Please don't get me wrong.
I appreciate what you are trying to do,
but you don't send salt and pepper to a starving nation.
I've been dealing with assault of the mind
and inflammation of the soul
in a way no whole-wheat diet or
heartburn medication could ever fix.
I've got all these little tips
and all these little tricks
for how to fold anger up like an origami crane
until it looks somewhat like a punchline.
The flaw in the design of this art
is that no matter how many were made
they couldn't cure Sadako's leukemia.

Perhaps it's an ongoing theme in my work
to shirk all these lies I've been told.
To mold the past into a weapon
to harpoon the future with like a humpback whale.
But I've watched razors sail
across the surface of my skin like a hundred tiny boats
and while I'm making my way in this sink-or-float Earth,
I still have the spirituality
to make a penny feel like more than what it's worth.

I can't make your life having meaning.
I can't give you the feeling you get
on that 999th paper crane,
but I spend my whole life trying to catch
thunder in a wine bottle.
It's just a noise,
and it exists only ringing in the ears
of frightened children
and bringing the tears of overjoyed children
in Africa.

I'd like to believe that we could all just move on,
that we could find a future past this discord.
If you don't bother to try and fight
and flee into the cloudless night,
you'll be paying in a way you can not afford.

I'd like to believe that we could just forget,
let the past fade away like a washed off stain
but you have to turn and face your fear
and fight or die with a mind that's clear,
or let the past be your ball and chain.

I've been walking a tightrope through the world
but somehow the line has curled
and bent.
And I've spent the better part of my dreamscape
trying to find a cape to pin to my shoulder
use boulders as my paperweights
to stop these thousands of pages
opening up the floodgates.

I will never know how you managed that.
To pull a relationship out of a magicians hat
and say "Abracadabra!"
shortly before saying "Goodbye."
I ask myself this question as if I don't already know why.
Because we reap what we sow in this life
and the undertow that drags us down back to Earth
when we reach for the skies
is only gravity trying to remind us...
...

We were never meant to be Daedlus
because in being a genius
you run the risk of flying just a little
to close to the sun.
And you know you've won the human race
when you can no longer look into the face
of the ones you love.

But reach for the sky anyway.
As if you're being held up by the gunslinger
that we like to call 'Confidence'.
Reinvent bravery
and fall towards Earth when you're done.
Less like a shot down plane,
more like a fallen angel.
We'll all get to wear our halos eventually.

"oh my God, I had An awesome day, my boyfriend is so wonderful, and so sappy.
Don't worry, I'll find someone for you.
It's your turn to be
happy"*


Well, I'm glad your day inspired awe,
And that your boyfriend is so full of wonder.
But, don't speak like I'm below you.
It's not you I'm under.
What will you do on your life's brightest day?
what words will you have left to say,
When you already wasted
"Wonderful"
on some sappy boy you hardly know. And
Awesome
On this ****** day.
Then, had the audacity to say it's my turn to be happy.
Like I drew the "skip a turn" card one too many times.
Like this is monopoly.
But, Love's not a Game.
And Happy Isn't a name.
There's not Boy or Girl named Happy, ready to show me something new.
I don't know, maybe this is news to you.
But I'm happy all alone.
Maybe even happier on my own.
Happy has no face, It's not a name or thing or place.
I'ts a word.
not a name, Just a word.
with definition.
yeah , That's the situation. There's power in the things you say,
anyway, Sorry if I ruined your "Awesome" day.

© copyrighted Nicole Ann Osborn

Perhaps.

Perhaps when you lay in the most bitter of agony,
when suffering is laced in every fiber of your skin,
When the hangman's noose begins to fray
and your broken body on cold cobblestone lay,
perhaps then I could even try to begin.

Perhaps when you have felt as you have made me feel,
taste damnation as it was inflicted by your very own hands,
when through penance and pain I have made you see,
through brotherhood if not through empathy,
perhaps I'll quail when a blow most brutal lands.

Perhaps when your mind is in bitter fragments,
when your crops are burnt and no cattle does live,
maybe through some amusing twist of fate
despite the fact it will have been much too late,
I'll find it in my broken heart to, in time, forgive.