You Me and Poetry Scholarship Slam
Learn more about other poetry terms
I have not met you in this physical lifetime,
Although I carried you with me for quite some time.
I would like to tell you about someone I admire before you reach your destination.
From the soul to the mind
From the mind to a paper
It is a translation of my feelings
A language that can only truly be interpereted by me
Poetry is not about the word that rhymes
A secret journal
A place to share
The feelings I can't bare
Morning can wait
So I stay up late
Making me nocturnal
A sea of white
Vast and deep
Hiding the secrets that lie beneath
Left alone, it's quiet and still
It hungers for the ink to spill
Just seize the pen to take a dive
Police officers are killing my people which is a crime
but yet when they stand in front of the jury they get no time.
They started off as heroes but are turning into murders overtime
taking innocent black people lives.
My Ars Poetica: A Different Kind of Animal
Nothing turns a stomach like the rancid aura that cradles the furry carcass of a life that once was.
Ambiguous meanings drift
Through my thoughts. I'm
Unaware
Comprehension will remain
Unclear. As I
Sit. As I
Stare
Words on paper will slowly
Disappear. Why?
Gather ye round, kids, would you like to knowAbout how I took up the art of writing poems?Let me summarize my 18 years in all of their glory,As you sit around t
The release
The power to express
The words I can never tell another soul
My hidden secrets
The force to liberate my spirit
Erases the fears
Takes the pain away
Frees my mind
To escape for the first time
One must have a cause
Dispair was mine
And distance was at no pause
You write not what you want,but what flaws flower from corrosion You want to write about the universe,how the stars are really tiny pulsating ancestor heartswatching over us and instead what you get on the pageis that car crash on Fourth and Broad
Craft a darkened temple in your mind
give it four pillars, no, five
set a pedestal in the middle
upon it, lie a full blooded rose
now, name the pillars;
First, is the rose,
so sweet and pure
it was never a choice to be born into a world unprepared for me
a world too violent, too aggressive
me, a minority among minorities
born in the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong world
I remember in sixth grade,
at the Poetry Café.
I was up on the stage,
only a few words left to say.
Finally, my trembling and shaking ceased,
and I glanced at the audience,
their faces blown away.
Poetry is the expression of mingled thoughts and emotions and ideasin the form of simple words and complex patternsthat can very rarely be achieved through spoken words alone.
hot. sweaty. sticky.
I slide down the wall in my room
begin typing, trying to record the feeling
raw. anew. cracked.
minutes before I stood outside, working
dark out, with headphones in, full volume
Writing is my way to escape reality ..
I just do not fit within society.
Writing is what keeps from me harming myself from the wretchedness on the inside..
Taking a look at these submissions
One caught my attention
And it was a sign I had to get raw and gritty
You ask why I chose poetry
No, poetry chose me
Now welcome to my city
It was an outlet
Sticks and stones,
have broken my bones.
And words
are metal shards embedded within my skin.
Some nights they are the structure of my (unfatal) Icarus wings.
It’s been a depressive couple months.
A couple months of crying, Feeling alone
Feeling confused and unloved.
A couple months of isolating myself.
But what I need…
A much needed break,
To ask why I write poetry is to ask why I breathe
Why am I alive
Why I am who I am
Why every single sentence I utter is artistic
To figure out why I write, speak, and think like moi
Head aching, mind blanking, your eyes burning as you stare at the screen,
A lone blinking line staring back in silence,
You can feel exhaustion in every inch of your being, but you can’t quit yet.
I won't talk about who I amuntil the words are directed at no one,words shouted into air no one dare breathes. I am a good person,but that doesn't mean I am honest.
Me, a poet? I never would've thoughtBut by always shoving all these thoughts in the back of my headBy tossing all these feelings that eventually come back stronger than the lastBy hiding what I believe to be the real me
~The News~
Trouble minds
Corrupted youth
Don't speak the words
Of me and you
Reporting Live
My dad smokes.
For years, I would get so frustrated at his immutable addiction.
My yells, piercing daggers that haphazardly
flick into the cramped space.
Each shard of my heart splinters under the tension
STOP...The words you've heard since age two,
Your parents are like, "Yeah I'm talking to you."
You crawl into a corner and hope you won't be found,
But there they are as you turn around.
I have a page, Confessional Slam, where people can send me anonymous confessions and I turn them into poetry. Here is the poem I wrote for the confession, "Everyone thinks I know everything about anything and ask me questions.
I prefer to avoid poetry.
Turning my brain into words and my heart into ink is too intimate to share with others,
I could write all day about the room around me crumbling into an iridescent and soupy mess,
The power of poetry is incredible.
To pick up a tool and paper and decide,
I will change something,
with words...
is extremely powerful.
Humans have the ability to communicate,
The forest greets a new day,
Sunlight beams penetrate through lilac canopies of serenity
Somewhere, a river gurgles―water rushes down a stream
Life and me
is like a puzzle
always frightening
always learning
never forgetting
to give meaning
to the puzzled
To write with a pen in my hand
Means to speak what I can not say.
To create words line after line
Means to drive this hunger away.
line break
Dear Pen, It's almost as if I was the paper. Practically monotonous, but overflowing with potential.
I felt her hand,
heard the thwuck of the straw,
and walked to the back of the store to find something
worthy of my words.
She didn't want to go,
it was a boring spot,
I give my love my everything:
The nooks and crannies of my soul.
His mask then fell, unveiled a liar,
Spilled every secret: none untold.
Friends come, they go, all while they know
Little girl without a dream,
Not that good at anything;
The only people that she knew,
Were the writers at her school.
They taught the girl how to breathe,
Everyday momma would take me to the window
she would sit me on her lap
reach across and open the curtains
Sweetie, What do you see?
I see children laughing momma
Forgive me,
but I have such a hard time believing that you're being sincere.
I feel my fingers rattling—
tapping other bones,
nervously checking my phone,
Maybe if I put my problems on paper they'll stay there.
And I'll never have to worry about them
Sneaking through my ears,
Settling back into my thoughts,
The constant arranging and rearranging of words in my head.
I must find the right fit, the rhythmic flow of words.
Aha! I have found them. I franticly write the cluster of words
Poetry wrote me.
Poetry took a pen and sketched out my soul, then my body--
proving that I am somebody.
Poetry lent me a brain and a heart,
a lucky, gratuitous, helpful head start.
poetry makes it easier
the attempt of articulation of the abstract;
feelings too unfocused to figure;
emotions endlessly endeavoring for expression
The butterflies will soon turn to ashes, to just an empty feeling inside,
You stare in the mirror.
"Take the blade," he whispers.
"do it, just one cut. No one's stopping you."
One cut, two.
Your Lungs filled with cement, your feet like bricks.
Your ears, open doors to shameless words of hurt.
Eyes always watching but never friendly.
Tearing you piece by piece,
On my way out the door,
I tiptoe
Making certain the only sounds to be heard
Are the low hum of the crickets
And the faint buffeting of the wind over soft grass
NOTE: The original looks like the image
Peach
Yawning, the light of a passing day dips the horizon in an apricot die
I like words
To pin them in my head;
repeat them like mantras
apply them where I can
throw them into thoughts
small prose, poetry
ways to express
the catacalysmic feelings
of being alone
There he is,
so shy and sweet
my feelings there,
I can't defeat.
I keep my feelings
in this jar of hearts.
It's quite full now,
but I can't start
to tell him how I feel,
Abbey's eyes were champaign;
Her tongue a wild mare
When she galloped she kicked up words
like dust under Ozymandias' feet;
I write to fill my mind with purpose.
I write to occupy my hands.
I write to show off my talents to me and my audience.
I write to see the words, watch them hang in the air,
I now write
Poems to ease the pain
All day and All night
My thoughts become more tame
I've wished death
Upon my own brother
To take his last breath
For stealing my mother
I fell in love with the honesty:
Poetry was simple deceptions masking great truths,
Music was not really the food of love
but it fills the heart like a good meal,
I said hello,
But you wouldn't know.
Thought that I was annoying,
Compared me to a crow.
I waited for you,
In the cold, cold snow,
Hoping that one day,
You would show.
Rain falls sweetly across my face,
Lost in a poets kind of embrass,
Foreign terms in his words,
Like a love song for his worlds,
Meanings beyond meanings his words are so sweet,
More so than the candy we eat,
"Write a poem due by my desk on Friday," he said.
I looked at the assignment and wondered if I should have just fled.
Putting my annoyance aside, I sit down and put my pen to the paper.
I can’t breathe
I can’t see
Feeling so lost
No light to guide me
I have fallen
Fallen deeper into the grave
I can’t escape
From this pain
You can take my wings
This form of expression came naturally to me, more so than I ever expected it to be.
You don’t know what you did.
You don’t understand how dead I was inside.
You didn’t see the horror movie that was my mind.
You didn’t see because I didn’t let you see.
I didn’t let anyone see.
Depression isn't like the monster under your bed, it's much more like shadow or your reflection, it knows your biggest fears, it knows you like the back of its hand, it knows what to tell you, what to repeat, what to scream at the top of its lungs
If my mind is a ball of yarn –
it has been tangled and untangled,
rolled up into knots.
Someone naughty has
thrown it up and
kicked it down and
pushed it aside and...
well,
Everytime I open my mouth
The words don’t seem to come out
Unless I bear my soul on the page
Alongside lead and tears
And pour a pitcher of my heart in between the lines
Poetry has always been present,
I just never really paid attention to it
Until I learned to appreciate it,
Understand it.
I was fascinated by Shakespeare's sonnets,
Emily Dickenson's dark poems.
Running in circles
Inside my head
I have to get out
Alive or dead
Shatter the mirrors
I can't bear to look
My eyes tear out the pages
Of my body's book
People drink to be at ease
Writing isn’t a talent
Writing is an art
An art that even people with minds under lock and key
Shades snapped shut
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alive but not breathing
no, breathing but not alive
i sit on my couch grieving
Poetry was not made for me
Rhyme does not come naturally
My body knows rhythm, only when dancing
My mind cannot spit out the words to create a thing of beauty easily
I Just Want To Be Straight
Make Sure My Family Good
Don't Want No Should Of Could's
Or Be Living In The Hood
You, me and Poetry.
God used poetry to create both you and me.
First was the word.
It was heard.
Then came he and she.
Poems have no bounds
From setting sun to high sea
That is why I'm free.
Freedom from strict rules
title-that-perfectly-captures-this-poem.txt
i enter the atmosphere of a radiant, enchanted world
where the air is condensed with adjectives and nouns,
I live on my drunken abode,How pretty everything seems.I do believe that around is clearer than I really see,For I have done this before.
I lived here so longI no longer beg to differ.
I sat in my seventh grade English class--
A place of joy, safety and the ability to set your subdued voice free.
But no one knew, underneath my superficial smile and a painted mask,
The embers in the hearth stay aglow
As the wind howls and the sky erupts
In showers of ghostly, pale snow
As I look toward his golden face,
Rhyme
This time
Sam-I-am
Green eggs and ham
Just pretend there is a place
Where the sidewalk actually ends
Place, please, plays, prays, praise, pays, pace?
Face disgrace to human race
I'm a poet for those little moments
That I want to remember just right
So I take out a pen and write what you
Said that was worth remembering.
I'm a poet for the shallow hope
Seventh grade, my friends left me
All I had to console me was family
A new Taylor Swift C.D.
The melody
School was tough with no seat
No one to meet
When it was time to eat,
Not sure how I got here,
with no time for sleep or life
let alone to write.
Inspiration?
A mere fabrication of my imagination
that I can't seem to control.
There's rarely a muse or a purpose,
Falling hard from reality, seeing the unexpected
A dark, scary scene that no soul should witness
Seeing a broken family become connected
Yet the loved one is listless
Too late, life's favorite words
For an amber lady beetle, it’s a challenge to be heard. My hum blends in with the usual buzz of the urban wild. My voice hides beneath blankets of blaring conversation.
Poetry entered at a young age
At a time of my life
Quite an early stage
Expressing an interest
The options to choose from
They're limitless
It can be real or fake
As she's putting this pen to paperShe's giving a brush to a painter
An anonymous artist who knows her soul And defines her life with every stroke
As a seed sewn in the ground
I was raised by word and sound
Music calmed my frantic woe
While Poetry pushed my stem to grow
A sapling green, yet easy to sway
A Harvester came to make me stay
Night Writer
By, Kayla Daniels
I sit at my dining room table; it's 2 am
I listen to the sound of peaceful raindrops: drip, drop, drip, drop
I hear the trees whispering softly in the wind
When the whistle blows
I start slow,
I let my breathing relax,
And let a few pass,
Just a few,
I pump my arms,
Pound my feet
Determined to lose all imperfections.
Eating less because I am too fat.
Flaws is all I see.
Extraordinary is what I want to be.
Can I ever love myself completely?
Little girl staring down at where her pen meets.
So many thoughts in her head, but nothing on the sheets.
In her mind, she creates a world no one else can find,
But when she goes to write... nothing seems to rhyme.
A bond to be formed,
a bond to be broken.
As you begin to grown
and more words are spoken.
As you see,
that time goes by.
Soon your life flashes,
before your eyes.
Faithful and just
The reflection of me plastered across-
A blue lined canvas
The order found within myself
Found within these two red vertical lines
My mind, my soul, my being
We write to release
You are even
I am odd
We are opposites
Yet we complete each other
You sort things out
I make a mess of things
We are fire and water
But both essential for life
You keep me steady
Show me a way to acknowledge
This.
The world we live in is confusing, turning, shocking-
Show me a way to make sense of everything around me.
I wonder, sometimes, how to express who I am.
There was once a man with a penniless soul,
Who was looking for women to make him whole.
So he wandered into my undiscovered land,
Where he dug a whole with his filthy hand.
A-S-D-F is where my 4 left fingers lay,
and only a G-H away, the other 4 remained.
“This is home base,” Ms. Z had said,
and I settled in quickly by the end of 4th grade.
I took to the page as birds take to the sky.At the tender age of six, my head was full of life,And my hands held a million hidden stories.I would not have known, had I not become a thief.
"Roses are red, Violets are blue"
This was my first poem
I heard it when I was only about six years old
In middle school there were more rhymes
Let me tell you a story
About a girl that needed her mom
It’s a story that I have lived and told before but let this story bring to light the truth of her ways
mom don't you know I need you
Because I have faith you say I have no hope
You hear my voice and say it is shattered
I ponder the truth of your lies and say, "nope"
Righteousness, I see in the world, you battered
In light a shadow follows
Darkness fills it grotesquely
Full of secrets so hollow
I try to lock it safely
I find it like Apollo
Cunningly sly, honestly
Robert Frost and Edgar Allen Po
Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou
Four great poets that inspired my soul
With Gold that can't stay and hearts that beat
To the strong black woman and tiger in me
Show me
that I am confident and fragile and whole.
Show me
that I am infinite and gentle, filled with sadness that knows itself
only as hope.
Its the end of another day
as thoughts go through my head I hear myself
thinking and reminiscing about the good and bad
wishing and hoping
crying and moping
laughing and singing
the poems i write
the words i select
they have great potential
many meanings different messages
i get to choose what they will mean to me
to order and arrange them
into my very own personalized
I've always loved writing, putting pen down to paper,
When high school hit it became second nature.
In an instant it went from a little to a lot
Like an addiction, but unlike my peers it wasn't pot.
Can't say I had no inspiration but on days without much to do, I'd end up writing about nothing, until my ideas became solid and my motive changed, what a way to express myself, as the words came to my head the pen moved faster and the rhyme devel
It came like a hawk attacks prey,
Fast, furious, and without sway,
That feeling that haunts me,
It kills what I want to be.
My hands start to shake without stop,
My face scrunches like it will pop,
Be it the birds from the window, the longing, the flight,
I had ideas that strings of words could carry me over any papery wall.
But first they had to begin.
Poetry has been a special magic for me,
For years it has spoken my heart when my lips could not sing.
I web of words to express my wish to be free
From the isolation depression's cold tendrils did bring.
Like the soft taste of a kittenOr the smell of a quiet breezeI get an upturned lift of my lips.The taste of the picture jumping to its feet. Yearning for more, I smell the excitement
I can't eloquently express what I love about poetry;
All I know
is that my ardency grows within me like a tumor,
a parasite I enjoy hosting.
All I know
is the freedom the pen offers me,
What makes a future sure?
Between the days, blurs
Clouded eyes that long to see
A desperate need
To endure
What makes a person dream?
Quiet nights, haunting themes
There is no opinion quite like my own.
It’s so well thought out; I wear it like a jacket.
I grew it in my garden (I never missed a day of watering).
It became a flower amongst tangled weeds of opposing ideas.
I remeber the rush.
The moment pen touches paper.
The smooth glide on blank slate.
Infinite array of options,
Potential, that I never had.
The feel wasn't all however,
Poetry abuses me,
Flirts with me one minute and
Abandons me the next.
She gives me palaces
And then she burns them to the ground.
Poetry taunts me,
Hands me jewels and fills
Wind was hard and coldly bitten;
Sun fails, but still, golden, glimmers.
Water’s haughty and so frothing;
As I lay my head by the weeping willow tree
I think:
I am more than just a statistic
I’m intelligent, quick-witted
Reform is the antecedent
To achieve the peace that’s needed.
Poetry as a child, I wrote of my thoughts,
And did not realize the destruction it wrought.
I saw the world as black and white,
With scarlet as its natural highlight.
I wrote of the red, the pain and suffering,
Life is a tragedy when seen up close, but a comedy in the long run
I am independent, ambitious,strong and spontaneous
Inspired by success, music, love, art
Pop!
There goes the rubber band
Not much of a story? Let me start from the top
Its the story of a young man
Pulled in all directions
Angered about the focus of his affections
Forced, terrrified, pain, lonely, hurting.
Forced to deal with the truth of a sheltered life.
Terrifed of what came next.
Pain for what what was, what could have been, for him, for his future wife.
You meant nothing.
You were meant to.
I didn’t see anything.
You were a chore.
Insignificant.
At first.
I did not ask to be the person I am today.
When I was young, all I would do is run and play,
But years later, reality crushes my ribcage
As the bricks fall with my rising age.
Poetry and I
Are joined by a common thread
Considered by some an obstinacy
But most appreciate the freedom
To appreciate the worth in everything
The refusal to take a side
Words
Ideas
Phrases
Thoughts
Hopes
Dreams
Rants
Explosions
Questions
Meanings
Open fields
Smell of freshly turned dirt
Rows and rows of long hours
Moments and moments of thinking
Dreaming
Open skies
They say we come into this world tender and mild With hopes and dreams buried in every child But no, you burst in kicking and screaming Telling the world that we are not leaving Not til we take the world in each hand Some going off and exploring a
I am losing my mind in the depths of my screams
Alone, I walk the halls
Empty faces stare back
.Smiling.
The whispers of my steps disappear before me
Poetry
What is poetry?
Poetry can mean different things to you and me
It is not a skill you can pick up on suddenly
Or a skill you can be born with
At first school made poetry seem like a bore
All the poems I had read just made me want no more
But in the end I understand that I had been at it all wrong
At the time, it hurt my mind, and some poems were way too long
I was brought into this world with no mind of my own,
Seeing time fly by I knew I had no control.
Since the time I remembered I was only just five years old,
Sitting in play time by myself, I was alone.
What do you wear to see a man who is already dead
If you dress in black will it hasten his demise
Will the bright colors of Spring give him hope
A reminder that life goes on
Growing up is never easy,
Constantly trying to understand my being.
This person they constantly questioned
Discriminated, and offended.
Poetry is dead, he said,
As he woke up with the sun.
As his breath came out in gentle puffs
And a silent song was sung.
I lived and I praised and I loved and I gave
And Finally
I was empty
Nothing
Left
In Me
Been turned to the side by the mind's greatest enemy
Depression
What a taboo word
I hide myself in the movies; the clips
Once I retreat from serenity
I jump into the joys of notes across a bar line
Once the tempo and its tranquility strikes
I resort to old ways
Soothing and fluent
Poetry, it's inexplicable, it has no boundaries, no limits, no rules
And I'll admit, being a self professed poet makes me feel quite cool
Which is what drew me to it
I became more cunning, and even gained some wit
Words are an art
only some can see.
They say a picture is worth
a thousand words,
but what is
the value of a word?
Maybe we can't
put a value on words
because they are
I’m no prodigious poet.
In fact I’m quite the odd bird,
I’m always delving deeper
into ideas others find absurd.
As my father crossed oceans
I fell onto my knees;
anxiety and depression:
I remember being lost;
In a dark, ominous realm.
There were random faceless beings surrounding me.
They all began to speak simultaneously,
Telling me their problems at a constant rate.
I believe in winning
I believe in crafting words to spit fire,
breathe venom
I believe in the acceleration of heartbeats
the iambic pentameter of a
A story to tell
Made simple
Ongoing
To empower
Inspire
Forever
Ongoing
Love
Pain
Life
Memories
All continuous
As words
As messages
Found long ago
I am poor with words,
And frankly money too.
But how could I express so much
with so little?
She was a little girl that had so much to say but never said anything
Dancing and prancing to the beat of her own drum;
she only spoke to hear what others had to say
I'm trying to live, but end up merely existing..
I don't know what to do any more.
I'm stuck inside myself reaching for a door that no longer opens
and i am becoming hoarse from screaming..
Like Charles Dickens i have great expectations for you.
you are like a novel i seek to dwell into and become lost in a never ending fantasy
a great-gasp-be-comes the only expression of gratitude like Fitzgerald when i see you.
Let me take a second, to explain.
It's not everyday I'm put into a place.
Between a rock and a hard place, having to try
They walk and talk like they really know mebut I'm not just some random bodyI don't need them to dictate what I can and cannot do
Poetry was the hidden frontier
Veiled from those like me who had a spark but were terrified to light the flame
Poetry was restricted to a few special
Those who were brave to take a chance
What is life?
What is freedom?
What is the right to write your own reason?
It's the Truth, it's the Life
That we all have deep in side;
The Truth and the Life that no longer wants to hide.
How many times can my voice be suppressed?
Hiding from the world in pain and depressed
I have this way to get my anger out
To forget the bad words and the way they shout
I used to stay up late into the deep dark night
I would watch, think, read, or give myself a fright
The darkness under my baggy green eyes gave way
When life gives lemons,
make lemonade.
Sometimes there are Dead Ends
forced to find another way.
Make lemonade
when thoughts, feelings, and words get s.t.u.c.k.
Forced to find another way,
1.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. –Maya Angelou
I am stitched of my favorite images of female
strength and courage,
portraits painted by the words of Angelou.
Tick, tock, tick as the wheels of motion flicker
Each nerve formulating extraordinary ideas for my poetry
Inspiration falls down to the smooth, dry surface;
Crumbing under my fingers
The hand of the friend of a sinners son
They cried at night felt they were the only one
Their happiness they lost in a world so cold
To only live lonely and grow old
Times were hard, they were tough.
I had turned to thinks the were distructive to help with the hurt.
More often than not it just made it worse.
I was young.
I was afraid.
I was alone.
Young daughters appear to only see,
Whatever their mothers pretend to be.
From childbirth to the age of fourteen,
I never felt unable to make ends meet.
I asked my mom if my friend could come over,
I was in the 4th grade when I had accidentally opened up a portal to another world.
And started scribbling metaphors on the back of my science book.
Dear Miss Austen -
My good friend,
I keep with your advice.
Look around you,
See the story,
Write of society.
Dear Miss Dickinson -
My good friend,
I hold to your advice.
In the abyss
a crevice of black
I curl my neck
ready to attack
With inked rapiers
in my claws
I slash and stab
hoping for renewal
Half awake
my sore back sprouts
Countless hours
Harmony in my head
Words of life
Don't send me to bed
Stay up with me
Keep me company
I am the quiet stream
But you're the babbling brook
speak in sense
They say this generation needs to be fixed
How can something need fixing if it was never broken
Why does something need fixing if it’s not the ordinary to your eyes
My eyes and your eyes see two different things
Mirror, why do you hide what's inside?
It's as if you judge people on how they look or their outside mask
You glisten
You shine
But you hide
You hide my beauty on the inside
My emotions
If we live everyday with the blinds closed, we will never notice if the sun has set or if the moon has risen, rather life takes a standstill.
I'm not much of a creative writer.
I'm not a genius, and I'm not a fighter.
Just an average student on break going day by day,
Missing the plentiful dining hall buffet.
I sleep all day like a newborn baby,
You, Me, and Poetry.
We three different entities,
One Metaphorical, one in the past, and one right here and right now.
Time
I love to read
words being a remedy for what other things
couldn’t mend
My first name;
It just came to me,
I never know what to say
But,
Whatever it is it’s part of me
To me, poetry is the purest form of writing
There are no rules that cannot be broken
No boundaries that cannot be crossed
No emotion to raw
No idea to absurd
And most importantly, no judgement
I am only a senior
Trying to be a dreamer
I want to build my foundation
With love and determination
I want to go to KU
But my mother says that she hates to be a shrew
I do not have the tuition
Hey it's that kid with the ashen skin
Skinny white b♂y who you could snap like a twig
Ask me again how that story went
Because the first time around my voice cracked thin
I was alone,
Cramped in my mind,
Displaced,
Unheard,
Seeking some attention i probably didnt deserve,
I was alone with a pen, a piece of paper and my thoughts,
Swarming,
Devouring Me,
Like a ship slipping into port
On Novemeber, at dawn,
At first it was all white,
Now the blankness is gone.
Like a ship going out again,
Through the encroaching mist,
To find a secret golden island,
Change
Remeber me? I was the one you made fun of;
the one you spread lies about.
The one who never had friends; the one who always cried a lot.
You used to be my best friend, but I guess things have changed.
The many colors I grow,
How many shades can be seen.
The family affair and the many seasons I spring,
Springing up from the darkness into the marvelous light.
I grow tall yet many are small.
The staring daggers-
The Seething rage-
An ember from which passion thrives;
You feel your blood boil,
And the world turns red:
How that hatred begs to control you;
You stop to think
You spend your whole life building a brick wall.
You on one side. The other unknown.
One day you hear a soft knock. A whisper.
A tentative voice coaxing you to, just come over.
She is 17 years old when her body is laid out on the autopsy table. When she is ripped open and stitched back up again. She is given a waxy face and closed eyes and thin pale lips.
Beauty is just a face and courage is spoken not seen.
Beauty isn’t hateful, beauty isn’t spite.
Beauty is inside of me, in you in all of us.
But, the only beauty that matters is the kind that you can see...
In the scope of the world, this moment seems insignificant.
Our paths crossed once, over a year ago today,
wherefore hers headed directly forward, mine, back behind her.
Young love, hand holding, and silly notes,I'd been struck by the baby that floats.It was natural. I knew nothing at all.
i.
Sometimes, poetry is a chore.
When you have to assign words to the letters in your name,
or dissecting it till you vomit up meaningless meanings
that your teacher wants to hear.
I live in a world where my peers,
are drenched in their fears.
No one is truly living the life they want.
I’m so tired of hearing I can NOT.
I was always an artist first
but words were just a new kind of paint
Not so much a visual medium
and not so much music
but something in between
With words dripping out of my fingers
The tenth circle of hell couldn't compare to a women's sorrow .
For a women's sorrow is the coldest lash of winds that scars the skin.
No man can not understand for women share each other sorrow .
Poetry, my dear
was something I fear-ed
would be sappy and gushy
romantic and mushy
that it had to rhyme
and that it took a lot of time
to write just one line
Yet I write today
Four walls watched as I waited for my Father's promise to pick me up ..
Instead of quality time he bought quality stuff to keep my mother hush ...
So every month he stopped by to drop a couple hundred bucks ..
I’d never imagined the day I would describe myself as ignorant
How could I be ignorant-
I’m a first generation college student living in 2016,
A Latina with dark rough skin,
Yet, I never heard of an Afro-Latino
For my story you ask?
Reciting it is a grueling task…
Unless it is told in a gentler form
A poem! A song.. The tale is reborn
Storm of emotions tearing me apart.
Setting them to words a work of art.
Sharing it with others to promote understanding?
No!!
Maybe... Yes.
Time soothes, allows intimacy to dissipate.
I am someone different.
I am someone new.
I am whoever I want to be.
My heart has been shattered,
All strength has forsaken me.
I am broken
I am torn.
I can express this.
I do not write poetry for people.
I do not write poetry for you.
I am blessed, yes, but I sit beneath no peepul.
It is not for the “ahs” or the “oohs”
I write poetry
Not for me.
My faith was in doubt.
There was a world I knew nothing about.
My sight was in black and white.
Insecurities filled my mind,
Making me think that I was blind.
People tried and insisted,
I'm not sure, exactly, when the words came--When the thunder and the sound and the fury became anExplosion.
The patches of grass are blueish if you stay up late —
or wake up early enough. If you’re there,
you can see the wasps parade angrily or joyfully around the white fog lights.
In English class, predictably,
The teacher told us patiently
About the forms of poetry
And how to write them well.
Entranced by artful imagery
I read them quite ecstatically
She didn’t carry much because most of what she carried was inside of her.
Her shoulders were never cloaked in velvet,
her neckline never dripped with jewels,
The world is full of poets,
No more special than the first or the last,
No more or less passionate or feeling or tortured.
But
In a dizzingly fast world with conversations so careless that the words
Somebody yells
Glass hurls into a wall
Hands draw up;
a half-hearted attempt at a protection
that shouldn't be needed.
For the ghost of bodies hung from trees
For the arrests and attacks of the people and Martin Luther King
For the lashes and scars on my great-great-grandmother’s back
Words can be strung in an order,given purpose—made into an illustrationof what’s in a child’s mind, a childwhose mother and father are fightingover and over, all the time. Thescansion marks where the child
In a constant struggle with a blade that left lines upon my arm
Transforming it into a piece of paper that needed to be filled in
The blood that fell splattered on the sheet below
I feel the burn of the smelly and strong relaxer on my head
The chemical takes hostage of each of my natural curls and permanently damages it
I was at the library
Looking for books to read
I found the poetry section
And saw buy those was necessary
Longfellow in gold
On a beautiful soft cover
I flipped through the pages
June 15th, 2016 12:36 AM
Pen to paper.
Here she is trying to tame a burning temper,
she is a frequent visitor, she knows this.
She told herself to stop, stay focused.
Little Brown Book.
Good morning
I say to myself
though I don't know if it can be
A day passes as it does whether good or bad
I hope for good mornings, as I crawl out of bed
For as long as I can remember,
my mom would journal.
Her words and thoughts,
written down to be given
as gifts to her children one day.
A way to remember those special moments.
A documentation through
When I was at church,
everyone had their heads bowed..a low hum of prayer.
But then I heard a giggle. I heard her voice.
I looked around and no one else had heard it but me.
I lifted my head and looked up.
What is poetry to me?
A means of expression?.
My thoughts they're jailed inside my mind trying to get released but always confined
If god is real, then why not the Zeus?
From retarded apes, we have diverged.
From near extinction, we have profused.
Our mental growth has been induced;
Yet irrational thought has come merged.
There is a poem at the start and at the end and somewhere in between.
A poem on the cracks of my palms, the bends of my elbows,
In my morning coffee, my Tuesday trivia,
A poem in the sweat of my ancestors,
Sway with the wind, that's what they told me.
How could you be so bold!
That’s how they’d scold me.
I prefer to rise with the moon.
I can write a poem just as good as his.
When you said you wanted a poem,
A poem is what you get
It may not be a Picasso,
Or even a Da-Vinci
A serene sky, blue upon arrival, but orange upon departure.
A locked door, but a stranger still found the key.
A home meant to protect, but crumbled to pieces.
Hope for a great Destiny
That will show you
To do great things
To help others
Everyday
Love your life
It is in your hands
To do the right thing
You might change a life
Every day
Anxiety is crippling
Shaking, gasping, the world seems to spin
The smallest things trigger it
Do you know how long it's been?
since I've actually had a calm
Knees weak, eyes tearing
I thought if I conviced her I had nothing to say
My mother would stop insisting I write.
Words were my enemy
The I’s of the world
Hammer out revenge
Behind defense
Of a brick fence
Running in the door
Just ahead of the wind
I hear you
I hear you in
the pouring rain...
Words
Words that cannot escape my brain.
The unexplained
Been told all my young life long
My words conceal where I come from.
Fellow Jamaicans would speculate
About how I enunciate
With a too-American twang.
Not enough patois to be a yaardie.
The Thinking Man is always thinking
Thinking of the best kind of writing
Writing of some kind of rhythm, so he is listening
Listening for some kind of inspiration coming
Coming close to breaking
Alabaster lined paper
positioned blankly on a desk
urging an artist
to create a masterpiece.
A curious, yet fearful adventurer
clasped it, anxious about the unknown.
Six years old standing in front of the casketTears flooding my eyes and I look at my mom's closed onesThe floor seemed to fall awayGravity pulling me into the pit inside the EarthNothing seemed to stay upright
Ay Caribe, tierra de mi gente hermosa.
Tremors from the speaker’s bass reverberate across the wooden floor.
Our bodies become a vessel of rhythm.
Poetic Beginnings
AEIOU and twenty-one other consonants too
That’s how we all make poetry; isn’t it?
So it must’ve been when I spoke my first word, no,
When I wrote my first word
What if you woke up and everything changed?
You talked about love instead of blowing out your brains?
The weight you carried became bareable?
The skin that once made you feel shame turned wareable?
My story is very simple
in school I was bad at reading
passeges and questions
was nothing but scribble
but poetry came easy
I could read a poem
and know it like the back of my hand
1.
Love poems are Boring
Lines creaking old wagon wheels
Bitter tang of sprayed-on gold or gaudy sweet of colored syrups
In this space they tell us is home
We
Are often made to feel like we need our straight-jackets
Urged not to squirm,
Not to scream,
With hushed voice
And warm mouth
Frequently compelled with passion an intent.
While having feelings I ration and repent.
Thoughts often kept in.
Until the man above made realize the truth lies within a paper and pen.
I'm not often called upon as my voice speaks softly
My soul is whirling around in circles, searching to be found
My mouth is silent, but my mind speaks words over and over
Some things make you happy and some things make you sadThese two shouldn't mix.BecauseI drank a lot of tea todayIt was quite delightfulBut it also made me sadBecause I know it's your favourite.
And I remember being sick to my stomach
Watching him rip each layer from my underdeveloped corpse
I felt more dead than alive
My first poetry book.A pink composition notebookwith my signature on the front,and the words, "This book is for my feelings,"ending with exactly five exclamation points,written inside the cover.
Tennesee... Sweet Tea, country land
Volunteers, country ham. Mmm salty, savory, biscuit gravy
Illinois... Land of Lincoln, city-life, suburbs, Illini...
You see I had to make a transition, had to change my position
I pour my protectors in their home, they
Come alive bubbling in the hot sea.
The myriad of emotions astray
Pulled in the anxious capsules. I’m free!
Frustration entering aromas tokens
It began with my mother (like so many things)
Reading love poems in the computer room,
Skipping over the dirty ones, giggling at jokes I didn’t get,
And memorizing the look of her little red book.
It begins a little fuzzy and
dark
But it begins there nonetheless
It begins with a face so white and
stark
Who goes by the name of Dial
It is lonely at the top.
But no, you can't stop.
You've already gone so far.
Keep shining, you star.
You must keep going.
No, there is no slowing.
The journey is difficult,
Anyone who we have ever fearedOr lost,Is seventy-two percent H2O. Two parts hydrogen. One part oxygen.And everyone who we have ever loved,As well. Me -
How dare you
call yourself a lion when you can't even RAWRR?
Refusing to acknowledge that this World means War
you nest, numbing your mind endlessly in a frenzy of instant gratifications;
Some say the words call to them. Others say they sit down, pick up a pen, and the words just flow.
That hasn’t been my experience.
Life . . . live in a world of endless possibilities.Express who you are with no apologies.Say the words that your brain and your heart fight over.Do whatever you want with careless ease.
Poetry’s Poem
Is breathing an obsession?
I think not, when breath means I’m existing.
Is poetry a compulsion?
I think not, when poetry means I’m living,
My mind is a labyrinth of riddles and mistakes
And stories my heart yearns to share.
My mouth is numb and stiff,
A silent machete destroying the tangles of my brain,
Uni-verseA singular barOur lives granted by a singular star
Societies' priorities deludedMother Earth’s recruited Hate and happiness it seemsYet I feel nothing
No purpose or passion within this dream
comedy works better in a rhyme,
iambic pentameter who has the time.
a tale of woe is too sad,
a tale of humor makes one glad.
a short and cheesy rhyme
is used by me to pass the time
no real,
The color Black
Black is used to describe the color of my skin
Black is an ominous color
It represents the sign of death and sadness
Black can be a color that when used can be a sign of madness
I was quiet. I was small. I was weak.
I had a heart of paper and a mind that couldn't seem to stop goingThought after thought after thoughtPurple fear, yellow hope, green ideas
How does one express the very words that are written within the shadows of their chest? Hidden away are the very things I’ve never been brave enough to say.
I opened my mouth hoping that the words I wanted to say would escape I wanted to say that you hurt meI wanted to say that the gashes on my heart are still there That the still continue to bleed from time to time that the sound of your name still s
A pillar of beauty. An object of perfection. All women are beautiful in the body but in the mind they falter. Respect yourself ladies and spread your iconic wings as mothers, wives, and angels.
I don’t write for myself
Or to impress anyone
I write just to get the thoughts out of my head
The things I am dying to say
But can never speak
In life I’ve been accosted with a quantity of queries and questions,
some of which I resent.
“What’s your name?”
“How old are you?”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
I ache (I hadn’t had any sort of collective conversation,and this createda cacophony only my controlling cousin could describe. The cloakthat covered the black scars on my fragile clavicle
Beat to the rhythm.
Tap your toes to the music.
Trapped in these prisms,
This tune is our rhetoric.
Who will speak for us?
What is speech against singing?
Words are all we trust.
Growing up, all I ever knew
Was to make my parents proud
But ever since I have entered my last couple
Of teen years
I have noticed that there was so much more to do
I wanted to make a difference
When I discovered poetry
It felt like color had touched my saddened soul and
words wrapped around my brain for understanding
while the meanings floated straight to my heart.
Poetry hit me like a slap to my face
Poetry is nothing
about perfection
but everything of
expression
and
putting words
in shapes
and rhythms by
sharing
your
voices
of emotions
experiences
When you're young and naive
You see all these beautiful things
And you want to believe
That you are beautiful too.
When you are young and kind
You see the lost souls
And can't leave them behind.
I write because all the twisted, dark thoughts don't go away
I write because nightmares still show up during the day
I write because my mouth doesn't want to budge
I write because paper doesn't ever judge
Upon my brittle lens
and gallows
grows a liquid form,
candle-like,
breathing flames in and out
into a sun-scald croon.
Below its puckered lips,
I dance:
foot one foot
Sometimes, it would feel as though
My heart were thrashing against my ribs
Begging to come back out of my throat
I can’t write the same anymore
I used to have this glow but it no longer shows
Sitting at the desktop all night, with you by my side, telling me what to write
You were my muse
I had always felt like I was failing
In school, in work, and in life too.
It turned out I was the one curtailing
Myself in what I wanted to pursue.
I look upon myself today
And see how far I've come.
The best remedy for me has always been poetry
A diary of memories started out as paragraphs
Picking up rhythm and rhym as my soul quickens
Hands grasps tighter to keep up as my mind as my mind sleeps
There is an dimension between love and war; in mentality, arguements occur in thought. In dreams, I get a particular emotion that cannot be tamed, but controled or overthrown.
Just Words
Growing older and older,
I hated words.
And even as they got louder,
nothing could hurt worse.
I refused to speak,
'cause I didn't want to hear
One still night, alone was I,
As mind and soul raced wind and time.
To space, they spread and quickly fell,
Obeying laws against their will.
I thought of all the days gone past,
I laugh, I cry
I am broken, I am whole
I am black, I am white
Poetry is hard, poetry is easy
When you notice something, you know there is more than meets the eye
Poetry is
Loud, soft
Burning power of an unbridled storm.
Searing Passion of Hatreds' scorn.
Guilty pain punctured my soul.
My mind was bursting, nearly full.
History of anger and heritage of strife,
Never give up
Two years ago i was a rebel student
A clueless human
Who thought didn't have a bright future
Because i thought i was too stupid
For school
Because my mind was polluted
Forgive me father for I have sinned
I let an earthly man take your place in my heart
He engulfed me in cotton sheets right from the start
Forgive me father for I have sinned
I've begun to question your commands
I try to numb the pain.
The pain of everything and of nothing.
The pain that I cannot put into words
And the pain I try so hard to control
The pain that somehow always seems to find its way out
My fingertips are made of glass.
I'm afraid to tap too hard in ponder,
for fear of shattering.
To run my fingers along the wall,
tracing my steps to destinations,
is to carve rivers in sheetrock.
Slowly but surely, as the seasons change
Words crept into my life
As a babe, my first word was "mama"- what a multi-faceted word
Shall fires and storms rage ignored in my mind,
Unnoted, wreaking havoc, just to fade?
Shall flowers of romance ne’er water find,
And dry ere they assume their lovely shade?
Just like drugs and alcohol
You pulled me in with a promise
to feel better.
You brought me into a world of feelings
Made me addicted
I'm so hooked it's become mylife.
I do it in the world
Before I ever read a Walt Whitman piece,
I had spent my entire life with my eyes sealed shut.
I did not know of the vibrant hues the words on a page could produce
I am 9 and discovering poetry
For the first time.
"Hope is a thing with feathers," I read
And imagine the words tripping off the page, plummeting,
A baby bird pushed from the nest. The ground rises up to meet them
The beautiful thing is that poetry is messy,
In this it reflects life so well.
Perhaps that is why it so easily captures meaning,
In it one holds a mirror to oneself.
They say art imitates life,
Taking some time to think back
It is quite difficult to track
The date of the beginning
When poetry I found fitting
These are the stories
The star maps
The shifting winds
I am the dust
Beneath angry footsteps
Here is my compass
Red as blood
Spinning
Spinning
I consider friendshipslike being a house people move intosome people will wander in with their realtoronly to leave after sampling snacks
I've stopped counting
I broke my vocabulary free, suddenly I see
Why everyone is okay with being numb all the time
It's easier to feel nothing, than everything
Now, I realize
I am by the seashoreMy toes dipped in flawless watersThat quietly carry my irrelevant thoughts away...I'm calm as the breeze,My hair tracing its wavering patternsAnd the quiet of the beach
You’ve seen girls in magazines,
And they don’t look like me.
A descendant from the blood of royalty,
And I can’t be your beauty queen?
So what of Martin’s dream,
Today, is reality?
I’m a Poet.
The sounds and words collide, making
Universes that we can glimpse, something
Unspeakable in normal life, uniting
People from near and far, completing
I write because of history
I write to show you what’s come to be
I want you to help where you can
To lessen the pain that’s befallen man
the once white walls faded to yellowwith the contact of cigarette smokethe plates in the kitchen were shatteredthe door to the bathroom was broke
Poetry is more than elaborate word play and a mad flow
More than hearts ripped off of sleeves and transfered to paper
It is more than fear and fantasy
Insecurity and heartbreak
Happiness and sorrow
I could write
For my whole life
Without stopping onceI could write foreverIf my fingers would ne’er
Grow wearyI could write endlessly
If I had an unlimitedSupply of ideas
What do you do
When there is no inspiration?
When your thoughts
Have run dry,
And your pen
When I'm told how deoxygenated blood Goes in through one side of our heartAnd out the other, carrying life through our veins and capillaries and to our organs
You push my buttons
make me breathe out deep.
I swing nice and low
when you give me a solo.
I know I'm hard to learn
but the time will fly.
I'm a saxophone because
Miles and miles till i get to that place
I place I’ve been moving towards
Till I my feet bleed
till my chest hurts
Till I am completely out of breath
There's a dark cloud fogging up my mind and heart,
I just don't know how to start.
All of these things are hurting me,
I don't know how im supposed to be.
I keep feeling this pain,
All i can see is the rain.
The Openness of Rhyme and Reason
Poetry is…
the space between words better left
unsaid. The cruelest of sharp criticisms and
Poetry, My place to get away.
I bleed on the pages, rather than razors.
I show my emotions through words on paper.
I've never tried to rhyme,
In any of my poems.
But this one is different,
did you know
that an atom
is a galaxy?
the nucleus, dense with balancing
neutrons and humming with
protons, is an infinitesimal star.
and swelling around it, like nebula gasses
It all started in 2007. When my grandmother left and went to heaven. My brother got up he could barely speak. The sight of my grandmother's casket made him weak. He read his poem and I knew right away.
People always told me, not to worry that somebody was going to love me,
That somebody would see my true beauty,
But 5 years passed and people still called me ugly,
They howled and screamed, they hated me,
When time passes;
When I’m afraid I’ve done nothing.
When the years end
And the friendships go,
There is a pen.
When I open my mouth
Words are born
When I open my eyes
Colors flood my sight
When I take a breath
My lungs contract
When I write
There is poetry
When everything is changing
I was taught
When I was young
That to be a poet
You didn't have to be a poet
You could be a student,
A teacher,
A reader,
Or a baller.
Anyone could be a poet
When I was small and undiscovered
Undefined, uncreated, blank
I stumbled through a poem for my class
Unsuspecting, unknowing, amateur
A teacher grabbed hold of my newfound skill
1.
Sitting on your bed.
Thinking.
2.
Listening to your work.
Hearing you, knowing the sincerity of your words.
When I looked at me
What did I see?
But a lonesome girl
With no personality
Then I came across
This thing called poetry
And read Ego Trippin’
By Nikki Giovanni
Only to realize
What is poetry?
Not simply rhyming verse
But a force that moves the Earth
through the voices of millions of hearts
united as one.
What is poetry?
It is the voice of the meek,
Darkness floods the mind.
It takes control.
It doesn't let me go.
Darkness floods my mind.
It wages a war.
Battle after battle,
And nothing won.
And nothing won.
They say a toddlers favorite word to say with their mouth is why.
Yet I find it being uttered by mine with every rhyme.
Why did I stay after what you did on Lakeview and Joel?
It all started when i was young and had a love
for the way lyrics coursed into my ears and set my body a flame
As i acquired years i found my other love
The written word ,A bundle of pages that took you to another world
I was as young as the winters spring
when god gave me his pen to wing
with only a broken heart and sadden tears I seen
in and out of school depression laced my face
running to my room to hide the demons I envied
Home was a term used loosely,
It was a place for her to lay her head,
It was a place for her to spend her weekends.
An escape if you will,
but only for the night.
For the day was consumed,
A silver pendant screams your name
Red fingertips are the bane
Of your existence and your fame
Popping pills for better days.
Returning with empty pockets and a cluttered brain
Let’s pour paint in puddles and splash around until we’re rainbows.
Let’s paint bowls of fruit with our fingers.
Let’s eat the fruit leaving the painting in it’s place.
Trapped.
My mind doesn't let me free.
Pain is all I can see.
I think myself into depression.
My brains the epitome of oppression.
Filled with what if's and won't be's.
She paints a pretty picture
But this one with a twist,
The paint brush a razor and the canvas her wrist.
She paints a pretty picture
Imagine this:
Life in the dark,no sound and no action.Static in safety and peace of mind,but you can't feel, you don't do.The darkness too consuming,you can't even take a breath.
I call the ocean my home
The body of blue, grey and green
capped in white
A constant in my years of adolescence.
Really, I know it no more than I know myself
And I must ask, how an entity so unconquerable
Today I am blue,
madl, deeply blue
depe thathe Marianas Trench,
Because that seems to be where my soul has escaped to, the bottom of the ocean.
I am blue today,as if I am covered by a cerulean blanket, smothered,
I forgot the first time
I ever labored
to birth a poem.
I certainly don't remember
if my first paper tattoo
even rhymed
at all.
Was it free verse
Speaking is futile, as words die out,
for sound only lasts so long, and thoughts can only wither on,
since time foretells the fate of words, which shrivel and whisper into the ears of few
Yet writing,
I remember better days
When I was happy to get up on the morning
I remember better days
When I had someone to meet in the morning
I remember better days
When I had a smile on my face
As a child my exploring eyes were wide
Illustrations vivid, but words my innocent hands would hide
But as I grew my soul longed for a friend
Black and white, single-spaced typed, times new roman
Since I was born,
I hit the ground running
I could not fall
And if I did,
I could not ask for help
I was born to a mom and a father, unlike many others
A father truck driver
Speaking in broken sentences
To convey a single meaning
Only to reedit
To make it anew.
Poetry is something
That didn’t come naturally
But the teacher said
I had to write a poem,
Being a poet
Is borrowing the sun
Which blankets just half of Earth
And sharing it's warmth with
Someone in the dark.
Being a poet
Is exposing yourself
And all your broken pieces
Sixty-two words on crisp white paper:
Tales of dream-worlds, frog-cats, diamond rivers
Ink arranged in loops and strokes:
Musings of a salmon mind
What hides in prose, in candid paragraphs?
My Poetry is My Life
How I convey My Strife
This gift it comes from above
It is the utensil in which I demonstrate my Love
Sometimes it comes in Lyrical waves
Roses are red,Violets are blue,There are only so many things that can rhyme with blue.
The feel of the bud in your ear
The bouncing of the music
The flow of lyrics to a beat
A simple poem with beats to make it sing
A simple word written on an unremarkable paper
You started
as just an assignment.
Something I had
to do to keep that grade up.
But,
once I was done with you
I missed you.
It didn't take long
before I had a whole book
A damsel in distress,
Wishing for the willpower to suppress.
Waiting for her knight in shining armour,
Only to have her life full of sadness, and horror.
The hope for happiness fades away,
I am an ocean
who outgrew her bottle,
allowing herself to flow
freely to the shore.
As the moon in
the distant night sky
pulled me onward with
it's forces of gravity
I was powerless to
She draws with graphite
and charcol and pens
I draw with my words
that is all I know and have ever known.
My grandma teaches me with
paints on her lap
I was a "messy painter," not a
The day I watched my first slam
BAM
I was back at the day I heard he died
And all I could do was cry
A star football player, dead at sixteen
Emotions are quite the interesting thingsIn this daily walk of mineSuch fascinating and terrible creaturesTo have such control over my actionsNo matter my mindThey lead me on a leash
Everyone has a reason for loving poetry
In a way, it's not much different for me
Poetry has always been a way to connect
To my own little world, and everything in it
It's a lovey day to meditate,
To center yourself in an abstract way,
Forget your situation,
to stimulate wu wei.
With a beating heart and adrenaline rushI created art, my pencil -my brushWith every beat, pattern, and measureI found a connection and it gave me pleasureLoving it dearly like a friend,
I learned sign language just for you.
You didn’t understand the silence of my hands
Because your ears worked just fine.
But when you watched the way my body moved,
Who was I before I was attacked?
I was a nice guy who looked on the bright side of things.
Never saw nothing wrong with the world.
Till one day I saw a guy beating some other guy
I stepped in
I am not a poet
I am just poetic,
every scribbled letter from an aching hand,
every smudge of blue ink on a crinkled page
is remembrance,
experiences of metrical saddness
and symbolism of my existence
