3rd Grade, Awards Assembly
Children are filed into the cafeteria in almost orderly lines
Giggling about silly jokes that make no sense to adults
But for awards, they are silent, and expecting.
Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, finally
The little girl with her shiny black shoes waits for her award telling her that she qualifies as smart
And she receives perfect attendance

8th Grade, School Computer Room
Awkward preteens set in blue plastic chairs
Friends clumped together around a single screen
"Secretly" googling ***** like it's a crime, though everyone knows
But in the very back
The girl with her black bag full of books checking her grades online
Has her nose to the monitor and worry in her heart
Because just perfect attendance makes her a disappointment.

Junior Year, Home Bathroom
Soapy water soaks the floor and into a dollar store rug
The bath is half empty and tinted a rusty shade of red
And sitting on the floor with her knees to her chin, carving A+ into the scarred skin of her arm
Is the girl, almost a woman, with her eyes messily ringed in black, who doesn't dare cut too deep.
Killing herself would mean losing her perfect attendance.

I'm a sheltered nineteen-year-old
from Northeastern Nowhere,
Pennsylvania. I spent my preteens
worrying about girls and digging
holes in the backyard. I had my friends.
Two or three middle-low class kids
down the street. We rode bikes, played
video games, and occasionally watched **** together.
It seems a lot weirder now than it did in the moment.
We made memories daily and spoke our
underdeveloped minds. At thirteen, politics
were simply, "**** Capitol Hill" or "the prez's
a crook." Things change, though.
I still know little about politics, but I'm sure
there's at least one good policy in effect.
Everyone eventually goes their separate ways
and the phone lines between us get damp
or get cut. I haven't dug holes since a landslide
filled in my work. I traded in my bike
for four wheels and a piece of wood. My Nikes
are now Toms, and I don't worry about girls.
Just the one I've been with for almost four years.
Instead of ****, I look up synonyms, so I can
sound a bit smarter at 7:30 AM typing my thoughts.

I lose pens constantly.
Constantly.
At every second of every day, a pen I once owned is now in the hands of a stranger.
I wonder if they are appreciating it as they should.
If the pen gets to write love notes or encouraging words on sticky tabs or biology lectures or groceries or to-do lists or the signatures of celebrities or hearts on the hands of preteens.
Maybe my pen will be the one that signs some bill to end a war. Or begin one. It could write the next great speech. Or play. It could ignite a revolution. It could change the world.

I hope their hands aren't sweaty.

Innocent eyes, Innocent lives
the day the world lost it's light
In times that are so dark and dreary
Hope only breeds eternal misery

Little toddlers trickling in
preteens just going about
Teenagers just about to begin
All like chalk, were wiped out

Witnesses to horrific crimes
it'd have been better if they were blind
What was their fault, i ask
they hadn't even begun their lives

One death murdered two
a child's death killed his parents too
What was their pathetic excuse
to embarrass humanity,such abuse

Oh those young supple lives
How great was love's demise
So many worlds jolted with shock
Of how humanity came to a full stop.

Man, if there was ever a time
where those two hands mattered
more than just pointing
out the obvious or tracing vague
memories on paper in swoops,
zig-zags, draw-backs, or the capital
cursive "Q" that still eludes me, it's
now. 6:26 A.M., and I haven't slowed
down since 9:20 yesterday
when my girlfriend gallivanted
about her room, her ******* perked
before me.
*******, she looked so good.
We, my friends and I,—the ones
I wrapped in cellophane and tissue
paper two years ago to take
out, reminisce, and put back
whenever I forgot their faces—
got in my boat of a car / bathroom
tile white / and drove through
thick I-80 fog to search South
Side for Santa's front rotor biplane
dropping Christmas joy mustard
gas down molded-brick, soot-caked
chimneys to get people in the mood
for a day or two before the egg nog's
spiced *** negligee stopped feeding
their stocking stuffer lungs and the blisters
that decked the halls like boughs of death.
Then we sat—I, uncomfortably on my car
keys,—by the bar, drinking refills that filled
the IBM-print bill $60 worth of Sprite Pepsi
Huckleberry Lemonade. My one friend
leaned over our cornucopia of unfinished
wings and said that he and the bartender
had been exchanging loaded gun glances.

Neither would ease the trigger,
or even aim well.

She could've been eyeing the waitresses
working the floor like a dart game.
Sharp when your drink's low and feathered
by pathetic tips. We stopped by Lyco. Lynn—
softly steeled—still sung her circular saw blues.
Baby, don't cut me so deep. Just let my girders
meet the street. Let me feel small trees and admire
nice cars signing their makes in last week's thin snow.
We took away two cups of coffee, some Modernist talk,
and a salt & pepper flannel past Market, Maynard,
and slowly spoiling milk to the Mansfield exit.
Over the occasional window defrosting,
we talked premature families, North Carolina
classmates, prison sentences, and that MU
***** who hates my guts. They're out there,
and we're here in this box going seventy-five
and skipping exits like rope.
Double-dutch dual-enrollment college credit
transfers, losing Foundation money talks
****, but can't leave her grudges on the rock
salt steps we sulked up. Hallways with
carpets and our cars parked poolside,
but we chose air conditioning over breast-
strokes. My God, would some lonely preteens
**** for that. Metal detectors to detect
our insecurities and greasy faces full
of acne acne potential. Potential some
didn't use. Potential that went wasted.
Potential that could've gotten them out
of this miserable hole, but instead rented
them out a sad shack on the outskirts—
nowhere near suburbs—of town
where they could inhale
the Ox Yoke's smoke stack laying fog
down to the county line.
Galeton High School, regrettably,
here's to you.

Third floor psych ward window lookout,
second from the right on the east side.
Best seat available, padded, from 1934.
Backrest Swingline-stapled to the faux-
Maple leg support 2 x 4s. Beige bedspread,
white walls blend into the door threshold
that people are honeymoon'd
through kicking the aids, clawing at their eyes.

But Téa sat there watching the overcast
shadows sweep the sky heavily
like the watercolor paintings on the group
room plastic table where ******-off
preteens paint Dad beating them,
or Sis dying in a car crash.

Téa just sat there while the stagnant Valley
tumbled dry low outside, tuning out
a black patient behind her riling-up
another fight with a plastic-hinged
particleboard door.

Swinging.

Just stop. Dont waste your time growing your mind on my perspective. Its similar to the colective after getting contraceptives from the medias aggressive deceptive since childhoods progressive attentive. I didn't learn anything newer than you. We both got ******* by the driver of our nations fire. Shot of ***** included to help believe the deniers when they said those kids weren't killed because of their suppliers of judgment handed down thru People, Cosmo, or Enquire. We turned a closed eye to the horrific mess just to have the light of advertisement dance its color over our flesh. We dont want to think less of ourselves after all, ego cant handle anything being its own fault. So, lets blame blacks, gays, muslims, mexicans, trans, asians, preteens and their abortions, little people, disfigured fighters, mentally handicapped, single moms, single dads, the homeless pulling all nighters, the blind, the deaf, the suicidal, the bulimic, the anorexic, the institutionalized wild, the lost kids orphaned, illegally imported, Native Americans, Indians, anyone close to the Mediterranean, or from an Island in the South Pacific sea, anyone that looks, thinks, breaths different from me. Which should be no body, but you don't seem to believe so. You can't see that deep inside, our souls are made out of substance brighter than gold. You only see flesh with that closed eye. So open it and discover the lives behind. And if you think I spew only lies then go back to the beginning when I said stop reading and quit wasting everyone's time.

Princess Misled:
Poems for Preteens:

Kissed a bunch of frogs
They were still frogs in the end.
Kissed toads, until warts grew
Why is what you're looking for
Always in the last place you look
I asked myself.?

I needed my Prince
Oh how I needed my hero.
Ready to give up, I drank
Potions from the last cauldron.
About to call it a life.

My Fairy Godmother
Was a Witch.....
I Was under her spell
Still I searched once
Again to no avail.

One last kiss did I perform
To my surprise this last frog
Transformed; When the
Prince saw me, with warts
On my skin: Mission
Completed as this now my end.

The moral of the story is as clear
As can be, Mono or ****** is not
Worth the risk.
The toads that you kiss...
May not be so charming; Fairy Tale
Metaphors, may prove be alarming.

Real Princesses, go home
When they leave the ball,,
The Prince was not very happy, not
Happy at all: He ran away screaming...
"Ladies and Princesses should never kiss frogs "

I was walking though the mall one day

For no particular reason at all, just passing the time away

I was there with my boyfriend and we were doing our usual routine of walking and talking

We’ve both always enjoyed people watching

I guess that’s partly why we like going to the mall

We go there sometimes when we aren’t really even looking for anything at all

And that’s fine

It’s just something we do to waste some time

It’s better than just sitting around at our houses

So we thought we’d get out and look around at the t-shirts, the jeans, and the blouses–

Anyway,

That’s enough of that, I’ll get back to the specific events of that day.

Like I said we were just walking around

And one thing I could not help notice was all of the sounds

Every time we’d walk past a store

A different tune would emerge from its core

Attempting to briefly describe

Its personality but it struck me as more of a bribe:

“Come in here! We won’t bite!”

But they will chew up your money right out from under your sight.

Once again, I’m sorry, I’ve fallen off track

I have to get back to my story…

So on top of the sound of the music from the stores creating a sort of Doppler Effect

Another thing I noticed and could not forget

Is the bits and pieces of different conversations

All so entirely different like they were their own little nations

A small group of preteens giggled and gossiped as they did fly by

No sooner did the clique disappear I heard a baby cry

A mother and her children: one infant, two sons, and a daughter

Mom said “we’re leaving” but the children, they fought her

Awkward… As I quickened my pace to sooner pass them by

The next I encountered was a group of young guys

Not so young as the girls from before

No, they looked as if they were about twenty-four

With all their ears stretched and tattoos and their chains

I feel like they did it to be different but quite frankly they all look the same…

Next walking towards me is an elderly pair

A man and a woman with thinning white hair

They look very humble and seemingly fair

I wonder what they would think of those guys back there

It’s funny to wonder why each of them have come

And even to wonder where they’re all from

Did they come here as we did, just for something to do?

Is this place an escape, or did they just come for some shoes?

All of these types, with each such a different face,

For one reason or another we all ended up at this very same place.

this precious rickshaw
hiccups

it jolts at slightest expressions
of the roads' flat faces
hick!
and my stomach wobbles up
like an astronaut made of jelly
bounces against the diaphragm
disturbing the cuddly lungs and
the lattice pancreas wince
hick!
the sour liver curses and
noodle intestines startle and then
grumble
and the swish slosh slosh
of my kerosine blood
is light and jumpy
in the ancient pipelines of flesh

my hands unlearn
unlearn
they are chubby preteens
then hesitating littles
now my handwriting
is an infant walking
hick!
crawling
hick!
this wash-machine ride
with an inferno of April breaths
hick –– hick –– hick!
my little dog-heart
shakes
its fur all ruffled and spiky

Rope to ***** the weather, sweet sixteen dreams
The mirror tells we can have some fun in teams
I can't find my reflection anymore, searching in eloped reconnaissance streams
Lassoes in the sky, stealing cars under the starlight standing in strong dreams
Another day in paradise, looking better in paraplegic purging preteens
The electric fuzz on your face touches my standing goosebumps gleam at the ****** seams
Bumblepuppy acolyte turning at the prongs of the tattered road, calling up your Hessian friend and making politics right at the sanguineous pea-brain lean veal after the mob gets out on Russian ruby streets running with honesty
On the other side of the world, where the sun sets and polite moonrock never survive on The Berlin Wall tonight abseiling away sealed away, waiting for the ballot or the ballet
Waiting for the limelight to subside, guts tellin' me to keep my self in lowly mad hatters tied to napes, hundreds hanging by weather reports claps in laughter, descending tents by the brook beaming at us in starry dynamo of the thousands
Losing himself in a lucid dream of what was once the world's reality now sleeping, dead presidents in stygian darkness
Hanging on to the word of the weatherman, crime is rising in Russian motherless children hung for misdemeanor looking for a metaphor, the nation understands and wants to know us
Ukraine leave us from the 1990s, too late the third stone from the sun has taken three turns, we are at the trapdoor
Resurrecting the insurrection, pejorative for misnomers and draconian dead beats sibilant suss
Too bad I see the whole earth, on my body stains on laconic red flags, still fly indeed
Flying in the wind, like idiots in the weatherman's underground cuss dirt into the report sowing dead seeds
Unable to see the sun behind cold clouds in stormy weather, battered suitcases breeze by murmurs talking by-lines and stolen **** in ****** underwear ****** unable to breed
Then, the bombs falling and shifting with changeling wind charred sun under the unbeing reading in the Aurelius light
Thousands in the starry dynamo might outshine us all and the nation can't hold us back and keep us far from the fault in stars
The silver lining in the cloud, puerile virile as lady lying Glasnost to the prognostic benzedrine patient
I've never seen a can in hang in stormy weather
Charting out the Chinaman on the hydrogen shore, communism is on the brink of helium war with itself, viscerally hanging from Tomorrow's daughter
Whipping up the foamy sea like cold ice nostrums thawed in search of the antidote to warm red planets named after Roman Gods
Looks like the sea lord created a thalassocracy for the sea cursed by memos and pastiche, droll parody in the mewling hall of the rebuke of free-prose poetry hanging on the tinkering lampshade
Touch me now, never or now bullish books read the list of people who were once on this winding road just like us shining crummy ******* now in a handful of stardust
Being is tougher than living, and the berserk wind keeps changing
Under forked lightning, it gets worse when the spoon picks me up
In my wet dreams, I'm killing myself hurting to find if you can put your mind to this cornish dream of Cavendish and hashish
Stuck in the stitches, and the ******* don't drip blood and sweat it
Ukraine leave us from the 1990s, too late the third stone from the sun has taken three turns already
Murders on the mystery train, never reach the orient station looking for a whimsical refill
Halting sloth the indolent, I remember redolently like moth attracting to the blazing coruscating gleam, that's when a screaming teen becomes an upstart or a fiend
With an iridescent grin, caviling on the shore asking more from jackknifed business kitsch photos of the crosses
Throwing them in the trash, just like that
Ire of the nation broken with the lugubrious sleep of dinners after the summer's madness, hurt by the locked hearts in an armed madhouse looking at everything like geniuses
Asking what does it mean? Motifs and everything, lintels on the fluorescent signs on numinous streets caressing our wires, hanging by the piano wire
Waning adolescence now has a name in Hades' beard made of fiery pubescence that doesn't wanna listen
Tantamount to the king's orders, ligature marks on the hands that only know cuffs
The que glibly glistens in the lively dungeon
Hosted by bacchanal and mistresses, Elizabeth Bathory in the company of friendly books full of picturesque pedestrians on the streets of angry murders with ****** sleeved shirts
Blackened lackeys looking for a toss of change or pederasty with Countess Dracula
Moloch, you have made my life changeable despite skiffs
Moloch, I hang in the balance of the skirmishes of scorching fire burning at the midriffs
Easter bloc, ropes hanging for whoever doesn't wanna burn in the witch fire, sold for 200 pounds in a dilapidated home, till the berserk wind blows the candle out, old under Tudors that say a lot in a few words about style in art as slavery is merrily rampant
Killing the people, in the name of the republic of 1968 reminiscent of Phoenician Lands, rueful murmurs arouse the twisted looks turning out the traitors
From the rapidly changing wind, that brushes our hair and kills the pain of hanging to our families in bunkers
From the road of hope, I find some affliction in the forgiveness
Of my lord in whom I find breadth, heareth, endeth the breath that lendeth thy will, in the lengths of my souls searching for horizons in Old Earth
I died with my elegy in 1968, the wind still hoists flags in my name in death three years in the latter

Years back I wrote you and found that you had vanished. We were supposed to be family  closer than actual siblings but shared no blood. I thought I see you grow. 25 years has passed and I found you again but hesitate I must. We were supposed to watch each other's back, we had plans to watch our families evolve. One day you vanished without even a call. Soon so did I, not by choice but local distress and the birth of my 1st born. Now I have 2 children and both are grown.  

I saw your family with you yesterday in pictures,  I cruised through your photos while my eyes watered and my heart further blackened. Where did you go sister? We were preteens, we were high school graduates then off to college. Why won't you see me, hear me? This hurts more than I can take.  Where are u???