I wear the letters NYU sprawled across my chest as my individuality is asphyxiated.
Lungs choke under the weight of the added pressure. 

The thought of college plus my complexion,
Equals complexed looks that ponder my intellectually-heightened direction. 



Will you think a little bit more of me, with my conformity?



Attempts to better myself meet enough ignorance to even cloud the vision of God.
Segregation and alienation cause mental spasms the strength of lightening rods. 




I guess you're just a product of the environment to which you were exposed. 


But I'm always trying to fight the stereotype that black people are ultimately foes.



I am the ant and the kids of rich parents are magnifying glasses. 

Cremating me with the solar power of son's who were taught that their existence was worth more than mine. 



I lay motionless, in bottomless quick sand pits, itching to alleviate my stomach stitch, engulfed by set standards that could not be met. 


I am tired of trying to be what you'd like to see.
Astute, respectable, young black man-just so you can approve of me and hopefully think that we are not all "up to no good."



Say it loud,
I'm black 

And I'm,
Not going to lie,
The proud part is kinda hard to say. 


Because I walk down the street and see my face in the homeless everyday. 


I fill the prisons and I'm famous when the news reports crime. 

And when I show up early to interviews,
they look confused to see that I,
Don’t run on Colored People's Time.



I don't hate black but I hate the fact that black means that sometimes I have to find alternate routes to success. 



While other people's roads are already paved, I suffer from all the stress. 



I try my best but I'm always categorized as less, then a man. 


And I'm trying to change perceptions but I still feel like a visitor on American land




And the poor are physically trapped so I relate mentally.

We both suffer from the oppression and accept the hatred like it was meant to be.




Society has led you to believe that blacks are not worthy of equality



But take a long, hard look into my eyes and tell me that you don’t see my humanity.

The wolves did not just stalk quietly through cadmium woods.
Their teeth grew madder and rose from each others throats.
The tigers did not just sleep on mossy slopes,
they colored the afternoon fushia and indigo from caladon heights,
The dragon with its terrible emerald tail and ruby glare,
did not merely threaten to incinerate everything around it.
Spiders prepare a grave.
This thing in a binding tomb.
A multitude of flames, a million orange and blue....
Tears cremating the past.
A burning snow falling everywhere.
When the darkest angel of all, sits at last upon my chest,
permanently enfolding me in its radiant wings....
A creature without a voice,
A voice without a name.
As immortal as mi life,
come here at long last to summon the wind.


© Crystal Erickson

Two o'clock sober
might still be hungover
you're begging for my tongue while I beg for your love.
I never thought I'd love like this,
one-sided and founded on ever unstable lust. I shouldn't even call this love,
I think it's love and I think you're just in it for a ****. Writing
poems about you is "hard" because I can't admit
what I can't bring myself to say out loud. You told me your secrets
and I swallowed the seeds, letting your admissions
bloom inside of me.
How could I have been so stupid? I should have known
you would plant a garden just to leave.
Girls made of gardens wither without affection
I must not be your favorite flower. I don't think I ever was
but you keep coming around just to see my petals unfold
every spring and I let you leave dew drops all over me

We've done this before. Lines and rows of blooming pinks and red,
scratches, finger prints, bruises, hickeys, marks that fade
after a few days. No matter how many days it's been, weeks, months
we find our way back to the patch of wildflowers
where we first decided to make love.
There will always be changes to the scenery and
I can't think of anyone else that I would plant myself anywhere with.
One of us is always leaving but somehow the wind blows us back home.

I'm not religious anymore but the Ten Commandments
seared inside of my psyche flash
before my eyes and I hear myself repeating
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
while I make myself ****** to the pictures you sent me. One night,
I wrote everything about you that I idolized in big letters on lined paper
and ripped it into squares. I twisted the paper bits
into your godly shape and whispered
your name as I dropped you into a floral candle and let the flame
eat your tiny body. Have you ever felt crazy?
Have you ever been so in love that it makes you crazy?
Until you've made a lover into an effigy
and tried to force your passion for them to rest
by cremating their paper remains
I don't know if you understand how close love and crazy really are.

I swear. I swear, I'm done.

But I'm not done. I pretend to forget
the way your name feels for a while, I pretend to idolize
other things but when you appear
uninvited to my dreams I can't forget the things I've seen. You kiss
my forehead as midday sun
settles on my skin and a garden of roses
start to bud where you've planted love. You pick the most precious one
and when you cut the stem I **** awake, facing the candle
where I tried to destroy what I thought of you. I don't know
why I see you everywhere and I don't know why
I keep asking questions that I'll never have the answers to.

Once you're actually here my laugh bubbles
from my throat and chrysanthemums and lilacs and daisies
fly out. When you kiss me I swear I feel ivy
entwining itself into my hair and my eyelashes grow tuberose.
I bloom with you and when you leave I become winter, waiting for you
to tend me. Every day with you is spring
and I know exactly how fast the seasons change. "Thou shalt not covet"
but god, I want you
I want you to trust me with everything and I want you to sow more seeds.
I can't tell you the last time I read my bible,
I thought it didn't have a hold over me anymore but I want you
to choose me and I don't want
to feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak anymore.

I've been thinking
about touching you
for so long
And now that I am
it feels euphoric

Your skin,
as soft as
I remember it

I melt into your words. I catch the flame
flickering on my bookshelf
where I burned your likeness and look into your eyes
flashing my most devilish smile.
You're back in my room and you've covered my body with sticky honeysuckles
and forget-me-nots. You, imperfect as anyone else but I see you
like you're some walking god. You, human as me. Your hands
left prints of hibiscus on my skin and when you leave
I open my diary to the page where I pressed cherry blossoms and maple
leaves and they fall as I write about how happy I am to see you.

"I just don't think that men like you like women like me who have moonstone eyes and crazy day dreams, women who dot their poems with inky pearl tears, pressed poplar leaves and, well, I wanted to write you a poem but I can’t think of any creative words. I want you to read how beautiful you make me, how your eyes drink me in, how I overflow for you. I want you to feel the conflict in my heart... so rarely that I see you but every time we reunite we are even better than the last. I don't know if you want to read it but I want to write you a poem. I want to write you a poem that makes you cringe because I write with honesty. I want you to feel the rhythm of my words the way we feel the rhythm of our bodies. You should be happy to inspire someone’s poetry. You, you don’t love me. And that’s fine, because I’ll always look back at you and see sunshine streams on your skin."

My room is all white and pink, floral print and my African violet.
You look perfect in the rosy glow
of my feminine sanctuary and I feel so appealing,
I trust you enough to show you everything, I say, luxuriating the words in the sunlight.
I want to absorb this moment to keep me warm. When I lay alone
thinking of drifting to sleep in your arms, it is this moment
with you around me,
the way you kiss my face like I mean something to you
and this is the place I go, when I swear
all of this means nothing to you. Doesn't everyone want to feel home?
Maybe I think being with you feels like the kind of home
with a nice garden I want to live in. Maybe you feel it too.

Maybe I'm reading too far into everything
and not saying enough of anything
maybe both of us say nothing hoping the other will
be the one to admit the feeling
but you, as soon as you leave and I tell myself I’m done. Swearing
I've burned up the last of you, I’ll never do it again.

I can't stop thinking about you

And I'm back thinking about you, too.

Spiders sprinkling down a crooked spine

Can you hear the whine of a brain stem dying

One hundred and eighty days of pain

have metamorphosed this corpse into something deranged

mangled and tangled in webs of perception

razor-sharp enough to cut straight through the gut's deception

and when the vile heart succeeds in silencing the eyeballs

emptying the sockets of life-long pitfalls

maybe the spine-spiders will finally commence to release

the good soul that remains trapped inside this tree.

Grow tree, grow, for you are all I have ever known,

If it weren't for your protective shade, who knows where I'd have been blown.

You may be covered in cobwebs and leaves long decayed,

but I'll keep my promise to save you someday.

You may not grow to be the big oak of which you dream,

perhaps you will end up as kindling in the fiery gleam

of a thousand spiders cremating in my hearth

as I look on, a corpse consumed by an angry spark.

Lovingly your ashes will be placed

beside the oldest river, the one you once graced.

There will be no more spidery-spinal veins

to screech and rattle and bring about the worst pain.

Changelessness is not a virtue, a concept you most despised,

in the spidery spinal tree's search for life of a better kind.

Well
not so sure I think or feel
but it was a hot day
the kind to make your skin melt
and you want to take it off
so your bones can breathe
but ****** is illegal
in Kalamazoo
so we must be polite
to the locals
eat the bacon fat like good people do
love air like lemonade
bitter and delicious
refreshing in the right circumstances
loving the smoke
so sensual
in and out
controlled and contorted by lips
pillars billowing
cliched
but so **** fine
thick and formless
it disappears
but for a moment
it's yours
theirs
yummy
wrists crack like silly skeletons
jumping around
clowns in the heavens
what are you saying
my dear boy(s)
you think you're in love?
I think you're in
for one hell of a ride
if you're into
cremating your dignity

See a Sea of Secret Signs
Voluptuous Volatile & Vile Vultures
Creatures Creating Cretinism
Solid Solutions & Solid Situations

Subconsciously Violins Consuming Sounds

Roses Rapping River & Roads
Water, Walls, Weeds Wallow
Cremating Carnivore Carnations & Carnivals
Tenacious Terrorism Trimming Time

Riddles Will Consume Things

Everyone's past is a tragedy.
Everyone's heart has
been broken.
That means
thousands of
reasons to feel
sorry for
yourself.

Hundreds of different
shades of pain, an
endless rainbow of
exes and
depressing
stories.

Relationships pile up,
as rotten and overwhelming
as a garbage dump.
I need to reduce
my interpersonal
carbon footprint.

There are too many
bones in the graveyard
of my heart. I am
almost out of
room, I will have
to start
cremating
soon.

I want to forget them all,
every failed attempt
at love.
Can you
wipe my slate clean?
Can your kiss
outweigh
a decade
of defeat?

Laying there stagnant
My fingers percuss
Your ivory spine
Striking tendon strings
With fleshy hammers
Filling your thorax
With the vibrations
Of a thousand wasps
Stinging at your heart
As you stung at mine
Injecting resin
Injecting reason
To stay forever
And I ignite you
You, the Brazen Bull,
Cremating your heart
Still beating “I love you”
In boiling Morse code
But howling His name
In perfumed clouds of
Carbon Monoxide
Insensitively

My gaze burns, you say
Flames spew from my eyes
To char your soul
Fire, you call me
Burning up your life
I’m ignited, you say
Flames licking up my legs
Cremating my heart
Ironic
How my presence makes your sweat
Yet you make me shiver
Ice, frosts over your eyes
Icicles hang from your arms
Frozen, deep down to your heart
Clouded snowflakes hang in your breath
As you breathe out your cold words
So fire melts ice
And I burn you up
As you freeze the life out of me
Still we can’t seem to give each other up
Mutual destruction assured
Still we press on
Heated words and cold silences
Like fire meeting ice
We were never meant to be
Yet, here we are

We humans are erasing existence of humans ..
The killing of animals have shadows of humans..
We are erasing Silk, Cotton, khadi ...
Kids now don't like the taste of natural honey..
Eating of fruits they know not, drinking fruits is what they like.. Home cooked hot food is becoming rare now..
Bringing parcel of food is becoming common now..
TV, Mobile, Computer, FM, takes 16 hours a day now,
Kids getting a digital notebook is becoming common now..
Humans now don't have time to ponder,
Humans are becoming slave of man made things...


To plant trees in empty land is no one's pass time
To visit a zoo or feed an animal does not fit in the 16 hours slavery,
To invite relatives is yearly event..
To have meeting with friends is limited on FB WhatsApp or Instagram..
To walk, to hear birds chirping is just like a dream,
But humans are busier than they were before..

Kids are growing indoors.. And not outdoors..
There hieght is also changing from length to breadth..
0-10 yrs kids have thr brains growing,
What ever they easy, what ever they do they remember for rest of thr lives..
Walking, laughing, thinking, playing, eating, they learn in this age,
Irony is Mother's career and Father s promotion is also at peak in this age of theirs.
Knowingly unknowningly we are stunting the growth of young minds,
In the hands of video games was are cremating future of tomorrow..

We humans are erasing existence of humans..
We humans are erasing existence humans!!!

Sparkle in Wisdom

i don't carry a lighter
but, baby,
i would hold a match to the entire free world
just so you could light your cigarette
on the flames of civilization going to ****.
i love the smell of capitalism cremating
and of you breathing your slow death
into my trembling lungs.

Sometimes you feel so inferior that you will tear away the flesh of anyone in your path to simply ascend. You are struggling to breathe. Sometimes you are suffocating so intensley that you will slay the souls of anyone in your path in your colloquy. Sometimes you will set tempers ablaze from the embers within your belly. Sometimes you scar fabricated memories with truth.  

Sometimes your heart burns to a degree that can and will collapse stars. Sometimes your temperament will destruct star systems.

Sometimes all you are capable of is cremating worlds. Embrace it, mother dragon. On every plane in every realm. You burn for eternity. You are the personification of hell.

As the flames take my memory
I see beauty in its tyranny
I think about suicide
fire melting my skin
cooking my internals
cremating all my bones to dust
Until everything is dirt

My fire is dilatorily dissipating.
I was once a holocaustal conflagration.
A cremating, mad inferno.
Containing an unseeable array of vibrant shades of amber;
that could be seen from distant, distant regions.
I had once ignited with such a passion.
A drive that was beautifully unstoppable.
You were my blazing incendiary.
You started this combustible mess.
I am now but a flickering ember,
barely being able to spark.
My once scorching and numerous flames
have pulverized to ashes.
...Ironic isn't it?
The arsonist who dared to create me
whom fueled me with such a flammable tinder
was the same person
who tore me down
within seconds
with but a drop of water
and a blink of an eye.

tHE bEAST lIES dORMANT.

You stumble upon a cave.
Cool breath purges from its mouth;
Waves producing shivers—
Shadowed by curiosity?
Cremating all doubts.

And for one last time,
Reason dictates how you behave.

“Come in, oh ripe blood.”
tHE bEAST’S vOICE tRICKLES oUT.

Amalgamated teeth—hung above,
Saliva drip-drops unto the ones below.
Under your feet,
A tongue of damp-dark snow.
Although... last light lies within,
Hence who’s to claim it isn’t so?
Eyes strain—a distant glow.

tHE bEAST lICKS iTS lIPS.

Slight stumble—
If only you could sense these ***** tricks!
Again steady…

aS tHE bEAST iS tOO.

Desperately you reach for the light,
Blinded by its cathartic might,
You grab tight.
Oh!—how the cave grows darker than night,
Depreciating sight.

tHE bEAST’S hUNGER iS sOOTHED.

Relentlessly you paw for a way out,
But the beast’s mouth has long since shut;
Infinite rut—you scream and shout.

A resonant gratitude streams through my veins,
Consecrated to my middle school heroines, deflecting
The whispers of shame.
But they taught me that I do not have the luxury of shame;
I have a voice, and I must amplify it––that’s what my mother said.

Elles m’ont protégée, blossoming my oneness.
I am here now because of them, I harness their divine feminine
Strength.

Standing on the bones of my aunties, their anguish travels up,
Their histories following suit.
Beneath my feet, to my knuckles; charging my inner being
My spine is rigid, fortified with the duty––
To liberate, to reform, and to love.
“But my love,” she tells me earnestly, “this love, has been assumed,
Taken for granted, blended into the background of the White man’s portrait.”

My dun skin lives in the ambiguity of praise and prejudice,
And my sisters are dead. Exploited, first––then dead.
As were my mother’s grandmothers, when the Britons drew the line.
The assembly line, however, was an American invention––
Where the American Dream came to fruition. Commodified neatly,
‘Cheaply’ produced, and easy to swallow: fine [Black*] American craftmanship!

Her tomb
Stone, will be mined by her brothers.
He is unearthing the buried history, but forced to push coal into the fire,
Cremating the legacies of his own kin.

“So what are you going to say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me?”
Her lasts words, found amongst the ashes.

until your lights come undone
And the sun deport its creators
And seek you instead;
Every person you came to love was already dead and they shoved their corpses and broken teeth down your throat like a blackhole branch and nostalgic chaos
cremating all the bodies they’ve occupied, but still it tasted too familiar to your common sense that  you let it.
Or is it okay as long as it's spoiler free, and less relevant to your story standards, and case scenario?

What can be depicted that I have yet to touch,
unravel a mystery my mind has yet to absorb.
For leaves of stress fall on my path,
cremating my imagination as hours pass.
As the hand on the clock so turns.

One touched by the hand of death,
taking by fragile hand to grave.
Another, nerves unravel like thread,
how many hours only God knows.
One left confidence and pride
kind has been the hand of time.
As the hand on the clock so turns.

In a trance broken by my glimpse,
reality sets in and we come to this.
How many times has one sat and pondered,
dreams, tales, all wonder, life?
While the hand on the clock so turns.

Keening Iraqi rpg koranic crumbles heaven’s.  Enkidu kills the god, decapitates forest’s guardian.  Against girl-groping monk Sharvan said truth ******, choot ******, on the Matara Express headed toward Colombo. Egyptian acres scent ***** where Hanuman dropped moly mountain into naga kovil’s backyard.  Caramel tethers artery, never speaks in word-simple.  Father’s thrush to go plucked flensed singer, lashes silken, cuts drafted ghost-voiced achtungtexte in elongated black ink.  Affirming unchecked fluent grit refresh eagle standard, lost legion trollops ******* like Catullus.  Cantering
predicate broidered domine dismissal, does not prevent smatter, and boozed brought fools alongside.  Murderers cremating vulgate rob black willow mosque.  Dappled spent commands a beautiful that is no place.  Squirming myrmidons march honey trail to the western sea.  Disregard lack, loss, and overrule morose placental hayride.  Mint golden sluggish essays.   Snaring nearness generously urinate, anticipate licks of *****.

What slender strength once attainted to
reach forth, but now its feathers of life
have collected like a funeral pyre cremating
their existence to embers floating in limbo.

Her virtue swaying with every expiration,
cartilage falters dismembered from her form.
Hollow and barren. One moment of existence
still hangs on she is not yet gone.

That faithful breath falls on this day, a lonely
woeful tear leaves the nest. This inanimate effigy
now a husk of memories rings once worn now
stained. *She died standing up... she died alone...

An apparition floats in the ether
Flirting with uncertainty
Fornicating with insanity
Dreams weaving spiderwebs
missed connections
The cerebral cortex is dead
Neurologic misconduct
The product of masterbatory philosophic ego
Circling the drain
Dark matter ***** its pistol
Currently the universal harmony is obsolete
Industrial jinx the Sphinx winks
Esoteric barbaric monkey race
Acrid acrobatics through semantics
Labrynth of foul play
The mind can't stray away
Meditate on the outer banks
Collective conscious cremating brain waves
the last microwave TV dinner
Enthroned on the last iceberg

“I am lied to,
I am deceived,
I am hurt ,
I am broken,
I am split,
I am dust”,
All things our heart has whispered,
Into our souls.
Which are whispering to our minds,
“I am lied to,
I am deceived,
I am hurt,
I am broken,
I am split,
I am dust”.
And the mind replies,
“I am lied to,
I am deceived,
I am hurt,
I am broken,
I am split,
I am dust”.
Our souls,
Our hearts,
Our minds.
They are all tired.
Tired of the lieing,
Deceiving,
Hurting,
Breaking
Splitting,
And cremating.
Our hearts, minds, and souls
Are sick of this abuse,
“We want a break” they scream,
“We are done with the abuse.”
Then the heart shuts down,
Then the mind.
And finally,
The soul convinces the body,
“Your in pain, those pills can make it better”
The body takes a pill,
“No” the soul says,
“All of them” it whispers.
The body takes them all,
It Falls asleep.
“It didn’t work” the soul screams,
“Pick up the blade, it will give you sweet release from this pain,”
The soul coaxes “it wont hurt.”
The blade cuts,
The blood drips,
The body is dying.
“Finally” the soul celebrates,
“No more suffering,
No more pain,
No more deceiving,
Its over”
The soul shuts down.

oh poopee p'ooh...
   please don't
distract me from
what could
never be your fancy
of worth
interests that
   i find more to
be my taste, esp.
  in terms of sunday
mornings
  and a smashed t.v.
and a radio
that hasn't been
turned on...
    it's hard to feel
jealous when there's
this thing called
  mob-rule...
   or at least that
one aspect that can
turn itself into
    a fickle prescence
    that desires protests...
funny...
  some people deserve
graves...
  others, statues...
i wonder which party
has an r.i.p. acronym
engraved above their name...
as so many are laid
to rest,
   the few are being
kept awake and constantly
agitated to give answers...
   ah...
   communism makes
even more sense
in a graveyard than
  when being applied to
resurrecting nations
    like those waiting nations
akin to syria...
     the collective hush...
  the forest of marbles
and of other less precious
stones...
       then again...
           animate the dead
by cremating them
and into the fire, rather
than the earth, and hey presto!
1 billion blue indians!

Breaking her into pieces
Wondering how it happened
Knowing in my head -
I ignored all the signs.

Killing my brain with substances
She supplied more
Killing my time
She was the glass I poured from

Breaking her into pieces
Cremating the bones of our relationship
Knowing in my heart-
She cared far more than I could manage.

I am now standing here
Solitary.
Breaking her

All over the floor.

Hellinsky


Proxy imposter implant

clown court jester puppet.


Death and destruction is

all in your name.


We the Sunflowers hold

you responsible.


Five times more bees

when facing east


We’re west cremating in

their graveyard of empyre


Hell in sky smoke cloud

ashen the blue oblivion


Shame on every flagpole

flying the national metaphor.

If you think to be poor
Makes you rich in heart
Have you ever tried dreaming streams of desserts
Laid out in trains
Have you thought about the poor man who murdered
The rich man with the bleeding lady
All of them look alive in their splendor and tombstones
Cremating acidly, acerbic jesting goes a long way out of killing
Journal says, "I'll never be poor again. Or my wife will **** me."
He  said his soul is innocent and immortal and it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

A woman speaks in a
Twisted tongue of lies
A keen eye for dire literature;
Her mind judges otherwise

Comprised of conspiracies,
Yet quick to criticize
The atrocity of her ways
Come not as a surprise

Her words churn fire
Cremating my ****** skin
To an opaque,deathly crisp
As the ashes are born akin

Versatility a prolific landmark
Artistic freedom at its peak
This war is child's play
Her casket awaits in the creek