Head is heavy with the load of pressure,
The pressure that I bought unwillingly.
A burden passed from hands I trust,
Now rests on me, relentlessly.
They say it's life, this endless fight,
To pay the debts that hold me tight.
Each step I take, a sigh of pain,
And every dream, a fading light.
Once I walked with hopes held high,
But now I stumble, wonder why.
The weight of bills, the cost of time,
Leaves me drowning in a silent cry.
Middle-class dreams, now feel so far,
Crushed beneath this heavy bar.
I wear a smile, though deep inside,
I'm lost in waves I can't outride.
Depression whispers in my ear,
You'll never win, it's all too near.
I long for peace, but find despair,
In every shadow, every stare.
I didn’t ask for this, nor choose,
The life where I was born to lose.
But still I stand, though frail and small,
Fighting debts that never fall.
Perhaps one day, I’ll rise above,
With strength unknown, and unseen love.
But for now, I carry on,
In a world where hope seems almost gone.
Categories:
outride, anxiety, betrayal, change, dark,
Form: Free verse
He is outstandingly out-of-bounds
asserted the outlandishly outspoken outlaw
He can outshoot, outtrump and outride you.
He is outrageously outranked, the tenderfoot replied.
But he did feel outsparkled and outvalued.
And a little bit on the outs...
The outsized outsister tried to sooth the tenderfoot
but she was an unfamiliar outsider and not totally respected
So they both ended up being outwitted and outslickered
by the outspoken outlaw who outsmarted them
The outlaw’s outlandish gang outroared their protests
Making them both feel outclassd and out-of-sorts.
Categories:
outride, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form: Free verse
BAG-LADY IN THE PORTRAIT GALLERY
In all my failed moments of ambitious grace,
The truth, swarth-headed, lifts its greenest shape
To madly light the curls of whitest lace
Edging your throat, and redeem the nape
Where a brown knob burnishes the bone.
Such well-bred tenants of the proudest hock
Like ancient grandees, dawn on my lone
Outride of the politic, and who can mock
The wasteland where now our dreams
Have only the patina of reality to make us sad,
Where derelicts abound in housing schemes
For the heart’s homeless moments, and the bad
Lands of myth are skeletal. Public thresholds
Invest our private myths, and the flesh holds.
FROM IN MEMORY OF HER 2004, 2008
Categories:
outride, blessing, identity, imagination, poets,
Form: Sonnet