WE THE PEOPLE

Will Gladly Kill Each Other To Remain

              WE THE PEOPLE

 

They're not attractive you may say

But they tell a story from your every day

Wrinkles from time, emotions intertwined

They define your story line

Each is special in its own way

There are etchings where ecstasy once laid

However, tears leave tracks

And stress leaves worry cracks

I remember in December

I finally became slender

But I was called a pretender

I sadly had no defenders

I cried every night

Staying hopeful with all my might

How I wished someone could save me

Yet I was brought back to reality

There's only one savior; that's me

Even though insults sting like a bee

I stayed true to myself and agreed

I am the cure and the key

And, oh, how much my wrinkles went though

It marked the mysteries of my life like a tatoo

Who knew?

It makes you, you.

The sun shines on the flowers who thrive

Their faces pointed toward the great orb, growing strong and beautiful

Smiling flower faces

And bees swarm spreading a variety of pollen and enjoying the sweet honey it gives

On the other side of the sun are the flowers who grow weak and twisted

Shadows cast on their decay

Barely getting enough light to survive

They will fall behind never befriending the butterflies, but instead attracting the worms and maggots

And then there are the weeds that will grow up through the slum

They will use corruption from the forest floor

And do their best to spread and strangle the flowers that face the sun

Can you blame them?

It is that or nothing, but ugly just the same

Have you ever tasted the sweet reward of honey?

Or have you fallen with worms in your ears, slowly decaying?

It is your decision to make

May the sun shine on your face

 

Shirts

 

There once was a girl with a million shirts:

shirts with people that dance in skirts,

a shirt with a blue owl, a shirt showing a luau,

shirts with trees and you’s and me’s

and shirts with stars and shirts with cars,

shirts about games, shirts about rain,

shirts with tramps and lamps and stamps,

shirts with monkeys that cha-cha dance.

But all she’s missing is…

                                     … one pair of pants.  

The beholder of secrets

The teller of truths

The wisest of the wise

It walks right through

 

It has danced on the wind

Been part of the chase

Skipped alongside many lives

With no haste

 

It has seen bloodbaths

You could never imagine

And bubbly moments

Softer than fabric

 

It has seen the wilds

The fierce and unrestricted

It has seen the docile

The quiet and conflicted  

 

It has passed many ages

This it has and forever will

For time is the only mystery

That life cannot entirely fulfill

Rain pelted down on her face,

With no utter sympathy for her troubles,

And though yet indeed,

She was not afraid.

A harsh gust of wind only pushed her back further,

But she was not afraid.

Her mother and father said she couldn’t,

Her friends said she couldn’t,

Her teachers said she couldn’t,

Yet she is not afraid.

The world seemed to tell her she wasn’t strong enough,

Her real mother,

Her stepmother,

Her uncle,

But nothing will stop her.

She will never give up.

She is not afraid.

friction is lost,

the skating rink

he never

asked

 

for

flooring the brake,

all he can do now

is to

hope

 

for

the girl

to stop.

ring ring

pause

 

for.

 

i) a trade. of sorts.

 

mother is calling

her voice cracking with

a tone that shatters me

 

ii) it can wait.

 

too cold

fingers freezing

cannot answer

sans gloves

 

iii) a wish.

 

he wishes he lived

in Monterey

 

she wishes she had

made her

own coffee

brown is a lovely color,

of chocolate and beaches

but i do not like it on my skin

for i am judged and stripped of respect-

because of it:

i wish it would go away-

 

purple is a lovely color,

of lavender and grapes

but i do not like it on my skin

for it stains me and leaves in pain instead-

because of it:

i wish it would go away--

 

red is a lovely color,

of apples and poppies

but i do not like it on me

for it trickles away from the cu/ts and scars-

because of it:

i wish it would go away---

 

white is a lovely color,

of clouds and doves

but i do not like it on me

for it su ffo ca tes and (surrounds) m e -

because of it:

i wish it would go away----

 

but it doesn’t””

because its all i see now

 

and i realize

white is all the colors in one

when gabi hands him a doughnut

and another student says,

“sounds puritanical.”

 

no sugar

no carbs

sauces with no oil

 

“you know

at the end of summer

you need to

tighten things up”

he says.

 

sounds puritanical.

 

fear and self control

play well together

with guilt.

 

last year

we read scarlet letter

and the crucible

i shaved myself down

thin enough

to hide between pages

 

shame colonized

everywhere

 

i hollowed out.

 

my final project

critiqued the romanticizing

of female pain.

 

men made a fetish of

beautiful female death

only loved wan flesh

sick women

 

if there’s one thing

i’ve learned from the history

of this country

it’s hypocrisy.

 

we build a world

on things we can’t do.

i tell myself

i am fine.

 

don’t i mean better?

 

mean

my body

is stronger than

two hundred years

of romanticizing

everything not alive?

 

don’t i mean

i don’t wait for god to save me?

 

that

i don’t flinch

when mr. ashley doles out

self deprecation like

gabi doles out doughnuts?

 

my country hasn’t

recovered either.

 

my country still only

wants to hollow out.

 

still only

sees women

as candy wrapper

like lick out the sugar

and throw away the rest

 

my country

blesses men

who know witchery

but accuses women

for living.

 

dr. Ford death-threat forced to move,  

while her assaulter moves to the supreme court.

 

trump calls accusations against him

“the greatest witch hunt in american history.”

 

what about salem?

what about anita hill?

what about social media comments that turn my friends’ Instagram accounts into public humiliation,

stocks,

pillory.

 

last year

i played betty parris

in the crucible

 

my brother

said i looked twelve

and i took it

as a compliment

 

wanted my body

to stay frozen

 

i sculpted myself

into someone

hawthorne could write about.

 

i’d like to say

history doesn’t repeat itself

 

but style magazine ads

show women drowning

under the weight

of their necklaces.

 

i’d like to say i make it across the ocean.

that I find land without taking away.

i’d like to say

i don’t spin

in a whirlpool of regret after dinner.

don’t feel like I’m navigating a hurricane

waking down the pioneer hallway.

 

i’d like to say

i have hop-across-the-ocean faith

 

let my body

believe in flesh

let me believe

in myself

 

every day

i make room

for this living

 

every day

i make my body

a new home.

 

Everything is hopeless, my friend tells me.

She can’t see beyond how useless we seem to be, she says

because we’re insignificant and small and hardly here at all, how,

she asks, can she care about homework when are barely here and

nothing will ever be fair and how the hell are we supposed to care about a world

that may as well be dripping in blood red?

 

I wish I could tell her I get it, but

I’m not her and I will never be her and

she sees the world in a way that makes her sure of this

and so maybe,

I don’t get it.

 

but even if I did, I don’t know what I would say,

because how could I claim that things are ok when there’s more to be scared of every day,

when locking school doors isn’t enough anymore

and, maybe it wasn’t before, but right now,

it feels like the world is falling apart underneath our feet?

 

It’s the next day,

and the morning newspaper’s words spill off the paper

and cover the kitchen counter in grey,

spill into my cereal

and I imagine I can feel them stripping the teal out of my hair.

 

At lunch, another girl,

not the one who said she was hopeless, but someone who may as well have,

asks what the point is, of trying to focus,

sitting in class

after class

hoping no one will notice

that you just don’t care about the bonus question,

stuck inside listening to the prognosis of college, and future,

and what happens after,

when the future seems no better than the present?

 

I look for the right thing to say,

want to find words that won’t spill out of my mouth in more grey, but

my sentences drip from teeth and pool at the ground at my feet,

run down my boots until they cover the color in her shoes,

and so instead of trying to speak again,

I reach for the pink glitter pen in my backpack,

tell her when she feels like she can’t spend anymore time

in this colorlessness,

x’s and y’s can stain a sheet of math homework grey,

but no one can stop you from filling the rest with ridiculous glittery pink.

 

In history class,

our notes are smeared from writing too fast,

and the teacher is talking about the past

and perhaps

we just want to pass the next test but

we listen, too,

to the words that fall from her mouth onto our paper,

about people who are long dead

and so many lives will go unsaid and unmentioned

but the ones she tells us about stain our notebooks bloody red because

American history is sometimes just a three hundred year story of how awful people can be.

 

But I sit there,

and I think of hopelessness and pointlessness

and grey dripping from my shoes and red covering the news and

we’re surrounded by a world that’s losing color by the day and

I suppose I don’t know how to get rid of the grey, but,

I do my chemistry homework in purple pen;

my math homework in gold glitter

and maybe the grey will never be gone.

maybe the red is too strong to ever get rid of,

but, maybe, we don’t need to.

Because the ink from my gold glitter pen washes out of nothing,

so maybe

when the grey finally fades,

something else will stay.

Maybe one day, the words tumbling out of my mouth will fill the air with gold.