Beyond the hills, they understood me,
In the quiet of my mind, I am seen.
Then my eyes are ripped open, the world hits me like a wave, the anger thick and metallic in my mouth. My pulse races, my skin aches — everything feels too loud, too bright, too much. I can’t escape, and the weight of it all is crushing me, like a  drop of water dripping constantly.

I was not a problem child,
I was a child with a problem That caused me to process the world in patterns and pieces instead of as a whole. I wasn't a puzzle I just needed stability in the home.

Around the river and down the path they supported me
But I'm laying in bed instead
Paralyzed in my own skin, stuck in the chaos of my mind.
Hearing their words on repeat and rewind
Lazy lazy lazy
Try harder try harder try harder
You're a liar liar liar
But I'm trying my hardest I'm doing my best  and the weight of their disbelief presses heavily on my chest. It's thick and suffocating they can't see the mental war inside of me, just the absence of my results. I regret to inform you that It wasn't laziness but invisibility that was a plague to me.


Even when I mixed up my letters and struggled to sit still. I could never be quite and my mind spun like a windmil, running 3 miles a minute,  my mind has never known silence and peace. Though somehow to them  it was always a calculated plan. I would manipulate them with ease.

Fear claws at me, a constant gnawing,
My head starts spinning, and the weight of failure bears down.
I avoid, I freeze, my mind a storm, afraid of failure and afraid to try creating a tornado of paralysis in my mind
I try to speak, but my words are tangled in knots.
no matter the effort and energy I use
It always seems to be reduced, in their minds,
It's all a tactical plan, a game I play to illict attention, even if I lack having an attention span.


When my brain can't comprehend the world in a typical way, I'm told I just need to grow up and deal with the pain.

Lacking the ability to thrive as a child, no one to support the way my brain had been wired, falling deeper and deeper into the role of a liar.

I'm too smart to struggle
I don't apply myself and I lack the ability to juggle multiple tasks
They swear I'm lazy
And I know I'm not good enough for the world they made for me
I can hardly talk to the cashier ladies
I need to improve my work ethic
I need to apply myself.
But what good is trying when you already know you're piling information on top of itsself, crashing and malfunctioning, the system creating coding errors, measured in dysfunction and despair.

Sitting on top of the tree, the branches hug me as I lean into them. I can't be lazy if I climbed all the way up here. I can't be dumb if I know how to get down. I know that what I feel is normalized as unproblematic in my parents town. I can see beyond my struggles and I know I have the ability to succeed. I excell in subject that are beyond me, even if I lack basic literacy and feel lonely.

Everything is normal nothing is symptomatic I'm just being dramatic I'm only a child and children like me can't have that.

Feeling the breeze hit me, and taking in all the shame, I struggle to understand myself and I lack the ability to make it a game. My struggles slip through the cracks and I'm always met with attacks. The fact remains the same that imposter will always be attached to my name

My feelings slip through my finger tips, like sand in the wind. I reach for them on the wheel, but the words dissolve before I grasp them, not even having names. only shapes, fleeting like shadows. Hiding behind the walls. There is not one word to describe this pain at all.

Failing to help regulate my constantly  unregulated body and speculating my motives. Constantly on the edge of our seats fighting for my mind to just be right. Hoping for us to all feel peace

Down by meadow surrounded by flowers, I hear the wind and I know the truth at last. I needed support and a helping hand. A routine and someone to try and understand. Someone to help me find peace within myself and not find chaos in their judgement . I wasn't the problem, I needed to be seen, not as a puzzle but as a whole piece. It was the world at hand not being built for a brain that  processes information like I can

i knew what i was destined to do,
to be,
to see
the surface of the water had broken
splattering liquid across the lakes surface
causing more and more ripples  
making my impact
only to slowly drift away losing momentum
slowly one day being forgotten...
making the water clear once again.

يغازلنا المطر و الغيم يا من بعدي
تدافع عني مهماً انقال و كان ضدي
افكر من بعد السحور و الوردي على خدي
لو انك تدري الي يدور فالقلب و في صدري

قال لي شخص كله حكمة و نور
خلك من الباقي و ابقى مع الي يجيب السرور
دام ان الوقت يركض لا تركض وراه
تابع ايامك  ولا تطلب رضاه

فالحفرة تكون لي سروري
تلعب بأشاير الحب مع فاضٍ خط المروري
فألي مر عليك هبته ريح الندا
لؤلؤ كعيونك الي تنسيني همومي و الشقى.

وينك يا جاذب شعوري             و مطمن إحساسي
كتبت عنك رواية تنقال         و وصفتك في اشعاري
غرت عليك من الباقي          و ما سمحت للي نوى
انغمرت فالليل و عيونك       و اخذ يلعب فيني الهوا
   خذيتني بسؤال طرحته           كنت نسيتني الهم توا
و نضراتك تدلني طية            تلمع و كأنها موه
سلبت روحي و اخذت        صبري  و انفاسي بقوة
     اننا نفترق لعيون الغير           ماهو شي قد شرحته
احبك  والله                    قلبي لغيرك ما فتحته
عيونك تغطيها الشهب       شي ما قد وصفته
احتار بين الكلمات            ما قد كلام شين بعثته
احبك, و ربي انا واثق من الي كتبته.

“In some office sits a poet,
and he trembles as he sings,
and he asks some guy,
to circulate his soul around”
Joni Mitchell

<>

joni:
your both sides
then and  now,
was my guiding glasses
for a life of motley loving
and love, gained, pained,
lost and found
as a younger man,
and now, as old soul
with rear view perspective,
the glasses tinted transition grey,
(matching his pallor, his hair.
his transient perspective,
trembling fingers as he writes,
with humility,
0
pleeze circulate these
decoded words
mate them out of clay
hoping  come new daylight
one or two, even a few
will lend a rosy thistle, blow softly
an encouraging breeze
upon this poem
the freedom to burn into
glowing embers
in our circulating worlds
of pass/fail
it’s my mere soul
you pass judgement
with a hint of tasteful scents
on
and beyond
with an
honorable push
your mentioned
breath,
guiding them
to the currents
where poems go to
blossom

Long time 
No, see how you 
Be good and nice, that's all.
Do one good deed a day, happy 
You'll be

~dedicated to the heart fixers~

sometimes I smack my head,
when a poem commission is lying on
the ground before me, and I just don’t
hear it, believe it, in order to retrieve it…

many months of physical rehabilitation,
sessions always ended with a certain cutesy
Gen Z~Millenial crossover phraseology:

“remember to tell someone you love them”

the instructors mostly youngish,
so we senior~smile
a tad dismissively, give them a reward~grin, and
head for the locker room,
where we gossip and compare notes,
on the Part II of our in-process-future-realization,
living a grueling new life of self-preservation, 24/7

the PTs & EPs pound you on the machina, go faster, work harder,
eat better, sleep more, take those meds, motion is lotion,
walk the talk, never be still, but race to live longer and
prosper, this hard work is your new job, and resignation
is non~optional

now, it hits me, via a figurative sharp slap on the side of the head,
triggering an actual physical manifestation that reverbs to the toes,
that the most important lesson went under the radar,
evading the former trader’s dimming vision,
flunking himself on the rehab test paper,
a purple F for fool,
a grade, earned and deserved, and herein poetically preserved

the hardest heart work, begins only after you co-
commence the longest road back to where you once
belonged, but where you can’t walk alone, for therein
a recipe for failure; and the work that needs doing,
is on you; take that tear-repaired heart, and give it away, it,
one can be healed, but not if sealed, for the hard-hearted
walls thicken, and “over  time, the thickened heart muscle
can become too stiff to fill the heart with blood; the heart
can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs.”

so break off pieces of your heart, give them away with
relentless abandon, for this is the heart that self-repairs,
new tissue, new fiber, and most important, regeneration,
the one single reparation that can successfully
accomplish the true miracle of getting by giving,
no forgiving, if you don’t exercise the heart by

“remembering to tell someone you love them”




dedicated to the hard working staff of the
Cardio Rehabilitation  Unit
of Nyulangonge, Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation
who started  me
with a mighty push on the long road to utilizing my heart properly

<•>