Evil

Why can’t you handle happiness and joy?
I’m just as wicked as you
Lying to make myself feel better
About the things I’ve done
It sounds so cliché
Because everybody does it

I Believe

I believe in you
You have my trust
Trust that I exist
Exist only to help
Help everyone we can
Can you accept?
Accept this choice?
Because I do
Do I believe?
In you
I believe

A Cup Full of Cranes

Breaking a caramel pencil taken from a box, and
Staring back up at the blinking smoke detector.
Another discouraging moment used
To avoid making a paper crane for a green-glass cup
Already overflowing, but nowhere near the thousand.

A blunt knife, a shoe lace, a love note from you to me
Written last year, does not make your cure
Or describe a dying affection.
I’m not what I do, but I am who I am
Another fancy word, another not-so-fancy occasion
Where nothing happens,
Staring at those trinkets you said meant more
Then they really did.

Maybe I’ll stop pretending not to hear
Their enslaving sounds of fear,
Your slowing breath, their awful stares
Of failure, the failure to know who you are
My failure to make just a hundred more
To make a wish
And now I’ve lost,
We’ve lost,
The race.

Notes: With the help of my dear friend Andrew King, we were able to turn this poem into a song. You can hear it at his Website for free.

Whistle

Here come the raincoats
Here come the raincoats
They arrive with the downpour
But block out the effect
Of the falling
And broken sun

To stand in mist, a frozen cloud
Will the shadows from the shroud
Raincoats guard! Raincoats protect!
Pick a spot to never leave
Fight to keep it all away

So whistle, whistle, on a drop
A drop of rain until it stops
Stops and plops
Away, away, from that spot

Never soak through
Never give in
The raincoats keep it safe

Beat away the shadows and rain
Without regard, forever after

Here come the raincoats

Spider Lilly

A mass depression
An unknown decision
Before we know it
We’re all falling down
Dropping from innocence
Living in purgatory
Our bodies buried
By more bodies
A deeper red seeping out
That paints a lily
If it could
It would cry for us
Bitter rouge tears
For those who gave it birth
But it can’t
So it won’t

Notes: This is a war poem written for class taken from the point of view of the casualties.