Force a smile
and stand up straight
first leg's a mile
ready at the gate

Please do not worry
if you cannot relate
we're off in a hurry
it's sort of innate

To leap and bound
and always be late
but always be running
it's sort of our fate

To run and never get there
to die and never know where
or why our fate is unfair
or if you ever did care

I can’t breathe-
But I can wear long sleeves.
I can’t look
To the tumbling leaves
Without being reminded
Of my cracking psychiatric state
That his name leaves me in.
I can’t smile,
But I can blame it on
Being “under the weather”
Like it’s some sort of
Dizzy spell that disintegrates
My fake smiles and
Social interactions.
Another year I watch the leaves lose their hair,
Being stripped completely vulnerable
In public,
Just the way he left me.
Another year I spend my birthday alone.
Another year I don’t have a date to the fair.
It’s unfair…
Another year I will be purposely outcast
At friendly functions.
Another year I’ll be questioned
As to why I stay at home all of the time.
Another year I’ll spend alone in my own mind.
Another year;
Closer to death.
Happy ******* birthday.

Portable Carnival.
You pack it up and roll it away two weeks to the day that it arrives. The lives of these carnies have never mattered. They exist only as a part of the traveling freakshow. Something we pay money to stare at, to laugh at, to mock. It’s degrading, but it’s how the freaks have to earn their living. It’s how Two Toe Toby affords his next meal. But he doesn’t have a favorite sit down restaurant, because they keep putting him back on a bus and sending him to a different city to manage the tilt-a-whirl; And all the hurling ***** from children's’ stomachs that are full of corn dogs and cotton candy.
Portable Portajohn.
A traveling **** storm. Citizens come and give us their paychecks in return for cheap thrills on rinky **** rides that spin their minds into oblivion. Just so they can say they’ve tasted the clouds and all of the pollution that surrounds them.
And just like that, we leave again. Vanishing into our next city, for a scheduled two week period.

Is this what writers do?
Lure their readers to a false sense of security?

You know that I'm in love with you.
So you, with insincerity, play my heart strings like poetry.

Dear Brother,

I was struggling.
Anxiety attacks and utter insecurity,
The pit in my stomach was a permanent crater
But I saw you
At recess, standing on the blacktop alone
And I forgot about myself

They told you you couldn’t play football with them.
Your limp was horrible, you didn’t understand the rules exactly
Boys running up to tap me on the arm
Yelling “Get him away from me”
“Tell him to leave me alone”
How am I supposed to tell my brother no one wants to be his friend
No one wants to talk to you Ryan because they can’t understand what you’re saying
They don’t even want to try.

Everyday the school called home, he’s hopeless
Detentions for yelling at the teacher,
The one who didn’t bother to notice he was trying
And he did try too, so hard
So hard he came home calling himself stupid
Because that is all he summed up to at the glories of public highschool

Mom cried, and Dad tried to give her hope
That someday people would treat you right
And I prayed that I wouldn’t keep hearing kids mutter your name in the hallways
Completely unknowing that you were my brother
And all the times your frustration built,
Holes in the wall and broken door frames
I never ever blamed you.

Now we stand side by side at graduation
And I want you to know,
I couldn’t be more proud of us.
Dear brother,
You will always be one of the best things that ever happened to me

Who are you to hold me
safe
with soft hands on fire?

                     when the want overdoses to a need
                                              my only serenity is our distance