School Submission

"Dark Chocolate"

Bittersweet brown
with changing tastes in every bite
most don't enjoy it
i don't know if i do
it's so much easier to eat
milk chocolate
white chocolate
double chocolate chocolate chip fudge brownies
until you get sick
and then eat dark chocolate
to counteract the sweet
with bitter health
and things you need to eat.

It all comes from
the same place
the same rough hands
of dark workers in the Americas
who see nothing but chocolate
but not the brown
they chop open the fruit
find the cacao
toss the flesh
and repeat until sunset
they don't see the sweet milk and sugar.

And there are those
who eat too much
who fill up on chocolate
but really just sugar
sweetness, kindness, fake sugar
and nothing else
and then they grow fat
or if they're lucky,
just on the inside.

The men who make the chocolate
and the women too
transform cacao
from the fields
from the trees
into goodness
in a varying spectrum
of percents and perception.
Perhaps they tried
to convince us all
that dark chocolate was good
but they found it easier to
just
add
sugar.

Science has proven
with multiple tests
that dark chocolate helps
your beating heart
or at least it's a start.

So I'll eat my dark chocolate
it tastes fine anyway
and experience the bitterness
it won't drive me away
it's healthy for the heart
and at least that's a start.

back in black.

"White"
the electric green grass,
the electricity
of the night air,
the elasticity
of the moment,
the plywood
over the resting river,
the petals settled
at your feet,

here,
in this place of whispers
shushing wind
stillness
silence




frost




your lips
ponderosas
sigh

gusts,
the burnt bark
wanders,
daises
in the wind

dandelions,
complexions

all white,

all white




all white




I just think this is a sick poem. As in, tell me if you like it.

I wanted to revise this before posting, but...

...I'm sort of stuck with it. So it's the same one on my blog...

bitter bright empty insides wake you before the morning
(innards drained out slowly seeping)
and it begins with the tip of the toe as it touches the floor.
quietly, the silence asks for more.

you are not
not it, not what, not that
I am not what you are,
nor is anyone else, not enough.

explain this now:
the silence that asks for more.
the empty innards, secretly cruel,
the wordless works that hide under your tongue.
explain this loss, this lack, this un-being,
not-knowing,
anti-power.

I cannot flesh this to its truth
but hew it roughly from a block of wood
or tie it roughly up in yarn
or spread it on a canvas and pick the meaning out.
the splinters are the chaos, truth most natural and pure
and the split threads only instincts and
muddy pools of paint the mystery.

mystery and instinct and anger most natural
as the empty innards that wake you before dawn
and the questions
and the weakness simply a cycle
explain it like a tree that dies
and grows again,
far away in a thousand places.

I'm the only one who posts anymore.

Ode to Paper

You were a tree.

A vibrent, living tree.

A bird family may have lived in you.

You could have given fruit.

We cut you down.

A ream of you is going to the hospital.

You're going to be the bill

for the old man, who can't pay

and he's going to try to barrow some money

from people who don't want him living

anymore.

A ream of you is going to the preschool.

You're going to be the background

for that macaroni art

of the three year old, who is going to

give it to his grandma out of love

and she's going to leave you up

on her fridge to remind her of her grandson

forever.

A ream of you is going to the company.

You're going to be a flyer

that's a vibrant color which

the mediocre salesman, who hates his job,

is putting on the windshields of cars

at the ballpark during the game

and you're going to blow away

or get placed in the wastebasket

so you can go to the landfill to rot

indefinitely. 

A ream of you is going to me.

You're going to be the keeper

of my poem which I could share

with my friends, who like things like this

or I could hide you in my drawer

or I could end it all with a twist of

my wrists and split you down the middle to

end it all. 

A Day at a Car Dealership seen through a Vending Machine

I wake up every morning

at five fourty five to the smell

of a glass cleaner being sprayed

on my face. The Mexican is playing

mariachi or something like that

on the radio and I can feel the sounds

viberate on my transparent face.

Today is differt becuase

at seven fourty five the man who

stacks food in me is here because

I'm out of A7, B3, C9, D1 and D3.

He takes away the money from me

and he slips himself a few singles.

At eight o'clock, we've opened

and a very people wander in.

At ten thirty, Frank walks past me

and into the bathroom. Times are bad and 

He wants to kill himself.

At ten thirty two, a large man

stuffs a dollar into my mouth

and buys some chips that he doesn't

really want.

At three past eleven, a kid

presses my buttons and I tell him

that he needs money for his selections

in two languages.

He's there until his mom calles him

away to wait with her and he smears

up the windows of a car.

At twelve nineteen, the lunch rush

begins. Eddie buys skittles and

beef jurky and he devours them quicky.

He is having an affair and his wife

is going to find out about it soon.

The people quickly buy more from me.

Afterwards, at three fifty six,

a car alarm goes off and at 

three fifty eight, it is shut off.

At eight past four, a woman complains

about the popcorn being stale

and throws it away after one handfull.

Time goes by slowly.

The people meander in and out of the 

dealership until closing

which is now at eight.

Everyone has gone

and it's just me with my

green words that

only want someone to

buy a snack.