Marching through the streets chanting and hollering.
Waving evil flags and burning tiki torches.
Calling out for the death of many.
Not thinking about their own.
Anger, hatred, met with silence.
Stillness, steadfast.
Mace and truncheons meet faces and bodies.
Close quarter hate-to-hate combat.
Swastikas fly protected by sacred badges.
While voices of peace lay on the ground in hopes of a better tomorrow.
Peacefully we try and violently it fails.
The fight never won by one side or the other.
We can't share our living space.
We can't share our voice.
Coexist is a death sentence to those without weapons.
We sharpen our tongues and dull our blades to fight this war on our own neighbors and friends.
One day it will end.
We just don't know when.
The drums of war will quiet and give way to new peace.

Two sides that are supposed to be together.
Fighting against a force of pure unbridled frustration and chaos.
Two inseparable sides cut in half by the monotonous buzzing of this horrid swarm of insects.
Home was on the other side of the country but they brought their enemy with them.
Home felt like D-Day storming an unfamiliar beach with familiar people.
Watching them fall away into the reality that this world hates us.
It's all noise and bombshells.
****** fire picking off the last of what I knew and loved.
Home was here when I was where I was.
Now this is a warzone.

I walk at night a lot.
It's still and cool at night.
Everything is vacant in a small town at night.
The buildings are quiet.
The smells of the diners no longer linger in the air.
I relate a lot to the night time.
I'm quiet and unsure about what's in the distance.
I'm vacant and cold.

Like this balloon, I'm filled with helium, as the things I love keep floating away

*******... remember when you loved me like that?

I get snappy with people.
I get impatient because in my head it all just turns to noise.
The talking and questions are replaced by the constant buzzing of TV static in my ears.
I feel overwhelmed by the simple things.
I get angry.
Not at them, at the nothing that's so loud in my head.
I can't explain it to you.
So I'm sorry you have to suffer the wrath of my bad attitude.
I'm sorry it's all just noise in my head.

I don't write a lot of poetry about me being queer.
Not because I don't like it.
I love that about me.
It's because I'm lucky.
I'm so  lucky that I grew up with parents who hugged me when I came out.
So lucky, that my friends reacted with a "hey, cool".
So lucky that all of this let me come to terms with myself.
I never hated myself because of who I am...I'm so so ******* lucky.
But there's so many out there who didn't have this.
Who's parents kicked them out or beat them.
Who's friends left them alone.
Who hate themselves for who they are, for the wonderful things that they are...
For me it was easy, for you it might not be
For them it can be so hard.