Best Of Intentions
By Nicholas Petela
Written May 28, 2012

(Poetry is great in that it really gives me a chance to lash out against things. Like the inevitable. It’s easy to lash out against the inevitable if you’re being poetic about it.
This is about one of those really bad no-way-out situations, where not only is there not a way to please everybody, there’s not a way to please ANYBODy, and someone’s bound to get hurt in the end. Sucks, but it’s these brutal facts of life that make me a poet.) 

Love is such a hurtful word
But it’s never heard
And meant that way
Oh, I was too depressed to pray
My selfishness and pain away

Dear, forgive me if I do
Care for you
Despite the words I speak
Get louder the less I think
As the lies keep getting weak

I’d say it if I could
But you shouldn’t wish I would
And we both had the best of intentions

I’m really not the best of guys
Though I just might be in your eyes
So please, rectify
The disease that makes you cry
The love behind your feeble lie

Condemn us if we do or don’t
There’s no way out, and fighting wont
Do anything but tighten the coil
Shred our thoughts and cause turmoil
Bring the pot up to a boil

And I don’t know what’s best for you
Your feelings leave you cut and bruised
And spoiled we are
From all that we’d start
To say we knew

Forgive me that I’m sickening
For not telling you everything
It’s wrong, although you still don’t know
The things I should have said long ago
But now too late to let it show

The fighting’s harder than we knew
But I know this much, I really do:
We both had the best of intentions.
If only that could get us through.

Wonder Why I Don’t Try
By Nichoals Petela
Written May 5, 2012

(Forwards are for loooosers. :P)

Trying to make sense
Trying to deny
That birds could fly
And you wonder why
I don’t even try

You’re like the hazy dream that never goes away
So familiar that I want it to stay
But the morning comes in the haze of gray
And steals from me this beautiful moment
This beautiful time in history
This beautiful depth and mystery
And you wonder why
I don’t even try

You never learned to play
And so you don’t play fair
You just left me standing there
Like they all do anyway
You’re so wonderful you don’t even see
Nor do I know what it means to me
But you simply refuse to let go, let it be
Yet you wonder why
I don’t even try

I hope this feeling doesn’t slip away
I hope this dream can one day finally stay
I hope this toil can come to fruitful end
I hope this hope doesn’t break though it might bend
I hope that I
Can one day try
To fly

A Less Imperfect Me
By Nicholas Petela
Written May 18, 2012

( A poem about craving someone’s attention. Mostly. I wasn’t going to post it, but I really liked some of what I did.)

Familiar envy coursing through my veins
But it’s not the same
Oh, I wish it were sane
But no, it’ll never be like that again.

What are you that I am not?
What is it I have forgot?
What can I be?
Better than me?
Good enough for her to see?

My mind unravels 
The edges shred
Feeling dead
But breathing still

My body shrivels
My heart alight
Can never fight
The way you feel

I crave to be
A less imperfect me
Good enough for her
Finally
I have something to be
There’s something more to me
But still nothing will work

Somebody slay the king in Reason’s seat
For he is not the heir
He’s taken over Reason’s chair
And I’m just so tired of seeing him there

I want to be
A less imperfect me
I want so bad for her to see
For once I want something for me
And not for everyone else
Something for myself
Possessed now
A flower of selfish direction
Thus spreads the infection
So I may never be
Any more than an imperfect me

Decompress
By Nicholas Petela
Written April 16, 2012

(So I was cleaning up my desktop, and I found this thing I wrote A MONTH ago, that I didn’t publish, that I barely even looked at once I read it. It’s funny, random lines float into my mind, and I couldn’t remember where the “The world is my oyster, but you are its pride” actually came from, but I remembered that I wrote it and I liked that line a lot. I went back and I was like “THIS IS GOOD. WHY DIDN’T I PUBLISH THIS. :O ” and so here it is.)

Stress
Binds us
Chaos
Finds us
No matter how much we hide
I can see how much you’re stressed inside

And I am the one
Having all the fun
While you’re writhing in pain
And I’m going insane
Because I sit and watch it all

Stress
Takes us
Stress
Makes us
Into what the world wants us to be
You simply must refuse it to be free

And I am the one
Who refuses to conform
As you play the game
And gladly perform
For the audience of all
For the audience of none

Decompress
Let go
Decompress
Just show
Just please just be who you are inside
Forget the wounds that you try to hide
The world is my oyster, but you are its pride
And I long to see your smile.

Inside Her Eyes
By Nicholas Petela
Written March 5, 2012

(My poems are writing themselves again. This is a slightly worrying but nonetheless interesting phenomena. What started out as being a simple note on human potential and being nice to people instead turned into a very specific piece dealing with a friend of mine who’s struggling with something right now. I didn’t really think about how worried I am about what she’s going through until I wrote this. So here it is. )

You look into those eyes
And you don’t see
A single thing you made her out to be

You call her trash
A dirty whore
You don’t know
She’s so much more

You don’t see
The way she bleeds
The times she’s cried
The times they lied
You don’t see
Who she is inside

You don’t see
In the glimmers within
Genuine sorrow for genuine sin
Oh, she knows what she should have done
But she’s making the best of each moment, each one
She made a mistake
That she cannot erase
But she will not and cannot deny her fate

You don’t see
The hollow in her eyes
The misery that made her despise
All those stupid, stupid guys
And how anyway she’d fight
To set it right

You don’t see
The darkness as she wakes
The sum of her mistakes
Weighs down, but she never breaks
No
She is so much more than these
She’s so much more than memories
She knows she has the power to change
If you were her you’d go insane
But no
She remained

You don’t see a person
You just see a face
Add label to action
To person disgrace

You don’t see who she is
Or what she has done
You just see those eyes
Not behind to the one
Inside

Dawnbreak
By Nicholas Petela
Written March 4, 2012

(I saw a really pretty cloud. I’d just watched something on some horrible people who took advantage of some people and… I don’t want to give specifics, it’s pretty sickening. And I thought of how people build these walls because they’re scared, scared of getting betrayed, or scared of their dreams never being fulfilled, and I just felt pretty horrible. But that cloud, with the sun just behind it, intensifying the light edges of the shadowed form, just reminded me of the breaking light I wish to see in the world, that nobody has to suffer that, that everyone can be unafraid to be who they wish to be, do what they wish to do, and give their all to their passions and love without fear of judgement or loss.)

We walk through
Dazed and confused
And oh, we are
Afraid to be
Who we are
So scared are we
Of judgement
Oppression
Betrayal
Depression

We walk through
Fear following you
No, you can’t let your guard down
No, you can’t turn around
And remember the days you trusted and believed
In all this world was and used to be
No longer is the time for such childish themes
Your dreams
Mean nothing in the grander scheme
So we think

We walk through
Nothing to do
And everywhere to be
We walk past
Our life just so fast
Always cresting the next mountain
Always in with the next task
And refuse to let it ever last
We just won’t enjoy the view

We fear ourselves
Retreat inside
A glass facade
And try to hide
But still we cry
Out to the world
To see the mask destroyed
And the lie unfurled

This I pray:
May the dawn break on a day
Where we don’t have to be afraid.

As It Stands
By Nicholas Petela
Written April 30, 2012 

(This one turned out really good. I like the scheme, and the message. Trying to make sense of something without any evidence for any sort of interpretation whatsoever. Of being uncertain, and fearing the unknown.)

Why do I believe
You don’t want to talk to me
That you’d rather
Be far, far away?

Why do I believe
You have somewhere else to be
And you wish I’d
Simply step out of your way?

Why is it I think
That you wish I had left your life
Do you really
Think it’s better when I’m gone?

Why is it I think
That I’m just causing you strife
Is it really
That I should be moving on?

Why is it you don’t
Just say you want me gone
So that I don’t have to obsess
And wring my hands?

Why is it you don’t
Let me know I’m right or wrong?
This is my interpretation
As it stands