Following are most of the poems found in BlueSuburbia, or from my scrapbook. If you wish to see them in their intended interactive form then do visit the site. A couple of these interactive versions are also stand-alone pieces (such as “Strange Dreams”, and “Angel”). I’ll be updating this post as I continue to write, although I do urge you (if you haven’t yet) to see them in BlueSuburbia.

 

Ghosts

 

“I’m dancing through life on splintered feet… The devil rejoice in the poor man’s grief.”

 

 

God…
They say; he made us in his own image.
Homicidal, inconsiderate, insane?
Cold to the suffering of others?
“How I would hurt you back!
You! Of all! To suffer like us!
If only I had the chance.
Show me your face, you coward! …”
Says the developing alcoholic.

“If all men have been created equal then why don’t all men live equal?”
Says the mass produced retail refugees.
How I fear to once more,
Suffer the fate of the poor.
Bankrupt ghosts pushing about metal mesh and wheels,
Bearing those last belongings in a shopping cart,
A cold mockery of their inability to consume and to buy.

 

…The rich plow about those devises as well,
Across polished floor for short periods of time,
Filled with un-necessities boasting to enhance their lives.

 

Modern ironies of a strange society,
Unable to pity those that surrendered to struggle,
And wait for sellers to take repossession over life.
“Stop breathing, the air is mine!”

 

But, over time, we all die
Leaving the same way we came,
An inconsequence to the Universe,
As little things obsessed with nothing,
Inventing reasons as why to try.

 

–

 

Poverty

 

The root of evil is the shadow of the beast.
That cruel thing called poverty.
Biter, angry, cannibalizing, defeat.
To hopelessly lie at the bottom of the bottomless pit.
A place where suicide tastes sweet.
Where it is a curse to breathe.
And love a terrible lie.
Where friendship is a distant myth and families know only to weep and cry.
Where men loose themselves trying.
A place where the only comfort is the blinding deception of another’s ideals and dreams.
But how should truth mater here?
It is a worthless absurdity.
Clouded by things that struggle keeps one from seeing.
Give hell another name, and surely it would be poverty.

 

–

 

“I stand as a shadow in the land of ghosts. Still born
…Abandoned to the habitual rhythm of everyday.”

 

 

–

 

Spiders

 

Fragments of a dream
Woven into a web of misconception

 

I’ve been trying so hard i forgot what I’m fighting for
I’ve been fighting so hard that I finally lost myself

 

Lost…
Who am I?

 

The promised land was never promised me
Utopia is a lie
Fashioned from the fabrics of naivety

 

Reality is a world of greed
Where those that eat to live are preyed upon
By those that live to eat

 

Here it’s easy to mock the needy for being weak
And the starving?
…How they do desperate things

 

It hurts to live like dirt

 

Oh you fools!
Whose song are you dancing to?

 

Won’t you see?
What you do to the children?
Suffer them…
Curse us for what we leave them!

 

An unforgiving place,
Infested with sorrow
Earth
Angered by the deeds of yesterday

 

They will have no future
No tomorrow

 

…But I

 

I will be no god’s fool,
No leader’s belittlement,
No man’s mean to the end.

 

…Instead, like a spider, I watch.

 

“Lost… at least i found myself
Trapped in that reality of pain
And suffering
A simple beauty in conquering the impossible
Free now, no evil will ever overcome me again!”

 

–

In Rosebushes

 

In rosebushes I wish to lie
Buried beneath crimson clouded skies
Tangled in thorns
Never to shed
Another drop of blood or tear
I will be hidden
From life’s torment and fear

 

Disregarded by time
I will forget how to speak
Never…
To utter another idle thought

 

In this place where the past buries its dead
Everything fades from memory until finally lost

 

As the wind comforts me
With it’s warm whisper
My face grows lurid…
Slowly
Let it wither!

 

For it is beneath that blushing sky
Bound in twisting rosebushes
Where lifelessly
I will forever lie

Forgotten

 

 

 

–

“What haunts a new refugee’s sleep?”

 

Who, who, who, who,

Who broke the refugee?

 

The, the, the butcher,

The hater,

The great big decision maker.

Turn them out!

Traitors all three.

 

–

 

Because I can do naught but grieve
This ever-twisting tale I see
Of a crumbling world drenched in greed
It’s nations drunk on mad conceit
And their patriots that bask beneath
The shadows of their omni-righteous deities
I’ll close my eyes and in that joy of sleep
Out of pain,
Paint a dream…

 

–

 

The Student

 

“Suffer the little children unto their last breath, and forbid them to be, for such is the will of the state. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not break as a child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up from 8:00 to 3:15, conditioned his will upon them, and made them as the empty and dead.”

 

I am the student
I am the learned deceived
The dreamer not permitted to achieve

 

I am the disciplined kept on a leash
The one biting my tongue not licensed to speak

 

I am the oppressed, tyrannized, the victimized wishing to be free
I wish behind gates where I’ve been penalized
My age is the crime for which I’ve been institutionalized

 

I am the pupil
The follower, the listener
The prisoner, analyzed, corrected, improved, then approved
The taught with a thousand censored thoughts

 

I am the listless puppet whose limbs move wherever they ought
I am the child, the adolescent, and the youth
The pet taught to be passive
If I do not heed I will face rebuke

 

I see the way I am supposed to see
And speak the way I am supposed to speak
I assume my position and am where I am required to be
I must be discrete not to displease

 

I’m the slave told I am free
I am the hypocrite that pledges to the hypothetical flag
The fool that faces this foolish rag
Driven mad by the fact that I’m promised life, liberty, and happiness

 

–

 

Cold,
Cold,
Cold,
…How I feel alone in a crowd
Crying inside because “Me” is not allowed.

I am…
Empty
Empty like an empty book
Told how to think and how to look
Living according to graphs and diagrams
Of ordinary Men and Women
I know don’t exist
The skeleton of a soul
Unable to be filled or grow
Eager to please

…Please
I am numb
I am gray
But… I feel?

 

–

 

“Tears fall like feathers in silent oblivion.”

 

–

 

“In the shadow of the beast, I lost myself trying.”

 

–

 

“When ashes, ashes, ashes, ashes, ashes clouded the sky
Mother came running, running, running, running, running, and told us all to hide”

 

–

 

Moths And A Candle

 

“Hungry consumers
From the land of opportunists
In pursuit of happiness,
Credited the world away.”

 

Father, father if you’re there,
Oh god, oh please, show you care.

 

Justice is a hopeless dream,
Lost among those angry screams,
From the monk with kerosene.

 

Father, father, are you deaf?
Oh god, oh please, this feels like death!

 

Truth is a casualty when nations bury their wrongs,
Casting the shadow of bullets and bombs,
On broken hearts and Wounded Knee,
On tired eyes deceived by dreams,
On families crushed through poverty,
Faceless bodies, gray flesh, and grief.

 

Father, father, I beg exist!
Oh god, please stop! End all this!

 

Deceived by lies in the land of pride,
Where wealthy leach hope off the weak,
The poor are banished to the streets.
Where greedy economies prepare their feast,
Feeding the consumer and the beast.
Where soldiers become faceless statistics sacrificed for success,
We leave our children a world condemned to death.

 

But darkness, darkness, no one’s there,
A shadow of life leading nowhere…

 

–

 

Freedom From Dignity

 

“I am the still-born future,
The aftermath of theory.”

 

I am a surreal phantasm trapped inside a madman’s dream
Created by a delusive educator who failed to conform me into the institutionally- approved human being
An unachieved prospect whose mind became deluded with unacceptable perceptions of- reality
Diagnosed as another socially challenged abnormality
I was hastily graduated, dismissed, and formally banished into society
Condemned to become the well marketed must have dreamer, entertaining commercially- promoted fantasies, while cowering behind Television’s far-fetched illusions so that I- may numb my distraught yearnings to be free
Behold! Before you stands a human
The scientifically renowned walking mass of organic goo
Evolutions chanced achievement
Foolishly deceiving myself into believing that I’m a product of divine creation whose-life bears infinite meaning
I this thinking piece of meat
Made sub-atomic among indefinite numbers of human live-stock
A unit specially bread for labor, schooled into ignorance by another of histories-self-righteous civilizations
Forgotten on a earth which is hopelessly lost among countless other earths
There is where humanity great and unsurpassable slowly vanishes from memory
Cast into unfathomed armies of worlds, that shrink to particles of dust as they clutter- unending skies with limitless constellations
Cloudy formations of stellar patterns, which create the Milky Way
An over populated fiery spiral passing unnoticed amid boundless myriads of other- galaxies
All listlessly adrift within the universe’s ever expanding eternity
And, somewhere, lost in never ending multitudes
Buried among the cosmos ceaseless display of kaleidoscopic chaos, is a self-important- molecule desperately trying to be significant
Another trivial spark of life quickly obscured into oblivion by the incalculable grandeur- of infinity
This is your individual, the fool hiding behind conceit
Only proud because I’m ignorant of myself and humanity
My body is my prison where I have been self-condemned to insecurities solitary- confinement
Isolated so controversy remains only restless thoughts
Unborn poetry that, if given being, could unleash a maddened uproar of suppressed disquietude in raving floods of verbal fit
No! Such words, given voice, are dangerous and must be aborted
The offender quickly crushed into submission by social handicaps, in institutions- confining grip
Truth ought not dare to escape
Therefore let those silent protestations scratch at the caverns of my skull
Time, with the resignation of age, will eat away all youthful incentives for opposition- and make their claws dull
Look at me and you will see a living example of irony
The thoroughly flattered human would-be under the influence of acceptance
With such eagerness striving to appease status quo that I make me my own enemy by committing the crime of apathy
Willingly suffering under self-inflicted captivity while listlessly cleansing my thoughts- so that they may reflect the social standard of healthy patterns for a scientifically prescribed institutionally processed mind
Oh! Behold that which was meant to be human
This credulous and indifferent fool carelessly degraded into another statistic
Tagged, numbered, then filed among nameless masses of dehumanized and refined- beings
Irrational, superstitious creatures who once mistakenly believed to be divine, at last- liberated from the tyranny of integrity by faithful obedience to structure and system.

 

–

“Break the children, bleed the people, and the rich shall inherit the earth.”

 

I was born to be cattle feed for politicians
A ladder for the upper class to carry them higher
Now I voicelessly call myself a liar
As I bear their goals on my back

 

I hear the pledge and the truth it lacks-
That meaningless allegiance to life, liberty, and happiness
These words haunt me as I toil and slave for another’s gain
I dared honor them- bound by social chains

 

I am here to be an economic resource
My class is the disease and work the only cure
I dream of release, but it is not mine to procure
Work will set me free

 

I must hush that burning dream of liberty
For I am only a unit of labor
And have been given that grade and label
Which tells me who I can be
After all where would the world be with actual democracy?

 

I am obliged to willfully receive my portioned existence
With the least or no show of resistance
I am expected not to know
For knowledge makes one’s mind grow
And there is no room for individuality in status quo

 

Ignorance is bliss and requires less space
It is least selfish to remain in a mindless state
Therefore I should not question my chosen place
Or ever attempt to rise above the confinements of my social fate

 

I was born to listlessly bear these chains
And choke back tears as I neglect my lacerating pains
For I feel myself lingering away to empty dreams
Falling, I scream muted pleas and unvoiced prayers for relief
That none will ever heed
For they are merely vulgar notions
Unstable moods brought about by adolescent emotions
There is no reason to be so discontent

 

Yet, I fear one day I might assent to the system I resent
Relinquishing within the bitter torment of that appalling reality-
My life is not mine to live

 

–

 

Angel

I met an angel that had two wings
Now they’re broken with dreams that remain unspoken
Silenced, for dreams carry you to high
And when you look down
You might not like what you see
You won’t come back once you’re free

 

I watched the piper play his melody
He beckoned all the angels from the sky
And trained them to labor for another’s paradise

 

I met an angel that beamed to bright
With thoughts to noisy for ears
Truth must be silenced before anyone hears
Therefore they drowned the fire in his eyes
With waves of experts that told him otherwise

 

“You mustn’t have to much passion for life.”

 

I saw an angel that was too free
And disregarded authority
He leaped past his gates of captivity
They sawed off his wings so he wouldn’t fly

 

I watched an angel suffocate on her leash
Her collar grew far to tight
Giving one last disturbing sigh
As their grip tightened
She took her life

 

I listened to an angel cry
She let her tears shower from the sky
In a bitter attempt to be heard
The world took cover, waiting for her eyes to dry

 

I watched those angels grow
As their wings got smaller they fell bellow
And vanished within that inhuman society
Where they never wished to be

 

–

 

Strange Dreams

 

Strange dreams…

Stir now, sleeping consumers!
Discomforted by unthinkable acts of self-preservation.
Another sacrifice to the “Greater Good” left bloody bodies that blatantly clog our conscience with their memory.
Victims of self-justified, pre-forgiven atrocities remembered only as nameless statistics that slowly melt into our collective forgetfulness.
The controversial stench of guilt is easily sanitized, then dismissed, before entirely buried in today’s trivialities and tomorrow’s news.

 

eat

Smile now, oh self-proclaimed elite!
Leaders that make fools of your people
and cannibalize life
Today the gluttons make a feast
Wealthy murderers guiltlessly rejoice in the spoils of blood as they declare victory.
God has blessed those who oppress in the name of their own well-being.

 

…god?

Where are you now, oh absent deity?
The one that made man, then walked away, and has long been reasoned out of existence.
Your holy men do unholy things then hide behind their holy scriptures.
If they speak the truth then god must be a hypocrite!
Nothing more than a pointless riddle written into holy books.
…deaf, blind, and mute.

 

death

 

This is the death of man.
Incarnated into that abhorrent form of a deified Nation.
An omnipotent demon, drunk with conceit, casting the shadow of fear and of grief
Of bullet and bomb…
To reap death, that mad fruit of power and pride.
Bred upon the faces of fathers, while lacerating the flesh of children, and tearing apart the hearts of mothers.

 

strange bitter dreams…
Sleep.

 

–

 

Weak
My world coming to an end
Falling apart nothing makes sense
Love is the deception of a moment
And family a self inflicted lie
If I had tears left I would cry
Oddly enough I still chose to smile and hide
Bearing a disguise that slowly wears with time
Fooling none but myself
Fooling myself
A fool to myself
Not sure why I try

 

–

 

A Dream

 

I waited for the mute to speak
And tell of their wisest thoughts
I waited for the wars to cease
Oh, the vanity of what I sought

 

I waited for utter silence
From the funeral bells
and from man’s violence

 

I waited for a tiny laugh
For the broken hearted to be glad
How I waited and it drove me mad
It was all of this I wished to see
But life it seems can’t be a dream

 

–

 

The Story of Nothingman From Cubicleland

 

“Dig your six foot hole for the rat race,
Sell your soul for the rat race,
Your time ticks away, so make haste!
If you wish to win this rat race
And become rich in this mad place.”

 

Highflyingman from Makebelieveland
Began the day with big dreams and plans.
His face looks just like your’s and theirs,
All shining, fresh and grand,
And far to young to understand,
That he was standing in quick sand.
So he leapt into the rat race,
And vanished without a trace.

 

Nobodyman from Nothingland,
Comes in early and leaves late,
To earn his nothingwage.
He toils and slaves,
Has never lived a day,
And hopes things will change,
But his hair is turning gray,
From living in this nothing Nowhereage.

 

One day Nobodyman decided to take matters into his own hands,
And came up with a neverplan!
…While talking to an office plant.
He would quit, then walk away,
And finally escape,
By abandoning his place,
To seek life and its meaning.
But, instead, relinquished to daydreaming.
He was trapped in society’s nowheremaze.

 

Nobodyman from Nothingland!
As years wore him with age,
He turned old, and gray, and slowed his pace,
So they finally put him away.
A retired fate in that dead-end place,
Alongside all the others with a wrinkled face.

 

Forgotenman from Hasbeenplace
Died, but long had been replaced,
With another Nobodyman,
Eager to fill his unoccupied space.
None remembered his name,
And as his memory fades,
He vanishes without a trace.

 

–

All rights are reserved by Nathalie Lawhead. Poems may not be reproduced without prior written consent from the author.