2011+Miscellaneous+Poems

=**Miscellaneous Poetry... YEAR 2!**=


 * For those of you who write poetry outside of Slam Club (Trick question! I mean all of you!)**, **this is the place to post your assorted poems. I thought it would be appropriate to start a new page for this year's poems so as not to get all mixed in with last year. Anyway... write! Fill the page! Make me have to make a new one!**

Here's some advice Go with your gut.

Trust me, It's trustworthy.

Do you remember that instant, that thought, that decision you were unsure to make?

Well, the mind, It talked you out of it. It thinks. And thinks. And thunks you out of what you originally intended. It comes up with so many counter positions to your decision that your decision doesn't feel feasible anymore.

The heart is the same. It makes you feel what you want to feel, not what you should feel. It masks the truth with its overbearing emotions, and decides important resolutions on a whimsical glance. It burns and it itches and it pushes and pulls you around until you can't take it anymore and give in.

Your heart can waver. Your mind can change.

But your gut, It is your instinct. It is your subconscious, your dreams. It's the little guy that SCREAMS at your made up reality telling you, THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT! NOT WHAT YOU NEED! It's that particular friend, the one who is always right And you hate them for it, hate them for knowing what you need, before you could even come to terms with it, within your mind, and in your heart.

-Sarah"heyguyswutupslammersI'mhackingyourbloghahahhahahahahahahIloveyouguys" Kennedy

Hey listen. Every single one of you was born with a gift: You are capable of taking in smells and lights and sounds and producing a complex series of chemical reactions that we all like to call thoughts; and back in Da Vinci's day a lot of folk would take these things called thoughts and use them to create greatness. But 500 years was all the time it took for your mental state to deteriorate and now a person who thinks is about as common as inhabited planets and we take what is told to us and we accept it as doctrine truth. I pose the same question to the close-minded evangelist as I do to the hard-headed anti-authoritarian atheist: why are you not thinking? <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Why did it not occur to either of you that the other <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">has some merit to what they are speaking about? <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Why do you not look past the threshold of your <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">own purported omniscience and see that the world <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">outside holds out no answers upon silver platters, <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and that anyone who claims differently is a liar? <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I challenge you to swap shoes, hold hands and walk a mile. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">We live in a country where we can dig holes and climb <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">mountains and walk away with the same perspective. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">This is a world in which the dazed stupor has become <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">the fashion market's newest sensation <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and even the world's most brilliant scientists <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">are jumping onto bandwagons with reckless abandon. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I'm not telling you not to have a religion, <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I'm imploring you to invent your own. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Build a relationship with your God that you feel is real <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and rewrite the bible according to what you know to be true. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I want you to write the gospel of YOU <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and I want you to scream it to the clouds from the top of Everest <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and gurgle it to the anglerfish in the Marianas Trench. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I want you to agonize for years, consider every possibility <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and read every holy book and memorize the tenets of every <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">point of view since the dawn of man, and then I want <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">you to forget it all. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Use your brain, ladies and gentlemen. Open your mind and <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">realize the lies that tantalize and tempt us on every street corner. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">And I can tell you that anyone who claims to have the answers does not. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Anytime someone tells you that they know what's above us and below us, <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">what awaits us after death, what someone else is thinking or <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">what the universe has in store for them, smile politely and walk away. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">They do not know. You do not know. And I know this, <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">because I don't know either.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Ellyn "IThinkISenseANewTrendComingOn" Touchette

<span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">When We Were Younger

<span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">When we were younger, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">It was so innocent <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">to sit beside you <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">at our brothers' games. <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I have a magnet on the fridge, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">you with your overalls, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">me with my dress, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">smiling in the yard; <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and memories of swim lessons <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and car rides home from preschool. <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">But now, I see you everyday, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and barely //see// you. <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Never thought it would be this way, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">noticing you every day, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and never speaking. <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Good times have hid <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">in both our memories, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">as times have changed. <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">One set of glazed eyes pass over the other <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">when I see you at the games. <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">And the magnet is peeling and tearing, <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and beginning to fade <span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">like the memories.

<span style="color: #011b7a; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">-Cassaundra "WowHowTimeFlies" Martel

//Breathing Neck//

There is something,

breathing down your neck,

the warmest, breath,

a moist, hot breath,

that chills you to the bone.

You want to shake it off,

like you shake out

a rug that’s been

sitting out on the floor,

collecting dust,

and dirt,

grimy mud,

mouse crap,

mouse bones.

It’s gruesome, I know,

and so is the creature,

that breathes on you

not forgetting.

What, you thought it would?

I’m sorry, but once

power’s gone to the mind,

no little bit of memory loss,

amnesia, alzheimer’s,

is going to let you forget

what it is that is

breathing down your neck.

It’s a disease,

you freeze, like the

trees stop swaying,

they just start staying

in place, with the leaves,

only falling once

provoked.

And once provoked,

those leaves pour,

they pour from the tree

and crash to the floor,

they don’t crunch

like leaves wish they

could do.

No,

they crash with a thud,

all at once,

to the mud,

all at once,

you forget nothing

even when you try,

because each little

drop of saliva

slipping from your mouth,

and the warm,

steaming,

boiling breath that

comes with it,

is only felt

on the back of your neck.

And it burns you

to the bone.

Lincoln "Agh! Get Off Me, Creepy Neck Monster!" Gray

Cobweb. There is a cobweb on the ceiling, in the corner of the room, there is a spider in the cobweb, and there is another spider sitting in the other corner crying, sighing. It is a sad, sad, sad, sad, spider. He cries every day, he sighs every night. And then he dies. The farmer takes a newspaper, and whacks the spider until the spider is a mess of yellow and black pulpy goo, and then it rains all day. Now the spider is not sad but he’s not happy either because he’s dead. Dead dead dead dead. The spider had a son, and now his son sits in the other corner. But the farmer sees this other spider and takes another newspaper and whacks the spider. but this spider doesn’t die. He lives. At first. And then the farmer takes out a gun, because the newspaper didn’t work. Then he shoots seven holes in the wall, but the spider doesn’t die. Then the spider has a heart attack and dies anyway. The end.
 * __//The Spider//__**

-Lincoln “Muahaha” Gray

//Dear Ugly Mindy,//

Are you missing Susie? Huh?

I have her! She’s sitting in my toybox, and you can’t have her! Muahahaha! Today I had her and Elmo play together, then I ran my Hotwheels cars into them and then I took my dinosaur and stomped all over them. Susie was not happy. Then I threw her down the stairs and my dog came and slobbered all over her and chewed on her, and you know what? I let him! Muahahaha! Do you miss Susie? Are you crying yet? I’ll give her back to you if you leave me some of those cookies your mom always packs you for lunch. Leave the cookies in the classroom, and then you can have Susie back.

Dear Icky Jimmy,

I know that this is you, you little creep. What? Did you seriously think I wouldn’t have remembered that you were stealing my cookies the other day. Do you not remember the crumbs on your shirt, the chocolate in the corners of you lips, the little chunks of cookie between your teeth? Give me Susie back tomorrow or I’m telling Mrs. Hanson and my mom, and your mom, and then I’m going to tell Principal Klifter.

Sincerely, Pretty Mindy.

-P.S. You’re not getting any of my cookies you stinky little toot!

-Lincoln "Dotted Wallpaper" Gray

//Family//

Is there anything more trying (or universally tying) than family? The tribulations and celebrations we experience with those to whom we are genetically connected, and those to whom we bear absolutely no relation, form a convoluted creation which can only be truly defined as family. Although we might be sucked through the twisting wormhole that is life, there is always an anchor to prevent us from getting too far off track, a weight to ground us, a beacon to guide us home. Family is the reason people can live in a one room apartment in a run down borough, with hardly enough food to go around and clothes that don't fit right. Family is the reason we forgive that which is unforgivable. Families are different. Families are the same. And at the end of the day, when all that is good is gone, there is family. -Adam "Vulture Rider" Bourgault

//Trying Times//

It's the thump rattle beat, so free from your feet, That you feel like your bones are gone. You feel like an atomic bomb has been dropped on your mind. That what once was permanence is now evidence of a war crime, An unspeakable endeavor, twenty eight or so people plotting together, Sayin' words like “how much” “is enough” “to erase it all?” Now, I know it's not the fault of those twenty eight people, or even the fault of the bomb. But it hurt, oh it hurt. Can you imagine a thousand stinging bees in your throat, chest, and stomach, Buzzing, biting, stinging, stabbing, looking for a way out? It was kinda like that. It was kinda like blisters, so thick that they stick like brick, and never break, Forming on my heart, lungs, liver, lips, Sealing my mouth, preventing me from speaking the words I needed to say. It was kinda like free fall, but endless, With the darkness reeling up to greet me, With things that go bump in the night, On the dark side of the moon, the dark side of my mind, the dark side of the Yin Yan sign. But those twenty eight or so aforementioned people, the one's who did the long division?

They got the calculations wrong.

What should have been enough, what would have been enough, was not. And into the bleak emptiness Apocalypse had wrought, Came a thought. And a thought. And a thought. And a thought. The rabid junkyard dog was not enough, the gas chamber was not enough, The dark side of the Yin Yang side was not enough. An amber flower burst forth from the turmoil, followed by a bengal tiger the size of a skyscraper, Followed by streamer after streamer, and airplanes trailing messages, And a bicycle built for two, built for the whole world, for my whole word, to ride. I hurt, yeah, I hurt. But the Apocalypse was over, and Eternity was here, Beckoning with a hand of marble, sheathed in a robe of everything. I took the hand offered, Because that which is good can't be broken like wood, Can't be snapped like a stick over the knee. That which is good doesn't come from a cell, Doesn't come from a molecule, Doesn't come from an atom. Good comes from something smaller, Something higher, Something that is as eternally lost as it is forever found. Good comes from something you can't label, And to say that God or Zeus or Buddha is the push behind Good, Is a falsehood. They've done just as much harm as you or I would. So where does it come from? I don't have the answers, when I wish I did. Why I forgive that which is hard to forgive. All I know is that no bomb can exterminate all life. There will always be the roaches to start things up again. -Adam "Horse Without Bones, Otherwise Known As Boneless Horse" Bourgault

//Zoos//

I went to the zoo today. It was small, part of a public park in New Jersey. Tickets were four bucks a pop, and pop was five bucks. I went to the zoo with my family, including my young cousin. He ran from exhibit to exhibit, oohing and aahing, Pointing his stubby child fingers at the animals. Some of the exhibits were empty, filled with grass and rocks, and not much else. Other exhibits held animals, like donkeys, mountain lions, and lemurs. The donkeys chewed grass, oblivious to the fact that life existed outside of the confines of their cage. The mountain lions paced circles around their enclosure, walking the same relentless, well worn path. The lemurs slept. But what really got me was the toucan.

I went from exhibit to exhibit. I watched each animal for a matter of moments, The only moments their lives amounted to any more. Then I would move on. But what really got me was the toucan. He sat by himself, the sole toucan in the entire zoo. The bright colors of his beak seemed gaudy, Like the fake smile you wear to tell the world you're alright, When nothing could be further from the truth. The beak contrasted sharply with his plumage, which was entirely black, Except for his throat and lower face, which was a banana yellow-green. I looked at him, sitting, perched on a gnarled branch in his mesh enclosure. He shuffled around a bit. Lifted his wings halfheartedly. Adjusted his feathers. He opened a tired, black eye, and turned it on me, as if to say: “Are you about finished? I know why you're here. Why they're all here. Why they come every day, With their cameras slung around their necks, And their sunglasses balanced imperiously on the bridges of their noses. They're looking for a thrill, Looking for entertainment, Looking for something different than the monotony of their lives.” The toucan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “They think their lives are monotonous? I know monotony. I stand here, everyday, eating what they give me. Sometimes I hop around a little bit. But as dull as I may seem, I am always looking for a hole in the mesh, A chink in the armor. I am always looking for a way out. What are you looking for?” The toucan moved again, turned his head and fixed his other tired eye on me. “I know why they clipped my wings, and imprisoned me with mesh for good measure. They did it so that little kids could look at me for three seconds, and promptly forget I exist. They did it so that I could be some amateur photographer's focal point. They did it so that they could find a hole in the mesh, a chink in the armor, a way out. I know why they clipped my wings, And I know why you're here.” The toucan closed his tired, black eye, and lowered his bright, banana beak onto his chest. I went to the zoo today, And what really got me was the toucan. -Adam "Wooden Internet" Bourgault


 * Letters to no one**

Dear, no one, I write these letters to you. Letters like the buds that sprout out of the soil that is my brain. Alternate personalities that bring worlds of meaning to the right reader. The stains on the paper? The food I accidentally ran it through as I rushed to get out the door. The scribbles litter the paper from what I decided to cut out. A letter is no where near perfect. And it doesn’t have to be. It just has to make it to the blue United States Postal Service drop box. A letter. Interpreted as a personal file or a saintly epistle, Can change the way one thinks, reacts, and knows a person. And the written word is where those feelings live. Those feelings live on a bleached lined paper just waiting to be read. Those feelings live forever because the writer brought them into the world.

A man pens his love to a family, written forever on stationary. Messages scrawled on the bathroom stall, Or drawings created on the lunchroom napkin. They’re letters to no one. Thrown into the trash. Only being glanced at by the person that matters most. The writer. And they know that these letters are an art form. They’re art for the artist’s sake. They turn you free, let you loose to create for yourself. No one, these letters I write, they’re for me. They’re for me. And even though they might end up in the blue United States Postal Service drop box, The feeling of the word is felt by the one that matters most.

Hopes. Dreams. Hates. Loves. All find their way scrawled onto the letter. All scribbled out in some way. The words just didn’t say exactly what I wanted them to. And nobody, I want to make it perfectly clear. I want to make it clear that you’re gonna read these letters someday. I’m gonna show you. I’m gonna pull them out of the blue United States Postal Service drop box. And show them to you because this is what I desire. I want you to see who I was and the person who came out of it. I want to see the emotion resonating from inside. I want to see the maturity that these letters fostered. Sincerely, no one.

Jason "No One" Meuse


 * Black And White**

Blindness. The blindness growing inside that that you know takes control of your being. And you can’t see. You can’t see what I try to do, And although they may be misconceptions of how to act socially, This is how I live. I live knowing that you will be blind. Blind to what I try to do. Blind to what I need accepted. I’m sitting at the bar, alone, Drinking my night away. No, I’m no drunk ‘cause that’s a metaphor, and that metaphor tells me that I’m alone in this world. I alone being the only star in this vast emptiness And I no liar. I can see the radiation of the ignorance Coming from that vast space. No, you can’t see me. You can’t see me trying so hard to burn out my energy so you can see some false brilliance. No, something’s sucking my effort from my being. Something’s keeping me from speaking up, ‘Cause you’re not deaf. Far from it. You’re a listener. No problem with that.

I’m wrong. You’re not the blind one. I am. Lift the wool from over my eyes so I can see the person looking at me. And I’ll realize that I’m colorblind because I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see these fake colors thrust before me. I want to see the black and white and gray. I want to see that white light away from the drab grays and the pitiful blacks.

I can’t wait to look you in the eyes for the first time, And realize that you were, are, will be there for me. The fact that there’s no deceit shielding my emotions from you, Allows me to regain what I had never known I owned.

I always thought that I was looking at false idols. I never knew that I could hold something so tolerable. So present. So aware. And you deny that you’re smart. Smarter than me ‘cause there’s no way I’ll ever be able to hang on. Well, Thats what I thought before you told me that it’s not true. That’s what i thought because of the shades of blue thrown into my face. But, now that I know I’m blind, now that you’ve shown me the real color, You’ve shown me the bright white that is so undiluted by falsities. You tell me those sweet, genuine sounds, But you do more. You verify your claims that I once thought ridiculous. You hold my eyes open because you know that there’s no way I can do it by myself. Yet. Just like how I can’t roll my tongue or wink with my right eye. Except that I can do this. I can open up. I can see that I’m not sitting alone at the lunch table. I’m surrounded by the black and white That manifest themselves into real beings, Ones that can pigment the world without having to submit to fabrications of the mental kind.

You told me, that no matter what I do, I’ll be colorblind. That is, to the exterior. You told me, that no matter what I do, what I think about myself, That I’m wrong. And I could never be more grateful for being blind. If it weren’t for bestowing this gift to me, I would be that same whelp wondering why the world is dominated by shades of blue and green. There’s no meeting like that of the enlightenment. And I’m forever in your debt. For making me blind.

Jason “Ineedglasses” Meuse

It’s a dog eat dog world out there. All you know about it is what the adults in your life want you to know. As your life continues in your little bubble of misconceptions, There is a sharp instrument of deception, waiting to pop your chimerical illusion, into a global hysteria of sorrow and conflict. And the closer you get to adulthood, the closer this instrument will get. Until one day, your little bubble will go “POP!” and the distortions will have clarity. What should you do when all you have ever known is ripped from underneath you and you are falling down the pit of the unknowing? Hold on to the ledge soaked with the remains of your little bubble? Or free fall down into what you have never known?

By: Joe “Psh, Who needs a prompt when I can write stuff with fancy words?” Lambert

Dear Hair Everyone judges books by their cover And you, you are the beautiful artwork that encourages my reader The thing that makes those who have met me burn me into their memories like a million suns You make me look different And in a world where all humans all 6 billion of us share 99% of our dna you are The genetic mutation that sets me apart Thank you for giving me the fiery sex appeal that only a red head can be blessed with And the luminescence to stand out in a crowd And yet you give me something else besides my obvious uniqueness You give me the experience the experience of being a little different The ridicule of looking different from the perfect standard of brown hair just for standing out from the norm of most of america And though I know they are just kidding that they are my friends and simply have fun getting in my head And I do not take it too seriously It teaches me What if this wasn’t so What if they weren’t my friends What if they want to kill me to hurt me to take what is mine for their own simply for being different Oh hair you teach me to love those differences to accept them and to promote To encourage people to branch from this norm to throw it to the dumpster and become who you want to be

By Kevin “Human Torch” Lombard

I have been manufactured. School, work, die. I have been trained How to think, What to think, By the American institutions. School, work, die. Success is an education, a job, and because they can’t stop it, a death. School, work, die. I have been manufactured. Don’t disobey the rules. Listen to parents and teachers. Don’t challenge authority. School, work, die. I have been manufactured. Somewhere in my structured Day to day life, They buried my humanity So I can’t find it And won’t ask questions. School, work, die. Question the text, Not the analysis. Question the motive, Not not the rule. School, work, die. I have been manufactured. I have been trained. I have been made another victim of society. Another plain and boring no one Going through the motions For a lifetime, And disappearing Out of permanent thought. No one is going to hear my name Two hundred years from now. School, work, die. I have been manufactured. You do not break the invisible laws, The guideline for living life. School, work, die. I have been manufactured.

-Cassaundra "Manufactured" Martel

Macanaw Street

The asphalt road sparkles

Radiating lemon colored sunshine

Wrapping the tall brick walls

In eighty degree heat

Spreading the melted butter of comfort

Along Macanaw street

Maple sugar glazes the sidewalk

Intermingling with clover honey

And chocolate fudge

Making the road bubble with sugar and life

Old men's tongues lap the sweet from the street

They suck on stones

And taste the talons of birds

Trapped in the dazzling glow

Of Macanaw street

Children ease the baby feet into the glare

Their pudgy toes squelching and burning in the oozing road

The babies cries match the heat of the sun

Both echoing off the looming buildings

Far away

Houses stay silent

Jealous of the glitter and attention

Ignorant to the screams and slurps

They sulk in their drab shadows

Wishing for the earth to change its orbit

Letting them melt in the sun

Their soft pinks

Sky blues

Sea foam greens

Melting into a pastel puddle

Never comparing with the angelic aura

Thrown off

By Macanaw street

The firefighters wore their sunglasses stoically

Staring into the caramel candy glare

Taking zombie steps towards the celestial glow

Abandoning their fire hoses and their duties

Eager to dip their bodies into the magic

Their baby blues rolled into the mess

Finding companionship with wayward hazels, browns, and greens

Grown-up boys eyes

Glued to the floor

Gazing towards the sky

They can never touch

Wrinkles caress the sticky red jumble

Licking their fingers clean

Trying to shine the Diabetes inducing eyeballs

Gently placing the little colored ovals

Back into the firefighters eyes

Leaving them longing for the touch, taste, smell, and sound

Of Macanaw street

Birds squawk

Children too

Firefighters touch their spit shined eyes

Old men melt into the confectionary homes

No one rips down the burnt sugar vines that bind themselves to the schools

They turn away from the

Sugar seas drowning commuters

Honey that seals doors and windows

Crystalizing in the sun

If Midas had a sweet tooth

This would be his palace

And

He would be proud

Katie "creepy old man" selens

Ladies meet men when they’re handsome When they’re beautiful, in their prime They fall in love quickly They fall in love fully Diane and Masaki married in June
 * Diane and Masaki**

Three beautiful babies, two boys and a girl and a job and a house and a world They built a life that was whole, one that we envy Diane and Masaki were happy

Until the world went dark and there was no job and there was no house Just five lives and five voices and five sets of eyes, (even those of a sullen teenager) who cried

Voices that spoke, that screamed and woke up babies now grown Diane and Masaki fought And the words got sharper They stabbed late into the night

His pride was had been wrecked with a phone call but their love was terminated with a few simple words back to Japan for a traditional wife can’t be here, no longer, no sir

Then Masaki, that bastard, locked himself away tail between his legs, his existence behind the door, waiting for a plane

the youngest son, he came and went, in the house where his coward father hid he said nothing to no one, and he went on living in mid summer heat ‘til the night he came home and his father was gone back to Japan Leaving Diane he had nothing to say not a tear fell Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodby

Ladies meet men when they’re handsome When they’re beautiful, in their prime They fall in love quickly They fall in love fully Two hopeful people married in June And one left on a night in July

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">A Sestina for a Dream

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">My mind once flowed like midnight water <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">my thoughts resounding as trumpets <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">but if you should decide to approach <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">me now you'll find that I've gone soft. <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">The once full cask has been drained empty <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and I'm left, forever, running.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">As I chase my train of thought, running <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">causeless through my mind as roaring water <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I find the stream bed, now empty <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and the highest notes of the trumpet <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">now sound flat. The glow, soft <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and subtle, fades at your approach.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Now, as the dawn's approach <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">impends, time ceases its running <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and becomes a sleeping child, soft <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and vulnerable, safe beneath the water. <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">And I know that there will sound no trumpet, <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">no noise to wake us. All is empty.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">And in the great expanse, empty <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and silent, I fear not the approach <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">of morning. The sun resounds its trumpet <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">blaring, and the moon begins running <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">to flee the light. Beams like water <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">cross the sky and the light that shines is soft.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">The darkness that enfolds me is as soft <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">as your sweetest words, but they've run empty <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">as the streambed, now devoid of water <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">as the droughts start their approach. <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">The fluid has stopped running, <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and the lamenting cries sound from the trumpet.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I begin to sense the fading, the trumpet <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">shall play no more. It shall give way to the soft <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and dulcet sounds of silence, running <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">forever into the land of the empty. <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I feel night and sleep approach <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">once more, and my dreams shall flow as water.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I've seen the water shimmer as the brass of a trumpet, <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and I've felt the approach of all things soft. <span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">But everyone ends up empty; in the end, we're all left running.

<span style="color: #808080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Ellyn "I don't usually like structure but I like Sestinas" Touchette

I wish

I wish I had told you I liked you

I wish I had told you I loved you

I wish that I told you I want to be with you and you are all I can think about.

I just wish I had told you what was on my mind.

I wish I had had the courage to spill everything that my heart was telling me to say to you.

I wish I wasn’t such a coward and could say what was on my mind.

I just wish I had had more time, to get the nerve to tell you.

I wish you had liked me back

I wish you loved me back

I wish I was all you ever thought about

I wish that after I finally got over you you told me that you had liked me back

I wish I had told you that I loved you.

because now its to late.

I'll wait 'till the stars are my home And The earth is a telegram Wait until oxygen becomes peanut butter Too thick to inhale

I will keep waiting For “//**everything”**// to fade For simple thoughts in simple moments For idealistic families that don't make the awkward kids skirmish I'll keep waiting For you and for everyone else For the perfect piece of pizza And Comfortable conversations I'll keep waiting for the waiting to stop For cliches to be acceptable I'll wait for you and for everyone else

I'll wait Until my eyes get too tired The color of my skin melts into the ground I'l wait until some part of me touches the sky And The present is a thing of the past

I will keep waiting

Katie "ohlookanotherpoemaboutstars" selens

Loving you is like windows Car windows, at the time of day pivotal to human existence The tar is a splatter paint of fading sun and tree shadow In flashes and beams our days whip by Some dark some radiant Others a brilliant mosaic of the two

There is never a moment to reflect take the masterpiece and hang it over the bed that we’ve made

No, our brilliance lasts no more than an inhale Then it is flattened by rubber and built anew The days remain nothing but roadkill bloodied by time fading behind us And time remains nothing but infinite like the road being swallowed beneath us

Loving you is like windows And as sunset and shadows splash across our white blank page We create a novel, A story that flies out the back window and is strewn in a path like breadcrumbs, for the good tired people to notice only ever-so-often

Pieces of our love are everywhere they’re mixed in the leaves long gone beneath your feet they’re bubbling into the waves that reach out from the sea and crumbling from the dirt road on which you sweat

My love is your carpet, And those good tired people ever-so-often stop They feel our love warm beneath their toes and they stoop down to let it slide through their fingers

And in the fading sun they can see our pages scattered everywhere they look Our window love no matter how fleeting remains ever growing

Charlotte (love poems are dumb) Feinberg

13339953711333995371133399537113339953711333995371133399537113339953711333995371~ //To Merl//

I woke up this morning, and rubbed my makeup all over my face, the two ponds of skylight blue drowning my eyes, the pasty-white, white paste, that I spread all over my cheeks and forehead and chin and ears. I rubbed my lips red, not pasty at all, but a sort of thick, moist red, both dark and bright. I combed my hair into it’s tight, winding curls, and made sure the colors in it were distinct and separate.

I was just about to walk out of my house and enter that little buggy that can hold thirty of us at once, when I saw her. The black hair, the light skin, those two large brown eyes. And then I screamed, a scream that people mistook for a laugh (because those of us in our profession spend the majority of our time laughing).

But this was no laugh. This was a scream. She looked at me threateningly, brandishing some juggling balls, holding a sword at her side (because, you know, she can swallow swords), tentatively tickling a flickering flame with her toppling tongue (because she eats fire, and as far as I can tell, she eats fire because she //likes it!)//.

And then I screamed some more. You don’t understand! Merls are frickin’ scary! You’d understand if //you// had grown up in a circus.

It was all I could do to keep from crying (because we clowns are not allowed to cry), so I carefully twisted a balloon into a doggy and handed it to her.

She just stood there staring at me, her eyes wide open, she clutched at the sword at her side, she juggled the balls in her hand a bit, she took a quick chomp on the flaming torch, yet she did not reach out to take the balloon animal.

I think she was trying to kill me //with her mind!//

I threw the balloon animal at her. She grabbed at her sword and hurtled it at the balloon animal and consequently, at me. The sword sliced through the balloon puppy, who started to whimper and whine, kind of like a real puppy, and then the sword chased after me!

I screamed again! It sounded like this: //Wahahahahooohooha//! (We clowns are VERY bad at screaming.) She kept staring at me wide eyed, not moving a muscle.

At this point, I started to cry. I feared for my own life! I grabbed a handkerchief from my jacket (which was tied to another handkerchief, which was tied to another handkerchief, which was tied to //another// handkerchief) and then blew my big, red, rubbery nose furiously into the handkerchief rope. It sounded like this: //Honk-a! Honk-a!//

The Merl stared at me wide eyed, mocking me, pretending that she was afraid of //me!// But I could see, through the balls juggling around her face and the flame that she was gnawing on, a smirk. A smug little smirk. And then I was hit by a midget who had just been shot out of a cannon, and whose flight path had gone terribly awry, due to a slight miscalculation involving gun powder and elephants.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was the Merl. The image is burned in my memory forever.

-Lincoln “The Clown” Gray 13339953711333995371133399537113339953711333995371133399537113339953711333995371~