I contemplated
if being a second choice
was better than none
but I couldn't stand the thought
of being an option
because that meant I was
dispensable
and I didn't want to be
just another star,
you know?

I wanted to shine
I wanted to be the entire galaxy
while I was just another
twinkling star
that would be gone
by tomorrow night

How can I be so dispensable?
Useful, perhaps,
but dispensable.

Like toothpaste
that you squeeze
and squeeze
and squeeze
until I’ve run dry
and there’s nothing left
that I can give to you,
so you don’t put me away
with your knick knacks and treasures
but place me in the trashcan
without a second thought,
a fond memory,
or kind goodbye.

Goodbye.

I’m not allergic to bee stings – I never have been, I probably never will be – but I am more afraid of bees than anything else. More afraid than heights, than fire, than opening up to others, than death by drowning. I have been stung more times than I will ever be able to count. My skin has since grown thicker, but I remember when it was soft, and I was small. I used up the entire allowance of pain I was given for life in less than four minutes.
Perhaps I should specify that it’s not bees that I am afraid of, but wasps.
When I was nine years old, much younger than I am now, I stepped on a yellow jacket nest. My bare foot went into the hole and came out covered in their little striped bodies. There was this buzzing noise that at the time I’d thought was normal, but I now know that it was the sound of the wasps that were in my ears. They had been trying to crawl down my ear canals. I wonder if they had mistaken my canals for their burrows, and had been trying to get back to their queen, but were disappointed to find my ear drums, instead.
My sister – the same age – covered in wasps alongside me, screamed and screamed, but I made no noise. By the time I even thought to cry, I had been stung so many times it would have been pointless to weep for my swollen, red toes. I remember being unable to feel the wasps’ venom running through my veins because I couldn’t even feel my veins. If I would have cried for anything, it would have been for fear that, being unable to feel them, I might have lost track of my tiny feet. They could have walked away without my body and I wouldn’t have known. They could have walked to school and back without me.
Of course, my feet could barely walk. After my initial disgust, I watched my sister run away from where we had been standing and I knew that I should run, too. I could still feel the wasps crawling, clamoring, on my skin, in my clothes, in my hair. I remember the feeling of these bees crawling around among the roots of my hair, making themselves well-acquainted with the tender skin of my scalp. I remember being unable to get them all out of my hair before I walked into the house.
I knew that I should run, and so, balanced precariously on my numbed feet, clambered after her.
I followed my screaming sister down to our farmhouse, past my stepmother who was also screaming, even louder than my sister. I don’t remember where my father was that day.
We ran down the dirt road that led from the barns to our house, removing our shirts as we went and stopping to strip down to our underwear on the front porch. I remember the honks from cars as they passed by. I remember not knowing why they were honking, but knowing that I was angry with them for honking, for ogling, rather than stopping to help. I remember not knowing how they would help, just knowing that I needed help, desperately.
The irony of our stings is that my sister, a year later, was cast in our school’s operetta, and ended up playing the part of a yellow jacket, a sort of elementary-school-gangster, part of a group of them, who wore – you guessed it – yellow jackets and stole other bugs’ lunch money. I would say that, if the wasps that attacked me had been human, they would definitely have been after the money I used to buy Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pies in the lunchroom.
If I had been stung even three years later, I would have been big enough to know that one doesn’t run around in untrimmed grass with no shoes on their feet for precisely this reason. If I had been stung three years earlier, I would have been too small, and dead. So I am grateful for even the smallest of coincidences, the tiny droplet of fate that had given me those stings on that day, at that age.


I would like to talk about pain transference. In your body, nerves often run between parts of yourself you never thought would be connected. If something hurts in your elbow, it wouldn’t shock you to find that your fingers hurt as well, but if your elbow hurt and so did your lower spine? You’d be a little confused.
This is pain transference.
It’s a form of generalized pain; you can locate the pain, it’s just not coming from any one place. You can feel the pain in more than one part of your body, though there’s no reason for anything other than your elbow to ache. This is also your body’s way of protecting you from pain. It’s not that this pain is more manageable, but that it is easier to understand. Your elbow might be more hurt than the ache lets on, but you can’t tell, because your lower back is throbbing.
Now imagine your body as a hive of wasps. Imagine each of these wasps as a nerve inside of said hive-body. Imagine the queen as this hive-body’s brain. What is your body’s goal? To protect the brain. What is a hive’s goal? To protect the queen. Each wasp is born with an instinctual dedication to the queen. They must protect this individual at all costs. Your body, on the other hand, does everything it possibly can to protect the part of you that makes you so unbearably you.
Yellow jackets are social creatures. Each wasp has its own purpose in the hive, and the three different ranks within this hierarchy are the queen, the drones, and the workers. The queen (who is the only member of the colony equipped by evolution to survive the winter; every other wasp is dispensable) lays eggs and fertilizes them using stored ***** from the spermatheca. Her only purpose is to reproduce. Occasionally the queen will leave an egg unfertilized, and this egg will develop into a male drone whose only purpose is also reproduction. The female workers are arguably the most important part of the hive. They build and defend the nest.
Only female yellow jackets are capable of stinging, and wasps will only sting if their colony is disturbed. This fact is new and interesting to me. I remember thinking that it would make so much sense if the only wasps in the colony who could sting were the females. Females have a motherly, nurturing nature about them, but they are protective and willing to make sacrifices as well. Lo and behold.
The females are the nerves. They transfer the pain from the queen to themselves (and then, if disturbed, to the third-party individual who has disturbed them).
Psychics view pain transference as the transferring of pain between bodies rather than the transferring of pain between separate parts of the same body, but it works in a very similar way. Different types of energy vibrate at different frequencies; loving energy vibrates at a higher frequency than dark energy, therefore they transfer between people at different rates. Pain is simply dark energy that holds a fatalistic power over us.
According to psychics, energy can be transferred through the mind, the body, and the spirit, but pain is mostly transferred through physical touch. To transfer pain to another human being, you must touch them in a way that is not beneficial to their own or your spiritual growth.


I would like to talk about smallness. I was nine when I was stung by these yellow jackets. I was nine and the first time I’d ever been stung was at a friend’s birthday party at maybe the age of seven, behind the knee, and it’d swelled up so large I couldn’t bend my knee for two days. I knew the dangers of disturbing wasp nests; I’d watched my friends all through elementary school getting stung on the wooden playground on the premises. I, myself, stuck to swing-sets and splinters.
I was always so careful. I never went near trees if I saw a nest in its branches. My teachers had told me that I should stay away from the part of our playground made up of tires, because the hornets liked to nest in the rubber. I was terrified of being stung again after that first time because all the mud in the world didn’t seem to make a difference. The wasp’s venom, even after drying up pile after pile of soft, wet dirt, made my limb stiff and sore. I was always so careful; it seems appropriate that the one time I’d been careless, I’d been stung enough times to make up for all the times I had avoided wasps as if my life had depended on it. Maybe it had.
I was small enough when I was nine. If I had been stung at six, or three, I would have been in a lot more trouble. I would have been in a lot more pain. At nine, my stings required calamine lotion and mud for the venom, and ice baths for the swelling. At six, they might have required a trip to the hospital. At three, they would have been much more alarming, considering I had never been stung by a bee by that age.
I was careless. It was summer and I was old enough to wear denim shorts and I had kicked off my flip flops so I could feel the grass under my feet and I was careless and I was punished for it. Now I watch my cousins and my niece play outside and I have to hold my tongue, remember that I am not responsible, that I cannot prevent their being stung, their stings, no matter how badly I want to.
I would like to talk about fate. I would like to talk about how, if I hadn’t been running barefoot, I wouldn’t have gotten stung so badly. I would like to talk about how if my father had been around to tell me not to run barefoot, at least my feet would have been safe. How, if I hadn’t been too stubborn to listen to my stepmom, too, I probably would have had shoes on. How, regardless of all of these things, I probably would have been stung no matter what.
In a world where people are stung by hornets every day – where people are stung by as many as I was, at once – I would like to say that I know now that this experience is not as unique as I had previously thought it to be. I know more people than I thought I did whose trauma involves insects smaller than their pinky finger but together cover their whole body, and venom. I know people who, when I tell them I was stung by hundreds of yellow jackets at the age of nine, shrug and say nonchalantly, “Hey, me too.”
I would like to talk about smallness, and fate. I would like to talk about not only physical smallness, but the smallness one feels when they are in pain.
Belittled might be the word I am looking for. My pain wasn’t belittled, per se, but my pain belittled me.
My pain made me feel small. My pain made me feel small when I was stripping my clothes off on my front porch, cars racing by on the state highway that ran past my house. When I was running my fingers through my hair under the faucet in my kitchen sink because my sister was older and always got first dibs on the shower. As these wasps that hadn’t suffocated under my hair stung my fingers, too, until they were as swollen as my toes. My pain made me feel small when it made me pity myself.


I would like to talk about standing up for yourself as an act of causing pain.
Honeybees, when they sting, are defending themselves and their queen, but they don’t know that when they sting, it will become lodged underneath the skin of whomever they sting and it will pull them apart and they will die.
I imagine the first time a wasp stings to be a sort of power trip. Female wasps can – and will – sting repeatedly to protect the colony. I also imagine they don’t know that their relative the honeybee dies after it stings, but it must be strange for them, nonetheless.
Have you ever seen a video of a woman protecting herself and those she loves? She’s vicious. She won’t stop until the perpetrator has retreated.
When a woman stands up for herself, though, it’s as if she’s tearing herself in half.
A woman standing up for herself is a dangerous thing, both dangerous for her and for those around her. It is an act of bravery and defiance and saving grace all in one.
A few weeks ago, I overheard someone equate being female with being terminally ill, as if we have no place to go but down. As if we are dying creatures, on our last leg of life, with no will to fight for what we want.
As if the pain of the world is being transferred into us all at once.
I would like to argue that it is the exact opposite. There is nothing more alive and breathing than femaleness.I am inseparable from my femaleness. I am inseparable from the that leaks from me when I think of all of the times I have been harmed But I am not inseparable from the pain that I have caused others. I cannot forget that.


I like to imagine sometimes what my stings would have been like if I had gotten them ten years later, as well. I am much bigger. I am much stronger. I am much more capable of handling pain than my nine-year-old counterpart.
I wish I could have been the one to have to handle that pain. I wish my nine-year-old self had known better than to let her foot fall into a yellow jacket nest. I think it’s unfair that, at such an early age, I had to deal with something so terrifying and painful and traumatic. My extremities were swollen for over a week. I couldn’t write, I could close the zipper on my backpack, I couldn’t turn the pages of a book. I couldn’t go to school, and I couldn’t read in bed, so it might be enough to say that the week I was kept out of school to elevate my legs and let the swelling go down was the most boring week of my entire life.
Sometimes I look at my ankles, swollen from blood flow, from standing too long or from sitting too long or from doing anything except elevating them, and I’m reminded of this time when my ankles were much thinner and I watched them on the end of the couch, my toes pointing toward the ceiling. I remember how terrified my mom was. I imagine that phone call must have been harrowing for her – Hi, Michelle, Em’s been hurt. No, she’s fine. Just a few bee stings is all. – and for her to see me for the first time, red and splotchy and itching myself like mad must have been even more so.
I think about my father’s reaction, how I hadn’t been around to see it, but how he must have been heartbroken at knowing he wasn’t there to protect me, to prevent the bees from attacking me. I believe, however, that there was no protecting me, that there was no preventing these wasps from defending their home against me, an infiltrator. I had stepped inside of their burrow and was instantly seen as a threat. Anything I see as a threat to myself, I instantly want to rid myself of.
This is the way of the world: we see something, we determine it to be good or bad, and we either bring it into our lives or defend ourselves from it depending upon which it turns out to be. I happened to be the ultimate evil in these wasps’ lives. They were simply protecting their queen, without whom their hive would no longer exist. I was dark energy, vibrating in a way that spoke to them as threatening. I was transferring pain to them when my foot stepped into the hole, and they were transferring it back to me when they stung me. I transferred energy into the ground as my feet thumped against it. Water transferred energy into me as it helped me rinse wasps out of my hair.
From pain to protection to pity, back to pain. From bee stings to womanhood to sadness and back again. One shouldn’t be afraid to introduce the things they’ve lost to the things they’ve loved, or the things they love to the things they’re afraid of. And I am afraid of wasps. Petrified, even. The other day, driving in my car, I rolled the window down and in, immediately, flew a yellow jacket. I watched as it she flew past me and then around the back of my head. I heard her and was immediately transported back in time. I wondered what she was doing in my car, so far from her queen. I wondered what was in my car that she possibly could have wanted. But I knew that she wasn’t there to hurt me, because I hadn’t invaded her home. I hadn’t made an attack on her queen. I knew there was no sense in panicking, so I didn’t. I didn’t panic.
I am afraid of things even though they won’t **** me, but I have watched myself face these fears. I have stumbled onto a Ferris wheel and then walked confidently off. I have left candles lit without standing to check on them after every episode of The Office I watch. I have loved people I never thought I would, and I have seen the other side.

Why am I a joke to you?
No really, because my admiration seems to be undermined
and it’s not because you don’t care,
but that you’ve seen it before.

I’ve told you these feelings many a time
like a book you’ve re-read.
But the words have lost meaning,
my words are dissmissive.
And the whole story is good to you,
but now following the process
just seems completely pointless.

To you, I’m
dispensable.

Contemplation for days and hours
As all the beautiful flowers devour their worst enemy
Trying to defend me, no decency cause I tell myself I’m horrible
Gravity slams me to the floorboard of a moving car
Let me go, let me breathe
My reality deceives the truth that you and I were once meant to be
I overlook, my eyes force me not to see
All the pain, all the lies
Just *******
I despise you and your ******* *** ways
And I’m still sitting here in this haze
Of my sweet mary jane, that takes away the pain
Because she actually gives a **** about what I have to say
And she don’t question me
She smooths the depression out of me
There’s not a doubt in me that I won’t see better days
You’re in the past
There’s no way we would have been able to last
But I be me, I do me
I don’t give a **** about what your eyes want me to see
They see what they want to see and I be what I want to be
I laugh at your failure to attempt to change me
I’m invincible, not dispensable
You can’t just use me, I’m insensible
Good luck finding someone as valuable as me
There’s no next time, there’s no meant to be

You don’t know how it feels.

When you are cut from your lifeline
like an apple being picked
when it isn’t fully grown.
When you are replaced
with hard plastic and metal
where bone should be.

You probably want to know why he hates you.

It is because he has to learn how to walk again.
Because you can’t run like I could.
Because you can’t kick a soccer ball like I could.
Because you can’t make him itch like I could.
Because you are a reminder of the infection.
The infection...
that took me away from him.

I was made with him.
You were made for him.

You took six weeks to be created
I took nine months.
I was his first step,
You were a puzzle piece
that didn’t quite fit
You had to be forced
by people in white masks and blue gloves
They couldn’t touch you and
neither can he.
So instead you lay on his bedroom floor.

And I will not feel bad for you because
I am lying in a medical waste bin.
Waiting for my turn to enter the fire.

This
is
my
hell.

I miss him,
will you tell him
that I miss him?
Let him know the feeling is mutual.

I understand if you tear this up
there is no warmth in you.
No blood will ever pump through you.
Trust me, I get it.

When the heart dies, it is buried where it belongs.
Being hugged by its fellow vital organs.
it’s just like taking a nap
they say.
But when I die,
I am surrounded
by other dispensable body parts.
We are the forgotten few.
People do not have funerals for finger tips.
It feels like I am being eaten alive.

You can’t tell me I should feel bad for you.
Or that I should feel sorry for you.
Because I was alive,
I was moving
and you
are plastic.

Just,
tell him goodbye for me.

Defining Lego Moment? What is that, I don’t own one!
Life growing up was unacceptable – it was chemical and dispensable
My life has never been a bed-and-breakfast - early childhood memories got me ill and susceptible
Tryin’ to find a good early childhood memory is like NOT passing “the test”, because I wasn’t in class. So I ask, what’s next?
Defining moments were replaced by worries and doubts, fears and shouts
My, oh my, why couldn’t I have been brought up in someone else’s house?  
I’m just me. So why can’t anyone see I’ve got dreams I want to turn into reality?
I know, maybe I’m adopted! Oh, I could only wish that I belonged to a different home
So who knows, maybe I’m supposed to grow old in a world where survival is at the core of my bones
Future me, I hope that you see, I’m not like them, nor do I ever want to be “like them”

-----------------Fast forward to today ---------------------

I thank GOD for the life I was given and the road that was driven
I’m here because of those dreams which started out as fears - I’m what I am because of those years
I know that I wouldn’t’ be here if it wasn’t for those days of dysfunction and tears
I’m at a junction in my life - I’ve realized that my unction in life is an exponential function that shines like a bright light
My tears have been replaced with people who are sincere and true
I no longer have to worry about the black and blue, now I can simply wave ado…
So I chose to become not what I saw, but what I knew was right in my heart. I leaned on God and learned from stressful nights that choosing the road less taken was all part of this plight
And here we are today….
Now, what does this say, about me?
It says that I’m a child of Destiny, not a child of Disney
It says that I’m a child of God not a child of the Devil
It says that I am…
Predestined presently, sensibly created even though I didn’t come from the best pedigree...

I was lost in the darkness,
Overwhelmed by sadness,
Life lost its meaning,
And became depressing;

I was a terrible fool,
To think the thoughts are cool,
That says only you,
Can make me whole and new,

But i found a way,
Grew stronger everyday,
The darkness is over,
I've found another lover.

Perfect complexion and arrangement of her ****** features ,
but you don't see her .
Easy to relapse when I see her .
I don't love her , but I please her I get deeper psychologically deeper .
I play with her head now she lays on my bed she still agrees while you disagree we made an agreement ,
see we keep it lowkey .
I'm not ashamed of her it's just better if you don't see .
She can express herself loudly as can be no one to judge her , cause her face is a mystery.
She knows she'll get hurt cause I've done this before simple infatuation but in hope for more.
It can be,
but before you should know I never show faces cause they all look like her .

One day as leep by a captivating woke essence in your handscaught in your arms woke getting up after nearly having died ...you gave me your breathing air and calm your back to life, releasing the fear more gregarious, after opening my senses almost incinerated i learned that the stars trembled me to reach it

I started a new life to sharing with you,
sometimes i feel that in your hands sap this life to revive my acuity,
what to unfold my body, she quadrupled making me shiver by quakes your tenderness.

But today on the eighth day of the universe,
divided my feet walking to you for every step of light sonica,
road on it being over your carnal finesse frosted still light beams for aboriginal embracing love with your gutted threat to the end dump body, being today only light story emerged from any pythagorean indigo.

Eight feet by my raving not walk on forgetful slip hugs and achieve that without it on my feet, making you a path of kisses on a piecemeal moan  covering your pleasures in quiet regia union, sealing and my memories to mummifying the most sensitive areas disown make me when you suffer from almost feel much pleasure.

Your feet chafe my eighth willing body as your hands it to me, this is your feet eight  feet, and your finger eleven flute my way to you open your columns wet and trembling, born in the tropics decorative colors flashing your eyes when mine yours take on your innocence as a mother's dismissal, genesis as a maternal layoffs in the grotto shaggy times makes me roof for to paint with my kisses and my mouth full of oils,  full streaking manias those desires that are further under your skin, deep lining up to associate to me ...!

My seven feet is the semi - obese and language lenticular spider mine, unleavened filling the food, its highest sing syllabic, make your paint  blue and moan molecules liquid call themselves, with its concavity make the bio - live surgery last transplanted hallucinate ... vibratory column of my responsibility on your body, cutting all fear, every element of your flesh lying addict to me hanging on my conscience all descontrol physionomy, losing my light steps sonica falling into the abyss of your distances fragrances, falling in ovation interapeutica licking your body my breath, like a sixth sense.

I meditate burning between your legs, dying as i was born of a woman wild servant, fawn as an almost died for a hunter, i prefer my conscience advance day and night to your legs to die of living where one day saw in the recesses; the greatest pleasures with ambitions to break all your secrets, all your defenses to break your falling on my tyranny, allegory huge walk along the invisible to other united take that helped me your surplus usages, enter you and your being, feeling peace penetrate you, not feeling loving preact, or not to have you in the distance but hugging everytime you Drodida to moisten your words to me,  stuttering of desire.

My six feet organizing penetrates you feast on enraged cowbells,wishes with malice and early pregnat, alcamphor extreme longevity and erectile espermiosicotic, with smoothness and irradiating polish your rattling,
spitting cushion on my bones,
like a sapphire on until your clothes,
and as a inseparable attachment unit dispensable.

My bringing night of Saint John in your prayers for imaginary pain coexist
in between taking you doing it my trees by spoil collude copulate,
taking you stormy ray to the phenomenon with the masses elephantine hitting you on your shoulders, your ******* armpits challenge your beasts i want my grind with canines and incisors to create a new universe of shed your joy to laugh about our loving.

The five feet; rub your skin like a shower delicate pituitary
******* kilometers of rivers into criminal triads morbid on your face ...
as well as the sand masturbates the waves,
on the sand and wave nail with my eyes my spells dominating you,
rolling you thousand times to my love trades.

You shall be called Drodida; worship the everlasting orbit of my sight,
when i go for your absence mount your toxin grotesque gasp;
the stalk watered voluminousity  your mouth singing your sweating my
groaning  telling my cries thinking with my worst vanity,
the turn on rotation vanitatory what you just do me with your stalks and not my serous waters in my effervescent mouth in your ******* astral, arrested in any language your thinking lubrication retained me and your touching, what i always touch in you.

The five feet as a tightening necromantic porosity your skin that change shape your temples and declaims pretending aridity lovers bad; lords nomades covered them your area leafy tagled branches covered to neat legends of penalties appealed fables o mytofagic eaters; brotherhoods of the worst disease of not having small Mt. in high with it my staff rooted in resisting demolition and other eroding sorrow, reverie spoil it captive in your infinite journey of ecstasy explosional femic.

The four feet light make a gentle sonica, dry your language lenticular stalk ciliary zone, enter your supra entails, the cave unexplored wider,enter with both arms with herbs pulsating symmetrical cottoned sleeping in your walls and grotto forms  desensitized, insense redeem the pain of window pastoral bishop uniting both peni-***** areas full of gems balsamic, percusionatives full of eyes.

The three feet,
running is my hand movements on your ******* imprisoned,
they are my two hands scratched by scratching the delivery of your birth.
touch my hands that know not touch, when he was born without willing,
but my biohands touch your skin attached to transfer and progressive evil of love for the shores of cry to the center or your body centers clung to my hands over your thoughts rampant, wanting to stay in the fact to see you perisphery merge at twilight of our our sunken eyes friction and wet kisses dormitation delightful of travel and destructive of wickedness;
fulgurative but doubt of living or dying your enjoyment perpetuate.

The second feet,
you are you loving me on my feet vertically like a weak tower,
ash as rain that spread my fire for you.
i take my hands and i took a walk in the seas of ******* bellowing.
you took the scrub the eternal holy and spinal vocabulary of your mouth muted outrage both enjoy your subumbilicales areas.

The first is my feet Drodidaged,
it full landed liquid bathing you, your eyes full of ***** petals and replete, as bastions fallen with their helmets  gnawed your moans, that resound in memory of trees expectant that divert all about us practice,
only your tilt knee …will exalt   the  time for my happiness excessive.

My feet first,
it is my son music turret  ram rope breaking your every arbour grotto, asleep by the dream Drodida you commanded you do to me,
to rock for you and cutting wheel kissing my return to continue all apocalyptic dreams and your most ****** on my ways about it forever astral.
Plane  it me  come the way to sleep with me,
come see how i am able to teach Drodida
ways of sleeping next to me !!


Jose luis  / 0ctober 2003 -  Copyright 15 – all rigths reserved

To the men who tell me I’m prettier when I smile,
the ones who feel uneasy if I frown for a while.

To the men who make me question myself,
the ones who make me put my worth on the shelf.

To the men who finish, then stare at the ceiling,
too scared to ask me how I am feeling.

To the men who make me burn out like a candle,
who tells me that my love is too much to handle.

To the men who take and never return,
this is my last hope that you’ll ever learn.

You seem to think my heart is invincible,
either that or that my body is somewhat dispensable.  

You turn off your feelings, afraid to seem weak,
run away when you see the affection I seek.

I played along, thinking “sure this is normal”,
but I’ve been enlightened and my complaint it is formal.

So listen up men, because I have a voice,
what used to be an orifice, is now making noise.

You made me a fool, left me with no clue,
but I’ve come to see the only fool here is you.

You’re missing out, and I finally see,
God told me “bless up”, then pulled you from me.

Actions over words, I know, what a shocker,
I’ve dug out my self-respect from the back of my locker.

So here it goes, a few words of the wise;
the “girl you were *******” now has a surprise.

Listen up “men”, because you have a choice,
until the right one is made, the correct term is “boys”.

I am untouchable, right?
You don't want to touch me
Be near me
I'm so ugly

An outcast, I gripe
Sparkles of dust
Flying aimlessly
Towards the void

I disgust, don't I?
An abomination in flesh
A ***** -inducing nauseating pile of thrash
I'm nothing to you
You are nothing to me

So you fear I'll give you the disease
Honey, there's no disease worse than the one that is rotting your brain
To you
I'm dispensable
An object
A slave

So you won't touch me
But you want me clean your dirt, your shame, your filth
For they would make your hands *****
My hands, what hands?
I'm subhuman ******‌, right!
They don't matter
Nothing matters

So you won't touch me?
That's fine
I DON'T WANT TO BE TOUCHED BY YOU
NOT IN A MILLION YEARS
YOU DISGUST ME

I remember this moment as if it were just years ago.
Felt this feeling before, guess my lifes been put on hold.
I sensed the fear in my heart.
Been too scared to rip apart.
The negativity attached to me. (Its all I know)
Its been exactly three 3 years since I've walked this path.
And now I realize there's no turning back...no turning back.
Just know that I realize
I know whats on the line.
I just gotta remember to remind myself

You just want to be dependable.
No you don't want to be dispensable.
You're much older now.
You're much wiser now.

There are certain things that I've come to understand.
The expectations I had for myself didn't go as planned.
I tried to mask all the pain.
Of my failure of a life.
Just to see that that ain't right.
But in moments like this, i ask myself.
Is this really the road you wanna go? Hell no.
But just know, that I realize now.
I know whats on the line.
I just gotta remember to remind myself.

You just want to be dependable.
No you don't want to be dispensable.
You're much older now.
You're much wiser now.
You don't want to be emotional.
No you don't want to be disposable.
You're so much older now.
You're so much wiser now.

the arrogance

oh humankind
terror
fear
suffering
exponential death
we have brought
into this plane

a world
that may be no larger
than my eyes attest

oh humankind
our purposeful waste
dispensable products
people
populations

oh humankind
our sophistry of individuality
greed
power
war
genocide
in the fallacious name of
permanence

oh humankind
we cling to our objects
our love and hate
our righteous insecurities
we claim these as authentic

but we are little more than ghosts
inflicting a blink
a glimmer
of intolerably painful light

while we
these pathetic apparitions
stubborn and feeble
dissipate
into colorless purity

everybody talks about their boys
like they're daisy chains
or paper dolls
nearly identical and
dispensable
but for me there's only
you.

what does (s)he see in me?

my heart feels like lead

all the color in my life is gone,
but all the cones in my eyes are intact.

I never should have woken up

am I that dispensable?

I can't remember what it felt like
before the darkness came.

That just invalidated all my efforts

I’ll only be a burden

They’re just being polite

Why should I even bother?

I wonder if my family sees
the hurt in my eyes
and elects to ignore it

when i say i don't need you
what i mean is
i could need you
if you chose to want me to

but how do i tell you
there are little dead girls
rotting like black pebbles
in my ovaries
and i'm still scavenging for the gold
trapped inside burn crusted skins
determined to pull every survivor from
the tomb before the world shifts beneath me again
and lava eats away at the bedrock

i can't let you be the next explosion
that crunches through
my chest and floods it's way
into the cavities of my armor
how do i say this and not come off harsh?
i have **** to do
i can walk with you but i can't walk for you
and i won't walk because of you
unless you walk because of me

if you let go
of my arm and instead
held my hand
if you would look at my eyes
instead of the door
because i'm sitting right here
in front of you, just waiting
for the moment
when you finally notice
i'm not manipulating or planning
i'm not waiting to crush you

i'm not doing anything to you at all
except hoping that you'll
look me in the face
and ask how my day was
and genuinely want to know
and actually listen to what i say
you will notice
you like me a lot better

i still stay up most nights
because sleep ran away
with the part of me that's missing
but i don't imagine that it's with you
because you will not be allowed
to take the valuable bits of me
if you just feel like sampling

and i don't run along fault lines anymore
searching for where the destruction begins
i don't think of you when i'm sad
because i won't allow any person the power
to shift my entire life into collapse

it's too easy to hand me a weapon
and think i won't use it because we all love ourselves
too much to do that, you're making the assumption
that all human beings feel like human beings,
and that's a dangerous thing

you see we all taste our feelings
a bit differently. sword swallowing
is something i do every single day
every muscle in my body is torn
every secret is ripped open and displayed

i feel nothing inside me is sacred
and now i am truly dispensable
but in that, i've found peace
i am nothing, i am guilty of this
but in that silence
there is only freedom
a blank page waiting to be punctured
with only the most carefully cultivated thoughts and feelings

and in the process of decay i have become everything
have been everything at least once
and even through my anger i understand
the people i truly hate
and even through my adoration i see the flaws
in the people i truly love

this is not to tell you i think you are a bad person
but you're a person who would hand me swords
just to see what i would do with them
because you live for yourself, alone
and you're a scary type of person for me
to get too close to, when i live to create love
to the best of my abilities
even when i'm alone

and while i understand it isn't personal and so on
i cannot sit through another year of not knowing
who you are and what you want from me
so i will make this choice for you

ive never been enough
even in my mind,
i fight to win the rival that
never ends.
the only things that bring me comfort
are Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings,
mhm... yes i miss you and that smile
of yours dear god, it is like heaven.
but, you see, ill never be enough
ive always known that.
neither the doctor nor the hobbit will
come to save me.

i hate being so dispensable
i feel so bad for my friends and my family,
they have to deal with me all the time
but i guess when im gone
everybody will grab a glass of wine.

cheers, shes finally dead.
(i say this all the time in my head!)

oh dear, dont be sad,
be glad,
shes dead and the
demons are gone from her
blasted head.

(can i make the same end-rhyme twice?)

Laughable
Affable
Reachable
Near

Damnable
Mandible
Crucible
Bone­

Icicle
Tricycle
Sensible
Fear

Inevitable
Dependable
Dispensabl­e
Stone

How many men make or brake the barriers?
How many more move forward as the carriers
of the message? The presage of the black dark future.
When society is wounded who'll be dressing the sutures?  

Those in suits blur truth across the canvas,
Then paint over it with blood from the youth and the savages.
Ravaging for innocent civilians, to apply the bandages.
While the man in the suit counts the loot as he micro manages.

Feed them Faceless,  Tasteless  food for thought.
Get them Pacing laceless- racing to be caught
red handed, then remanded in custody to rot
in a cell, dwelling on how poorly they fought.  

Not to quick to mention their desire for redemption.
The lesson is learned until it's consumed your whole attention
span, quick make a plan- confessing that you're a bad man
Don't change the fact that you were sweating as you ran man.

Who's this man? Who's lurking in the shadows?
The search narrows- he's found hanging from the gallows.  
This harrows the whole world for a whirlwind minute.
Until the media man has had enough chance to spin it.

"He was a reprehensible, dispensable shell of  human.
His soul had creeped out after years of consuming
peoples fears, then blaring it back into their ears.
He was mole for manics, spreading panic to the assuming"

C. B. was a son of a B!
Did anybody really like him?
Most of the people he encountered
Usually found more reasons to strike him.

In school the kids called him a bully.
Bully he was, and bully he did.
He derived inordinate pleasure
Tormenting any vulnerable kid.

His schoolyard behavior was no better
Than his disruptive behavior in class.
In fact, most teachers would call him
An incorrigible pain in the ***.

In high school he was just as aggressive.
His reputation was firmly upheld.
Holding a freshman's head in the toilet
Finally got the bully expelled.

How he earned money. Well, that was
A real mystery--through and through.
Not surprisingly his motto
Was "***** them before they ***** you."

What his girlfriend saw in him
Was truly anybody's guess.
Aware of his fractious personality,
The woman married him nevertheless.

People made bets on how long the couple
Could last in a stormy marriage from hell.
After the wife had had enough,
She packed up the kids and said farewell.

C. B. remained estranged
From both of his kids for the rest of his life.
Some woman out there was very lucky
For he never found another wife.

Money. That was all that mattered.
People? Employees? They were dispensable.
His dog was even afraid of him
And sensed that he was reprehensible.

He bought a number of businesses.
How they lasted was a surprise.
Frankly, most people suspected
Secret Mexican Mafia ties.

One day C. B.'s lifeless body
Was found in his driveway. The coroner said
A heart attack was the cause;
But some suspected foul play instead.

A gravestone reads: "Here lies C. B.
When life was hard, he would persist.
Survived by two loving children,
The doting father will be missed."

Whoever wrote that epitaph?
You wonder: what did he or she owe him?
The author of those unfounded words
Obviously didn't know him.

Oddly the deaths of louses and scoundrels
Are so hard to identify,
For based on gravestones and the obits,
It seems that only good people die.

- by Bob B (6-27-17)

There are those people who
Never seem to care about the things
That I find so important,
Like friendship, and family,
And loyalty, and trust.
Perhaps it doesn't bother them
Because they are accustomed
To seeing things in that way,
That way that people are simply
Dispensable, replaceable, interchangeable
Not so special or unique,
Just faces and voices to fill empty spaces.

She bore her second child
in a room of white powder,
cylinders of blood, and grey
masks. There was pain but
none to remember. A slab
of live meat burned in her
arms, leaving marks over
wrists and blooms of red
between her bruised legs.
It wouldn't stop crying.

The thing had a *****.
It was an off-white thought
that permeated her sweat
and that smug look of concern
on her husband's face.
She was a calf born into a
slaughterhouse. Stirring to eat,
to milk; to forget, spawn,
and then lay down whatever was
left beyond bone and tongue.

It was time for balloons and grapes.
Re-printed greetings cards
from Aunt Elaine: 'congratulations
on your human function,
and here is some money
for your new kitchen sink.'
The doctors were talking over
the Tupperware cradle. They must
be able to see the symptoms
of dispensable modes of thought.

They ask if she wants to hold him
again. When she told them that
she was tired and would rather
sleep the whole thing off,
a clean-shaven man-child gave
a dark look and wrote something
down on a clipboard. He made her
nervous. She could hear his
new shoes squeak, and could count
the blisters forming over

his earnest young feet.
She could not remember getting
home weeks later. Or how her
hair was combed into shape
every morning. Mother was round
most days, sitting in the garden,
making tea with too much sugar,
and giving lectures on the
importance of breast milk. The boy
would have to get used to unreal food.

The third time she went to hospital
she returned with no children at all.
Her mother still came to see her,
bringing stories of the brothers.
It was better this way, of course it was.
It is easier to listen to the falling
of bombs behind a newsbeat vibration.
A far-off land where worry can only reach
you in off-hand bulletins, bright white
pills, and a needle to send you to sleep.