#portfolio?

promised myself I’d fiddle with CS6 but didn’t have time. Instead churned this out!

medium: 0.5 mechanical pencil

In the ten years I lived in Israel

no one talked about

how it felt

not to know if there will be

another day to breathe, dance, sing.

Another day to live...

--- 

But in these United States

this isn’t a “thing.”

It is more strange to die than to live.

Living’s not a “thing”

without questions about when

and if at all.

But we will all die.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week,

and maybe in sixty years.

 ---

But the Israelis are the bad people

because the outside world doesn’t see that it’s easy.

That it’s easy for us to die.

That my family could die today-

and not due to old age.

But because someone doesn’t want

for them to live.

Just because they live in a place

where the brainwashed extremists don’t want

While watching Rasputin’s song in Anastasia, it hit me.

In the “dark of the night” shadow will find you:

The kind that eats up your skin,

eats up what’s within.

It reminds you of your faults, and their triumphs.

It reminds you that you’ve done wrong,

but tells you that others are all perfect.

You try to tell a friend but they say to just forget it-

                “It’s all in your head and the drama’s unneeded.”

                -but it’s all in your head and the trauma won’t just leave.

It won’t leave you alone, it won’t let you find home,

not in the farthest reaches of the planet-

and certainly not in your dream world.

Every way they say they fly you can, too.

But it attacks even your morning sky and

makes you fall into gloom.

This shadow rips apart any semblance

of any good start.

It rips away every good heart standing in

its way to total and complete control, to the

forces trying to protect your soul- your very core and being.

The way you value truth over what sounds pretty,

              the way you believe that no one deserves pain or unhappiness-

              no matter what,

and that most people believing differently completely breaks you.

It tears you apart until all that’s left is you shell, your skin,

but nothing that made you who you are.

If you tried to fly away, you’d have to land some time,

and your feet could touch the ground but you would burn, as they

 would root themselves down into the shadow and the depths-

into the way everything breaks.

But if you fly, you get struck down by lightning. So please,

just give up, my darling. You may live a little longer

if you serve their dark purpose. You may grow a little

stronger if you’re bent to breaking point,

and someway, somehow, manage to

just barely survive.

You could grow strong enough

to help the others live, while you

whither away and die

the second you try to land, or fly. So make

the leap and let yourself fall, so that

It’s all a game,

and I’m faking sane.

It’s all a ploy,

and I’m nothing but your toy.

  I’m that thing you use for entertainment.

You can mold me to be whatever, whoever you

want, and that’s the only way we work.

  While I sluggishly succumb to

society’s sobriety, or lack thereof, you

can’t seem to name yourself. While you

search frantically for a name for every

illness, every emotion of the mind, and

every way you’ve taken mine. You’ve taken

my mind and pulled it apart, restructured it into

a more pleasing figure to look at. Reimagined it into

a lobotomized Barbie doll, simply doing what

 she’s told. Whatever’s hot, whatever’s easy,

whatever’s only for you but never for me.

  You pulled and played with me,

like a plasticine machine. If you mold

me just right, I’ll do what you want. I’ll flail

frantically to satisfy every fleeting whim.

Every haphazard desire, whether it’s a sandwich,

your pride, or that one position you saw from Deen and Stoya last night.

  Just like plasticine, to throw away a wasted limb.

Or artery. It’s no big deal. You can replace it with

something else, I don’t need them to live, I don’t need

them to be me—I don’t need to be me. Not as far as you’re concerned.

  So what’ll it be?

  My brain or my heart,

where should we start this time?

At heart, there will be nothing left, but without a

brain, how would I know which promises must be kept?

How would I know that I was only to obey you

mindlessly and not anyone else? How would I know how to

read your brain without a single conversation?

  You leave me unkempt and underdressed, skin and

bones left for the rest. Every time you throw away

an arm, a leg, maybe another so I can’t move, I

can’t escape you, I can only be of use to you.

And I accept every bit of it, because unlike you,

I wouldn’t change a thing.

  Like plasticine, you molded me.