Mist-minded, clouded thoughts
Can't seem to focus, or keep rapport
Importance is relevant, irrelevant I dwell
In this cartography, well-drawn Hell

Zipped up lips, verbiage tripped
The spoken, delivery, edge unclipped
Harsh and cold, worn limestone
Regardless of polish, I'm overgrown

What feels real is this heart of steel
All else surrounds, of fabric, of gown
Dressed up nice to masquerade
False-tipped smiles, dead parade.

The forge burns true, just underneath
My love, my Sun, I shall bequeath
Hardened and cold, aftermath of the craft
Add a little heat and reveal my heart.

A girl cries out in the night
A mother rushes to hold her in her arms.
The older sister in the same room stays silent.
She watches her mother coo the little baby to sleep
She waits for her to leave before getting up once more.
She looks out the window, the sky covered in smog.
"I want to see the stars."
She opened the window and climbed to the ledge.
She was six years old.
Sitting there and breathing, the little girl watched the smog
for signs of the little white sparkles
stuck in the sky.
The baby started crying again.
Her mother came to comfort her.
She didn't notice the girl's empty bed
Only the window. She shut it, locked it tight.
The little girl wasn't scared.
She brought herself standing and looked down below.
"Bye Mom!"
The window flew open too late.

all that surface area
all us beings make
creates too concentrated an environment
a sick air

it's not a sacrifice
it's healthy release

The beast that needs to be tamed lives
within yourself. All the other despair
is smog being blown away by the invisible
mouths of those who, with cries and silence,
are trying to breath and move around
under water, trying to think which was
that one turn that brought them here
and started the person that became.

All these right-and-wrongs that are said
and also those who remain silent,
all these intentions toward a saved life,
and all these doors that are being opened
and closed, are so much like the efforts
of a writer creating a character for
a book that will be finished on a deathbed
and surrounded by teary-eyed beasts in human skin.

We sailed the sea

In a boat made of ivory,

And we sailed away

Till the thirty-third day.



On the thirty-third day,

We docked in a land;

Crafted by the hands

Of a million slaves.



It was sparkling out

In the night darkened sky,

As the people burned

All their candles away.



Into the sky, the smoke rose

So high to the stars,

And it warmed up the air,

And the jumper I’d worn,

Brushed the floor

As I carried it

Along through the streets.



‘No more ice,

Only water,

Only smoke,

Only steam,

No more frost to freeze

The fast running streams.

No more cold to tear

Your lungs at the seams’

This was seen as the reason

To why they were right,

Not wrong, to continue

To set more fires alight.



’It is good, it is good’ they sang.

They danced round the fire;

The warm got warmer as the fire drew higher.

'No more cold, no more cold.

It has melted away.

We’ll only have summer

For the rest of our days.

Under the orange tinted sky,

We’ll stay happily beneath it.

No more white, snow-filled clouds

That sprinkle around us

Like a shroud.

The smoke has melted the cold all away;

We’ll only have summer for the rest of our days.’

This is what the townsfolk did say.



On the forty-third day

A marching band played

For remembrance

Of the famous Chirp-Chirp birds.

It is thought that they’d flown

Far, far away.

As nobody had seen them

For quite a few days.



Because of the smog

and because of the heat,

They could no longer stay

And decided to fleet

From the suffocating air

And the ash filled, choking skies.

They left while they could,

Before all the flock died.



Now pennies are collected in effort to remind

Of the other kinds of birds that may fly away too;

If they all did that, there would be no bird stew.

So, the people pay their pennies to save the last few.



We had to sail away from this hot, smoky land,

On the forty-fifth day, we walked back to the sand,

Where our ivory boat was ******* at the dock,

And we laughed at the sight of the Chirp-chirp bird flock!



They were perched on the boat awaiting our return

To escape this land hidden safely in the stern.

Without having to fly they could relax,

And just lie back;

They wouldn’t even need to give their purple wings a flap.



We remarked how they were clever,

And we let them stay on board.

Then we planned the fate

Of the Chirp-Chirp bird hoard.



When we return, they will live in little, cramped busy zoos,

Or we may even make them into Chirp-Chirp bird stew.

candle headed kids,
melting under pressure.
contorting and dying under the weight of something so bright and important:
a flame.
the burn of a good future just an arms reach away.
the heat of not letting anyone down.
the scorching pain of reaching through the flame,
the one thing destroying them,
just to succeed.
just to not let anyone down.
just to live.
anxious.
forever anxious.

smog headed kids.
they cannot breathe.
their thoughts,
contorting around their lungs,
killing them.
so dark,
so dark in their minds.
the need for pain,
the feeling of undeserving.
no one understands a smog headed kid.
forever choking over their own mind.