The words I speak don't matter
to those who don't listen.

Screaming air to those who
don't care.

They think my lips spill poison
and would rather sew them shut.
And would rather mute my voice
to their locked ears.

I breathe fire
baked from years and years
of pressure from all around.

All the little sparks and scars
added up for so long
until I can no longer hold it in
my mind and heart.

You may believe me to be overreacting
to childish play
or teasing words

but what do you know?
Do you care?
Do you know what it's like in my shoes?

Can you take all those pinpricks of pain from over the years
and still stay sane?

They'd rather have me stay quiet.
Silent
Don't start a ruckus or
Complain.

Out of the way and never
bothering the
structure of our world
with my pain.

And why?
is maintaining a lie more important
than my voice?

Pro-Yia-yia,
I remember when you were
Still alive
And asked to see
My eyes.

I was a ways from ten,
You were near one hundred.
You were sitting
On that plush armchair
With your
Silver waves of hair
Knotted nose
Wire glasses
The waves of ****** and the Aegean still residing
In your voice.

Your eyes…
I forget
Although they mirror mine.

You just wanted to see me
After being gone
So long.

And I refused to comply
And denied you to look into my eyes
And ran into another room.

I apologize, Pro-Yia-yia,
It wasn't in anger or defiance
But fear.

I'm sorry I didn't look into
Your eyes
And showed you mine.

I didn't want to look at what would
Become my reality.
Your image-- a reflection of mine
In due time.

That your image would become a reflection of
Mine
And what comes after.

I let the fears of the end of
My life
Turn my memory of you
Into one of regret.

Years have passed
And you have gone but,
It still runs through my mind.

How could I refuse to look into your
Weathered brown eyes
Because I fear my
Inevitable demise.

I can’t recall the amount of times I’ve wanted to hold you;
There are too many.
You, my friend, bewitch all who go near and
I realize that one’s beauty doesn’t determine their worth
But, you are radiant both inside and out.
It’s alluring
Ensnaring
Breathtaking
I found myself trying to close the distance between us
Each time you spoke with all your passion for life
I fought the urge to cup your light to my chest
Because you aren’t mine to hold
You never were
You burn so bright
Soar high above the sky and stretch your wings across every horizon
I could not reach your height though others have
And they gave you life
I’d see how your eyes would burn so bright
And you’d sing your love for them across a sea of words and breathtaking flight.
To be honest, it hurt
Knowing I’d never hold you.
And that only they could make you burn so bright
When I was the one listening to your dying cries --
Trying to comfort you with all I had--
I broke every time.
I wanted to hold you close and let your embers and ashes scar and burn my skin
Tell you, my love,
That I’d stand by your side
That I’d protect you from all the misery if I could
But I could not reach to where you were.
I couldn’t even see.
I could only hear you fall apart
Yet, you always rise again
Stronger than before
You are a phoenix rising above the ashes trying to suffocate your flight

I fear that lead incision shattering my skull.
That same poison tradition carried out for centuries before
leaving the disenfranchised with broken homes
and broken graves
to match these broken days.

Executions flash across my screen
day by day
like a sleeping spell
trying to numb my mind to the violence
of trying to live a life.

There is no reason.
There is only bloodshed.
How many are you willing to ****
to protect your pride?

Children's screams land into deaf ears
willing to mock their ghosts with lies.
You still believe the fallacy of the
Freedom of Life
when you're not the one
standing in front of the machine's eyes.

You care more for the machine
than human lives.
One that brings an apocalypse to our kind.

Yet, you never hold the blame.
You blame your victims
for what's happened in their lives
or the state or their minds.

Never that the gunman holds cruel intentions.
Your minds are too fragile to believe
what is truth.

Still bodies lie
With what used to be filled with so much light that
stare in your direction.

And never forget
what role you played
or else they could be
Still alive.

Let those words spill from our
eyes.
As light drops, scattered across
what used to be
Home
now a prison
to those of us suffering.
Having to equivocally smile
against all the odds
just to survive.

Being expected to show no sign of
Feeling.
Only vacuous faces
willing to take
and take
and take
whatever abuses come our way.
Having to hide the
Fear for our lives,
Anger for what they’ve done,
Sadness for the lost,
and Pride for when there is a moment of triumph
against that
overhanging cloud
where sunlight hardly
ever leaks.

Maybe not here.
Maybe somewhere-- maybe
even the moon--a happy life for us
exists.
Not here.
Never here.
Where we’re being hunted
just for attempting
to love
while they tell everyone
else that
we don’t exist.
How could we exist in
a place that is no
Home?

I walk another broken path, across a collection of burning fragments of orange and brick red, towering above my seemingly insignificant head down a pathway of forgotten futures to foretell.

Each tender leaf just falls. A crisp, whispering wind numbs my face, which would be all too great if it doesn't start to turn to a skeleton freeze and harden to a crystal clear.

Turn back time-- to a more pleasant day.
A day with no wailing cyclones of color circling around me,
No almost-black bark barred trees stretching its arms above my head,
No crunching sweet beneath my feet,
No musty fog to lose myself and forget,
No thundering storm cloud lingering not too far behind to finally come down upon me and sneer as I soak,
No looming forest to navigate through this seemingly endless broken path as I keep moving on.

But it can't be done. There's no going back.

I come across a clearing within and lay my head on the damp, wood soaked, earth-scented soil and look up. Look up into the ever-gray eyes of the sky, hiding its greatest secret--the infinite cosmos of possibly.

Oh, what worlds could there be?

Worlds of echoing majesty and light. Worlds that could cut the mold of ordinary life. Worlds where one doesn't need to navigate on their broken paths but where you can fly high above all else till they're insignificant to your gleaming sky-dried eyes.

But no.

In the forest is where I am. Does that really matter though? This is my fantastical world, here, so I should make the best of it.

I must go on. I step up again and continue in the journey. My journey. I walk to the sound of a trickling, icy, stream. I step over knotted root to knotted root. I almost glide on a mirage of gold and crimson.

As twilight whispers into the wind, I take a look around this endless wood of possibility and march forward on my broken path.

Just as there's light, there's darkness in everyone's life.
It's stark, shadowing sunlight, and doesn't yield.
Just how is anyone meant to jauntily thrive
in an ostentatious world meant to shield
Beading, beating eyes from those that suffer
from vicious, bleeding lies?

A pawn cannot decide where it lies
in the everchanging game of fate that is its life
being puppeteered by monsters who make their pieces suffer
from their callous thrones that do not yield.
For they always use an invisible shield
to ensure that they always thrive.

In such a world, how is it we are meant to thrive?
Sinking deeper and deeper in blatant lies
of the quixotic dreams of old to shield
the simple fact that we are taught to live a life
where we stand subservient and yield
the abuses of those in power who make us suffer.

For such a long time we were taught to suffer
through storming skies. Beaten, impossible to thrive.
Time can wither our ability to yield
the pain inflicted by those who tell noxious lies.
A sunken arrow into our psyche to devastate life
worth living and love that cannot hide though any shield.

What else other than our love do they want to shield?
Without, there is no cure for those who suffer
and carry on with the hardships of life.
We live in those pockets of light and thrive
in a different world where we banish the lies
that our worth is measured in what we yield.

Despite my pride, there are the times where I yield
to those shadows in the sky. Yet you shield
the rain and I can see where that crescent lies
above our heads. Cease what we suffer,
the moonlight sonata within tries to reach out and I thrive
from your touch of endless life.

I know it seems we're predetermined to suffer
But take my hand and we'll thrive
as I try to hold onto the fragments of this life.

If a cloud must release its aggressions into rain than I should with mine.
Release some unfathomable emotion too heavy to bear into the abyss of life so that for a moment I can feel.
Just feel and nothing else.
Feel and do what I wish without all that painful noise that just keeps banging in my head.
For once I’d like to do what I must without having to drag my brain so it can meet my heart
So that I can finally dance that dance I’ve been wishing for.
Yet I never budge from needless distraction to needless distraction fogging the path and blinding my will.
And I just hurt and keep it in.
Just build all the hurt and self-inflicted shame and pain
and stow it away
While I continue on my half-assed existence.
No one knows when that sweet recipe poisons the heart until its too late.
So much turmoil cannot exist inside a soul no matter what.
And I begin to molt and malfunction trying to hold my broken self together amongst the storm in my heart.
It becomes so difficult to just be human when on the precipice of breaking down.
You can’t even find the strength to eat let alone smile.
It ***** your marrow and leaves you frail to touch.
One even goes the length of finding different cures to try to rid themselves of this ache doesn’t sustain any life it latches itself on.
Although it’s never quite enough to stop the pain completely.
Even with the perfect magic potion, made to adjust the chemicals in your head, it might not work completely.
One must take it in themselves to make a change as well and release all those fears collected by the years in open air
and continue to do just that.
Know that there’ll always be storms in the heart that will try to devastate your life.
Let the rain flow from your mind as I’ll try with mine.
And maybe then the sun will come out once again.

Starless nights and narrow paths
rule this life.
Two decades ago felt so long
yet so sought.
Numbing herself through the day which
she used to celebrate.

Is it the gaping hole of a chest?
Is it the pre-recorded track of existence?

Has life always been losing its light
when they drag her to try
to play the game where she stumbles and falls
but still gets up and still remains off?

Maybe after pricking herself, she stopped
and now lives in sleep-walk
keeping on the same face
while ten feet from the grave.

There's only the doubt
that she can't get out.

Shriveled, clutching a beating chest
A beat, pause.
Automatic hesitation.

A crowded room surrounded
with noise and light and myself
At a stand-still.
Suffocated, snuffed out
Unable to reach--
To grasp inside my throat.

And I see red,
a collision of petrification and passion
still hidden from most.
There's an invisible curtain here.
They won't come to me
and I won't come to them.

Flickering candlelight,
embers across a jagged shore,
I throw my arms out
trying to grasp and throw out my thoughts
before the survival mode
and they're cloaked.

But when I do call out,
will it all go wrong?
I open my mouth
and, look, I did it again
Better to keep it all in
then make another mistake.
And I'll still see red
until my words bleed

I see red
I see red
I see red.

You don't stay out of my shadow
a mirage dancing in moonlight,
translucent locks and hazy eyes breathe life.
I go to lean into you, and you're not there.

My oldest friend, I shouldn't think anymore
I see that same look in your eyes
reflected back that same child who'd been locked out
only to peer in, too petrified to speak.

I've survived with it-- the hesitation to go back in.
Is this something that can be severed?
I feel its phantom limb when I kiss my wrist
thinking it's your lips.

You, the creation of a heart-broken child
stitched with a gentler hand
only words of love and breathless laughter sewn
patched up with whispers in the night
weaved in all the conversations I wanted to have.

You don't ask more than what I can give,
you're just here with me
there's no hatred or mistakes
no need to go back out again.

It's Pygmalion's curse
dipping your toes back in reality
only to be dismissed again
and I'm back in your arms.

Tell me sweet nothings I don't deserve
let my mind wander in a lucid dream
while my stomach grows a bitter pit
because you're a haven, I never leave.