When did being alive become synonymous with being dead?
If your body is filled with empty words and silent actions
then who are you to say that you are living?

Every day is like the last
it seems as if all the best ideas come from the past
I try to reach across the divide
but all I get is empty static moving through time.

I prefer
the certainty
of separation
Than the
uncertainty
of 'almost'

Happy    

Someone ask me
Are you happy?
How do you answer
The undefinable ?
The journey from
Happiness to sadness and back
And all the living in-between
It's hard to describe the flow of life

Am I ?
Not all the time, sometimes
Being self absorbed, who knows
My children make me happy,
And anxious at the same time
Do they cancel each other out?
Does laughing at a joke count
Just who decides?

My past provides happy moments
As well as oh **** moments
And just living life moments

If Life is the night sky
All the stars are happiness
The rest is the fabric of life
Everyday life sprinkled with star light
Hidden by daylight but always there

Copyright 2016
Richard L.Ratliff

Keep your words close,
—but the silence closer

(Villanova Pennsylvania: May, 2016)

I hate that I find beauty as the world burns down around me
The leaves turn red, yellow, orange, dying
I sit there and watch them fall as I read my phone, contemplating how natural it is for them to die
Like clockwork, they break
Like clockwork, they turn

Splitter splatter, pitter patter,  rain dance my cares away
Pitter patter, splitter splatter, on this cold and lonely day

Doing your tap dancing on the crisp Fall leaves
In your rhythm all my worries are relieved

Slapping out the tune on the old evergreen
The most beautiful sound I have ever seen

Splitter splatter, beating on my windowpane
Trying to break my heavy mental chain

Pitter patter, rapidly tapping on the glass
Trying to warn me, of shadows yet to be cast

©Pauline Russell

I knew you were something else the moment you answered my question.

"What's your favorite color?"
You shrugged before replying with, "Whatever color the sky is."

From then on I couldn't help but stare at the sky every chance I had. When I was bored out of my mind at school, while listening to music in the car, or simply walking home.

I saw the fiery reds and oranges, the cotton candy purples and pinks, the brightest blues, and the softest pastels. I saw them all and I saw you too. I have never seen something so majestic yet simply beautiful. I have never come across something so awe-inspiring yet something so out of reach. I have never met someone so different, the good kind of different.

Everyday, I stare at the sky then look into your eyes and I see a tinge of sadness underneath the unending awe and undying love. I felt it all too. After all, we both loved something that was way beyond our reach.