B-Sides of Life

by AndYes – AndYesPoetry.com – David@AndYesPoetry.com -- ©2015

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When you finish, Rewind this tape, or Flip it and fast forward. It’s all the same – Just share it with others. .

In a life that means nothing and will someday fade You have a choice. Either every moment doesn’t matter, and thus life is meaningless or every moment matters more than the last.

Don’t be afraid. You know what you want.

The truth is…

“B-Sides of Life (The Written Word Mixtape)” by AndYes

AndYes is a performance poet with 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Ethnic Theatre Workshop and the National Poetry Slam, whose work has been featured across Sacramento, the Bay Area, Italy and Spain. If you like the art, support the artist. This work is free (unless you want it in print. If I could afford it, I would provide that for free, as well). All I ask is that you share it. all content copyright ©2015 reproduce this work as you see fit, but ONLY if it is not for profit. Author must be credited in any and all reproductions, including remixes, tweaks, and other such edits and changes. published by AndYesPoetry.com November 2015

Please, introduce yourself…

Hi there. Tell me about a time you felt you were at your best – is it this moment? If not, what was the difference between your situation then, and now? Feel free to write your response below (I left room for you) -

How To Process The World

Farms have begun replacing their crops with sunflowers. I am told this is a way of replenishing the dirt, as GMO crops deplete the earth’s nutrients. My knowledge of the situation ends, there. I am not an agricultural fiend – just a bevy of random facts forming symmetry within, giving shape to lessons for life in everything. Example – I want to be sunflowers for lost souls. I am surrounded by GMOs, pulling the strength from others so they can grow larger, taste sweeter, put themselves for sale. Example – Ants leave pheromone trails for others to follow them out, and back home. This is why killing ants is a useless task – more will always follow until you clean their trails back to the hole they came from.

Two lessons, from this: 1. From the ant’s perspective, you feel most lost when you lose track of where you came from. 2. From the homeowner’s perspective, you cannot cure problems by attacking the symptoms. This lesson is also learned in modern medicine, how we patch over coughs but can’t handle the viral infection. This lesson is also learned from political discussion – how we pass bills for equal marriage but ignore the deeper social issue, and like laundry, mistreated, they will bleed into the water. New lesson. In the time I have been writing these words, moments have passed where I could have been a louder advocate. I am so sick of reading in coffee shops watching others snap their fingers. Forgetting our words, they say, “What a great show that was.”

If only a kiss

Rainfall under city lights her words leave her lips like smoke

Luminescent halos ring droplets still-lit fires within her breath

Refracts their shimmer on the sidewalk with words she will never put out

As downtown glows aetheria she is warm with her intent

Passing taxis push fares into the night stutters her goodbye

Wind uproots dampened cardboard wants to say more

Left in the gutter as I go on.

Don’t Lose You

She once asked me how I do it. How I laugh at all my problems Depression, betrayal, being lost How, even at my worst I can find a reason to smile or make someone else feel loved. I don’t tell her I am a broken heart engine. I don’t explain how, some days are all Struggle and no love Or the countless times I have given up Rather, I tell her If you’ve been as low as I have, the rest? It’s easy. The hard part isn’t the internal struggle – I say Some hands are beautiful, in how They try so hard to pull you down. They are craftsmen of self-doubt, They say, “Rest your head on my shoulder.” The hardest part is not living with myself, It is finding those who will push me further.

A quick word from our sponsor

Hey again. Sorry for interrupting, but I just thought I’d check in and ask you a question – What’s your purpose? Like, if you had to define it. If you had to break it down to a sentence, a good starting point, what would it be? Feel free to write it below (I left you some space so you could come back and scratch out the first couple tries – no one gets it right on the first go-round. If you need more space, because it’s not quite working out, grab some paper):

Please continue…

To The Open Mic’er (We Love You)

After two straight hours of watching shaking voices come and go at this open mic, I am finished - tapped out, unable to continue. I love the spoken word as much as the next, but there are only so many times I can hear the preamble; the nervous tones of trembling lips who don’t understand that We love your work until you tell us it’s shit

(and even after)

Poetry, among other things, is the expression of self, and I promise you are not shit. Your core, put on display for us, is a one-of-a-kind Kaleidoscope, where bright colors and dark spaces twist and turn in unique patterns. I swear your soul should be saved in a tabernacle, not excreted from your skin. Just say these words like you mean it. Like you, at one time, felt the rush as they rolled off your pen. You are not some broken prose half-statement with words unintelligible –

Unless you tell us you are. I would never hate you for being honest - Even if your words aren’t clever. Even if you use cliché like a hammer shooting fish in a barrel of monkeys writing Shakespeare on disjointed typewriters. So, Speak Your Truth. I promise, if you let us, we will all follow you.

All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. All this blank space should be used for something. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write.

From A Train Out In Italia

“Don’t hold back,” she says. These are the last words she speaks to me, before we cross oceans away from each other. It isn’t her face – though she is perfection – or her hands, extending from her body like jumper cables begging to ignite a positive reaction in these battery hands. It is her voice - the confidence tidal soundwaves of a woman who knows what she wants – and it is not sex. It is the unburden of all this regret, and every night I’ve spent staring at the ceiling with a mindful of mistakes and half-steps. She sees my struggle to own who I am, and In one sentence, she knows who I am through all this pretend.

So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. Edit: Look back at yourself to see mistakes. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. Edit: The more you read, the better you write We can tell if you are not consuming by the Consistency of the shit you leave behind. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. Edit: You know the love you give to others? It means nothing if you never love yourself. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. It means nothing if you never love yourself. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write. It means nothing if you never love yourself. So I write. So I write. So I write. So I write.

Can I ask you something?

Before we get back into this last poem, let me ask: Are you where you want to be, in life? If not, what’s stopping you? If you are, where do you want to be, next? I mean, if you stripped away the external factors, and all the reasons you can think of, would you find that, all along, you were just standing in your own way? Challenge, from writer-to-reader: make a plan for what you want, even if it is small. Give yourself a goal and a realistic timeframe. I don’t care if it’s one of those thing you’ve been putting aside for a long time because you can’t find the right people – give yourself this gift: Figure out what it would take to make it work. And don’t keep it to yourself – talk to someone about it.

A Sample Of Change

How long will we wait? How long will we wait For some day to come For our hearts to beat? How long will we wait? How long will we wait For some day to come For our hearts to beat? So many broken homes litter this canvas country with injustice-painted Jackson Pollocks of gunshots and handcuffs. We tell ourselves Maybe this time their death will have Meaning. Maybe this time their death will have Closure. Or maybe this time they’ll be Forgotten, as they always are. Real change replace with another discussion panel that ends with these words

“America’s gonna have to answer some big questions.” Yeah? When? When were you, The voice on the biggest platform in this country, When were you planning to ask them? How long will we wait? How long will we wait For our day to come For our hearts to beat? How long will we wait? How long will we wait For these deaths to stop, To let us be free? While you have read this poem another case of Depression has been fired from his job. His boss calls him lazy but he lays in bed dreaming of pulling a trigger, swallowing a bottle of pills tying a noose around his neck and slitting his throat.

Some days these thoughts overcrowd his good sense with a need to not exist. As he is shoved aside until his family is standing at grave-side wondering why heartless capitalism does not bend for people with Depression. Rather, it builds our resumes with tangential job descriptions until we give in to the condition. Look at our streets, they are lined with abandoned prospects of a country that didn’t want to help fix the problem. Instead America finds it easier to lock them up for the sake of production - arresting the poor for existing in a world where they are not allowed to belong. How long will we wait? How long will we wait How long will we wait? How long will we wait

A Closing Thought

If you had no history, and everything that happened today, and all the thoughts you felt and the things you did defined you as a person, who are you? Do you want to keep being this person?

You can always change.

If you didn’t like your answers, read this page again, tomorrow.

CAUTION: Choking hazard. Early exposure to Words has been known to cause Depression-like symptoms at first, followed by a cracking open of your skin. This is part of the healing process, as the shell that once held you opens to reveal a new self to the world. One with confidence. This new creature must be maintained with constant Word use. Be advised – what you feed the beast will become what it expresses tenfold. Side effects of the beast include enlightenment, as you share drifting thoughts late into the night and early in the day; attachment disorders manifesting from the absence of thinly sliced tree-sheets; increased handshakes and hugs as you share your work (sometimes resulting in additional attachment disorders when separated from large crowds of approving fans); diarrhea of the mouth; overconfidence stimulated from early success; the desire for more and larger crowds with which to impress; codependency can develop in unchecked emotions of poets. Use alcohol and drugs to your own pleasure, when using Words. Be wary, as each has its own side effect that may enhance or detract from the aforestated cautions. ADDITIONAL WARNING – Once Words are taken, you can never given them back.*

*In hindsight, I suppose I should have mentioned this at the start.

When you finish, Rewind this tape, or

Flip it and fast forward. It’s all the same –

Just share it with others. .

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