Like A Joke

You make a joke

You throw a joke

I am the joke

Can’t I take a joke

They laugh, they look

You smile, I within

I am the joke

What’s wrong, but

They know, I just

Can’t take a joke

I am the joke

It is me

And they laugh

At your jokes

They laugh at me

You grow like

A giant fed by

Their laughter, and

I shrink – tiny, tiny

Me, and that makes

An even better joke

So you say that, too

The laughs swallow

Me up, tiny me

disappears

Like

a

joke

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Too Many Holes

Take every feeling that fights

its way in, capture it, lock it up

inside a wooden box with a skeleton

key.  Everything I feel is my enemy.

 

The soldiers of sadness of fear of regret,

they fire their weapons of emotion if

they get too close, leaving me with holes

clear through.  Every shot means

one more piece of me on the ground.

 

I have no weapon, so I arrest them as soon

as they appear.  There’s a tiny prison box

for each, so sadness never speaks to hope,

and guilt will never hear from pride.

 

Boxes line my walls, reverberating

cries, but I stand guard, in case more feeling

come by, for I already have too many

holes and too many skeleton keys.