Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

Our words have power. Our story is important. I think it's important to remember that, and I know people forget it sometimes (I certainly did), and some people don't believe it at all, but I believe that even if nobody is listening, even if there's no-one to tell your story to; it is still important.

Sometimes it's all we're left with and we have to cling to it with all our might. We're lucky enough to be main characters in a lot of other peoples stories and that's a hell of an achievement. We get the chance to influence other peoples stories,and they in turn influence even more peoples stories. Without us, everyone elses stories get shortened and there ends up being less variation in the story-telling world. If we don't add to the storytelling process then the whole world slows down.
Every single relationship we establish with someone gives them more of a story to tell. Even if you don't make a story of your own you're still a vessel for other peoples stories to travel through, and that's amazing in itself.

The tiniest detail can change everything - the memory of holding a hand, a snippet of information, recommending a favourite ice-cream, falling over in a hilarious manner - it travels through other peoples stories, and without you that story doesn't get told, or gets told at a later time by someone else, by which time the person you could've shared your story with has missed out on the chance to pass that story on to a whole host of other people. That changes the whole storytelling world. Every future chain of events in which you could have, but didn't, tell your story becomes different - there's less of a story, it's not as full as it could have been, and everyone, albeit unknowingly, suffers a little more for it.

Most of us aren't wise enough or powerful enough to be the true "wise man" that our speices name **** sapians implies, changing the world in a dramatic way in one fell swoop with a single action or in the course of our lifetime, but we're certainly capable of being pans narrans (story-telling apes) and injecting a bit more variety in the lives of others. I can't think of a better reason to exist other than mattering so much that the whole future of the world becomes less varied, and slightly less impressive, if we simply cease to be.

Every moment of joy, every moment of anger, rage, suffering, jealousy, euphoria and even numbness contributes to the stories we end up telling other people, even if we're not talking about those moments specifically. We learn from them, we change because of them, and the stories we tell evolve with each new experience.

You don't even need to write yourself, sooner or later, somewhere down the line, someone will write something that never would have been written if you had not existed, and their work will be all the more glorious for the stories you helped to pass on. You are literally part of a bunch of great works yet to be written. You are a poem. You are a play. You are the beginning, middle and end of several bestselling novels. You are the first sentence in a book that grabs a publishers attention and the last in one that spawns a whole franchise. You are important and without you the whole literary world loses a masterpiece that would make a whole bunch of people feel like they weren't alone in the universe. You are their comfort as they lie awake at night with nothing but a book, and the inspiration that causes a child to believe in themselves. I can't think of anything more important than your words, your thoughts and the story you have to tell, but I know that, without them, the world never becomes as glorious as it could have been.

I love you, I know that others love you as well, and I'm certain that a part of the love that people feel for you will travel throughout the stories they tell, eventually end up in a famous book, song, or an artists brushstrokes and cause someone else to love that piece of a story you helped create.

And then they'll pass it on...

I carry my backpack, and the addition thirty pounds of stress that goes along with it.
I carry an MP3 player, filled with 1500 songs that make more sense to me than any math lesson ever has.
I carry a necklace from the 1800's that no one in my family cares enough about to remember who it originally belonged to. We both carry the feeling of being passed along.
I carry a notebook with letters I'll never have the nerve to send. I carry a pen that's been through more with me than any of my friends.
I carry my scraped knees and a tendency to fall to the waste side.
I carry my father's temper like a hot coal in the pit of my stomach. I carry his high expectations and my mother's victim complex. All three of which are, apparently, hereditary.
I carry Chapstick, Neosporin, and band-aids. Because things crack, and things break, and some things tend to cut.
I carry the same mindset as an Oxford comma and a worry of being replaced. We both carry the feeling of not really mattering.
I carry my uncle's divorce, & the way we buried him only a year after the papers were signed. I carry the way his ex wife's grudge is stronger than her children's love for their family.
I carry the dream catcher my dad keeps in his room, the one I got rid of years ago when I realized nothing would keep my nightmares away.
I carry the time my hero had his heart broken and spent the next year at the bottom of a bottle.
I carry the headstone that marks the beginning of my abandonment issues.
I carry a .037 fl oz tube of eyeliner in the hopes that no one will mess with a girl who always looks like she has two black eyes.
I carry a pre-med major that will never make me as happy as it will make my parents. I carry my family's hopes on my back & the way I feel like an emergency room with no more room left for patients.
I carry my best friend's name like an obituary I never got to read. I carry the way his head hit his windshield faster than it ever hit my lap, and the way I've hated sitting in the driver's seat ever since. I carry the way I never want to be invited to another funeral & the way each body they've buried makes me feel like I'm already 6 feet under.
I carry the mattress I slept on as a child. Pink flowers & blue satin & cold sweats detergent couldn't fade. The one I spent an entire afternoon scrubbing bloodstains out of, hoping my mother wouldn't notice when she changed the sheets. She never did, or at least she never asked, and sometimes I still wish she had.
I carry how my friend thinks her high school boyfriend breaking up with her is the worst that could happen, and the way I hope she always does.

What do you do about someone who is speaking publicly of you?

...beneath the ill and secretly in the shadows there
are the parts that reveal truth of which no one knows...

what do you do about people who once mattered no longer mattering?...
what do you matter?, to those of you who chose to....
what do you do about them talking about you...
what do you do when all they do is lie of you...
what do you do when they no longer matter
what do you do when I no longer matter to you?

what do you do?
when you are pale blue...

What do YOU do when-
no one loves YOU!

Dust flowers up from the Chilton County dusk
Rust is flaking off the pickup that has a skunk musk

Bullet , the blue tick hound from your sleeve pulls it
Could it be another hot day in August , would it ?

Peaches have last month gone to fill the niches
Beaches at the river are low , full of leeches

Summertime in Alabama is a long ******
Funnier than that song , swing low number

Gathering distant dark blue clouds that are a mattering
Battering thunder rolling , lightning shattering

Huge drops splattering on clay so Rouge
Deluge now soaking , coming down like a luge

Passing with one loud Crack blasting
Massing clouds now are just in a fasting

The beaten path is hardest to go alone but it makes one stronger. One never wants to admit to oneself that misery is the predecessor to change, ushering it like the pilot ushers the plane down upon the runway.  This is a new destination you'd never have known. That is why we go up and then down, otherwise you wouldn't care for clouds. They'd be like stop signs posted on every street of every town you can't escape from. Don't you think whales like to take a dip in our atmosphere with the same exhilaration we dive down into their ocean? Marine life has it's trials, it all seems so buoyant and peacful, but its another jungle down there. Beautiful until you live it and predators lurk every corner and algae field. Everyone eating the next guy, if its your residence, it is no vacation. Its not so simple just cuz they've not got rent to pay and corrupt politics. Babies on the way while no financial burden make most species crazy. Try being a single mother just trying to keep your kids well enough hidden just to go off to find good eats for them. They have very emotional lives out there, full of pain and suffering. If whales could get drunk, mermaids would charge and set up breweries. But the ocean would dilute any profits, and two tons of blubber each would call demand too high and so whales throw themselves into our world just to escape. They could gulp the air so low key, surfacing like submarines, instead they splash mountains with their ferve, the same way we get down, tossing cares across dance floors. And we wonder why when  they take a breath, they reach for the sky, they just want to be free, where nothing of their world can touch them. And we wonder why when it's not enough, they just give up, just like us. Massive escapists desensitizing to the joys in the depths of their waters. We wonder why we find them so sad layed up on our beaches, you see it in their despondent eye. They just want to die in that memory of exhiliration. One. Last. Time. But they're not happy. Cuz they were always chasing a high that fleetingly springed them from all worry. They lay knowing its the last time and they wonder what's gonna become of them when its all over. They just figure what lays on the otherside, or even nothing has got to be better. Maybe they're right,  or maybe all the off kilter chemicals got the better of them. Full moons got them all emotional just like us, gravity pulling all their painful memories to the surface, pulling them up out of the ocean all hopeless. Shoot maybe some of them dont even mean it, they were just so tired of the krill or baby seal murda life, or sharks poaching their babies and needed longer and longer til oneday they got too sleepy and the tide snuck down too low. Like when I pass out in the shower when it's hot enough, I swear I was about to get out..then, ****. Maybe that's why they're so ******* sad. They didn't mean for it to be over, they just got caught up in that feeling. I bet the old ones though go on purpose, just to spite the sharks that took their babies out they'd rather rot in the sea breeze they loved. Or maybe they're so depressed at the loss of their child they just want it to be over. They carry their babies in their bellies just like us, I bet they get depressed like us or the smarter dogs. Being a whale, or any sober creature can be very hard, but at least if you're not running from it, you might see through the storm for the beauty of its strength, releasing fear to just stand in awe of it. You can learn to cope with pain in at least better measure to sprinting in laps, without intention, you're just on the track, even if its as vast as the pacific, adriatic, atlantic, doesnt matter all the waters you cross, they all just ran back into themselves. See, the whale can only cope, no emotional escape route, so no matter what comes, whale is miles wiser. Their calls sound a little sad but so hauntingly beautiful. Do not beach yourself humans, in your little ways everyday. Stop feeding this disbelief in yourself. You were given this brain to choose to overcome this pain, to communicate in new ways. If you get tired of something just cuz you're used to it, you've done fell off your rock, you slipped to drown in your own riptide, to get pummeled to death. Or as my Papa woulda said, you're not playing with a full deck. You drown in intoxicant, whatever your vice, liquor, uppers, downers, shopping, food, flirting, ******* to numb life's beating. You're running from sobriety, from reality, from those people you don't love anymore cuz they can't jive with your illusions. You'll look for every reason why your psyches not the problem. If you'd not only accept but seek the need to heal,  you wouldn't need constant change of scenery just to feel something, to feel snippets of sanity, mini vacations from your daily miseries. New people, places and substances are just so exhilarating, cuz you can't handle yourself. If you could, each listed above would be blessings of oneness, not necessity. Running is only blocking your life from mattering as much as it should. You squander potential wandering in circles inside yourself. I smoked **** habitually since I was twelve, it didn't really hurt me right, just my dump trucked loads of brain cells? Wrong! Sobriety is the hardest but most rewarding excursion so far. I delight everyday in the opportunities I can receive just cuz I can think so clearly. I have an occasional shot or glass of wine with coworkers and think God I feel good. Then go home and think and plot, how can I attain that joy without consuming a dollar, compromising my body?  How can I be so at home in my skin that I don't need that just to feel like this?  I'll let you know if I ever figure it out. It's the big ******* mystery, isn't it. I THINK my point is,  we would never know what's so good to be cherished if we always had it made. They call it a beautiful struggle, and i really think they're onto God with that one. Wherever your feet lay, next time you look down at them in dismay, remember your pain is the best teacher you never had to pay.  It makes you great, it makes you an epic ******* trilogy of the past present and future.  You'll get through this day, I promise you. Whatever it proves to be to you, I pray oneday you hold the kingdom. Oneday you'll praise yourself for holding on. Oneday you'll stop running. You'll just wake up and feel at home inside yourself how the wise whale makes peace with the ocean. Tempering the binges to the surface. As above so below. You just have to find the thrill within the hand you're dealt and make yourself better for it.

This isn't going to be much of a poem, just a thought; something that I was thinking about today.
I was asked if it was weird to have dated my ex, since he was 5'5, one inch shorter than I am. And you know what, I've dated professional go-kart racers, jujitsu gold medalists and kick boxers, yes, all much taller than I am, however, none of them made me feel as safe as my 5'5 hockey player did. So the answer to that question, which actually surprised me as well, is no. It was not weird. It was not anything but another relationship, with another boy, who proved to be much more than how tall he was. Height does not matter to me and I don't see it ever mattering because he made me feel just as loved as someone twice his size could have. And even though he turned out to be a complete *******, that was not because of his small size, that was because he was, and is, a ****** person. Case closed.

By Chloe Elizabeth

I guess when you're a three to five year old
Smacking a soccer ball
Sweetly connecting it with your foot
Or folding an apple into your shirt at snack
Or playing tag with a blonde girl you've never met
Makes not speaking english
stop mattering.

Reese’s Pieces are for people who
Are used to picking up the pieces
Of broken hearts
But they still want to make it
A good experience
Smiles that look like peanut butter
And kisses that taste like chocolate

Butterfingers are for the kids who
Are used to being picked last for
Everything except to cheat off of
In math class
They’ve grown accustomed to
Not being thought of

Popular kids like the M&Ms;
Because in the end
What else do they have except
For the stories of muses
And the parties they attended
One-by-one they picked apart
Everyone who didn’t act just like them

Pop Rocks are terrible and
So are Peppermint Patties

Crunch bars and 100 Grand’s
Made the jocks think they would actually
Go somewhere and do something
With their lives
Hope comes in strange forms
Monkeys don’t know the difference

Kit-Kats are for the hipsters
Talking a little too loud about mustaches
Listening to music that nobody knew
Grouping around vegan lunch tables
They would break off one by one
When another clique accepted them

Anything made by ***** Wonka
Was a favorite of the kids who
Knew who they were and
Weren’t ashamed

After all, what does candy say
About any of us
Clothes and shoes
Were only disguises
To hide us from the world we
Desperately wanted to fit into
If you had a Five Star notebook
Started mattering a lifetime too soon

When I step into the convenience store
I picture the kids that I know
Because of the candy they ate
I regret having such a sweet tooth
To pick apart kids’ lives
With nothing to satisfy the bitter
After-taste of social humiliation

In case you are wondering, to whom I am addressing
I’ll clear that part for you, so you won’t have to be guessing

Aiming at the racist ones, words are my sole arsenal
And if you’re like them too, go ahead and take it personal

What I will emphasize may look to y’all as history
From humanity’s standpoint; it’s a big shame and mystery

It sure happened in the past, this ain’t a current topic
Or it’s maybe still around, hurtful and traumatic

Man was treated as goods, traded in public auctions
Disgrace was all over with no sign of conscience

Body wasn’t enough, you also wanted mind and soul
Wow! You must’ve paid a fortune to buy ’em all

Please answer me, Dear Sirs. What happened to empathy?
Do you know what the word refers? Taking the fifth already?

You never thought of yourself in the body of color
Yet gave long-*** speeches on dignity and honor

You were rough on the surface, to make them obey
Who knows how rotten in inside. And all that was okay

Captivated a race and gave them the stupid belief
That they were secondary and all they deserved was grief

Motivation was obvious; millions of things to take care
Slaves cost less than anything. You couldn’t even compare

Don’t run away now, we just heated the subject
He is a human being Mister, not a ******* object

Oh, I see, you don’t wanna face the sheer fact
That indeed your cruel ancestors attacked

These innocent African tribes for no good reason
In a barefaced manner despite the Age of Reason

And you’re not ready to redeem their deadly sin
Alright! Stand up and admit then. All humans are close kin

It’s **** important. Do you even know why?
That is to say to residues of racism bye-bye

Opportunity gap, project houses, ****** education
Are the real meanings of the word discrimination

Biased justice with never ending prejudice on Blacks
Are updated slavery forms deserving a good smack

You are mostly haughty for the things you didn’t earn
Race and color are given, but you have yet to learn

No man’s a property for your royal dynasty
Facing and accepting this takes a lot of honesty

Freedom was vague when society was stratified
Where the aristocracy were safely identified

By color, neighborhood, and school in the whole nation
In ******* good-old-days, during segregation

Do me a favor and don’t give me the cliché
That all **** sapiens had an equal say

It is not the truth even nowadays
Let alone back in those dark days

For all the years they have chosen to be violent
Slave owners don’t have the right to remain silent

Before giving me the crap on Afro-American’s wrongdoings
Let’s put you in their shoes and see how you’re doing

It’s not like Blacks need a defense from this ground
To see how they get even with you, just look around

Jazz, rap, hip hop, soul, reggae and blues for that matter
Non-black pants below waist, what a cross-cultural endeavor

Look at youngsters’ hands, when they’re saluting each other
Trust me, there is nothing white, it’s all from Black brother

In return is belittlement, denial, tyranny and attack
All while they are transforming and painting you solid Black

It all began in New York with the Harlem Renaissance
Artistic, rebellious and witty. Possibly the best response

I know what I’m talking about with absolute faith
Once my home address was 135th and 8th

Stop pompously calling this junk as modernity
It’s in fact nothing but big fat white sovereignty

Nonetheless you are more than welcome to anticipate
That in fact communities of color will emancipate

You from yourself in time, if you know what I mean
Too deep to grasp, huh? For what you have been

I can almost hear that you’re constantly asking me
While me being white, oh sorry. A brown maybe

Why on earth am I now irritating the past?
Like what happened back then is not manifest

I’m not even black, right. But in all fairness
I question the past to raise some awareness

I suppose it’s both because of my aching heart
Feeling in the history for this vile part

And also because of my Turkish nationality
That’s Europe’s Black these days, with Asian paternity

Add to that as well a keenness for reality
Truth needs to be cried out, it’s my personality

This way or that way, what difference does it make
Ignore who says it. Embrace the truth for God’s sake

Most great thinkers felt deeply for the human
With their vast and perpetual acumen

It’s not a duty assigned to philosophers only
We must do the same, so no race becomes lonely

There is no other way to the salvation of mankind
Notice it already! Don’t insist on being blind

If you’ve yet to realize what matters the most
It’s your efforts to solve the problem we diagnosed

Make no mistake, we don’t cry over spilt milk here
Action must speak louder than the words to clear

This longstanding injustice along with insincerity
A bleeding wound that is blocking solidarity

Here’s your chance to make it all right again
Treat people equally, I bet you’ll get an Amen

Kindly stop acting like nothing happened in the past
Labyrinth’s says it’s time for understanding at last

March 12th, 2019
labyrinth

Audio File:  https://soundcloud.com/prttybrdpoetry/i-thought-i-could-swim-until-you-stopped-me-from-drowning

in the middle of my silent days
you ran interference through thoughts whose only purpose
was to run interference through
anything good
or possibly good
that made its way into the rotation
of random pain
keeping me rooted firmly
on the backhand of a smile

snapped in place like the snapping of
my bra in the hands of middle school
boys that found it awkward to walk
when my puberty
kick-started theirs

so, 'SNAP'
there goes my dignity in that
seemingly innocent violation
that no one ever calls by name
where silence gives them permission
to make fun of my already mortifying
body changes that
took me from innocent and invisible
and ****** me into the spotlight so no one would notice
the way they were mortified
with their own reactions to my puberty

I hid behind oversized sweaters and sarcasm
never looked a boy in the eye
stopped talking
so maybe I could
pretend I was invisible and happy
or at least not naked
beneath these people who stole from me
without repercussions...

it lingers...

fast forward
through being made painfully aware that a size 10 was massive compared
to all my size 5 friends
but they were 5'2" not almost 5'8"
they still looked like a board
not a pinup girl from old-timey calendars
but fat is fat wherever it happens to land under thin skin
collecting into silent reservoirs
of self-loathing ammunition...

it lingers...

fast forward
through the first time 'no' held no meaning
shocked into silence and tears
still whispering... please...don't
as words were less weapons and more entrapment
where a body betrays in unwanted reactions
used as proof against my truth
or my perception of truth
or...it must be true because if I
really didn't want it...
but fear and panic can garner the same
physical responses as passion
and it would be too many years before I knew that...

it lingers...

fast forward
to the last time I knew I was beautiful
and the only time I ever let a friend
convince me that going home with these guys was ok
she wanted company and
she was my ride
she never did get lucky

I...
got a cracked sternum where his chin held me down
I kept my voice this time
but the music was so loud
my words remained unheard
no still held no meaning
my wrist bruised in his hand
one hand frantically stretching clothes out of the way
while my free hand struggled frantically
to keep those same clothes at my waist
but...
spandex is unkind on so many levels

somewhere in this fight with his
knees bruising my calves into position
he was thoughtful enough to
somehow, someway
utilize a ******, whose wrapper
never made into the trash
I know this as I followed my friend's
gaze first to the shiny torn package
then twist into what looked like pride
and on the way home
before the bruises turned purple
I told her... and she laughed

it lingers...

she said if that were true
and he stopped to put on a ******
why didn't I escape his hold
but his grip never changed
and when he took those 3 seconds
to rip it open with his teeth...
I was trying to wriggle free and keep my shorts up
and scream over music playing way too loud
I couldn't look at her
or show her the bruises when they appeared
I shouldn't have to prove myself to a friend
I lost more than my dignity
on my 21st birthday...

it lingers...

But at least I knew I didn't deserve it...
that time
but if I wasn't pretty or thin or
anything remotely attractive
maybe it would never happen again
but...

fast forward
to wisdom earned and extra curves
but hating oneself never diminishes
without draining that pool of self-loathing

so, fast forward
present-day and my mom's voice mocks my dreams
she always told me that, when they care,
what I look like doesn't matter
but...

she never mentioned what would happen
if I was the one who didn't care
I learned that when I can't see past
my incessant imperfections
that I'd never believe anyone would notice
when I try to drown myself
in that pool of past truths
that my withdrawal into the
abyss of pain
could possibly ever matter
if it doesn't even matter to me
but...

it lingers...

and every time I hide from the world
masking my pain with silence
stepping out of the way trying not to
burden people with my shame and weakness
I still cannot fathom
if when the people that crawl into my skin
ripping my truth into that pool of lies
can't be bothered noticing my silence
searching for a safe-enough distance
then, how could... why would... anyone else

See,
I've grown accustomed to not mattering
to myself
trained into the seeming safety of silence
where I grate my self-esteem
on the very invisibility I had longed for
so many years ago

I care so much
but it never makes sense
when someone cares enough to notice anything I do,
especially when I'm trapped in my own darkness
but to bring it to my attention is so rare
that I find myself absolutely perplexed

I don't know what it's like to be seen
or... I didn't
but...
you saw me
you saw my distance
and tried to understand my pain
you told me I changed
and answered when I asked you
to tell me how

I am invisible
it's how I cope with heartache and broken trust
disappointment and pain
unfortunately, it's also how I cope
with personal joy and
anything that might resemble pride

I feel, but the invisibility...
it lingers...

so, today...
when in the middle of my silent days
or weeks or who knows how long
I've been drowning in the abyss in slow motion...
today, you ran interference through thoughts
whose only purpose
was to run interference through
anything good
or possibly good
that made its way into the rotation
of random pain
keeping me rooted firmly
on the backhand of a smile

your honesty, reflecting the truth that
I'm likely the only one who
actually doesn't notice my own withdrawal into isolation
was as surprising as that first
snapping of my bra
but I found my voice enough
to apologize for the shame I didn't earn
yet so freely project onto everyone
touched by the perception of invisibility
in which I hide
but you saw me
and proved I am not invisible
you cared enough to notice
and...

it lingers