i wish i could wow you with a brushstroke

it only takes a quick glance to admire the skill of the artist

you'll be lucky to ever get a second glance

it's not enough to interpret my words

a painting can be enjoyed without understanding the meaning

but a poem?

you'll never know if you're skilled

or just another voice in the cacophony

and no one will tell you

because no one will read them.

your pages collect dust

it settles inside your skull.

you gave up.

260 saturdays. 1821 days from 13 to 18. Less days of adulterated freedom than digits in the second number of my prescription. The cynical, the realists, stiff. Raised by the weak, the erroneous, the facitious, the blind. I am blind only in the eyes of the law, but still I see the effects of the change that you won’t acknowledge--that you caused. Those who insulted the young who will not live to regret throwing you from your throne into a wheelchair. Who will watch as you cry for the handicap parking spaces you parked in years ago. Who will watch the executioner make the rounds through the nursing home. Those who ignored evolution, not understanding that it doesn’t move backwards, calling for us to join them in debt. Debt looks pretty on paper, but blue hair will condemn you.

We judge celebrity gowns as we sleep on dirty mattresses, waiting for our eviction notices.

Fortune favors the bold

Well, the rich

And I suppose the lower class

The pivot point of two ends

The working class,

Just rich enough to make it

Just poor enough to starve

I suppose, maybe im jealous

But yet, it would strip me of my identity

Without the world to beat me to a pulp,

I wouldn’t have enough bruises to blend in

Things aren’t the same anymore, but I’ll blame it on growing up.

Your quiet smiles always meant more than my raucous laughter.

Maybe I’m just jealous of your talent.

I aced the tests, but you learned the content.

Because when everything falls away, transcripts don’t matter.

After September, I’m not so sure anything I do matters.

Because when it’s quiet, I’ll fall down the hill, marked with the dead end sign.

If you were there, you would’ve known what to say.

But I’m afraid it would’ve broken you too.

You’ve always been fragile, so I take the blows of my own fist for you.

Then I’d sit in the back of the room with a black eye and catch myself smiling, and I’d have to remind myself I’m still mad at you.

Your silence is like a void that shatters the walls I meticulously build.

It screams into my muddled thoughts, clearer than the rest.

I avert my eyes from you to muffle the noise.

We’re like two identical magnets that fight to stay away.

But I’m your radioactive isotope; our lifespans are staccato.

Short and violent, they scare the audience, but are quickly forgotten when the legato melody floats in.

Still, I’d spend those seconds of time wishing I were you.

Through your eyes, there is only a blur.

You never got to see the beauty in life,

But never the atrocities.

I almost envied you,

Because at the end of the day,

You never had to face your opponent

Staring back in a mirror

There were infinite possibilities in murky skies, but only through your eyes

I speculate it will all go down in some knock off version of a dollar tree. Your drunk aunt hefts a man by his mullet because his slide sandals squack like a dying peacock every time he steps. Your edgy cousin with the newly shaved head is reclined in the middle of the candy isle. Which wouldn't be bad if he wasn't asleep on the cardboard Santa display with a good three boxes of worthless hard candy stuck to his face. Your dad licked them and stuck them onto his face because he needs to redeem himself again after he convinced your cousin that singing to the ground will make the worms come to the surface. Your grandma just threw a twelve year old into the corner of the metal isle. She isn't impaired in any way, she's just angry because the drunk aunt's kid threw up on her paisly wallpaper again. Not only that, but now the trim is stained.

(This is satire, obviously.)

What's a thespian, landlord, connoisseur, and noble's favorite kind of tea?

-

-

-

-

-

-

Property

Spirit woman

Lacking in title

Stemmed from family

Missing at her own hands

Fear

names her

Fausta

they call her

She sold her soul,

they cry as the moon lights up silver

A spear

Ironic that she resembled what created her

selfishness of war

Stole her family

stole her body

ravaged her soul

The green of baba yaga’s forest

Like the spirit of the boy

dragging his torso across the verdant

staining the garden scarlet

The senator

cries with a final breath

to warn the neighbors

The green in his eyes

go out like a light

as the moon seeps in

blows out the roman torch

Fausta ran

east

neighbors north

She runs away from the brilliant green walls overtaken with dripping of scarlet

towers of ivory

A new cry

from the depths of the pit

where the waves crashed into the rock

Fausta hangs a silver leg off the edge

and she is falling

She isn’t human

she cannot die

She isn’t human

she’s already tried

Sand

under the metal plates

between her toes

covering a boy’s torso

his legs exposed

He couldn’t cover what was missing

He drags himself from the rocks,

green spirit boy

Fausta

Metal digits catch suspenders

Suspenders

useless without pants

that without legs

She carries him up the cliff

Cuts her human foot

She just got it back

Pain as foreign as the nerves she stood on

Sentenced for an eternity

until she learned her lesson

She has learned all but that

He needs new legs

She slips off the cliff once more

The silver remains of her leg

arm

face

Melds her own tragedy in silver

Creates a foundation for him

Seeing green in his eyes

Her leg is given back

They throw it into the ocean together

Builds an attic

the boy lives in the heart

Fausta thrives in the walls

in shelves of parchment she’s written

Together an arm is abandoned to the lapse of waves

The boy grows older

Fausta builds longer legs

Her punishment fulfills her

and she wonders

was it meant to be so

Finally

She gives her remains

The silver sends the boy to apprenticeship

They stand on the ledge

She passes on the memories

into his rough hands

Half of a silver mask falls

he throws it alone

She finally grows old

Memories shred her

Piece by piece she decomposes

in the arms of her family

roots of her house

The silver is transferred

He catches half a mask

Watches

Fausta crumbles faster than his eyes can see

and the boy holds nothing more than a limb of a willow tree

and a pile of silver

and Fausta is home

Mind growing dim from the throb of memorized dates.

I cannot feel,

but if you so desire

I’ll tell you the dates of the Byzantine empire.

Or, if you prefer,

I could bow at the door of the man in the suit,

my surrogate sire.

I strive entertain you with my absence of light

but when I pick up a pen to fight

double spaced,

twelve point,

times new roman

spills from the hole in my temple.

But at least

I haven’t forgotten to cite the source of my plight.

And I’ll die away somewhere.

But I will go down howling in spite of the night.

____

I’m sure this is not the type of sad you wanted, but it is all I have to offer