I'm old, I tell them,

Older than you.

I tell them I'm old,

I'm full-grown.

I've seen many days,

Lived many years.

I've been many places,

I'm full-grown.

One Word

Can make the difference.

Guilty? or Not?

It doesn’t matter what I think.

It only matters what the jury believes.

I am nothing but a name in a story.

I wish more things were black.

Watch the depression stack

Bury the emotion in a deep sack

Take all the hate and give it back

The whip of remorse has a thundering crack

I wish more things were black.

Look at her,

I look at myself.

I see him,

I see myself.

I find what I want...

It’s not an option.

Mother is marrying Big Joe.

Why she decided to, I do not know.

Doesn’t she know,

She is betraying Father?

Doesn’t she know I don’t want to be a daughter,

To anyone but Father?

Hey! You see that

girl? Yeah right over

there. Yes the                                pretty

Music Will Play

People Will Cry

But Big Joe

Didn’t Die

When I give, I don’t think of me

But still I’m known for my generosity

I just gotta give.

One gift for your apartment’s rent

One gift for the woman whose cash is spent

One gift, this I believe,

One gift is all you need.

What makes me me,

Is the way I see things.

The happiness it brings,

That tells others what I see.

The coffin wood grabs at my clothes

The wood chokes me

The darkness attacks me

The weariness crawls around me

When it opens the sun grabs me

I am back

This man is rueful,

This man was done,

This man let go, temptation had won.

This man was punished, for things of great crime,

This man left a sod to eat on a dime.

This man, crushed and torn,

This man was tired and worn.

A gun’s cause’s harm

To the innocent

And gives fairness to the verdict

It’s not really the gun but,

The soul behind the gun

Reading. Books. Even if the two are generally frowned

upon in our day and age, they shouldn’t be. Books are

the things that raised our nation. John Adams, Thomas

Jefferson, John Hancock, and countless others used books, or

My eyes have seen,

My ears have heard,

The special beauty,

Of a kind world.

Those who do,

And those who do not,

They have shaped,

What it is I have got.

So much stress is on my mind,

she’s your daughter just as much as she is mine.

I brush her hair and iron her sweater,

when the winter brings such unfriendly weather.

You might say your work is rough,

I met a woman

Old as dirt

Yet nice as the morning sun,

Living where some considered

The worst part of town

Yet somehow

She finds time

To knit me a sweater

Of dark green string

Straight from the soul

My job is so exhausting,

I don’t have time for parenting!

Maybe my wife should try fighting crime,

and I can stay home all day wasting time.

All she does is cook and shop and clean,

I don’t understand how it’s difficult to do those things.

Walking up and down every street,

Every day – thump, thump, thump

Go my boots.

Walking past the park

Every day – thump, thump, thump

Goes the wino’s stereo.

I messed up with my life

Now I get held with a knife

I am out here trying to survive

I’m glad I’m still alive

I sit in JDC

Thinking how my life is going to be

My dad told me I would be aborted

To my mom I was important

They say they help,

They ain’t no good.

Ask for food,

Barely get kelp.

I wish I could just be

F r e e

Eating my thoughts,

Twisting my mind,

Her shadow passes through,

My words I can’t find.

She looks to me, waiting,

Her eyes pierce my heart,

I know what is coming,

I can’t let it start.

The days are piling up,

But I can’t move,

So little motivation,

Yet so much to prove.

I don’t want to be here,

But don’t know how to get away,

My only escape,

Is the game that I play.

Screams thickened the air,

A scene taken from a nightmare,

Flames licked through the dry grass,

Tribe members pounded the ground, fleeing,

Rifles blasting, the sound deafening,

I hid in my hut,

Peering through the window,

Though once you might have thought

To cast away conformity,

“We must go along with the majority.”

Are the words you’ve just wrought

And now I finally realize

The clanging bells of hypocrisy

Have been tolling with the fluency

I used to rely on compliments

But now I strive off them

I used to keep my chin up

But now I cry non-stop

I used to follow my sister

But now I lead us deeper in the dark

I used to try to be myself

But now it’s no use trying

words fill the pages

the pages fill the void

void an existence

and her head is filled with these words

not knowing their meaning

she writes but the words lose reason

she writes and the words are empty

How could reading be an option?

It definitely could not.

I think of all the books I've read

that will not easily be forgot.

Books

everywhere,

open one

and hear the sounds of

a market in Cairo.

Open one

and smell the crisp air

of the mountains.

Open one

and see the torrential rain in London.

Open one

Pencil joins with paper.

At once, a

pattern of words

begins to flow

and spread

about the page

stories of another world

of creatures

unknown to man

of sports played

on the moon alone

Crack the spine loudly.

Savor the pages fragrance

Consume the content.



Turn the pages slowly.

Continue reading aloud.

Voice calls me away.



Return to the book.

Curling up to read again