Have Hope

Have hope. The world is not a terrible place.

Have hope. There are pieces of goodness in every face

Though it seems to be spiraling 

And everything's gone wrong

People are still trying

We're learning to be strong

Have hope in humanity, faith in the free

Have hope that we can become who we want to be

The news may be darkness day after day

But if you look, you'll see that's not the way

Things really are- that people are trying

To get better, to live stronger, to stop lying and crying 

Have hope in your family and your friends

Have hope in love that never truly ends

We're  accepting differences, in the open for once

It's inevitable that some will act like a dunce

These are first tries for many, new  experiences for all

Of course some few will slip up and fall

Have hope that they're learning, trying their best

Have hope that some people are not like the rest

Have hope. 

Song Lyrics and Pantoums: There Is No Superman

In Creative Writing, we were asked to take lyrics from our favorite songs and to combine them into a meter poem. I chose to do a pantoum. This is two different favorites of mine, "This Is The Story Of A Girl" and "Waiting For Superman." I like it a lot, but I can't take credit for the awesome lyrics I had to work with!

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned her world
She looked so sad in photographs
But I love her when she smiles

She cried a river and drowned her world
She's waiting for Superman to pick her up
She doesn't know I love it when she smiles
She'll smile in his arms someday

She's waiting for Superman to pick her up
An imagined mythical perfect man
She'll smile in his arms someday
I'll watch him take my light away

There's no imagined mythical perfect man
She settles with someone who only pretended
I watch him take my light away
One abuse at a time

She settled for someone who only pretended
And he tore away her shining smile
One abuse at a time
But I know she can find it again someday

That man tore away her shining smile
And hurt her until the day she finally ran
I know she'll find her smile someday
Maybe she'll run back to me

He hurt her until the day she finally ran
Now she's gone, searching for her happiness
Maybe someday she'll come back to me
And I'll see her smile again

She's long gone, searching for her happiness
She used to look so sad in photographs
Now she glows once more
This is the story of a girl

For Valentine's Day

I'm standing here with my heart in my hands
Desperately reaching for you
I'm pleading and falling and see how I land
I lay crumpled, just one, and not two
Because desperation never works out
In matters of love and the heart
It's too needy, too ready to shout
And often over before it can start
But what if it's more than just the weakness inside
That's saying that we could be something
What if there's a reason for "you and I"
To have a chance to be more than a wondering?
Can desperation be silenced to find
The voice of one greater above?
Who placed us here, in this place, at this time
So we could find someone to love?

Even these wide eyes can see that it's hard

And that we'll each have to play certain parts

But it would be worth it, I think as I fall

To have the chance to join these two hearts

Ramble

I will epistolize this feeling, defenestrate my meaning

And send a paper airplane wending towards the sky

Your name is the only one I wish to hear today

TBT: Bent But Not Broken

Take all the poetry
Take all my time
You take what's yours
I used to think it was mine
Take what is left of me
Broken and scarred
Take it and fix it
This wild card
Take all the pieces
I've scattered on the ground
And make something beautiful
You can do that, I've found
Can you make me more worth it?
Less awkward and strange?
Stronger and sweeter
So the others don't run away?
(They don't think they will now
But they always do one day)
Lord, make me eternal
And gentle and kind
Let me be a mother
I'll do my best, you'll find
Just don't leave me stranded
Broken and bent
Don't leave me out here
Hung over a fence

A Short Poem About College Life

need sleep
want sleep
don't have sleep

need time
want time
don't have time

for you (oil spills)

I'll paint a portrait of love and loss, memories and oil spills
Coarse beach sand between my toes, a heart like an ocean
The clouds rolled in and I exulted - rain! rain at last!
But when they opened, rain was not what descended
I thought you were pure water, but I was wrong
The black liquid of you pouring across bright memories
Your glutinous solution sunk deep, discolored what was pure
A dark stain across my waves that previously gleamed
You killed my wildlife- my dreaming birds and darting fishes
They died, and the corpses washed ashore to rest at my feet
Soft feathers coated with slick, and scales that do not shine
To clean you up- it took great effort and much expense
I purified my ocean of you, but part of you remains
Bits of black dissolved into the expanse of salted sea
The memories I cannot forget
You were an oil spill that disguised itself as rain
The ocean waves roll, and though I am clean,
The water still remembers you

Love

Your palm is warm against mine, and your fingers keep mine from freezing

When I shiver suddenly in a breeze that's filled with snow

Residual warmth and weight- your coat- rests on my shoulders

Swing the door open, and it jingles, allowing the sounds of dinner to escape

You pull out my chair- my knees slip beneath a scarlet cloth

Later, we will skid and slide home on a brand-new white carpet

Then on a couch- green like your eyes and soft like your heart-

Your embrace will tighten around me. I will rest my head against your shoulder

Warmth is no longer confined to touching palms

We are two birds, resting beneath our wings for the winter

The warmth and glow from the fireplace illuminate us

It will guard us as heavy eyes slip down-down-down

Until dawn peeks through the window to rouse us

In case you're interested....this poem came from an assignment in Creative Writing. We were asked to describe ideas and words using sensory details.

Swimming

I remember the day when I first discovered
That allowing breath free from tightened lungs
Makes it possible to sink far below the surface

The world turned azure, and sounds muffled
Hearing is not so important anymore. I focus on
Roughness, the floor pressed against bare knees

My breath is gone, so it's but a moment, yet such stillness
A maze of legs, a labyrinth shifting every second. Bubbles like fog
Obscure sight, and navigation is impossible, but why move?

I am made of loose muscles and drifting limbs
In this moment, with chlorine on my tongue, that taste- to me
It means freedom. My mind drifts endlessly with the water

This instant is frantically still

And a moment later, bursting free of the water's claim
Breath returning to tighten empty lungs, and perhaps being tight
The tenseness, and emotion, is a part of being truly human

Broken And Used

What do you do when you just feel used
Tired and broken, bent and bruised
What do you do when you can't get up again
When it's all hard and it's all pain
What do you do when you're falling apart
What is to be done with a worn out heart
What do you do when there's work to be done
And helping others, and staying up til the sun
What do you do when the burden weighs too much
When you're limping and stumbling without a crutch
What do you do when to be heard is a must
Yet as for ears to hear, there's no one to trust
What do you do when you need to be told it's okay
That the stress doesn't matter and tomorrow's another day
What do you do when you need to be held
When you're weeping and crying and you already fell
You don't need to be picked up, helped, or caught
Just need a friend who will stay, empathetic without a thought
What do you do when you just feel used
Tired and broken, bent and bruised.

Courage/To Run Or Stay

sometimes the courage required to run
                                                              takes more strength
than what it takes to stay

and sometimes the words on the tip
                                                          of your tongue
are just the wrong words to say


occasionally a sailing ship
                                            will run aground
on a reef or jutting rocks

and for each of those run aground
                                                       there is another
that never left the docks


sometimes the fear of leaving
                                                so big it consumes all
is so much worse than to remain

but every time staying because
                                                  you're terrified of loss
is worse than to stay with the pain


sometimes to go is harder than to stay
                                                               to not leave it behind
and that is when you truly know

if you stay when it's easier to leave
                                                         and barely can leave
when it's easier to go

then you may have found something worth fighting for

Exam Week and Juliet

O finals, finals, wherefore art thou finals?
Deny professors and refuse thy grade
Or if thou wilt not be thus sworn, my foe
Then I'll no longer be here a student
'Tis but thy subject that is my enemy:
Thou art necessary, though not straightforward
What's final exams? It is nor heart nor soul,
Nor emotion, nor any other part
Belonging to humans. O be some other thing!
What's in a final? That which we call a class
By itself alone would suffice just as well;
So tests would, were they not finals call'd,
Retain that lack of terror that doth beset
At finals week. Exams, doff thy name
and thy being, for thy grade of me
Take classtime instead

Existential College Hamlet

To read or not to read, that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous review
Or to take arms against a sea of tests
And by opposing fail them. To die- to sleep
No more; and by sleep to say we end
The study and the many failed GEs
That student is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Never to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream-aye, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this student's burden,
Must give us pause-there's the respect
That makes calamity of so much stress
For who would bear the whips and scorns of grades
Th'professor's wrong, the proud peer's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd hope, our own delay
The insolence of students, and the spurns
With patient merit th'procrastinator takes
When he himself might well his grades have made
With a new pencil? Who would backpacks bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the longed-for time after finals
The undiscovered country, from which break
He must one day return, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear these ills we have
Than leave them for marks we all know of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is covered o'er with the grand weight of books
And reviewing with great notes and effort
With this regard, "fail" grades do turn awry
And lose the name of action

Confusion and Being Human

I am confused by people in the best and worst sort of way
I am confused when they disappear for many a day after day
And I am confused by their friendship sometimes; why do they want to be
Friends with someone so confused and absolutely baffled as me?
I'm confused by birthdays, whether we all forget or remember
I am confused by what to do the entire month of December
The bafflement that follows a single kindly deed
The sadness that follows when I don't know what they need
I am confused by people, in a new manner every day
And the best part is I wouldn't want it any other way

Freckles And The Universe

If I think freckles are like stars
Does that make my skin the sky?
And all the cells, the bones and veins
Are their own universe
Connect these stars to make constellations
And maybe in these pictures
I can finally see my soul

Typewriter Poem

Okay, storytime. I really love typewriter poems- I look them up all the time. Mostly on Pinterest. And today I wrote this one. It's not the best, definitely not up to par with the ones that I like the most, but I think it's nice.  This one happened when I was looking through old pictures on my phone and found one from tech theatre, where we'd had to do age makeup (that was a great class). It inspired this poem. Storytime over. The end. :)

Blue

today the city haze is blue
like my heart; the shade is true
clear as the sky cloudless above
but darker, my heart, with love

blue is the color of love i believe
as wide as the sky as far as we see
friends and family herein abound
in a sea of love. can you hear the sound?

waves roll in and out like the tide
but this sea is entirely inside
of a heart not mine, i am for sure
a resident of this sea azure

we all have a sea within our soul
and a tide only rarely within our control
it's blue like skies and the city haze
and here is where i'll spend all of my days


















PAD Day 31

Beneath The Gilded Mask

There is a gilded mask worn only over saddened eyes

A mask with one sole purpose: its owner to disguise

Gold and shaped to appear like wings outstretched in flight

To hide the face of a person deep within a darkened night

Feathers splayed out from a shadowed and hollow expression

Hidden deep within, a soul left with only one possession

A heart that may refuse to beat for a moment longer than it must

A mind so bruised it can no longer see why it ever desired to trust

They don the gilded mask in quiet moments of despair

A mask meant only to conceal the anguish that is truly there

But it is not solely anguish that the gilded mask can eclipse

It ensconces offense and hate, and angry words behind tight lips

Veiled fury and cold hearts too can the gold mask stifle

But the mask when worn too long becomes but a simple trifle

A thinning shroud no longer able to conceal the corpse beneath

'Til it is shown, a rictus grin, bare bones and rotting teeth

Emotions in full view of the world, greeted by disgust and fear

Though safety and love is all they desire, they cannot find it here

Skeletons run from the closet to the crypt where none shall ever expose

Everything they attempted to bury, their fears and griefs and woes

There is a flimsy gilded mask worn over saddened eyes

A mask with one sole purpose: its owner to disguise

Just A Minute More

steps lightly prancing
above the ground where we're confined
a jump, a hop, and we have a skip
skipping is light and fleeting
the steps are young and freeing

for when the world is heavy and dark

and our eyes see only pain

the memories that hurt us rushing in

resurrected from the grave where we buried them

the burden becomes too much to bear

a small light step

perhaps a twirl, and our movement

becomes like dancing

light like flight and full of happiness

that pushes the dark away

it may be temporary, for only a minute more

long enough to find a place where we can be alone

but that's enough 

to be composed another moment

and then they never see

a golden mask we wear

designed for a bird in flight

the mask we wear to hide the dark

to light our path a little more

a skip, a hop, and we can smile again

look for the skip and know

that is the moment when the heaviest weights

are born on weary backs

and they must hold it

just a minute more

Toward The Center

A Big Bang, you say. Created the universe, you say

But what is at the center of creation?

Expanding, you say. Moving away, you say

Existence grows ever larger

A grand cosmic balloon, growing at inconceivable rates

The center of creation ever distancing

Galaxies and stars flying away from where once they were housed

Pushing spacetime to new limits every passing moment

I ask again, what is at the center of creation?

What is the origin of all this wonder?

Something so large it could only be made of light

A God's world, in the middle of it all

Pictured in a mind, a God standing, hands upraised

Thrusting out new beings, elements, and light

Proceeding forth to stretch what once was into something new

A God is expanding our cosmic balloon

A Big Bang, you say. Created the universe, you say.

But what is at the center of creation?

Expanding, you say. Moving away, you say

But who caused the Bang?