You ever get that feeling?
Those times when you try to breath
and you have trouble,
as if something is weighing you down?
As if that person is throwing dirt
on your chest hoping you'll never make a sound?
Do you ever have
have
h-have trouble speaking?
Feel your bones creaking with the effort
it takes to not fight back?
With all the talent we have
and all the things they want,
we lack.
I've got a book stack
for every pretender
that has ever tried to make my life
look like a double-ender
with two ends and no beginning,
find myself grinning along with them sometimes
because ****...
they got me so worked up over nothing.
I'm still on the street corner of the
path to the future
and I'm huffing dreams
because nothing will ever be as it seems,
but it seems that the moon beams
fall upon my body writhing between the blankets
trying to convince myself
to have a sleep untroubled by anger.
Nothing is what is bothering me.
**Nothing is bothering me.

You think you know
You think you see
The half truths you're collecting

I want to be
I want to own
The image I'm projecting

Another side
Another face
Not quite what you're expecting

I keep my problem
on a leash, next to me at all times
and named him "Jim".
For too slim are the chances
to make more, the last moment dances,
the moonlit fancies.
Despite each and every one of my flaws,
I still manage to drop rhymes
like I drop jaws.
I've had problems, but now the claws
are out
and I can scream, yell and shout
as loud as I can
but the noise will not even register
above the applause.

I'm breaking all the laws
that I have set for myself.
It's always been easier to throw it out
than fix it.
Life is like a drink,
the way that I mix it
and I've seen people kick back
fly through life on a crash course
but I don't need to try it
because it isn't really living
if you do it on auto-pilot.

I won't try to deny a thing,
I've got problems,
but they aren't all I have.
I nav-igate
through a world of hate
and it's always swim or sink
and suffocate.
I've got issues,
but in the face of all those who said
I was "not that great",
They'll have a date with a leg brace
before I let them make me believe it.

For me
it will always be,
simply,
**prose before hoes

When I asked you to fix me,
You told me I wasn't broken.
But, let this soak in.
I just wanted to know,
If i was still a pretty enough picture to be worth, agonizing over a puzzle.
Even when it's a struggle.
And you have to nuzzle each piece into place,
Kissing the pieces bent out of shape,
Searching for pieces gone missing,
But you can't make a raisin back into a grape.
Yes, I Remember your middle name
And who says we can't celebrate failure?
Don't be sad, we tried, we tried.
When you write your story in the sand it washes away with the tide.
It isn't our fault.
We may have cut ourselves open, But we didn't ask for the salt in our
wounds
Can I still say "we"?
I guess you're kind of done with me.
I don't blame you, Puzzles are frustrating.
they're a tease.
Please, tell me I haven't lost the most important piece.
Tell me I haven't lost
you.

© copyrighted Nicole Ann Osborn

I stare into the face of GOD.
****. He's real.