Slice

I am sick of these poems

This demographics warfare

Night after night

Mic after mic

Across the country

Labels collected and struggles hoarded

In the battle of 'who's more repressed?'

But before you rush the stage

With hisses and fruits

Hear why my poem is that of the ugly kind

I am sick of these poems

As I am sick with these poems

Each of them bargaining with empathy

And playing to a crowd

With an optimistic faith in common sense

And humanity

And each of the perfectly placed punctuations

Begs for a slice of my heart

Directly proportional in size

To the amount of disparities and demographics

I have no choice but to give into them

As each poetry lives to tell a story

Of pain and longevity

Waiting in line to a room full of heart butchers

Ready at their slicers

Only one voice could possibly be missing

The voice of the room

Whole and unified

Fighting sighs and indifferences

Giving way to a struggle cliche-d into the

Hippie term 'revolution'

Fuck it.

Call it what you will

But it's not Armageddon

It's simply the poets Collecting our Works

To understand the level of empathy we

All seek in others

Is too in ourselves

The underlying passion is an adventure

Seeker with a hound dog scent of camaraderie

I am sick with these poems

My own tally-marked demographic novels in tow

Bring to me what I'll bring to you

Immigrants helping rape victims

Children of abuse racing for the cure

Inner-city victims of the deepest strands of racist tensions

Plowing through the rover-red-rover lines of language barriers

Gay feminist vegan Pagan naturalists

Devoting more time to the halt of genital mutilation abroad

Than they do to their own PETA-driven causes

The penniless building monuments

To the women who got the vote

See each other

As the poem in your hand

And heal the sick

with

these poems.

The Gambler

And so at least I know

It's me

That is feeling, climbing, explaining

Circumstance and indecision aside

I am this now

There are givens given

And hypotheticals discussed

At the seminar of 'What Next?'

Oddly placed in Vegas

Gambling and affirmations aside

I am standing, smoking, looking

At all the tables of play

Knowing it's me

Who has a very clear decision to make

To take over as Showgirl

With the deepest positive affirmations

My titty tassels can elicit

As I strip down to strip down

I realize, life is null and void

N/A

The sigh of relief is comparable to Katrina winds

And my stage name is born

There are no answers

What is-s

What was-s

And what will be-s

But no right or wrongs

No answers

Just questions

And I stop yelling at the microphone

Stop blowing dice like my life depends on it

And start shaking my fringe

And showing off a new look of pretentiousness

Because I wonder why people are attracted to men that treat them like shit

Not because I know they are

Swinging tea-bag insults in your bifocals

And thumping to the mirrored disco balls

As multi-faceted

And reflective

As any given noun or situation

One can imagine

Too smart for your own good

Thinking yourself dumb

Breathing

Smoking

Staring

Asking

Giving the disappointments and teases

And picking money off the stage like third world

Toddlers pick trash from land fills

Why?

Good question.

What does anyone lower himself?

Is it because we are raised to see our standards gleaming

High atop the landfills and mountains of history books

Pages screaming of struggles for indignance

And the very concept of a standard of living

Eat pac man gulps of our existence

For life

And the assumption that we all lower ourselves

Just to bend over to the ground

I know my dressing room standards

But life is hardly ever back stage

Its down center

And the lights will rise

When the horse races are over.

So I ask the lights

My questions

And gladly stretch

For my next bends to the floor.