maze, trying

to stumble and walk

and run and jump

and fly and

land

Bet your life,
let it roll,
make up minds, enough to see
around mountains and across canyons,
to the future.

Right now, this now, they say
today, while it is called today,

let this mind be in you, when you
realize your truths alignments
with the fabled truth, known
to make free men,
with no fear
of death.

But the duty is daily,
wake to drift away, daily…
when you mature,
and reach your golden years,
regretless regarding wasted years,
redeemed
in flash of recognition, times change,
basic mankind mind, in  mortal form,
is good as any basic living creature's,
the empty slate
comes preloaded with how to breathe
and later auto responders add reason
with emotions, good reasons needs,
and parenting, when equipped,
is not the most important
to the civilizating decadence, which
is importing reasons,
make believe,
until lief itself is defined as doing
by
some oft referred to higher power
reader readiness,
achievement
tested annually as were we, by
now
some authority has authorized your
training in all requisite social skills,
listen, good citizen,
allow obediance as sacrifice,
by laws that allow religions
to flat out lie
about knowledge and how God,
in the Holy Bible, out
lawed it, knowledge,
full spec, pure through good
for nothin', once you know, well
you must go to hell, or learn obediance
-you just do, yep, fool's names,
and fool's faces
oft appear in public places.

Any fully Disneyified child wishes to be rich.
The moral of the whole idea, live and learn.
Property laws protect owner's rights,
renter's rights are same as always.

For all the knowledge released in my time,
non
T
most seems better never to have
held true through osmosis, pressed, ground in,
heel grinding, teeth gritting, holy I said so, by God.

'Best believe there is a Manichean Evil afoot,
a jealous God, an avenger who hates unbelievers,
and hates the child unsaved by ritual adherence

of responsible adults to the things that make
Donald Trump's version of the Master Nation

Great as it was when we went to war against
the heathen ****** alien nations,
using capitalism's enrichment paradigm,

a rising tide lifts all ships. Yep.
And drowns all ports in the resulting surgepull

Greenest summer in Greenland history, wait and see.