Empty muskets
Breathing life and piercing holes
Tasting metal in your throat
Red rocks of oxidizing ore
The dirt is already filled with it
Why does it need more?
Ares colors run deeper than gold
Blood moons in prophecies of old
Deep red of our veins coats the Earth
Leeching life into our hearts
From cries and screams to hollow weeps
Blood born from mothers to Earth.

In forgotten light came birth
In cries and screams
It came to be
A mother torn of the child she bore
No father offering a home
Life was already worn
It happens this way
A child born but forgotten
Cries and fingers high ignored
The child grows hard and old
Before knowing why it feels alone
Looking for why
Finding no answers in the world's eye
Until the day the whispers came
Speaking of love in a distant place.
The child goes searching,
For a place calling its name
Of family who never gave it away.

Empty nights
Followed by pleasure
When bodies crave another's embrace
To stave off loneliness like a plague,
Finding a moment among the hours
Days passing into years
A life built of memories in passing.

People having grown from children
But knowing none the wiser
Still in need of mothers and fathers
In a world unforgiving.
Operating amidst the layers
Life and love can be sold for a dollar
Hidden behind screens of mass expression
Are the delusions of our acceptance.

Still seeking meaning amid thorns
****** hands haven't shown anymore,
Wash the blood
Let the peroxide sting and foam.
These bodies demand attention
Forsake them and they'll trouble you till the grave calls you home.

Moments of meaning are all we seek
When the aching heart is answered
It grants sweet release
In pleasured moans or dying throes
Sounds of our loneliness escaping in the night
As the joker deals the game of life.

I was ten and you were fourteen
I thought you were the coolest thing.
Our families were close.
My father liked you and your father wasn't there.
Those were early days
Skaters were in and Green Day was sick.
I was a kid and probably bothered you
But you treated me like the younger sister you didn't have
And I worshiped you like any younger sibling would do.
You taught me to snowboard,
"Keep your toes up and I'll teach you how to jump."
You let me have some of your Rockstar
And I stayed up all night.
You'd make sure I was by your side
And if anyone got rough you'd push them out of the way.

My family moved away one day.
You'd visit but distance made it hard.
Age and struggles muddled it all.
I was fifteen when I saw the look on my father's face.
He said you died, the call came earlier that day.
Overdosed on stuff you took for ADHD.
They said it may have been a mistake
But deep down I know it wasn't.
You were smart and knew how that stuff worked.
You were in a rock and a hard place.
I felt the same when I was your age.
I can't snowboard to this day without thinking of you.
Playing Green Day on the CD player
And nodding our heads real cool.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams was written for you.
Things I associate with you feel like Deja vu.
David I still think of you.

Writing in the night
Marking this heart
With each layer
The marks are deeper
The screams are louder
And the darkness is thicker.
Sick or gifted?
Both speak of their brilliance.
Leaving a figure much different
Her face is calm and eyes cool
Her expression alludes to something cruel
She's grown up hard,
I worry she'll lose,
What's left of the child inside.
I pray none will cross her
For the darkness she exudes
Could crush even the strongest of virtues.