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 I’m finding it hard to concentrate 

Thoughts speaking without raising their hands
Raising their voices 
Without being called on
Problems scribbled on the blackboard of my heart 
Lacking a solution for their missing parts
Attempts to steady my shaking hands 
Replacing God where there was once man
I try to sit alone and quiet down
A smile traced on my face 
…They all think she is ok
What if life behaved in an opposite way?
Where we just spoke the truth 
Of how we really were on any given day 
I would say, 
…I am biting down with weak teeth 
I am spitting out these words just to stop the nervous tweaks 
I am holding it all in 
I am under the water, freezing my breath
…becoming the hustler of life’s test
Shadowboxing the unrest 
The hive is loose 
And it is I they seem to choose 
Their stings prick and bleed 
But I bat them off 
With unwavering belief 
I’m fighting being defined a failure 
With scarred fists and a worn out tee shirt 
With the cliche missing 
And my poetry clinging 
Ink down my chest 
Bleeding from my heart 
Rendered into art
To heal myself 
I am tired and I am run down 
Yet there is magic in the forlorn 
I am telling you my real 
I am choking on how it feels
I am the result of what has spilled
…like oil out of a bottle 
I wear the stains of past tomorrow’s 
Yet I still live with two hands up on this roller coaster 
And that would be my truest answer 
If we lived in a world 
Where when we reply with how we are 
” yeah I’m ok”
…was not the standard