Smiling Picture

Smiling picture look away

My heart can’t stand to see you today

You look so happy, so picturesque

A painful reminder that someday

We all enter eternal rest

Smiling picture look away

Stop mocking life with your display

Frozen still to quietly tease

Stop being there, just go away please

I don’t want to see

I refuse to reminisce

A person I will always miss

It is too soon

To fondly remember

To smile for the good

I only see cold, gray pallor

Death personified

I only taste the salt of tears we all have cried

Smiling picture disappear

You represent just what I fear

Being gone, just like that

Like I was never there at all

When in the shadow of my mortality

I find it hard to keep my gall

Smiling picture look away

My heart is too fragile to see you today

In Transition

Almost there

Yet not quite

Suspended in air

Yet too low for flight

Left or right

That is the question

One is comfort

And familiarity

The other is new

And possible calamity

Left or right

That is the question

One is improvement

The other betrayal

Either way

The knife will cut deep

Either way

I’m sure to lose sleep

But what if I rose up

From these damp heavy ashes

And didn’t stop to wait for luck

And didn’t look at a sign

Left or right

To tell me the future

That is already mine

Choking For Words

There is a Chinese girl in my history class whom I have become friends with.  She has only lived here in the states for a few years and all things considered is quite fluent. Today we had to read aloud in class and when it got the person before her, it hit me: What would she do? Her accent is rather heavy and she is very soft-spoken.  She started to read and I cringed as the other students snickered. It was all I could do to not slam their cruel faces with my textbook. For a country that encourages immigration, we are so mean to the immigrants once they arrive.

In my recent endeavors to learn Spanish, I have realized how hard it is to learn a new language, particularly one as irregular as English.  I have a new-found respect for the bilingual.

To me it seems like choking

Air supply beneath that of mere survival

Knowing so well what you want to say

Only once translated, it’s all twisted

The words don’t properly form

A new language has turned you forlorn

You cannot fit in

When you can hardly talk

And at your oddly said words they balk

Going out of their way to make it harder

Not even realizing that you are smarter

Because they can’t hear over their own laughter

That’s what it looks like to me as I watch

Her face says she knows she can’t belong

When the language she does know is all wrong

 

 

I’m Falling

My ledge crumbled

And took me with it

My hands are torn and bleeding

My heart hangs heavy with a needing

For your warm hands and arms

I am weak and I am falling

Please come help me climb

Hold out your hand and be my lifeline

I know I caused you so much pain

I can’t do anything now but shout your name

I’m so sorry, your heart was not mine to shatter

My life was bleak and then you came

I took you for granted

I was such a fool

I’m so sorry, you don’t need to forgive

Just hold out your hand and I’ll be on my way

I’m not asking you to stay

Just to save me from myself

Slippery Truth

Whisper, whisper in the dark

Poison arrows hit their mark

Shredding me up inside

Soul debris in constant collide

The chance to know starts to entice

Thirst for knowledge, such a vice

That slippery gray truth it will

My soul and sanity slowly kill

Like an addicted cat I want to know

That thing that taunts my eyes to and fro

Don’t tempt me, damn curiosity

The end to this torture I cannot see

It’s pure masochism, I suppose

This desire for a truth that nobody knows

Midnight Murder

Five gunshots resonated in the night

Waking me up in a startling fright

I brushed it off, nothing could be wrong

But then I heard the ambulance’s song

And quickly proceeded to bite my nails

Thoughts of  a murder and all it entails

I made up a thousand stories in my head

Though nothing could mask the worry and dread

Not a mile from my home a soul just went dead

The ambulance resumed its death-tolling cry

As it lit up my neighborhood and charged right on by

Eventually I fell into a stiff-no good sleep

So scared was I to make a peep

The next morn I studied the news

But failed to find any useful clues

To a murder that last night had happened

Surely a disaster not deliriously imagined

Coup de Grâce

She was down on the ground

Balled up in defiant defeat

He had her in his palm

One last kick

At her shaky pride

His victor’s grin

He could not hide

She told him he’d won

He said he wasn’t done with the fun

She told him to leave

Find someone else to torture

With words so very cold

And threats so very bold

He said the last spurn would be his

And he made it so

Her mind and body red and raw

He raised his fist

A coward’s coup de grâce