down south we love our goobers
salt em up and set to roast
eat em by the dozens
drink em in our cokes

fix em fancy in deserts
peanut butter pie
big and small all size and sorts
eat em till the day we die

granny loves to cook em
goobers in green beans
adds a bit of crunchiness
to the down home sunday dinner scene

with newspapers set out on the floor
in front of  television sets
cracking shells like walker texas ranger
does good for nothing yankee heads

buy em hot and buy em boiled
along the roadside stand
spilling goober juices
all over the cars naugahyde rotan

finger licking greasy
from out a planters can
down south we love our goobers
like you done heard me said

I'd construct you a Kingdom
out of the salt-bleached bones
of past lovers

Hollow out the marrow
the femur, fibula
Develop instruments out of them
flutes, string chimes, reskin the drums
for your arrival

I'd ***** walls so high
That they penetrate the clouds and wage war
on the skies
Submitting the sunlight
Trapping it at your feet

And each day at the gallows
memories of old will die
for you to sit comfortably

If you grow weary of the palisade
and develop a longing, an ache
the forest, and it's density
is just beyond the gates

For you to run and smell
the richness of freedom
without requiring its taste

But please, return to the comfort of my walls  

the protection of my arms
Before the walls collapse
before the Kingdom lays to ruin

You make me bleed,
If only I learnt
how to paint you with it,
This would be worth it.

You make my heart ache,
If only I could turn this into art,
I would find a way
to keep you safe

Without endangering
my fragile beats.

You make me love you,
If only I could turn you into poetry,
And have people appreciate my love,
And not object,
I would.



But I can't.


So now my pen lays there,
The paper waits to be caressed,
The words remain lost in the echoes inside my head
Pleading you to come back.

But no amount of words I write
Will be louder than this worldly hate,
5+5 makes 10 so does 2+8

So why do they have to wrong us
To prove they are correct

I guess only a broken soul can hear
The sound a breaking heart makes,
You heard mine, for that I'm glad,
But you are gone now

The words now fall,
Only to get rusted and forgotten,

You made me hear
The silent lullaby the night sky sang to its lover earth
But now without you here,
It grows quieter every night.


Please, somewhere at some point
meet me again

Don't be a prisoner to mental slavery. Society wants us to be mediocre. Go to school, study, pass the test, those are all beliefs we are told since we can remember but are they really what you believe in? The window of life is so small that we must seize opportunities when they come. We need to get busy living before we are no longer able to. It happens way too often in society today that people are wearing clothing they don't like and doing jobs they don't want to be doing. You don't have to be a square piece that fits perfectly in the puzzle society lays out for everyone. Become a lion, don't let anyone or anything stop you from becoming what you want to become. So what's holding you back? Take control of your life.

Some things are inevitable,
Like the sun slipping,
Everyday into the shadows,
So the moon can rise and shine,
For the night,
Some things,
Like the sea,
Eventually reaching the shore,
No matter how many times,
She tries to float away,
Some things,
Like a love that was written in stone,
Before the lovers knew what love was about,
And some people (like me),
Stand at a crossroads,
Knowing that some things are inevitable,
Knowing that some things,
Are never meant to be

Everyday we go through
Heaven and Hell.
It's a constant battle:
Good versus Evil.

We go through so much
Pain and Heartbreak,
Joy and Excitement
But we're overwhelmed.

For every positive feeling,
There's a negative feeling.
For some of us, that
Negative becomes too powerful.

We become flooded by all
The could've, should've, would've,
The maybes and what ifs.
We forget the little things.

We lose our friends, but
Depression and Anxiety.
We feel dark and cold inside
And we isolate ourselves.

Don't get too close to us
Because we're contagious!
Every second we fade
Deeper into our minds.

We want the world to
Stop so we can relax
And clear our minds
But it just spins faster.

We become so overwhelmed
By negativity that we push
Those close to us further
Because we don't want to hurt them.

Our minds become a whirlpool,
A black hole, pulling us
Down faster and further
And there is no escape.

The only way to stop this,
In our heads, is to say
"The end"
Maybe then it will end.

But it doesn't have to end.
As writers of our lives,
We can end it
Or we can pause.

We can end it with
An "!", "?", or "."
But instead let's pause with
A semicolon.

A semicolon let us
Breathe and gather our thoughts.
It tells everyone that
It's not over yet; just paused.

As writers of our lives,
Pause and rethink our decision
Because our stories are not over yet;
There's so much more left.

Regret nothing from our past.
Rethink no decisions made
Or decisions that we didn't make.
Live in the now and for the future.

We owe it to our friends,
To our families, and
Most importantly to ourselves
To not end but pause.

We all crash and burn, and
That could be the end but
We can be the Phoenix and rise
From the ashes stronger and better.

There are times when I
Felt like giving up and saying
The end, but I remember
My friends and family and the good times.

I could've ended my story
Making it into a tragedy
But instead of ending every sentence,
I paused and carried on.

My story isn't over yet
Because there are no much
That I want to do in life:
Medical school, marriage, kids.

My story is not complete
And I don't want to
Leave a cliffhanger for
My friends, family, everyone.

Out stories are not over yet.
We have so much to live for.
We have so many goals:
Graduation, Job, Love.

Insp;re each other and
Everyone going through the same thing.
Be the warr;ors we are determined to be
And f;ght hard like your life depends on it.

Insp;re!
Be a warr;or!
F;ght on!
Our stories are not over yet.

Robert Frost said,
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood."
We have two choices.
Pick carefully; it'll make all the difference.

Pick left and end your story
With an "!", "?", or "."
Or pick right and pause
Your story with a semicolon.

**Insp;re!
Be a warr;or!
F;ght on!
Our stories are not over yet;

If she asks you
If she asks you who I am, tell her. Tell her
because she is not starting a fire for an explanation but a confession.

If you tell her I was just a girl you dated
for a couple of years, she will only give you a hard time.
The hundreds of photos tagged in your outdated profile and the stack
of books with our names written will be her allies.

If you tell her I was an old friend, she will only hear
half of what you say. She will recall how you looked at places
with a tinge of regret and a shade of nostalgia. She will remember
how you skipped a certain song ― a reminder of something you’ll find an excuse
not to tell her every time the car radio is on.

If she asks you who I was, lie a little,
because she is not crossing the line for answers but for assurances.

Don’t tell her how our lips played with poetry and how we dared
to dream under the light of the taciturn satellite. Skip the part where we
fought dragons together and how we named each other’s scars.

Reserve the fact that you still keep the letters, notes, old restaurant receipts under
your drawers and some tearstained thoughts at the back of your pillow. She doesn’t need to know
why you reread past conversations or why your mother mentioned me at the family dining table
just to ask you what I have been up to.

Finally, if she asks you who I was to you, tell her you love her. Put her in the limelight
because she is testing you to pull the trigger pointed at her

But you won’t. Instead, you will tell her she’s beautiful to compensate
for the words you never had the guts to tell me. You will tell her she’s a keeper, for the hell of it.
You will tell her a poor research about human cells being replaced after seven years so that one day,
I will leave no trace on your body.

She will then forget that you mentioned my name while sleeping. She will wash the lipstick stains
on your bedsheets and remove the extra toothbrush in the shower. She will ignore the way you twitch
every time you hear a familiar author or my favorite curse word. She will fill the spaces
of your fingers and plaster kisses at the holes of your chest. She will replace every scent of me
with her own promises, insecurities, and mistakes.

She will do this. She will, because when she asked you about me,
she knew I was the ghost of the house. And at the back of your head, you wanted to tell her
that the ****** no longer need saving. But by all means,
darling, she can try.

—

A. A. Dizon