I wait in anticipation for the answer to my call.

I weep, I laugh,

I'm sick and tired of wearing this ugly mask.

It's never easy to keep a smile on my face,

Especially if you come last in race.

The many times my feet felt sore,

Are the pains I have to bear, no more?

It feels like my inside is being ripped out right before my very eyes.

Tear by tear I stand here

Helpless, confused, wondering what's next

And can this get any worse?

And then it does.

My whole world crashes

And all my dreams and aspirations turn to ashes.

"Help me, help me", is the cry of my heart.

It feels like my heart is being torn apart.

Why? Honestly, I don't know.

I want to change the way I feel

But, I can't.

Why? I don't know how.

We all want to be loved, cared for and told in a whisper,

I love you!

- Keddisha Alscott

---------------

Someone like you

Someone like you

With a fragrant face,

Someone so true

And full of grace

Someone like you, who

lacks mistrust

You make life's meaning so true

Like the color of silver and golden rust

Like golden peaches, I

love your crust

Like silver apples, I will fly

If I must

Someone like you, I will

Always love

Until the time stands still

And dangling hearts fall from above.

- Annorea Williams

-----------------

When love was a feeling

I grew up on a healthy diet

of Air Supply, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson

voices like birds chirping their night song

at your window, lulling you to sleep

in the sweet evening mist of dusk.

The fresh smell of blossoms in their throats,

their tune like stars twinkling in the twilight.

That was when love was not just a word

but a feeling pulsing in your heart

like the rhythm of soul music

tearing your pride from the inside,

bringing it outside

in a deluge of tears on a bus

where you heard the incandescent sounds

of maestroes dead and living

crooning at the window of your ears.

- Nicholas Alexander

-------------

Making slingshots

I never knew how

to break the civil orange bark

nor how to curl my spine into the

rigid thumb that stole the ratchet

blade down the blotched wood

narrowing its neck to a 'Y'.

I could never find the grit in his

teeth, the rocky hill width of his

voice as he bartered charm for

elastic bands and left ripe hearts

on the crab-grass terrace.

And I would never convince my

mother that the old "naw-no-

name" box-sole shoes pitched

behind Ma'Franklin's mint

garden might well be patched

against the dry-rotten bag strap

'neath the cellar for the perfect

slingshot tongue. I learnt as you

pot-holed the tender from my

palm how the world collided at

blank ends, that even if you

bound your marrow to the 10

years of my skin, I should never

find the right stones to shoot.

- Adrian Allen