The difference which lies therein.

All these ways I fade to gray,
And yet it is still unclear:
Who would have made us
Kings unto men?
They must not have known how we falter,
grown to obsession.
How far we fall
and
How much we fail.
Don't make our choices for us-
We shall fail at our own will.
Don't even try-
You cannot understand,
Nor begin to comprehend:
We are not like you.
I am not like them.
We start out the same,
and we all finish with the same flourish.
It is what happens betwixt those two moments
that makes us different.
Tears the line between the strong
and the weak.
Everything is about reaction:
It's all about what you do with it.
What you do with what happens
is what matters.
Open up Pandora's box,
go on,
now you've been dared.
What is going to happen, now?
Are you going to be the same,
or will you set yourself apart?
Set yourself on fire?

There is still time to choose
what is it that you will do.
But be warned,
the world is waiting
and the world is quite impatient.

Wolf Outside My Window.

Waiting outside a window
is a wolf that wants to play.
To be told it has existed,
That it's okay to stay.

We prowl in the darkness,
softly stalking down our prey.
Continuing from long ago,
I do not sin to say:

You've made your choice.
You've lost your voice.
You can't return,
though this, you yearn,
Because you did not sing.
It's them or us,
So what's the fuss?
And no, you can't have both.

It's been awhile,
The sky's gone gray
And you dwell outside my window,
Waiting for some greater truth
To tell you that it's okay.

Just Another Griefer

You saw me in the shadows,
I know you must have,
the silver in the black.
You didn't know long I'd been there,
You didn't know from whence I came.
A guardian angel, arrived far too late.

They took your spirit,
but not your fight.
A stolen soul, but not a lost cause.
Even when it holds no meaning to you,
you fight on, you trek forward,
You make me see how wrong I am.

Not just another griefer,
Just another believer,
Not just another one.
Don't tell me you can make it on your own;
You need me as much as I do you.

They need you more.

(A/N: I would like to thank Fred Gallagher for MegaTokyo, particularly for Miho, whom the line "Just another griefer" is attributed to. I don't really think the poem has anything to do with the comic, though. However, depending on how you read it, it could...)

Enough to break you heart from afar.

The air holds hot and humid,
pressing down around us,
sweating it all out,
and we wait for the rain.

She stands alone,
cold enough to break your heart
from all so far away,
her shadow, a statue,
darker than you could have thought.

He fell through a crack in the sidewalk,
disappeared from the face of the earth.
No, you can't understand him,
only wonder at his choice.

The only help is that it is cloudy;
this is why I dare to stay,
So even if I can't predict the outcome,
I can still enjoy the rain.

How it's supposed to be.

People kept saying, "This isn't how it's supposed to be."
And I sat there thinking, "How is it supposed to be?"
Should he be here, living, with us, chatting, laughing-
Like a normal teenager, who, when you look more closely,
is far from normal, per se.

Some people can change the world they live in
by changing something in thier community.
Their backgrounds are feilds,
and thier visions, dynamic.

Some people are effective,
they get a message out.
They are like a small pebble,
Thrown into a still pond,
ripples spanning to the dark.

Some people die, painful and prolonged,
And the thought hangs like a boulder,
held up by an old rope,
and when it breaks-
there will be waves.

Some people do all three.

The water laps more harshly then it has before,
liquid tendrils reaching futher on the shore.
You can't tell where this is going,
and still, you long for more.

This is not our resting place,
and neither is it yours.
Like a leaf, your memory,
floats on into the storm.

Maybe we will dance in it,
for it's known; This too shall pass.
Sometimes it takes longer,
and sometimes we forget.

How can we know who will be here, when the storm does clear?
And why do we cry for strangers, but not for kin?
Why do we suppose to say that the universe is wrong?

I heard them say, "This is not how it's supposed to be?"
And it got me to thinking, "So how is it supposed to be?"

~*~

For Aharon Simcha Halley- z''l

Tear at the Fractions

I wish that you existed,
I want that you should be real,
I want to be able to look at you and tell
"I can feel."

I wait in as place as green as they be,
Unbent, unformed, and powerful.
There are trees, old and gnarled and tall,
waiting till the storms engulf,
and whip away the factions,
tear at the fractions,
bringing away the leaves.
I sit on a grey roof,
staring up to the blue,
and I'm thinking of you.

The fish swam past the fallen branch
Silver streak in muddy water,
Black lightening in the brown clouds,
Stir up the mud,
don't think nothing of it,
Don't believe what they say,
Can you trust them, anyway?

The heron jabs its beak in-
The struggle is brief,
The great blue flies away.

And I'm sitting here,
wishing you existed.

We write 'love' on our arms

I pray for strength
because time is not enough
because life throws hard punches
and I just want to punch back.

I have friends
who cut themselves,
to make the pain
more real.
And I think, "My god,
how beautiful,
this pain we call
'to feel.'"

I write love on
my arm
and on the arms
of others.
I see some scars
and I cry
a little
inside.
Not only because
I wasn't there
for them,
to stop them,
but also because I've
seen the abyss
from the bottom of it
and it's seen me,
and stared back.

And I wonder
what it was that
made them break
and why,
now,
we write 'love'
on our arms
as another way we can escape
with nothing more
that we'll have to explain-
in years in the future
to people we don't know now,
who might not understand-
since this is sending the same message,
but isn't as destructive.

Love is just a word
to send a message
about something
voiceless in its soul.
And I pray for strength
because
I want to see this through.