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 Nov 2013 ve
Emma N Boyer
I don’t think anyone knows what the hell they’re doing.  I mean, people think they have it all figured out but honestly, who knows? We can’t truly follow examples because everyone’s different –don’t tell me they’re not—and it’s not like we can ever have the same experiences. Not the exact same, anyways. And so I don’t think anyone knows what they’re going to do or feel each day, because we’re all a train wreck wrapped inside a fractured mind and a strong-ish body, moving through every day with the same uncertainty as a dandelion in a field of roses—we are lost. I’m not sure why we pretend; why we lie to ourselves because we say it’s not fair when other people lie. We put ourselves below others, or above them but who the hell cares? No one knows who they are, don’t let them fool you and don’t let them get you down because nobody knows where they’re going and so they’re pushing past you and sprinting in the wrong direction because maybe you’ve gotten further than them and they don’t know what to do and maybe they need people behind them to feel like they’re moving at all so let it be. Take a deep breath. You’re on your own, and they say you don’t have to be but you are. Because you live inside your mind—it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to. You are the things you think and feel and no one else is feeling them too even though they’ll say they are…it doesn’t matter. You are stronger than you think and even though you don’t know what you’re doing you can figure it out—at least for a little while. At least long enough to take a deep breath and find your next step. Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. Every time we think we have it all figured out, and we have a map of our lives tucked safely into our back pockets the wind picks up and blows it away along with any confidence we had and we’re forced to start anew. That’s why no one knows what they’re doing. We don’t have time to map it all out. We don’t have time for anything, and that’s why we’re lost. Things happen so fast, and before we can absorb them or celebrate them or be sad about them something else happens, and we’re thrown into another frenzy of emotion that takes away our breath and drowns our hearts in confusion—there isn’t enough time. And so no one knows what they’re doing and if they did, they couldn’t do it anyways because even people who are brilliant are full of doubts. They second guess themselves and they second guess each other because they know they are brilliant but that isn’t enough. That’s never enough. Society shows us—they scream at us that we are who they say we are and if they don’t see we are brilliant there’s no point in trying to prove that we are because it doesn’t matter.  None of it matters. And I don’t know why I feel that way but I do and I have and I always will until someone shows me I am wrong. And I mean shows me. I am tired of words and all their empty words no one knows how to use them right and they say them without a thought about how they will enter other people’s minds or lace their dreams I want someone to show me. I can’t show myself. I could try and I have before but the truth is I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. And maybe I’m pretending when I say that everyone feels the same way or maybe I am painfully correct—no one knows. No one cares. I am just as much a dandelion in a field of roses as a rose in a bouquet of weeds and so is everybody else. The problem is that dandelions are a menace and roses have thorns and there isn’t time to change the world or smooth things out because there isn’t time for anything. Nobody knows what they’re doing. So how does the world work? How do we breathe in and breathe out knowing that we’re lost and so it everyone else and no one can tell us how to be found because we cannot follow examples. Every single thing effects every single person in a different way, and no matter how microscopic their change in perspective is it still exists. The print made by our thumbs is not the only thing that is completely unique about us. If we could all be identified by the pictures in our minds and the music in our souls and not the masks we wear to muffle it all the world could be a better reality. Because for some of us not knowing is too much. We fall asleep at night or during the day and we don’t want to wake up because whenever our eyes are closed our hearts are, too. The world painted on our eyelids is better than the dreamless chasm that is reality and maybe that’s dramatic and maybe it’s too deep but no one cares anyway. These worlds are inside of me and they’re not just going to melt away so I have to put them somewhere. I don’t know what I’m doing. I want people to understand that. There’s always something more. I’m not sure what I mean by that. It’s just whenever I’m happy there’s something else that reminds me why I wasn’t before. I know who I am, better than a lot of people, but I don’t think it matters. I’m wearing a mask just like everyone else even though the music in my soul is so loud it shakes me. I drown it out and cover it up with the labels taped across my mouth and pinned to my back by people who just want to sleep. I’m not saying things should change. I don’t think they will. I don’t think I can change them but accepting that dandelions belong with roses is the only place I can start. Being lost is okay and being as scared of your own thorns as you are of everyone else’s is okay, too. Setting aside your mask and letting music blare from inside of you is beautiful and everyone knows it, but it they pretend it’s not…that’s okay. But I guess I’m sick of OKAYs. I want brilliance. I guess for now I will keep my mask on, and I’m okay with saying—I’m BRILLIANT with saying mine is a medley of both finger prints and music; weeds and a rose’s glow, and the beautiful and bold blackness of all these words I’ve torn from exactly Who I Am.
 Nov 2013 ve
J
You Live in My Mind
 Nov 2013 ve
J
You live in my mind
You never leave
If only to give, and never to receive
Why then must I constantly seek
Your face in every place
hoping for just a peak
How can one half move on so free
I wish that one half wasn’t you, I wish it were me
To be free from the bars you’ve prisoned me in
Nothing but the darkness of my thoughts to satisfy the sin
I envy how you can simply walk away, fine
If only I occupied your mind as much as you do mine
Is it our curse, will we always care more
Or is it just me, lost wondering what it is I’m looking for
Time will pass as it already has
And still I won’t heal as you certainly have
I pray, I wish for my own sanity
That as you occasionally catch a glimpse of me
You wonder the what if’s – what could have been
A flash of regret, some yearning again.
Wishful thinking, as always I will tell myself again
Just as I wish I could undo what I did.
 Nov 2013 ve
Richard Brautigan
Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
alone.
 Nov 2013 ve
Eulalie
That Song
 Nov 2013 ve
Eulalie
How is it
that I all too frequently find myself
poring over contemplations and fantasies to conjure my passion for you into writing,
that I have an entire section of poems, memoirs, and undelivered letters addressed
to you, for you, of you,
that I hurl myself into the vast, ever-encompassing depth of my loyal infatuation in the name of upholding and preserving
that special love
we discovered inside one another,
that I would gladly spend another nine (plus) hours hiding in my room if it meant I could reserve exclusively that time for you,
and you haven't even written that song for me like you promised?
The haikus are nice, my lovely,
but all too brief and it isn't even like you spend much time on those measly seventeen syllables of cheese anyway;
you don't make me feel significant enough and I'm just
pining quietly for you
while standing in the shadow casted by my affectionate regards of who you are and who I wish I could
dedicate my life to.
I may be just being too bold, too brash, too needy... But it isn't like I haven't tried to distract myself
from this eager, burning drive
to spend every conscious (or otherwise) moment wishing myself to be transported into the safe house that is your arms and chest and heartbeat...
I try.
Still, as I write to you, I am trying.
But my heart forbids I forget lest it tries to rip itself up again, and I'm not strong enough to call its masochistic, suicidal bluff.
All of this fluffed and heart-shaped confetti,
all of this gift-wrapped, glittery dedication,
all of this sugar-coated and caramel-dipped sentiment...
All of this, all of this, all of this,
and still
You haven't even written that song for me like you promised.
You don't deserve the pedestal I set you on. Not right now, anyway.
 Nov 2013 ve
JM
K
 Nov 2013 ve
JM
K
...
Your name,
a stab wound in the neck.
Memories of you,
moldy coffee grounds
and soggy biscuits;
your taste, spoiled milk.

Black, oily tendrils spill from my dying lips each time I say your name in my head.

I do not say it out loud

You are she now, I must
remember.

She...her.

She was the only one
I would have
completely submitted
to, had she only asked.

Her juices, sublime.

She ruined me
for the rest of you.
Cold and dark, her love
is the shadow in my eyes.
These bloodstained years,
ashes, weightless.

I cannot love anyone now.
I gave what little I had to her,
and she killed it.

I let her

This purging of her,
will it ever end?
So many dead memories
taking up precious space.
So many lies, so many lies.
A soiled sanctuary,
dripping in poison.

My dearest and darkest love,
my only.

They were all for you,
these poems. These futile
attempts to reconcile my reality
with my guts. Even the ones that weren't for
you carried your shadow.

Her, not you.
I must remember
This one broke me
because she didn't know
how to wield
the immense power
I gave her.
She was careless.

This has to stop.
Soon.

I want to hold someone
else and not think of...her.

You

I want to make everything right.

No

I want revenge.
I want her to suffer.

These dark reflections
from my nothing
inside
are innocuous.

Pale skin, bleach and rotten milk.
Lies and lies and lies.

Her grey garden is barren
but I still have sight.
She was supposed to
pluck my eyes.
Communion, this eating of
my flesh and
drinking of my
blood
has left me
bereft of anything
worth wanting.

*I crawl through stone
We were sat in the back row
she was watching the film show,
I was looking at her look at the screen,engrossed,
I had seen it before,
with Sharon next door,
who wasn't as pretty as this girl sitting near me.

I reached out my hand, she took hold of it,
and
my heart started racing,
seeking her cheek I kissed her,how sweet, and then she turned and kissed me,
fully on the lips.
I could feel it from my head to the tips of my toes
and now she knows how I feel
about her.
If she feels the same about me
this could be
the start of something new,
not just another picture show but someone I want to know and what I intend to go after.
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