Here's my poem for this month's mag, but It's waaay past the deadline, so I didn't get to turn it in, so I'm sharing it with you. 

FOX. 

Actually, we did get this poem on time and is under consideration. The deadline was May 30.

Admin

I watch the roses climb

Their way up the lattice 

In slow motion, hours bleed into days,

Days to weeks, weeks to months

And suddenly I'm old

At an age I never thought I'd reach 

I wonder

If the salt from my tears

Will poison your roots and kill you?

Or will your venomous thorns 

Prick me to death first,

Coiling about my neck like a noose? 

Why do I grow roses

When I've never really believed in love,

Anyway?

Are you just like me, here for the summer

But fated to leave

When winter's breath rolls in on the morning fog,

Peeling off the mountains?

I think maybe love can be a lonely thing,

A thing without a partner or family or joy.

Maybe love can be the quiet moments here

Alone at twilight, so deeply alone 

You almost forget there is another way of being.

Even though it may be something I never have for myself,

Maybe love is not out of reach. 

Maybe it's drowning in the river

Lying down and feeling your heart

Pump, it hurts

In a way that they say it shouldn't.

Feeling your lungs frost over,

Breathing shards of ice until it burns

And then breathing past that

Somehow.

Maybe it's long pink hair that I wear

That isn't mine

But I pretend

So hard that the world is forced

To pretend along with me.

Choking on the salt of a name

I never asked for,

Grotesquely squeezing my body into a form

I will never be able to truly own,

Making up words to label myself with.

I am just a product,

Here for you to consume,

A churned of words and images

Meant to grab and hold onto you forever.

Maybe it's the thickness of the air

When I try to wring it all out,

The uncontrollable tears

As I carve out a meaning in my arms

Since I can't reach my heart

We are forced to pretend 

That you understand me, you don't

And I know I'm not welcome

No matter what you say,

No matter how many times you squeeze my hand

Your face is sculpted out of cold hard plastic

And so is mine

But now it's the world forcing us to pretend

We're ok. 

Gym Class Flowers 

For gym class flowers

And margin-doodled love notes

But I am no Seymour Krelborn

Oh "great romantic" he

I have no flower shop —

My garden is the field

My bindings, my fingers

Leave stems warm with pulse

My art is my eye

My muses the sky

And you

It's always you 

--

An Afterthought 

That lousy bouquet was laid to rest

On a whiteboard ledge in my English classroom

My adoration left to pace

Some vast deserted waste

Within my mind

Which thinks it's taken

Too many classic plays to bleeding heart

You love literature, you would know:

Is every life so full of blatant symbolism?

Or tragic irony?

I believe in the beauty

Of wilted clover 

Today was my last day of school

Ever

And I opened a letter I wrote 6 years ago 

To the day

'Addressed to my future self.'

I miss confidence

Being secure and pretentious in all that I did

I miss the friends

That no longer speak

(I can't remember many of them fully,

Now they're just hollow names),

The assuredness and curiosity;

I miss be able to deal with uncertainty,

Embrace it with open arms,

Unconcerned and unruffled.

But even then

I see a layer of pretense

A falsity, caked on skin-deep.

I can no longer remember the thoughts in my head

But I can read the words I wrote

And I wish I had been a bit more honest.

I can see the posing poking through each line

Even though I'm certain

I thought my armour was foolproof

Back then. 

I must have known I was as foolish and silly,

Trying to look like so much more than I was.

It's embarrassing. 

But I also know I hated myself much less back then.

I looked so much more sure, and believed it too.

It wasn't perfect, but it was better.

Some things have stayed the same,

But so much more has changed.

At the end, I sat confident

Saying "I don't know what I will do yet,

but I have a promising future."

That broke me.

I still don't know what I will do yet,

But I've known for so long that last part isn't true.

I can't even remember a time when I thought that way,

But here it is, printed in a letter. 

I scarcely recognise this familiar stranger,

And half wonder if the author was another person.

Silently, I wonder what could've broken this hopeful child since then.

How I write:

~~~~~ 

I simply regurg/

itate all I see, into

a black sludge and spew.

This isn't great; I'm not much of a poet, but anyway, here it is. 

An Evening by the River

The river flowed

The wind blowed

The moon gleamed

And everywhere it truly seemed

Like she was there

And in the sky hung

A river of milky stars 

who wants to read a terrible sonnet about fish that i wrote for my english class? no one? too bad.

Sonnet I: “Shall I compare thee to a red snapper?” 

Shall I compare thee to a red snapper? 

Thou art more appealing than a dead fish

Appearing, with fries, upon a platter,

And thou smell better than a seafood dish.

Thine eyes hath no blank fishy yellow shine,

And thy teeth are not meant to eat algae. 

Thou do not swim in salty ocean brine

And won’t kill those with a fish allergy.

Thou art far above the humble fishstick, 

And shouldn’t be covered in tartar sauce.

Thy body isn’t streamlined to swim quick,

And thou don’t get tangled in dental floss.

But these things are not truly my wishes—

I would change nothing about the fishes.