Beauty comes from pain
Strength comes from struggle
Bravery comes from fear
But love cannot come from hate

When will the pain turn to beauty?
When will the struggle turn to strength?
When will the fear turn to bravery?

Perhaps it's never to be known
Exploited by greedy hands
Kept away and controlled
Fear, struggle, and pain
Only put in bold
There spawns hate

- Jay M
December 14th, 2020

I wish I was coming out of this
A butterfly 
****, just something with wings

Hasn’t it been a cocoon?
Crying and crawling, desperate times 
We're begging for change
When did it come to this?
I was just thinking about finding
What I’ve hidden 

Guess there was more than I thought

Where did I put it?
I know it’s in here somewhere 
Did it fall between the bed and the wall? 
I’ve dug through all the corners 
Third eye throat stomach swallowing heart
Plenty vulnerable with no discernible 
Skill so I know it’s unlikely but god
There’s a script a book a song or two
A business plan, A landing joke ?
Something somewhere in these poems
All over my floor and tucked into my arm 
Maybe it’s in my phone, probably not

I wish I was better but of course, I am


Even if you can’t see wings 
Maybe they’re bound 
Just under my elbows 


I’m better 
Even if it’s just barely more than before

There's a death inside of me.
And it wants to come out.
Maybe I need to honor and grieve
this death.
Maybe I'm scared of
this death.
A bullet through my ******* head.
What a relief.

And who heals through my suicide?

What part of me wants to die?
Maybe it isn't the physical.
Maybe it is the part of me that causes harm
to myself, others, and nature.

So where do I go?

Perhaps slow down and head back to those forks in the road.
All those many moons ago.
Soften them.
Rearrange them.

I am not me.
I am not
this death.

You caught our eye,
sticking out
in a bed of old red and pink flowers.

What's your story?
Perhaps you were just a red or a pink flower
who chose to be yourself.

Or perhaps you were put there
by forces beyond,
to blossom into a messenger.

Thanks for making us think,
and offering a choice to change
while we still have time.

folding the sirens of
eternity in on themselves
as this scant hour
rebuilds its stage
over and
over
in the light of my eyes

already there is a perception
of being caught
in a loop - of a lesson
playing out
before a malady
of ignorance

i am free to see it
and i am free
to miss it

it is the long
breath
of the breaching
whale - an exchange
of currents for
the transformation of
sky into
ocean depths

it is
the
hidden union
in transience

recurring
in beautiful
obscurity