In the pursuit of happiness
Americans chase fortune and fame
gold galore and a place
where everyone knows their name
but they could tone it down a bit
and not go loudly announcing it
to all and sundry with every word
it seems infinitely preferable
if some are seen and never heard
but on the other hand in another land
while leading lives of quiet desperation
trapped in their traditional ways
the British hang on in hope
of distant future better days
and tho' always first to join a queue
there are the few exceptions who
break the rule at every chance
don't give a whit or backward glance
hats off to them for their contribution
as every generation needs a new revolution
Wicked smile, turned dust,
Two halves of a broken soul,
Nothing left to chase.
Sometimes I wonder if eventually the rot leaves way for love,
if the thick layer of hope on my lips is enough to get myself out of the trenches,
I wonder if I’m held captive to my past because my past is just a reason to hate,
Am I in fact hateful?
do I hate the fact that it feels as though my past has deteriorated any thought of being loved future?
sometimes I just want to crawl out of my skin and soak it in bleach,
Allow every last sin to burn away at the chemicals on my skin
am I dirty forever?
is it really purity culture or just a lack of self esteem
I love myself repeatedly but it never seems to stick in the moments that truly decipher one’s loyalty to themselves
Conflict-ion of loyalty, love, and desperation.
- V.B
Tears are destined to unchain from the eye
when there's far too much going on inside.
Some eyes are not meant to ever grace light.
Like two blackbirds without a desire to fly.
A heartbeat was meant to spread out
to be felt over the earth and far beyond.
A pebble ignites the soul of a pond.
A beat and ripple are from similar cloth.
Sky ballerina, never stays in one place
, a pleaser for a panel of petaled faces.
Like a vagabond that's often displaced.
Butterfly and vagabond siesta in shade.
Some hands are meant to make love to canvas
Some fancy to finger clay or lay stain to glass.
Many go without as they yield to their passion
Most don't arise until after they're long dead.
I am choked by an anchorless, predatory rage.
I desperately crave a single throat to wring -
a solitary architect of this misery to tear apart while screaming 'Why?' into the dirt.
But there is no culprit to summon.
So, the violence turns inward.
I smash things, I bleed, I shatter my own reflection,
only to watch the dust settle and realize the most sickening truth of all:
I have become the flawless mirror image of the very cruel,
wrathful,
angry monsters who broke me.
I AM SICK OF HEART
TRUMP TEARING NATION APART
ICE AND VOTES TO START
ADDRESS TO NATION
ALL HIS IMAGINATION
VOICE HIS FRUSTRATION
Beheld
Through lenses, welled,
A pool,
Reflections -
Echoed pressings of,
A fool:
Can I be the poem, and not the poet?
Bestowed with solace, still and stoic?
The admired, not the admirer?
Draw a gaze as licking fire, cause unrazable fixing desire.
The captured, not the capturer?
Found; unbound, sound faith unfractured.
The written, not the writer?
Penned in tense intention, tide-script monad gripping tighter.
Can I?
In this life -
Be the loved, and not the lover?
Stood under; not left, bereft, to wonder.
The wish, and not the wisher?
Made; spoken verily, heard, save tokens merely whispered.
The yearn, and not the yearner?
Nor rough refuge, nor shunned sojourner.
I exhaust myself so foolishly,
Being poetic, mulishly,
Admiring, captivating, writing, loving, wishing, yearning,
While never learning -
To be the moon and not moonstruck, dismayed?
Not to hold to those, who never learned to stay.
Desperation is destruction
It position you
In the side of frustration
Moving without destination
Always wanting others approbation
What the society endows
You always confide in
Can't fight for what you want
Always fitting into the box.
Desperation
Is a dysfunction
Instant gratification
Putting you in stagnation
It breaks you
Making you to be station
Instead of been flexible
You become still
Making you mentally ill.
Desperation
Is manipulation
Catapulting you into a place
Filled with commotion
Instead of promotion
Blurring your vision
Blindfolding you from reality
Into delusions and illusion.
when they say I can’t
I am spurred on to go the extra miles
putting in time I did not know I had
do I think it will awe them?
I know better.
But I have to admit
some of my most wonderful decisions
were made out of spite or desperation
I never went back to school because I wanted to
I went back because I could not tell an old lady
I did not want to walk the same direction every day
She refused to even walk the route backward
Out of spite I got my masters degree plus ninety-four
He sat, a lonely man,
Tears cascading down his dirty face.
His heart thundered in his chest,
While a chorus of voices drowned his breath.
He stared at his little cubs,
Frail as leaves trembling in the wind.
He could not let them hunger anymore—
So he did what he had to.
But fate betrayed his heel;
Still, he stood a father, proud.
He smiled—not for death,
But for full bellies and one last victory.
He embraced death as a friend,
As the cold blade kissed his neck.
The never ending feeling of pain
As the giant ball rises up into my throat
Spiralling into an epitome of low
How can love be so cruel?
I watch as you take my soul, my mind, my everything, my nothing
Will I ever survive this cruel game we play?
I have grown weary of the truth
Blighted soothsayer soliloquies
Shouted from hand-made signs
Railing against self-made silence
Shattered beliefs drowning
In doubt’s echoless dungeon
Stained glass demons
Muted by mindless dust
Leaded beauty denied
Untarnished expression
An old woman waits on the corner
Knowing she may go hungry today
Rats scurry in the alleys
Knowing that they won’t
Desperation, draw me not like magnets pull
But once again let saneness possess me in full
Do not ravage me like a loin upon its prey
Block not the seeds of thoughts that come to save the day
Like limbs of a tree in the presence of a gale force wind
The heavy weight of thy encumbrance makes me bend
As a cookie being crushed underneath a fisted hand
Sapping my power, I become a broken man
Hope beyond my greatest self, suddenly appears
Dashing all desperate thoughts, releasing all my fears
Focused like a camera’s lens, my eyes see a way
Attitude and mindful thought, must have their say
Ideals forming one by one, possibilities
Desperation lost this time, healed is my choice of realities
Here I am.
Everywhere we were.
Empty as is.
Capillaries fill with her,
like rotting roots under trees.
More than I deserve.
I’ve found your silence beneath
feeding truths in buried leaves.
To preserve,
to please.
’Til you return,
I plead.
Please tell me it’s summer every day of the year.
Please tell me that Aerosmith plays from the sky.
Please tell me that heaven’s a basketball court.
Please tell me that everyone’s life has a point.
Please tell me that no one is ever alone.
Please tell me that dying is easily explained.
Please tell me that broken birds get back their wings.
Please tell me the tooth fairy isn’t my mom.
Please tell me that people are just as they seem.
Please tell me “I’m sorry” is always enough.
Please, Adam Sandler, you loveable lout,
Tell me that everything always works out.
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