You watch a movie
About a girl with cancer
Dying in a hospital,
A boy who loves her holding her hand.
You start to cry,
Because that was you,
Sitting in a bed waiting to die.
Sweetie
They call you, the nurses,
You have a brain tumor,
They tell you.
And it’s growing,
It’s inoperable,
Dead center of your head.

Dead.
They use that word.

You are dying,
Because your cells are trying too hard,
Just like you do everyday.
You are crying now watching this movie,
That girl was you.
Dying.
Scared,
In a Boston hospital room.
Numb.
Except no one was holding my hand,
No one is.

Now you lie
Awake at night,
Few years later,
Torturing yourself.
What if it grows back?

Broken hearts gave us the best poets in the world.

I don't feel like a poet, No sir I don't
I can write words upon a page
But does that make me a poet?
I have passion for the art
Am I a poet yet?
My pen meets paper with scribbles of thoughts
Am I a poet yet?
I share tales of the heart
Am I a poet yet?
Today I feel not of a poet
But of a girl who shares of madness

Do you ever come across that feeling of melancholy?
When you’re going too fast on that midnight trolley
Your head starts spinning in unfamiliar directions
While you’re left there, looking for defections

Do you ever feel like you aren't enough?
Everyone thinks it’s all a big bluff
But deep down inside you know it’s true
The whole world around you starts to turn blue

Do you ever feel that obligation?
When in school you want certification
Gaining the card that classifies you as
That one guy who is cooler than jazz

Do you ever feel pressured to fall?
Into a love in which you can’t call
A pointless relation clouds your mind
Pushing you farther from what you might find

Do you ever feel like you try too hard?
To fit into a jigsaw, but instead bombard
Looking for a clique that suits you best
Coming to feel like you’re better than the rest

Do you ever feel like you can’t be found?
Lost inside your own impound
Deceived by self-inflicting thought
You continue to feel even more distraught

Do you ever just want to run away?
Leave behind your past and go astray
Forget the life you lived at home
And elsewhere discover a new throne

Do you ever feel like life is a game?
A game in which you can’t come to claim
The honorable title as the winner
Settling down for the same old dinner

Do you ever wonder if you’re treated unfair?
You live thinking that you cannot bear
The dreadful thought of being singled out
Making you want to scream and shout

Do you ever feel like nobody understands?
Like you’re the only one stuck within the strands
Trapped inside an ignorant state of mind
Only to come all this way and find…
That you were wrong all along
It was all just a mixed up song
These steps you take throughout high school
Turn you into some kind of rotten fool

One day you will come to see
That it was all part of the journey
You’ll take it in and walk down your path
Knowing that the worst of the wrath—
Is over…

-David Rombouts-

Outside the window
a woman is
     beaten upon
          spit upon
a black man is
      unfairly judged
          unfairly punished
a gay man is
       hated at
          jeered at
but none of it can touch me
if I just
       draw the blinds
          close the curtains
shut it out.