We were smoking molly off of tin foil through a plastic straw made from a pen in the public housing complex of a small town. It tasted like black licorice and the kind of bug-spray flavor that I’ve always associated with being poisoned. I was jammed. I couldn’t not be anymore. He took his hit and stared blankly at me. He fell sideways, shaking violently and jumped up as soon as he hit the floor. I almost panicked for a second thinking about walking into the hospital. Pin-***** pupils staring a medical professional in the face, trying to keep my head up from between my knees in the waiting room. He laughed. I laughed. We carried on this way. For some time, actually.

If you bled the way I bled
If you died the way I died
If you were tied how I was tied
To that hospital bed that night

Would you feel the things i feel
Would you see the things I see
Would you know the things I know
About the shadows in the night

The way they dance
The way they writhe
The way they breathe the scared light
How they’re the only holy thing
I’ve ******* found
In this god
******
Life

How many veils must be lifted to see what is true?

Impatience - the curse of the dying
Who wait with bated breath
For it to be taken from them

Expectedly

The promise of eternal life with which to lift these veils itself a curse

Enlightenment

An ancient joke told by those who have seen true darkness

What could be left to ponder in such a context
With no constraints
And time an endless yarn
Not waiting to be cut

What matter the mysteries that might rise from the well
And what sense in waking from passive slumber
To have hand in the inevitable
Which eternal shifts

No,

Fading is the light

And from it’s last dim flicker may expand again

But mourn not the memories lost
The veils placed gently back to shroud things once thought known

For impatience is the curse of the dying
But death the blessing of the eternal

I remember the screams of the children out on the Common that night. I remember the deafening sounds, as sparks flew past my eyes. I remember the canister landing and pouring it’s smoke to the sky. I remember the look in that man’s eyes, with his hands stretched to the night. As he walked toward the chaos and knew he was ready to die for what’s right.

Chanting, “no justice, no peace”
Forced to live up to the promise

“No justice, no peace”
Turning the masses to prophets

There is neither justice nor peace

As they walk from their cells as free men

“No justice, no peace”

And must we live up to this promise?

I stand before you a King
A court of gods at my feet
They bow to me in worship
In jest
In mocking of my demise
Self-inflicted
And total

I raise my eyes
A yawning expanse before me
I have become a wisp
In the night
Journeyer to places
Spoken of only in dead tongues
Which will not be named again
Until this tongue itself has died

There I’ve found the beasts
Which wallow in the blackest mire
Scraping
Gnawing
Strafing
Wasting
Frightening
Guarding

The treasures
I came here
First
To seek

I tried to write a poem
But it was rambling and pointless
And now I find myself

Rambling

Pointlessly

About a poem that doesn’t exist

Now Billy was OG down D Street
Where Joey got dead beat
Caught mean heat down D Street
Where Billy was OG
Cop beats beat pig feet when Billy was OG
But Billy run quick flee
When Joey caught mean heat down D Street where Billy was OG

Now Billy got mad beef
Got kids feed
Their mother’s got DTs
But Billy run quick flee from D street where cops don’t beat pig feet since Joey got dead beat caught mean heat

Now Billy caught clean chrome to dome piece
Got kids feed
Their mother’s got DTs
And Billy caught clean chrome to dome piece from mad beef down D street where Billy was OG but Billy run quick flee from mean heat that Joey caught dead beat

You see
There’s things in life we lose that can not be found

There’s things in life we lose that can not be found

Not be found

Not be found