The flowers usually shined so bright

When she was so happy,

When she actually ran through their fields,

But one morning came the endless night;

The world feeling her broken plight,

The flowers bent over their heads

And set silently to lay her bed

In the meadow of the grassy sway,

She begged the sun, “Not today.”

The concrete grinds beneath the wheels

Carrying him from the things he feels,

Onward goes the black board

Riding on the black pavement,

Until he is on the ground tasting

His body’s own enslavement,

When everyone else leaves,

He’s left to give his payment,

Left to ponder while he greaves

That soon he’ll be

Six feet under autumn leaves,

As his body vomits with disease;

And he leans back his head to pray,

“Please, God, not today.”

Blood drips from his many wounds

And still the heat can make him swoon

While the house he raises will house someone new,

And on the streets each night he eats.

Paper flies into the machine,

As we speak his tools drop to the ground,

He falls back without a sound,

When he washes the nail hole his own way,

He drops his hammer; “Not today.”

She hardly remembers when the sky was blue,

When the clouds were white,

When the trees still grew,

Now covered with snow they sit

In covered night,

In solemn desolation, destroyed from the fight.

Same as them she sits alone,

She covered the furniture and tore out the phone

To prepare for when her days are done,

She calls in sick to lie on her bed,

Now she dwells in the ever darkening gray,

Closes her eyes, sighs “Not today.”

Her children will beg her to bring them close,

She provides till she’s famished for her loves,

For her cherished doves,

And still they paint her face with cement

And choke her slowly, what sort of rent

That they pay to her can this be?

Winter brings her much needed sleep

And a young boy begs an apple from a tree,

But tired of the world’s antics she lets out a sigh,

Too tired to either help or betray,

Groans at the boy, “Not today.”

He bears the world upon his shoulders

As its never ceasing pedestal,

The weight is that of many boulders

That consistently grow ever so colder

And on a globe he spins it now,

Sitting back in his chair

To let the sweat drip from his brow,

The burden of billions is too much to carry,

And alone for a while,

The world is okay,

So for now he can relax his muscles,

Whispering, “Not today.”

The last time I wrote I couldn’t tell you when,

Though I never could write the perfect end,

I tried until my creativity ran dry,

Until no longer could I sing,

No longer could I cry,

I ran my life into the ground just for the sake

Of creating a story so perfectly fake,

That maybe reality could escape me again,

Watching the line click on a blank page,

A story growing to ever decay,

I leave the keyboard, “Not today.”