It burns your joints
A silence, so loud, it ricochets off the walls in your mind
It is not a deafening silence
It is the kind that makes your ears ring
A quickening of the pulse
Invasive to the mind, like a dog's bark at 5:30 pm on a chilling December night
Your soul is screaming
Your toes are purple when you look down at them in the shower
It's all surrounding you
Pressing your arms to your sides as water runs over your mouth
Your pulse thuds in your ears so loud
It is equivalent to a locomotive train
It burns your joints

Never make
those promises
Never say "forever"
You won't die
Or fall apart
Just because you're
not together.
When your lover
Breaks your heart,
Know that
you'll survive
Even if without them
It's less fun
to be alive.
Pain might linger
Hurt may show
Time could start
to slow.
Love is temporary
Seasons come
and go.

My peach yogurt tastes like your skin
in the morning when you used to stay
at my apartment, the leftover sweat
of a night spent loving each other,
and the sun slipping through my *****
blinds, while I'm eating my breakfast
at my desk checking emails, always peeking
over at you, bare-chested, snoring
through the sound of my fan and my music
turned down extra low.

It's five months later and my peach yogurt
tastes strangely like that iced tea
I had instead of liquor on the night my friends
threw a party in my living room, us
sneaking off to my bedroom just to kiss
ourselves through another evening
we'd rather spend in our underwear watching
a movie over smiling in group pictures
or dancing to cheap country music.

It's so much later and my yogurt
still tastes a little bitter, a little sour
on my tongue as I try to swallow
a breakup that's bigger than a jawbreaker.
It still kind of tastes like the bottom
of my sink as I put my dishes in it
just to wake you up, watch you
get dressed in a pair grey sweatpants,
sticky hair that I'd comb through.

It's far too late for me to think about
your hand in mine as we'd walk
as far as we could before we'd have to separate.
It's far too late and far too many people
have intercepted your memories and turned
them into something new to smile about,
but today I pulled the lid off the container
and licked the silver side clean
just to be reminded of how sweet
things like you used to taste.

Please don’t call me beautiful
when your hands are between my legs,
and god forbid you say it as a seg-way
between you’re so hot
and my caution, your response
you’re sure you don’t want to?
I’m pretty sure the way my body looks,
nineteen and stress-infused with an Oreo belly
isn’t really what you pictured beneath my blouse,
and I’m positive you didn’t listen
to the story about my dad and the bad prom dress
because you cared. It was just sentiment. You said it was beautiful,
but really you wanted me to believe the act
like a description in the Playbill
and ride that trust all the way until the curtain dropped.
Please don’t call me beautiful
when the word ******* is before it
or if we are ******* because making love
is for married couples and you don’t even want me
sticking around for the ****** sunrise that peers
underneath your shade every morning.

Tell me I’m beautiful when I’m crying—
crack me open and watch the colors bleed
like a painting that hasn’t dried. Admire
the light that peaks through the clear parts
like a windowpane, no blinds.
Tell me I’m beautiful when I’m laughing,
when I’m reading my favorite part of a book,
when I’m stuffing my face with peanut-butter
pretzel bites and I haven’t washed my sheets in weeks,
and I’ll know you can’t be lying
because I’ve listened to the waves your heart makes
when you’re sleeping and I’ve called your smile
to the surface many times when you’ve tried
to deflect it back inside. You’ll know that
and you’ll know I’m beautiful.  
Call me beautiful
when you’re not even trying.
Call me beautiful when you’re by yourself
and the smell of my hair is still on your pillow,
or the memory of how dumb I sounded
singing my favorite song breaks your heart back
to the best little pieces.

I have risen
Before the sun
Escape my prison
I must run
Persist. Resist.
Yield for none
I will not Yield
Till I am done.

The night they shot Dr King, Stokely Carmichael  pulled the pin out from the grenade in his heart and made ******* sure the world knew he and his brothers would never be weak again,

The night they shot Malcolm X, the liberals shook their heads, clicking tongues about how "violence begets violence", and sometime later they put his face on a stamp, taught his corpse to dance, taught their children that this is the fate of a man who never gives up trying to change the world

The night that Missouri burned down they sent in the tanks, steel goliaths prowled small town streets looking for anybody black, or angry, or conscious, or any combination of the three, and every time their guns went off a new revolutionary was born in rage and desperation

Who are your comrades gonna be when the cops kick down the door?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the drug raids come?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the crowd control rounds turn to live ammunition?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the talking heads condemn the martyrs to hell on a twenty four hour newsreel?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the streets split open and the riot swallows everything in its wake?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the prisons crumble brick by brick?
Who are your comrades gonna be when it all burns down?
Who are your comrades gonna be when we rebuild this world from the ground up into something beautiful?

When they tell you, "Do not resist"
Resist
When they tell you, "Your methods are too extreme"
Tell them, "By any means necessary"
When they tell you, "This is the way things are"
Change. Everything.
When they tell you, "You can't change the world alone"
Tell them, "Solidarity, forever"