NEPHART.COM

Yes.

I am angry.

Not loud.

Not throwing chairs.

Not breaking glass.

I am the quiet anger.

The kind that smiles.

Inside me

there is a small

boxing ring.

In one corner

stands Mike Tyson

In the other 

Muhammad Ali. 

And they are not fighting people.

They are fighting

the urge.

The urge

to answer back.

To explode.

To tear the sky open

with my voice.

I do not like

bossy people.

People who inflate

tiny mistakes

into world wars.

People who walk into a room

and try to rearrange

your spine.

We are tiny drops

in an endless universe.

Dust with deadlines.

And still

some speak

like they invented gravity.

Their faces turn red.

Lava without eruption.

They stack superiority

like heavy books

on my tranquil mind.

My mind is water.

Do not throw bricks in it

and call it leadership.

I am doing my work.

I give what I can.

Advice?

If it is kind

I will carry it.

But I will not carry

monkey noise.

So I smile.

Because if I speak

my anger

has teeth.

And I am not joking.

I do not punch people.

I archive them.

I fold them

into poems.

And by the time

this poem ends

they are already gone.

Buried.

Not in rage.

In memory.