i have to show the world that what you three did to me only scratched my surface,
only took off the shiny layer of myself that i had previously perfected for the eyes of society’s critical audience.
but you didn’t.
you’ve broken my soul
and torn my heart
and punctured my lungs
and i’m finding it harder to live and breathe every single day.
people think that the pain caused by an experience like this lives and dies in the moment that it happens,
but those people are sincerely wrong.
it's been three hundred and twenty-seven days since it happened,
since each of you violated me
and took advantage of me
and abused my right to consent.
but i bet you didn’t know that those days equate to seven thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight hours that it’s been on my mind
and i bet you didn’t know that the nightmare is now burned into my skin
and flowing through my blood
and coded into my dna.
the constant feeling that my body is no longer mine will not leave.
the feeling that i’m missing a part of myself is going to stick with me.
the feeling that my heart strings are severed,
that my lungs have burst,
that my legs can no longer carry the weight of my newly found burden
and that my life has been tainted by your evil touch
will never disperse.
these feelings cannot be brushed under a rug,
but i’ve got to appear like they can to the outside world.
do you know what else hurts?
what also hurts is that this trauma,
the same trauma that is making me want to end my life,
constantly hoping that the last of my heart strings will break so that my heart can plummet to the depths of my destroyed soul to lay with my sanity,
is being used to mock me.
as if my life could be forced into further submission without the teasing and bullying of my peers.
thank you,
to the three boys that took my innocence,
turned my meaning of the word ‘no’ into ‘yes’
and made my body into a lighthouse as a guide for the devil.
he’s found me.
you’ve broke me.
you win.

Late night drive-thru, red lights, stop signs.
Lately I’ve been blue all in the absence of you
And I won’t lie
The Philistines are out in force tonight
And I won’t lie
I’m back on the bottle again tonight.

I can’t control it, the weight of the morning,
I read the warning but I never saw it coming
In my field of view, or in my mind’s eye,
Well, I’ve been blue in the absence of you

And I
Like a beating drum,
Like a washed-out popstar,
Like an artifact
After the fact-

I’ll cling onto what I got stored up in karma,
You see, I’ve been a good man
But I’ve done some bad things in my time.
And I won’t lie
Everything must go here tonight.
And I won’t lie
I’m back on the bottle again tonight.

They say laughter is the greatest medicine.
They say a lot of things but it never makes much sense.
They’re climbing up the walls
To get their monthly pay;
They say laughter is the greatest medicine.

Late night, junk food, I’m ****** without you.
I’m a badly drawn cartoon with red eyes
And an ego on fire.

And I won’t lie
The lunatics are out in force tonight

And I won’t lie
There’s too much wrong here
To try and make it right.

And I won’t lie
I’m back on the bottle again tonight.

https://soundcloud.com/ed-coles-667440414/bottle

I feel lost,
forgotten,
undiscovered,
disregarded,
neglected, and
past recollection.
I am stuck in
Painful Oblivion.

Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 3

Bad Morning, Viet-Nam

No music calls a teenager to war;
There is no American Bandstand of death,
No bugles sound a glorious John Wayne charge
For corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay

No rockin’ sounds for all the bodies bagged
No “Gerry Owen” to accompany
Obscene screams in the hot, rain-rotting night.
Bullets do not ****.  Mortars do not crump.

There is no rattle of musketry.
The racket and the horror are concussive.
Men – boys, really – do not choose to die,
“Willingly sacrifice their lives,” that lie;

They just writhe in blood, on a gunboat deck
Painted to Navy specifications.