I was shooting spitballs at the stars in my eyes,
difficult to do,
but anyway it's a Saturday and
who
was to know.

Not the beggar who sat with his hands wrought in iron.
I have my eye on him,
he sits there
quite prim
like an old English gent,
but I sense the pent up frustration
the doggedness of situation,
if anyone has an algorithm for that, tell him,
he's sat by the stairs on the Jubilee crown which was placed by the Monarch on her way down to the palace,
a place he'll never see.
'Coppers for me,
coppers for tea'

I just shoot spitballs,
I'm getting quite good, but it won't pay the rent,
if only it could.

Sometimes,
I think my conversations with You
pick up
when I put down the pen.
Other times,
I think You only communicate
through spitballs and passed notes.
I squiggle tick boxes
on college ruled lines to check
“yes” or “no,”
but You always end up eating the answer
when the Teacher is in ear shot because
sound carries faster than my sideway glances.
You say Your notes
are too loud for me to copy off of,
but I still can’t hear Your message
when we’re playing telephone at recess.
You avoided me on
the playground in grade school,
the hallways in junior high and
the cafeteria in high school,
so You can imagine my shock
when You asked to move into a one bedroom
with me in a concrete jungle gym
several miles away after graduation.
I have a four-year lease for this new place of mine
and You used to have a tendency to not stick around
when I needed You there the most,
but here You are now,
waiting patiently on the couch
holding two cups of coffee every morning
and two cups of wine every night.
You have left me with questions
that my tuition can’t cover and
that rent can’t afford,
so please understand that when I kick You out,
it’s not because You ate my groceries
or didn’t clean the bathroom;
it’s because the mess You made
for my parents to clean up
was too big to incorporate
in the chore list I left behind
when I used to live in blanket forts.
This is all hindsight,
but my vision gets checked annually
and optometrists say I’m going to be blind by thirty
if I keep wearing my contacts
during Marco Polo.
I keep telling them it’s impossible
to match where the sound
of Your voice is coming from,
so I keep my eyes shut
and my arms stretched out wide before me
to feel for Your presence.
They say that
keeping my eyes closed for too long isn’t safe
and that I should invest in glasses,
but my insurance doesn’t cover
another lens between Us
and I can’t afford to be separated
from You any longer.
Maybe someday,
You will gargle up all those
chewed up love notes
and questions
and I’ll find them below my tax returns.
Maybe someday,
You will pay me back
with more
than just a book fine.
Maybe someday,
I won’t need your change
to feel like
I’m worth something.
But, for now, I wait patiently,
writing with a pen
that ran out of ink
since the day You gave me hope
with a hushed
*“maybe.”

in the dark of the classroom you can't see your scars
and neither can anyone else
which is the important bit

the teacher droning on and pointing to the big screen that dominates your life

you hope that it gets better
idly scrawling notes and drawing images of what you imagine to be
a less painful existence

it's not that you're depressed
more disillusioned
because the teacher doesn't stop
and the assignments don't stop
mountains of work that you don't plan on completing
and students whispering either insults, or-
you don't know what
you don't know them
you don't want to know them
they're all empty eyes and spitballs and legs that trip you in the hallways and fists that have made their mark on your mouth and eyes
bruises that take weeks to disappear
and that teachers ignore
they ignore
your sleepless eyes
your swollen lips
your bloodied cheekbones

the boys that trip you in the halls
that call you a freak
a ***
that pin you against old metal lockers
and choke you
whisper in your ear and force you down on your knees
you don't know their names
they don't know your names
they know you only by the terms that you've come to know as endearments

(you hate them
you hate them but you can't make it stop)

Eternity wheezed,displaying its shortness of breath.Orange orbs whizzed in its' originalpath of vision due to a completelack of oxygen.Stirring stars shot rubber bands at each otheracross the universe. TWANG!Comets were slung like spitballs. Black holespainted each others nails whitewhile biting into a crunchy planet like a Dorito.®Salt of the earth was lost in dank darkness.An Mp3 player came crashing through the stratospherewhile playing my favorite song."Sitting in the morning sun,I'll be sitting when the evening comes,watching the ships roll in, and I watch themroll away again".

.

Raising his hand
moving from the desk
as spitballs fly
and notes are passed

Chasing his tale
in make believe endings
with a princess in pink
draped on his arm

snickers and snorts bellow
his train of thought
traveling off track temporarily,
temporarily  

Dancing at midnight
drifting the seasons
on a feather boa mattress
pearlescent skin and fingers

silence gathers around
heavy breaths float
eyes squint, trying to focus
not his, theirs

Drawbridge openings explored
present tense heartbeats
sundown desires drip
saturating the scabbard

Homework is sidelined
jealous boys, intrigued girls
as curiosity peaks and biology
is not just a subject anymore

at the front of the classroom
writing in black chalk
so the rest of the class
cannot see

but he can

*oh he can

This poem is a story about me. I'm writing it at 4:30 AM because I can't sleep and it's better than smoking cigarettes.

I'm 19. Male, half korean, half American mutt. For some reason, I have this photographic memory. I remember too things like they just happened yesterday. I get flashbacks to events I shouldn't remember. Things I shouldn't think about. Other memories never get past the tip of my tongue. I have PTSD with the dumbest triggers you could imagine. I live every day on the edge with pent-up feelings even though I tell people I do not feel. It's hard to make me laugh, and it's hard to make me cry, and I feel awfully lonely.

I remember elementary school. Age 5... I'll remember the first day I rode a school bus for the rest of my life. I think at least 8 kids asked me if I was Chinese on my walk to the back, and some disgustingly fat kid across the aisle was begging people for paper scraps to shoot spitballs at "the *****". The next 13 years weren't much easier than that day. As I grew up, I found it necessary to grow my wit. I disguised my sorry feelings behind clever jokes while people began to like me. I made some friends, but I felt so alone. I always felt like nobody liked me when it was probably only me that didn't like me.

Senior year of high school, I fell in love with a girl, and this is a really long story too except that I can sum it up that I just ruined her life and now she won't talk to me. But she was the sunrise to what had been a dark, dark life. She was my safety and my warmth. It wasn't about how cute she was or what she looked like. I fell in love with the person inside of her. We did some stupid things, disobeyed her parents. Her parents then damaged me for loving her... and I made mistakes I'll forever regret. I never meant to hurt her, but ... Everything I did to her - and what she's done to me, the guilt I put on myself before she ever left and the pain that she brought on me after she did... I cried to myself for 200 straight days and even though my friends have picked me up, it still makes me feel like the most pathetic being on this planet and I'm sure just like she knows now not to waste any her time on a waste of human life, that was nothing without her.

Today, I am a pirate ship -
My heart, the red and white sails of a head-hardy
*** spilling
Caribbean bound me
With men marooned to a land of
Salty wood and salty seas
Knowing nothing but the sun's devilish smile in
The morning tide
Or an Atlantic storm
Tossing them about like
The horizon's spitballs.

We will brave the whims of now,
The rapid tonight, the slow coming tomorrow
With a voice in the wind saying,
"And I swear to the gold you will find
Or the breast of that distant thing called land
That my fibers will catch the air,
My fabric will not tear.
Unfurl me under cloudless skies
And the charcoal memories of an
Ocean-stripped-to-the-Heaven's-above alike -
I will take you to places you could never even fathom."

When I was 10 I had my 1st crush
He had everything a 4th grader could ask for
He brushed his teeth and never threw spitballs at me
It was love, until he stuck gum in my hair

When I was 12 I thought I was in love
He was the hockey player with a glowing smile
I didn't care if he would talk to me I just wanted someone to find me cute
It was love until he decided to tell everyone how big of a loser I am

When I was 13 I thought I had found the one
Red hair, slight lisp, and an amazing smile
We'd stay up till morning wondering if the stars shown for us
It was beautiful until my friends told me he was a year younger so it's not allowed

So I brushed my teeth
Put the part in my hair
And shined that Apple
Ready as ever my teacher

So I got dressed
With new threads on
As I tied my shoes
Ready for teachers rules

So I look so good
Cause I know I'm cool
Yet I know I'm bad
Ready as an Eddie Haskel

So I ask the bus driver
"What holds the bus together?"
"The nut behind the wheel!"
Ready as an Eddie Haskel

So the teacher gets the apple
Spitballs and passed notes
Knowing I look so good
I'm just an innocent 6 year old boy!!

Sept, 1st day school 2017
Dennis Faulk

Spitballs against the brick walls
and flipping playing cards in the
backyards of some time back then,

between the factory and the clocking in
there was a world out there waiting
until the pithead led us down aways
through the tunnels where the coal
face looked grim.

We grew up to throw out our dreams of a future
but we threw out our hopes by mistake.

O Curls

my 3a-3b locks

im sorry for the **** i put you through

all the bleaching, heating, and treatments

trying to make you something you're not

for the times i tried to make you the standard

thinking my uniqueness wasn't attractive enough

i hurt you but you had been damaged

long before the straightener

when that boy in the desk behind you would pull your hair

you pretended you didn't notice

when those white folks touched it without your permission

pointing & prodding like you were an alien

when people lost pencils and coins and spitballs in your tangles for amusement

only for you to find at your feet in the shower

When you were told to be straightened

to look “safer” and “more professional”

when he screamed  “shut the **** up medusa *** *****”

naming you as a monster to silence the both of us

the first time i singed you i was met with

“you should do this more often! it looks so much better this way!”

and in an instant the straightener became my drug

a one time thing became the fix i needed for instant confidence

finally i looked like i belonged

like the girls at my school, on TV and in magazines

I let myself believe that to love me, I had to erase you

you are, in fact, what makes me

people notice you before they notice me

But that is because we work together, you and i

to make this “mufasa roar”

I’ll nurse you through the damage the world caused

The damage I caused,

Because my hair will not be quiet for anyone that asks

Im sorry that it took this long

But thank you for teaching me how to be

unapologetic, unique, authentic

Thank you for teaching me

How to be me

Bullying was brutal, like
having your heart ripped
out and twisted inside
innumerable dimensions,
your chests squeezed, dizzy
eyes lost in the dark, your
body shut out from the world,
nowhere to spread your arms
and feel the magic illuminate
inside the corridors of your heart.
I remember the days when
I was afraid to step onto the
big yellow bus, afraid of being
bullied by various tyrants,
sinking inside as I made
my way towards the back
of the bus, my beating heart
moving with the sound
of the breeze, rising in the
wings of the sky.  I could
hear the incessant name-calling,
negative comments, and bitter
diction becoming slippery
tar and gravel, unfinished,
expanding and igniting immense
flames, haunting expressions,
loud noises spinning my nation
off course towards horrible
hallways of bladed waves.
There was a familiar voice
in the back of my head
reminding me that I was
worthless, nothing but dead
fish floating in the pond,
a falling mountain disappearing
in the distance never to be
seen again.  And as I tried
to breathe out all the chained
consonants from my mouth,
I could feel spitballs and skittles
landing in my hair and on the
pad of my thighs, heavy giggles
hovering in the air, smothering
my soul as I stared outside
at the sunlight wondering
when would I ever get the chance
to inhale the sweet sensations
surrounding my lake, reach
up high in the sky and spin
my body around and around,
shutting out all unwanted
distractions, freeing my mind
as I soar with the majestic eagles
across the vibrant horizon.

It's one of those                                          
Dismal days                                                             ­       
I don't wish to leave
My space
Not even
To eat or                          
Drink anything
The worst part
Of those
Dismal days
Is nothing
Ever feels
Right or wrong
Or horrific
You turn
Sick of Repetitive
Pedals cycling
You
Fight suffocating hands
Who steal any
Sanity the mind
Has
Desperately
Salvaged
As you tell
The whole ****                      
World to
*******
in
Spitballs
Of
Fire.