I don't know how long I can pretend that I'm not rotting from the inside out.

I use a giant silver spoon to carve it out, pretend its ice cream, pretend its happiness, pretend its temporary. Every time I scoop, I'm closer to the bottom of the pint; but what's there at the bottom?

I look fine in your periphery, so what's there to worry?

I'm not bad at pretending, I'm just bad at being un-ugly.

I don't think I actually know what I look like.

I feel like pieces of me are these really ugly misshapen puzzle pieces I stitch together to make a cubist painting of what I could be. The mirror sometimes shows me a girl that's worth something but in pictures, I see a pair of arms, legs, eyes, ears, a nose, a body. Someone's body. Out of 380 photos I take, maybe there's one good picture, but that one picture usually doesn't even look like what I think I look like. Is that weird? Once in a while I catch a glimpse of myself and get a little startled because I don't look like what I thought I did... but then that moment passes and I turn back into the puzzle pieces that don't make sense, even to me. I then return to the cycle of piecing them together again, trying to figure out what the hell I actually look like.

Heavy boy
limping down
Broken ankles
shattered frown
wants a house
wants a wife
even if
she ruins his life
he chuckles then
realizing that
nothing was worse
then his bulging fat
fat from hate
fat from sins
fat from hating
the things he was given
nothing was worse
then what he was he thought
till one day he met her,
that one ungrateful thot
she really hated him
she hated him a lot
not '*** he was ugly
not '*** he was soft
she really hated him
'*** his skin was falling off

scrub scrub
brush brush
you’ll never be perfect
you’re not good enough
no use in wearing makeup
it can’t work miracles
besides
you can barely get out of bed anyway

slip on that sweatshirt
baggy to cover your fat
look at those fat thighs
the flab on those arms
no wonder everyone who loved you has left

fat
ugly
cover yourself up
shorts are a battle
bikinis an impossibility
might as well just give up

body positivity only works for pretty girls
and trust me
you’re not one of them

Ugly is beautiful, ugly is under the pretty skin and colors we wear.

When one thinks of art and the beauty of words it must always sound nice, it must follow and follow traditional laws of language;
**** that.

Art is an expression of self and soul is it not?
Humans don’t all have beauty in them, humans don’t always have some wonderful soul or righteous heart, so why should all art show the beauty of life?

Why not mock the beauty? Why not admit that sometimes we’re ugly, sometimes we’re crass, cold and vile?
Are we not all we are? Do our life experiences not shape and make us?

Life is not perfect and we all have pitfalls, everyone is flawed yet when it comes to art we deny the fact and mask it by saying “art reflects the tragedy” or “I use art to express my pain” and in that way, we make it romantic, but what if, we just showed it as it is.
What if we just said exactly what we’re feeling, what we’re thinking, what we want?

Must we use the beauty of words and paint and rock to hide our shame, or fear, to mask our greed and lust?
Sometimes people aren’t pretty, sometimes they have no soul, so what if some art was ugly?

What if I didn’t use proper words or language
Or started to; break up words by what-ever means I saw fit for the piece?

It would confuse, it would anger, it would look bad.
But that would be closer to human than always trying to turn some act of woe into some poetic moment.
For a moment reject the beauty, reject the urge to be clever or pristine, smear some mud across the page, ugly can be beautiful in itself because ugly is just that.

You are not the best, you are not the best looking, the fastest, the strongest, smartest, you do not know everything- so it would make sense that art at times should be flawed, that art should be ugly and broken, that art should offend you at times.
There is a humbleness to be found in ugly art, in art that is raw and exposed.
Once you take away the fluff that people are attracted to, once you strip her down and expose what she is, you may find that while some art is a flawless figure in her **** skin- other art may be torn, ripped and festering with disease but she’s not hiding anything in that moment- and on top of that. She doesn’t care.
Why should every poem sound nice?
Why should art have rules and laws?

Of course, we must have laws and standards, of course we must have laws and rules HOWEVER in times and for somethings- breaking that mold, stepping outside of the box, that is needed.
I say ugly art hides nothing and shows everything, pure surface value with no hidden meaning or deeper philosophy, which won’t do for some people.

Some people will rip art apart to understand its meaning refusing to believe in face value because they can’t understand the face value of ugly, they have to have something pretty, they have to have something clever or witty or something they can cling to as being elite as if that somehow places them above the social stature at which they reside.

Trust in ugly art, trust in unpoetic words, trust in blemished statues, trust in unpolished raw music, trust in ugly from time to time.

i dream we live in a different life ;;

you are pretty
and i am
young

and i stare into your
eyes and you
look me all over

almost . .
like i am food .

but you do not eat
me

frankly :
you never could
.

i wish i was who i wanted to be,
. . .
technical problems .

My dream was just like my everyday
walking about
watching my nieces play

Perfectly aligned with reality
in the restroom I gaze into a mirror
viewing myself with perfect clarity

Lifeless eyes
with redish-blue bags underneath them
Hair that had been cut all off
and dyed to resemble a rotten plum

My skin as pale as can be
Is this how I see myself?
...or is this how others see me?

I wish that you weren't so negative
I don't want to talk to you because of it
You're like that black shadow in my dreams
You are a cancer taking away everything

My grandmother always told me that
I had to watch the words leave me mouth because
I am a pretty girl and we do not say ugly words.
I’ve always had to take caution with my voice.

When I was walking down the hallway in ninth grade
A boy called out “Hey yo, nice ***!”
And when I whipped around,
I resisted the urge to call him a ****
Because I wanted to be a pretty girl,
I have always wanted to be gorgeous and
I can’t say ugly words if I’m going to be.

When I was waiting in the vice principals office,
After my “best friend” stuffed a letter into my locker
She called me a ****, a word I’d yet to hear,
And made me feel like I didn’t deserve to breath
Because I was just a *****, right?
The ironic part is she’s still the prettiest
Girl I’ve ever seen, who used the ugliest words.

When a boy who must have been 12 years old
Called out to me  “Hey, yo, girl, come here”
As I walked across the parking lot,
Garbage bag in hand and I had to tell myself
That the appropriate response wasn’t to
Call him a ****** but to ignore it and walk faster

When love came towards my head
Just barely slow enough for me to move
And the words “What the ****” caught in my throat
Because I still needed to seem pretty
Even when my body was shaking,
I couldn’t say ugly words, or I’d be ugly too,
So I just stood there and waited for
The shaking to stop in my bones.

I have always wanted to be a pretty girl,
And pretty girls don’t say ugly words,
Right?