What does being pretty feel like?
i think it would feel like
being angels, like everyone
always smiling when they see you.
drama, a lot of drama.
it actually feels like being the devil.
like everyone hurting because of you.
breaking boys’ hearts without meaning to.
it’s not our fault; we can’t love everybody.
i think being pretty
would mean a lot less hurting.
laughing without worrying you look stupid.
enjoying people’s eyes on you,
rather than shying away
from any gaze.
and i don’t even like who i am.
i’m tired of seeing my face in the mirror,
wondering if i’m as good as anybody says.
or if i’ll ever live up to the package.
wondering what people see;
they’re always looking at me.
i think being pretty
would mean waking up happy,
thinking the day would bring good things.
always having an easy time shopping.
i’m tired. it always feels like everyone’s
expecting something from you.
to look good, to be good.
i just want room
to be myself. everyone knows
bright lights can be unflattering.
for once, i would like to be neglected.
i would like to be pretty like other girls.
i want to be special.
they don’t know what they’re asking for.
no one knows what it’s like.
i want to be happy.
i just want to be.
Birds
What is life
What does it truly mean to live
Does it mean to risk everything
Everyday just for the hell of it
Does it mean to be cautious
And live between the lines
Is it to remember the moments that
Took your breath away
Or the number of breaths you take
Perhaps it is whatever you say
Maybe it is a play
And we are all actors, with a purpose
A given fate and specific parts
At the end of the day, however,
Life is just life
It both cages us and gives us wings
But you determine how large the cage is
And how far your wings will carry you
In the end, you could fly off into the sunset,
Or you could remain domestic and allow life
To care for you,
Giving it more trust than it perhaps deserves
But it is you and only you who decided upon this,
So be prepared for the end
Be prepared for when you can do no more
For yourself and life is in auto drive
Do what you can while you can,
and spread your wings.
Wasted
What I think and what I say, are often one and the same. No filters from my brain,
to my mouth so you can hate.
I get paid for mine,
nine lives regeneration.
Who else can sell rhymes,
To this dead generation?
What you see and what you hear,
Just to chase a dollar fast.
Checks cashed from fomented fear,
Without balance you will never last.
The Dance
“I cannot believe you let this happen.” She had stopped crying, only a small tick in her voice remained. She turned her back towards him, folding her arms across her small chest.
He took a step closer, sighing. He could make this right again, if she would just give him another chance.
But he knew if he were to say what he was about to say…
He said it anyway.
“I didn’t. You know I did not let this happen.”
Turning back towards him, slowly, with the grace of a dancer, her dark green eyes stared through him. The morning rays of the sun penetrated the soot smeared window, creating a yellowish orb that danced around her face.
She was so beautiful. The red swollen eyes, the too expensive mascara streaking her high cheek bones, the anger revealed by a small twitch just below the corner of her mouth, none of these could conceal the beauty he had loved for so long.
“You,” she pointed a slender finger at him, “stood there watching them!”
He loved her. He hated the finger. The one annoying habit she had…well the one that bothered him the most. He had once thought of biting it off when she had drawn the appendage from a virtual holster, pointing it at him, making it jump with every…word…she...said!
“I wasn’t there.” He offered quietly.
“That doesn’t matter!” She screamed. “You knew who they were! You knew how they are! And you… (finger shake) let… (finger shake) this happen! (two rapid finger shakes.) She turned back towards the window, arms again crossed in defiance.
He paused, remembering, I can make this right again.
He didn’t pause long enough.
“You’re wrong. I don’t know who you think I am. Why you would believe that I would let this happen. Why you would think that I have any measure of influence over what they do!”
“You mean you’re not their boss? Their beloved leader?” She said to the window.
“That has nothing…”
“Don’t you dare say what you are about to say! It has everything to do with it! You live for that place and those—those people. You never stop being a boss. Even when you are at home. Boss, boss, boss. Well congratulations, you’re the boss!” This time her pirouette was not slow or beautiful. She pushed by him, “Until you needed to be their boss. Then you just stood there and let them destroy everything!”
He took her place in front of the window. Dark gray clouds were moving across the sun, pointing malformed fingers at the man in the window, “Don’t say it.” They warned.
“They haven’t destroyed anything. You are overreacting.” He didn’t heed their warning.
It wasn’t words that came from her. The sound could only be described as lethal. The small twitch could no longer be described as such. He thought her mouth may leap from her face, splattering on the tiled floor.
Incredibly he continued; looking around the penthouse, “And being the boss has made life rather easy for you. How much did we pay for the dance lessons?” Making no attempt to hide his sarcasm.
If he had in mind a desired effect, he concealed his disappointment when instead she sat on the beige sofa, folding her hands and resting them in her lap. She waited.
Her unexpected reaction drained his momentum. He turned back towards the window, looking at the growing clouds. The stubby, pointing fingers, long gone. Now just a massive, unshaped monster that would soon clap thunder and cry rain. He touched the glass; twenty-four floors above the busy streets of Manhattan, it felt cold to his touch.
“It’s not destroyed.” He whispered to the pale reflection.
“Yes, it is.” She said.
He shook his head against her words. It can’t be. So much time. So much work. They had done it all together. From the beginning, he knew there would be challenges, pitfalls, and doubters. But he had set a course against all of that. He was very good at what he did. He knew how to put contingencies into place. He knew when to take small steps and when to take giant leaps. And they had done it. He had done it! How could she believe that it was now all gone? How could she blame him?
“I have to go.” She said.
“No, don’t go.” He knew it sounded pitiful. She would like that.
“There is no reason to stay, you know that.” She had a small golden compact in her hands, the powder providing a curtain to hide behind.
“Please, give me another chance to prove to you that nothing has changed. Nothing has been destroyed.” He had arrived at whatever place comes after pitiful. He walked over to where she sat, “And if it has…if it has, we will start all over. We can do it again.”
She smiled. The place from which all her beauty began. Large drops of rain were hitting the soot stained windows; but the filth would not surrender that which belonged to a world high above the city. From the land- far- away, he could hear the sirens cutting their way through the clogged asphalt.
She stood. Pushing up with the powerful toes of a ballerina, she kissed his smooth cheek.
“I love you, Daddy.”
Gone.
What I saw with my eyes
I saw the best minds of my generation
stand and watch a bully
rise to the podium
I saw the best minds of my generation
create another holocaust while trying to heal a genocide of hate.
I saw the best minds of my generations
turn the words I love you into a battle cry.
I saw the best minds of my generation
throw their brains in the trash to adopt this new trend of hate.
I saw the best minds of my generations
doubt the young people
and saw their interest in politics as a trend.
I saw the best minds of my generations
draw a pipeline through my history book.
I saw the best minds of generations
suck the color out the sky
and divide it into sections
black or white.
I saw the best minds of my generation
paint a rainbow in blood
I saw the best minds of my generation
entertain fear
I saw the best minds of my generations
try to grow flowers out of the darkest corners of hope.
Try to develop new colors with the colors black and white.
they took the bones of the dead and cracked them
open and found the scrolls to the answer of universal peace.
But I saw the best minds of my generations
line up tanks while trying to create peace.
I saw the best minds of generations
be inclusive but they forgot the minorities.
Yes, I saw the best minds of my generations
create life while creating death
and shooting ones who were fighting for a better future,a better tomorrow in hopes of meeting the horizon.
The Florist
A twenty-something man was attempting to put on the moves on a few girls in the downtown area of a big city one weekday afternoon. He thought he could pull off the moves but he was failing miserably. He was decent-looking enough and his moves were smooth but he kept getting shut down.
"Why must every girl be taken in this big city?!" he yelled. If it kept up like this, he felt as if he was going to chop off a certain appendage or something.
A young girl then approached the man, trying to figure out what was going on. She looked somewhat like a modern-day interpretation of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
"Would you like a flower?" she asked.
The man was angry. "Would I like a flower?!" he angrily repeated. "Look, lady! I'm getting my ass handed to me and all you can say is "Would I like a flower?" Hell no, I do not want a flower!"
The girl ran away crying. The man then noticed that a lot of people were watching this go down as it happened. The man was then walking around the city when he saw a flower shop. He walked in and began looking for the girl he made cry. She wasn't there. He found another shop. She wasn't there either. The man then proceeded to go to seven different florists until he found the girl.
The girl was sitting on a stair step, still bawling her eyes out. The man attempted to get her attention but she got scared.
"Rape!" she yelled and attempted to get her whistle out but the man stopped her.
"I'm not going to rape you!" he told her. "I came to apologize. You came to me at a bad time. My name's Scott."
"I'm Adela," the flower girl replied. "Now go away."
"What are you doing tonight?" Scott asked. He hoped his persuasiveness would work this time.
"I'm going to tend to the flowers and then go home," Adela answered.
"What time do you get off?" Scott asked.
"About 7:00," Adela answered.
"I'll be waiting," Scott replied. "Wait, that sounds too creepy. Excuse me while I go hate myself."
Scott then went to a nearby coffee shop and watched Adela do her work. She really did not know what the outside world was like, Scott observed while she spent all of her time with the flowers. She hardly talked to anyone and didn't seem to be bothered by the presence of others in the room. It was as if she was invisible.
7:00 pm came. Adela left the flower shop where she saw Scott waiting for her. As she began to speak to Scott, a guy with a big maple bat came up for some reason and smashed Scott's left kneecap. Adela got from her purse a can of mace and sprayed it right in his eyes. The man with the big bat dropped to the floor and Adela took his bat. She then prompted another employee to call the police while another bystander was given the bat while Adela tended to Scott.
"Are you okay?" Adela asked.
"My kneecap feels like it's a thousand pieces," Scott answered.
"The ambulance will come shortly," Adela assured him.
It took nearly a half-hour but finally the ambulance came. For some reason, they wouldn't let Adela come so she got a ride to the hospital. As expected, the prognosis wasn't great: Scott had a broken kneecap and would have to spend some time in a wheelchair. He spent the night in the hospital and Adela stayed with him.
The next morning, Adela took Scott home and she got to see what he was: some rich idiot with no day job. A trust fund kid, pretty much. But Adela managed to see through his exterior and found some heart in him.
"You saved my life, Adela," Scott told her. "If I hadn't yelled at you, I'd be dead."
"It's nothing, really," Adela replied. "I would have done the same for anyone else."
Adela decided to keep Scott interested by taking him to her work for the next few weeks. The accident changed Scott for the better, as he went from a smarmy jerk to a reliable friend. He helped Adela out with her social skills while she helped him respect the ladies a bit more. It was a relationship that didn't go past a friendship but they certainly cared about each other. And none of it would have happened had she not offered him that flower.
Best Advice
I was eight. We were in line, my mom and I, waiting for the community pool to open. The sun was not likely to break the hazy morning clouds and a sticky dew blanketed my face and arms. Looking around, itchy, bored and petulant, I had the audacity and poor taste to make fun of a large woman in too small flip flops and bright pink bikini in front of us. Like all things said which should not be said, it was said loudly, callously cutting through the thick air. The woman didn’t turn, but instead huddled herself shoulders to ears, trying to be smaller, trying to unhear. My mother, previously sugar and kisses on all occasions, grabbed my wrist hard (it would later bloom purple bruises from her fingertips), leaned down and whispered quick, spitting admonishments into my already shaking ear.
“The world DOES NOT revolve around YOU! In fact, very few people know you exist or care. I love you and so does your Dad and for that you are lucky. But in the grand scheme of things, you are no more important than that lady and you have no right to make her feel smaller than you. Foster love my dear, not hate. And apologize. NOW!”
It has occurred to me over the years that more people need this advice.
Human Nature
The spider in the corner. It means no harm, it just wants to live. It has no interest in the likes of humans. The slender black widow with its poison bite. The quick legs darting around on the floor, so close to the web it calls home. There is a person with it, as there usually is. A woman, in this case. She didn't notice it at first when it crawled in through the front door and thought not of the small strands of silk the spider used to start constructing a new home. It's been a while now. The woman finally saw the arachnid's new home, the web strung up with flies and mosquitoes, the well known symbol on its back. She flipped. She yelled and screamed and kept her eyes on the spider. The insect that just wanted a new comfortable home. The woman knows what to do. What she always saw her parents do. She finds her shoe and with the black widow thinking it was safe in its web, the shoe descends. The spider is dead, the woman scared, the house silent.
Now tell me, what was the truly terrifying, dangerous something? The woman, the spider, or the unawareness?
Ugly duckling to a graceful swan
That day so many hearts got broken
Honest cold words were spoken
Like knives they flew across the divide
Followed by her foolish pride
She knew the words were all true
They were said by the ones who knew
But she could not admit to her mistake
So she struck like a vicious snake
She knows she needs to change
So much to rearrange
She is an adult no longer a child
If she wants her family reconciled
But she is busy cutting her nose off to spite her face
Living in some kind of weird head-space
Too blind to see the worry and concern
Too lazy to listen too lazy to learn
Now her family is getting distant
She´s way too busy being indignant
Such a huge price to pay
The choice to grow up or turn away
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