Zero.
One.
Two.
Three.
Fast asleep on my porch
in the middle of the day, dreaming my worries away.
Like how my doll broke and I’m still mourning the loss.
In my sandbox that doesn't have sand,
replaced with my most beloved stuffed animals,
I lay there not knowing what’s happening outside my world.
My mom shakes me awake with worry covering her face.
She screams at my father, how could he forget me here?
Four.
More fights.
Five.  
Dad’s never home.
Never has time for me.
Doesn't talk to mom much.
Red flags, brighter than a firetruck, I didn't see at this young age.
Six.
Dad’s moved out.
I have a new sister.
But at least I get a new puppy,
and whatever food and toys I want.
Plus more presents.
Seven.
Another sister.
This one has a different mom.
The fake mom is mean.
She thinks she's my mom but she's not.
“YOU’RE NOT MY MOM!”
I scream and cry until my dad comes back from the store,
wondering what happened while he was away.
He takes my side of course.
I’ve always been daddy's girl and always will be.
Eight.  
Things are changing a lot.
I don’t like it.
Nine.  
Dad got a house with her,
2 new dogs with her.
Of course my puppy gets neglected.
Favorites are picked and now I'm last.
This fake mom’s gone at work all day
while I look after my real sister and my fake one.
I grab my phone that I use only for emergencies,
and call my mom, my real mom.
“Dad’s sleeping…Fake mom’s at work…My sister’s are crying.”
I stubble over my words, not able to get them out due to panic.
“I'm coming. I promise.”
The fake mom hears it and grabs my phone.
“You can't call your mom while she’s at work. And where did you get this?”
‘Hurry mom.’ ‘My real mom.’
I run away, grab my bag,
make sure my real sister is good, and grab her hand.
It's only real if she has the same mom I thought.
My mom gets here thank god.
Ten.
Fights with fake mom,
fights with mom,
fights with me.
I hate dad's house.
I was first, now I’m last.
I feel out of place.
Eleven.
Twelve.
July 6th, 2019.
Less than a month after my birthday,
he left.
Left to live with this woman states away.
A woman that probably doesn't care about him.  
Thirteen.
I don't talk to my dad,
I guess it works out that way.  
Fourteen.
I wanna help, really I do.
(TW)
P!lls, dr!nk!ng, p@rty!ng.
No job, no phone, no contact.
I just sit and listen to my mom trash talk him.
I know he’s awful, but he’s still my dad.
I try to tune her out, keywords hit my eardrums.  
“Lazy.” “Selfish.” Worthless.”
‘But he's still my dad.’
Now.
I wonder what happened to daddy's little girl.
The one that would make him dress up,
or color while sitting on the balcony.
I wonder how it would have been if he stayed.
I have lots of questions to ask but I can’t.
Fear covers my body every time I  try to text or call.
No happy birthday this year because I was too scared to answer.
Christmas coming up and scared to ask for a simple thing:
To be daddy's little girl again.

He crows about his crowd size
For “winning” an election
While most of us experience
Democracy’s defection

donald knows no boundaries
His pants always on fire
Now numbers past 12 thousand
Show he’s a constant liar

Praising evil dictators
He thinks that we won’t notice
While kow-towing to putin
Our crazy shady potus

Earth’s life-supporting systems
Are collapsing day by day
Showing scorched Earth strategies
Daily through his EPA

Rolling regulations back
For Mother Earth’s protections
Defiling our National Parks
Drilling toxic injections

The Amazon is burning
Is any country helping?
The Earth is getting hotter
Too many glaciers melting

trump’s polluting our sandbox
Distracting us from the greed
In the frenzy of rollbacks…
his relentless Twitter feed

Maligning our Free Press
It’s clear for whom he’s rootin’
Eliminating sanctions
Against vladimir putin

Wash the backyard off your face,
And the two am swing sets,
Cheers to the forever long gone sandbox toys,
The treehouse we burned down in 03,
Blue fruit snacks,
When being first in line was a win,
Scraped shins & knees,
Bandsids they could fix anything,
There's no such things as love,
Just lightning bugs & undreamed of,
Worlds....

Love.
The poems of old draw us in with some promise of shelter
from the other. The better half gone stale. And
too often to the common ear
the prose can promise more than safety but
rather a sure fire way to steal that girl with
the long brown hair who listens to good music and has
strange piercings.
The way she shuts him down makes
my stomach sink and my **** rise.
She looks like a good ****.

Love.
A justification for past conquests. A way to
rely on time and my own short comings to
draw a close when a word could set me free from
the bed I made and that bed in which I laid
down countless times beside her. And if our
hearts really beat as one then she too must feel
the lack of one future together.
And sure enough,
her text messages to
skinny indie boys who listen to good music and have
strange piercings justify the repeated recitation of my hatred for her in the bathroom mirror.

Love.
The loss of a prized possession.
If you’ve ever experienced the fear that
your favorite green army man may be buried inside the vacuum cleaner or
if you’ve been weighed by the guilt from breaking your sister’s Barbie doll,
where the head meets the neck,
you know what it means to fall face first into the sandbox of trust that any lover could prepare.
And you don’t know who’s dug for buried treasure in there.
Or who brought their cat.
When the "**** machine" breaks down or your tissues run out,
the annoyance is similar to the feeling of a break up.
Why now?
You could deal before.
Am I really that unbearable?

Love.
Overturned tables and chairs.
The screams echo through the temple as a
man who has had enough of status quo places himself at
the top of the food chain.
Even if only for a little while.
Sure you ****** another but I was thinking of
leaving anyway.
I am the evil one.
I am the wolf.
You are the gypsy.
I am the shower head.
You are the innocent.
I am the gas leaking in from under the floorboards.
You are asleep.
I am the fire. And
when someone else has put your boot heel over the back of their head and
through the curb dared you to be the Übermensch, when
you hold your head under water and swear I put the bucket there, and
when you swear I never loved you enough:
I will believe you.
Or when you poke me over and
over and
over and
over and
over and over:
I’ll strip naked and reveal the casualty of this pincushion’s voodoo magic.
Only then will you know what I know about love.
And if only you listened to wisdom passed down
through books and words
you would have figured it out way earlier.

I’m thinking of the faded checkered pattern that has been
smoothed away by time on the dark cloth seats of a Nissan Pathfinder
                                          driving down Ryan Road on a hot day in June.
My mother, in the front seat, singing along to a Spice Girls cassette.  

I’m thinking: red, plastic, crab-shaped sandbox and
                                      McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.  
I’m thinking: light princess pink, seafoam green, and robin’s egg blue.  
I’m thinking of a framed cheetah cross stitch, hanging on the wall of what
                                      used to be our bedroom at my grandparent’s house.
I’m thinking: Barbie doll houses and Hot Wheels and a cul-de-sac at
                                                                ­                     the end of the street.  

The sweet smell of cigar smoke.  The ice cold splash of the garden hose.  The pop of a bubble.  The sting of soap in the eye.  Dreams by The Cranberries.  As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys.  A HelloKitty boombox slowly spitting out vapor when the deck builders hit a power line while digging.  The deer in the backyard looking for corn.  The faded wood of a playset that was never really played on.

My father: sitting alone on a splintered bench by the firepit at the edge of the woods, empty beer cans at his feet, chain smoking cigarettes, and humming along to a song that is stuck—forever stuck—on the tip of my tongue.
I do not know if this happened.  I cannot ask him.  
(I’m not sure if I would want to ask him.)  
But I can make an educated inference that that line of
fiction is really nonfiction.  
A memory that feels like a phantom limb.  
                            Sounds like the sharp crinkle of static.  
                                                     Co­vered in a gossamer, dreamlike haze.  

There is a distinct otherness to this memory, to who
                                     I think I was before the trauma.  
We are two different people.  A yin and a yang.  A day and a night.  
The hermit crab is soft beneath its hard shell.
The asbestos is not apparent within the insulation.  
You cannot see the lead in the paint.
The mold inside the fruit.

I am the same as
My empty sandbox

I have nothing new to say
You're still same when as when you saved me
I'll come to you contritely
I have so much on my mind
and it feels like I'm trying
to access it all at once and it's tiring.
I'm weary but restless
I notice every bit of discomfort that can usually just ignore
It's like I think I'm supposed to be cold but I'm sticky and sweaty
I never was able to talk to you without some sort of agenda, always wanting another song or testimony.


Medicate me
Close my tired eyes
Help me see you
Just let me realize.



The same irritating set of melodies is stuck in my head
Melodies that I used to like
Turns out too much disease makes you hate the treatment

Now I'm starting to feel tired
But I still cannot repose
Or maybe I can
I think I'll try now
Goodbye



No
I can't seem to find repose
And I wish that I knew why
Is it the song stuck in my head
The describes you and I?

is it the way my pillow hurts my ears
the pressing silence of what is soon to be a year

It's been nine months
Since that first night
When you stole my sleep
With your beautiful eyes
They tear through this world
That dampens my mind
All the words I've held inside
I've been deprived
by your demulcent smile
That hurts my empty heart

Autumn, dont fall,
You've been holding on since spring.
Why when you change colors do the birds cease to sing.?
Why when you change colors does the breeze tend to sting.?
& knowingly, its gray days and dark nights that you bring..

Why does the fall exist?
Reminding us of bliss?

How the leaves turn to rainbows, and women cover their hips,
Leaving us with that mystery,
That, i wanna learn your history,
That, i wanna dissect your pain and microscope your misery,

just to see you clearly,

Autumn was her name.
but we fell apart, fell like a sandcastle in the rain..
but that sandbox taught me about life in a sense..
every fallen leaf is a loss of innocence.

So i spend my days raking,
& my labor comes with pride,

But by the time I'm done, the leaves turn green, the fall is in my mind.

-AFJ

Looking at this world. If
You have burned even
One frozen pizza in your
Lifetime, every tear you ever
Spilled on your own
Behalf is
Sandbox.

The best place to hide a
Needle is still within a
Haystack. So we forget, and
Let our strings be pulled.
Love? A scratch scratched.
Now count grains.
Crusts uneaten.

We reach out for dolls
with withered hands.
Stooped over, we play
in the sandbox.
Ancient children,
so old, with innocent eyes,
we never grew up
in an aged world.
Time steals our hopes,
to have everything be alright.
The ticking of the clock goes on.
Yet we cling to youth,
not quite knowing how to mature
to where we need to be.

We are the adult children of dysfunction,
and we feel equal weights of young and old
balancing on our scales of self.
The hardships we endured
heap wrinkles upon our souls.
But we go on.

Ancient children,
we've been around forever,
relics in the nusery,
babes wrapped inside
the armor of adults,
feeling all so wise,
street smart to a cruel world,
but only pretending,
so naive,
Ancient children,
we become in reality
what we long to still believe.

City street stillness in the 1960's
Two hippies pushing a baby carriage down the street
A castle building in my vision  
Playground sandbox and swings
Sun shining through the leaves
A soft summer breeze
Reliving a childhood memory
Ingrained in my brain
Attacking all my senses    
When time stood still  
On that perfect summer day

1.
I never questioned what love was,
I never thought I could do better.
Your love was always enough and
We lived happily ever after.

2.
This time we were slightly older
Neither of us wanted to be alone.
You kept me warm at night and
I never had to question if I was the only one.

3.
It was a dream we never had to wake up from
Where we kissed each other between bedroom sheets
And held hands by the sea.
We had the world at our fingertips and
Our laughter played on repeat.

4.
Every morning we woke up together.
We worked and came back home,
A cooked meal and sitcom television beckoning.
We said goodnight and held each other in the dark.
Nobody ever worried about waking up alone.

5.
There was never 152 miles
Or three hours worth of space.
There were no empty weeks,
We never tasted absence, and
Goodbye wasn't in our vocabulary.
In this world you didn't leave.
You never decided to give up.

6.
Here we live on our own planet.
Nobody knows we exist
So we fill the silence with our secrets and constant whispers.
The sunsets are ours every time.

7.
It's the afterlife.
I've been waiting and when you arrive
You collapse into my arms the way an angel falls;
Beautifully and all at once.

8.
I haven't seen you in thirty years.
We bump shoulders today on the side of a busy New York street
And the moment our eyes meet
We fall back into a love
Deeper than the ocean and
Brighter than the sun.

9.
You were born just 4 months before me
In the house next door
With a white front porch.
We fall in love before we even know what that word means
And you never move away on your 16th birthday.
Instead we reach 92,
Sitting in rocking chairs on
Your white front porch.
The place you first whispered I love you.

10.
I'm your morning coffee.
I'm your bed sheets too.
I'm the sun that warms each winter day and
I'm the space heater you turn to when it snows.
In this universe I never turn cold.
In this universe I know how to keep you warm.

11.
It's Groundhog Day and neither of us can seem to escape.
The day begins when we lock eyes for the first time
And ends with me sound asleep on your chest.
I wake up the next morning completely unaware of who you are
But I still manage to fall for your brown eyes every time.

12.
Goodbye does not exist here.
Neither does stay.
The words were never invented
Because your love never ran out and
Neither of us had to know what it felt like
When two worlds collide and
Completely shatter the other on impact.

13.
I'm a broken toy on the side of the street.
When you're walking with your mother
You pick me up and take me home
And glue my broken pieces back together.
We spend the rest of that summer side by side,
In a sandbox praying the laughter never ends.

14.
We're two raindrops living on the
Opposite sides of the same cloud.
When the sky turns grey and
Each of us tumble to the ground,
You find you way to where I am,
Melting us together right before
We crash into the pavement.

15.
You didn't sleep in a bed that wasn't ours.
I never threw that vase at your bedroom wall.
Our voices never got too loud.
I didn't crash my car on the way home.
Instead you played my favorite song
And we slow danced until time stopped and
The stars fell out of the sky.

16.
We are a picture frozen in time,
Framed on my left nightstand.
Our love doesn't change here,
Nor does it fade.
We keep laughing until
The people we became have long passed
That captured moment in time.

a bowl of brown rice
in a sandbox

Miss Wilde
Miss Wilde
he says with a smile
Miss Wilde
Miss Wilde
  he shakes his silly head

I cook a grand meal
but not without leaving behind a mess
  Classic Miss Wilde
he says
  Classic Indeed!

I'm ***** and clumsy
efficient but messy
I mix up my words
pronounce things funny
I sit on the floor
in funny positions
I'm kind but sarcastic
innocent but *****
knocking things over
tripping over flat surfaces
stealing the blankets
sleeping in strange positions
these things he calls quirky
these things he says are part of me
these things make me scared
one day he'll say
Oh Miss Wilde
        Miss Wilde
        I've known you awhile
        But you're just a child
        Miss Wilde
        You had me beguiled
         But your personality is really quite mild
         Miss Wilde
         Your antics have got me all riled
         You're wild Miss Wilde
         and I'm absolutely reviled
         so go on your way
         get out get out
         to the sandbox and play
         because you're just a child
         My dear young Miss Wilde

i'd love nothing more than to unhinge my jaws so i can
capsule your heart mid-beat between braces born of
steel and ownership. i don't write love songs, i can only
shriek about how confused i am that you are for keeping

they always scream at me for playing with the kids in
the sandbox next to mine. "you break it, you buy it!"
i'd take a poem as a pestle and an aquarian jar as mortar
variety is the spice of life and i want your veins in my soup

An Angel and a Demon, above the world, filled with chaos and destruction. Debating over saving humanity or letting it fall into devastation.....

This world is worth saving,
You see the good ones down there,
Praying and helping?  
Good beats evil, every time.
Letting things fall apart would be a crime.

My angelic friend, you're too high in the sky,
Grace us; come down from that ivory perch.
It won't take much to see through the lies,
Not much at all, to see what they're worth.

Dear demonic soul, don't you know?
Their worth is not in question.
Their value is more than our weight in gold,
Have some more appreciation!

Right--between war, the crucifixion and ****,
These humans are just such lovely things.
They aren't filled with a single ounce of hate,
Oh, come now! See the atrocities they bring!

The things you say may be true,
But there's so much good down there.
Remember Noah and the Renaissance?
The missionaries and volunteers, they still care!

Oh, goodness! Yes, how could I forget?
******* Priests with their souls to sell?
Rich lead the depraved farther into debt?
Your precious world is going straight to Hell!

No, you monster! How dare you talk like that!
These are human beings, not toy things.
They'll prove you wrong, peace is coming.
Go tell your puppet master to cut his strings!

Don't PREACH to me of puppetry, fairy!
Whatever happened to your God's free will?
Compared to Earth, Hell isn't that scary!
**** rat race! ***, money, egos, and thrills!

I'll preach what I have to, to save these humans souls,
Spineless creature.. You're wrong on so many levels!
I can't wait to dance with glee, while you unravel,
Dragging your worthless shell back home to the Devil!

I guess the horrors before you aren't enough,
You must want your sandbox to turn to doom.
These aren't falsehoods--this isn't a bluff,
Say what you will; Hell's running out of room!

.... And there Angel and Demon bickered, for what seemed an eternity. Purity prospered in parts, where death and deprivation brought others into declension. At odds and ends, they both returned home, leaving Earth to fend for its own.

( Sonnet )*

You who have lived but once only—
Take time from dream to wake again,
See, with true eye, a ladder rungless
As it toys its way in sandbox heaven.

You who have tread with many worn
Suit, plied for journey into sorry night,
Dressed in drab and tear of souls torn
Between grave earth of morning light.

You who have scribed all letters black,
Never knowing blood burns to a page
Writ by chosen knack, ease of tar path,
All made bets to poor sage of tragedy,

Never showering in sparks of chance,
You who— have lived but once only.

There she was again
The girl in the sandbox
Her brown hair cut short
Wearing pink shorts
And no shirt
I'm not entirely sure she's a girl

"Do you want to play with me
We can go and get my toys
And build sandcastles, play hide and seek"
She frowned at me and I wondered
Does she know how to talk
She muttered and walked away
#
"My mum sent me
She said that we should walk together"
It's early morning, -25*C
"Ok" said the girl from the sandbox
We were 8 years old
I can count the words she has spoken with one hand

It's nearly dinnertime
Where is the girl
You know the one from the sandbox
Crazy thing, she told me
Not to vacuum clean snow off the floor
And she gave me a puppy pendant
#
Now I don't live here anymore
And I don't have her number
They call us "Foreign Finns"
But sure thing if I go
To her parents house
I'll find her

Knock knock says the door
Her mum opens up and hugs me
Takes her phone and says
"Guess who's here"
And without hesitation
She says "Lily. I'm coming"

The girl from the sandbox

Things were just on the other side of the fence.
the perspective of the other side of the bus
he walked out the door and she was left with her thoughts
the sun lit up realization as it fell upon my face
focus on my reflection and let everything beyond blur
her body is slowly giving up on her
cold sandbox love
little Hannah drawing on the walls with green and red crayon
purple marker masterpieces of a two and a half year old
the economy falls,,,,into the hand of a homeless man screaming "Away Spirit" but we keep on walking
the ***** you chased with coca-cola at your best friends birthday party made you see how controlled you were with a blank mind and a laughing mouth, how you seemed to float along down the skinny hallway but somehow slam the door. the opposite of the lightweights laying on the orange **** carpet.
telephone pole shadows.
those dull blue eyes
biting lips till they bleed to relieve the pent up anxiety
not understanding how people can be satisfied and contented with the monotonous routines.

I hear the breeze of days gone by
with the whisper of long days, long nights
   and with a sigh,
I strain for the echos, the signs
of loves lost, of games played
of all the grass and dirt and grimes.
   Remember the times?
Merry-go-rounds and nursery rhymes?
That one first kiss that opened your eyes?
To the world of our minds, our maze
couldn't make out the beginning or the end
    of those days
To no surprise,
They're comprised....of swing sets and slides,
    jump ropes and bikes
and just when it was the end of the day,
the wind blows the smell of freedom your way.
Barbecues, fires, and the onset of night
to remind us of the times when everything was right.
   What a sight!
As the grass and trees rustle in the wind
   remember these days,
Of coloring books and crayons, markers and paint
paper planes, plastic trains, and origami flowers so quaint
running around so long that the blue in our jeans had gone...
    faint.

Back then, our friends lived close and the games we played
   in the sandbox and blacktops left us drained
So we sat on the hill and let the wind give us chills
under the trees, in the shade, from the heat we were saved
   So much time was killed!
And yet, we were thrilled...
when our birthdays came,
and our family came,
and our presents came,
And we never felt lame, playing the same games
Making silly names, growing pains
Kissing Jane and dancing in the rain....

And as the wind blows through the silt
and the echos pass us by,
Cry!
For the whispers of the wind have taken flight
Reach out and hold on with all your might
as it is on these memories that your spirit can again fly

"I'd strike the Heavens if they struck me!"* - Ahab

Dear god, just a few questions
(I know how busy you are):

Where were you when the stray bullet
found the skull of the little girl
in the sandbox at the playground
(another drug deal gone wrong)

-Were you smelling your flowers?-

or when the machetes flashed and
loped off the hands of the tribal others

-Were you admiring one of your sunsets?-

I know you have never ever visited
the Balkans where men were lined up
and forced to watch their mothers,
wives and daughters being gang *****

-Maybe you had a cold then.-

and I never caught a glimpse of you
in Viet Nam where the ****** fell
like your gentle rain on the innocents
and my partner was cut in half
by a burst from a 40 caliber machine gun

-Were you cutting a ribbon at a new cathedral?-

or later when I went mad and ended up
committed, in jail, alone, broken

-Temporary deafness?-

or when my brother was set up and busted
by a corrupt attorney general
and when my mother died a horrible
long slobbering death by Alzheimer's

-More busy days?-

so I guess I only really have one question:

exactly what good are you?

   ~mce

I have a story for you,

Come quick and listen

Take a seat this will only take a minute

This story is about a boy,

Young, maybe 5 or 6

Bigger then the world

Still slaying monsters with sticks

Fighting demons inside his Spiderman kicks

Running from sharks, no idea what this is

The playground his world, he was the king

He would fight anyone that dared to touch his queen

He opens his mouth spit out the words of his dreams,

Slow down a bit as you begin to see

Every picture that he is replaying with ease

He is pouring his heart out, speaks of explicit memories

Reliving a time when the ends met the means

Going back to that day when life was a breeze

There were No bills to pay, no boss to please

Just a sandbox and his skinned up knees

Just a teatherball and two missing teeth

no cares in the world when he was in that seat

There was no reason to wonder 'why are we'

the only questions to answer were answered simply


But as you listen to the story I tell,

listen to the words that fell from his mouth

take note of each one, line by line,

for this my friend could be the time

the stories he speaks automatically rhyme

and pictures are built as the story climbs

Higher and higher, the tears begin to fall,

and suddenly were at the top of a very tall wall

looking down on the people, they seem so small

but this is his kingdom, his place to brawl

these are his people, the words his end-all

for when he opens his mouth...

...stay quiet my dear...

do not speak back, don't even wipe the tears

let him continue, speaking without fear

see the weight lift off his heavy heart

this is what we call a piece of art

pure - real - free - childhood memories

a hand to hold is all he needs

remain silent, thankful, grateful and true

he will take care of his people, he will pay his dues

he will slay the dragons that try and fight their way through

he will remain at bay until the time is right,

beware of the rebel that hides in the night

Suppose we were a dream;

suppose the subtle incarnations of pseudo-reality
were just that, horses grazing on an incarnate field of
blue colored clouds like crayon boxes left empty
in a sandbox

when it was raining.

And, suppose::

that this is just what we were looking for, as if
wedding bands were eternal
and heaven is real; there is no need to stop and count
snowflakes in Idyllwild because

it never snows in New Orleans anyway.

Right.

Just for a moment, imagine that
we are together forever
and forever has already come and gone
and we are ashes in the ethereal moonbeams

of just-a-dream-I-had-last-night.

Deep and provocative,

think of her hollows and holocausts
and the conflagration of her soul
as if, as if she were ever just
outer space

and perhaps a slice

of buttered toast on Sunday afternoons.

Hey *******, I  like what you did
Just not what you do,
Hey *******, dropping tears
On letter " its me not you"
clever letters, clever watermark,
Still smitten whats written ,
signed with a fake teardrop on top,
Oh I clutch and claw,and still you part.

Hey boy all play, playing your life away,
I like what you do, not what you did,
He plays like you, you should see,
he makes then rakes his sandbox family
And not too far from that ****** tree,
Oh *******,
Your words and smile,
Make me hope for a breeze that took your apple far,
But it took you away from me.

Hey player, playing in your own play,
thought you would perform everyday,
driving and paying to see it,
you will never know the feeling,
When the curtain went to the ceiling,
Family, friends....your play I rave,
I CURSE THE DAY I STARED INTO YOUR DARK DESERTED STAGE.

Hey *******, hey actor of "everafter,"
Busy writing a new play?
I like your acting--playing is laughing,
but he has a future and fortune,
My **** man I knew that nothing was after,
but I need to see you one more time,
you make future and fortune not matter.


Will the show return one day?
I understand,
The thrill and never still changing name playbill
Assures a girl, it never will.

"Ahh, the charm, laughing, acting--
The searching strobes from the overhead tracking,
Minute ripples in the curtain upon the stage?
The violins warming up that will never play,
the curtain ascends,
the lonely echos of your nervous clapping,
Now the future they warned would happen,
Real tears well up,  
Ushered out by my saline sadness."

Sandbox giggles and seesaw chuckles
echo around the park.
Little ones pitter patter on tarmac and grass,
oblivious to their age.
All they know is the sun is shining
and they're going to feel like this forever.

Rubber throwing and hushed whispers
echo around the classroom.
Schoolkids adding and subtracting,
oblivious to their age.
All they know is that they hate math
and they're going to be an astronaut when they grow.

Cheesy pop songs and girly giggles
echo around a bedroom.
She's curling her friend's hair and smiling,
oblivious to her age.
All she knows is that Jake is a cutie
and she's going to marry him when she's 21.

Birthday wishes and lots of love!
echo around the dinner table.
He's having his first beer as an 18-year-old and loving it,
oblivious to his age.
All he knows is that he's going out tonight
and staying up till dawn.

Baby rattles and first words
echo around the house.
The baby is mumbling its first word,
oblivious to the meaning behind it.
All it knows is that its mummy is warm
and it's daddy smells nice.

Memories of sandboxes and summer nights
echo around their heads.
They're laying in a bed in a sanitary place,
oblivious to the current situation.
All they know is that their time is up,
but they had such fun whilst it lasted.

Compose me a song
I’ll never hear;
And I’ll write you a letter
You’ll never read,
Words built up in me
Before we met
Legos now scattered
In a sandbox
Where no one plays;
See the silence thick
From the echoes
Yet to be heard
Lying under the shallow grains
Waiting to be unearthed,
You pull me
From the shadows
I hide behind,
Glimmer in my eyes
Catching your reflection,
The only light I’ve ever known
Halo on your head bright
But turn the off the stars and find
It’s only the moon’s light cast
Making you appear angelic
A savior to my soul lit
By hopes and dreams
I cannot reach without you,
I retreat into the dark
Seeking another light
I’ll never find again…
© okpoet

I am playing
Nay dug in
Scratching
Young mind you
My sandbox

Eating sand is
Behind me

Bored sandbox time
Digging
Reaching

For prolly
Eleven months
Just excavating

Using all the Tonka tools
No China
No spoons

I find! A
Discarded
******

Mom!
What's this!