The Dead Men's Symphony

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

The redness is not toxic.
It is the people who are caustic
making her nauseas and cautious.
Pink skin pressed in
with razor thin
piercing pressure
to ease the pain
to silence her brain;

Cause no one is listening
to her sobbing,
cause no one is looking
for her scars,
more inside then out.

People care about her,
but they are distracted,
so soft motions become
harder,
and she becomes some
sort of sick lumberjack
trying to saw off that
pain called life.

How unfair
to see her go there
cause she is only
twelve.

#cutting #pain

Oct 2016

Nicole Hammond

a prayer

dear god of needle ***** and poisoned well
i pray you find my mother
cold and dry and unfeeling
something you can draw no moisture out of
a different god struck a rock with a staff
a long long time ago
and water came to cool his throat
but there are no miracles here
so you can please stop beating her now

dear god of gluttonous apothecary
my mother's body is a mathematical
uncertainty
it is a function with limits
her veins are rolling with their bellies full
of chemicals that burn
her hair runs from the scalp the way
two legs would
from a house going up in flames
my mother's body
is a house going up in flames
i am a child that is terrified of a monster
under the bed
i am helpless to a thing i can feel but
cannot see

dear god of gasoline remedy
your counterintuitive science
your black dream
takes her body like a new land
teaches her it's wretched language
it rapes and pillages
it steals the recognition
that sparks her eyes when she looks in mine

dear god of intravenous dark rider
let her live to see a day
she can wake and not be bound
to her biology

dear god of pink ribbon tourniquet
let her breathe and take it for granted again

dear god of careful rampage
finish what you have started
and lock the door behind you

#life #death #mom #chemo #chemotherapy

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

Run away
Lest ye become a martyr
To the minds of your time
Dining with swine
Consumed with the mundane
Uninspired rhymes
Subsumed by seas
Of selfish human beings
Till the oceans swallow
The last depths you had
And you wallow
In the shallow
Self involved
Un-evolved
Dim lightbulb
Bulbous
Busts of buffoons
Who call themselves
Pop artists

#art #shallow

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

As a child I asked my mother
to mend my lonely heart
to accept and understand me
as I am and not as who she hoped I’d be.

Please do not turn your pain on me
inflicting wounds so deep
that I refuse to ever trust myself.

Eyes aflamed with tears.
Sinuses clogged with snot.
Without comprehending
without words I asked for her patience
her kindness, to secure my innocence.
I asked for safety at home.

Had I known the violence she would sow
planting row after row
of red marks and broken hearts
I would have found a gun
and a safe little corner.
I would have asked no one
and taken the peace I deserved.

#suicide #abuse #childhood #autobiography #biography

Oct 2016

Aeerdna

shooting...star

A shooting star
my whole existence is
I used to believe that I am a new human
in your colourful life
a shooting star star
falling on the open field of hopes
of your dreams
I am falling now
with each and every breath of yours
with every sun that rises
with every sun that dies
I am that shooting star
you believed in
but
I can't make your wish come true
I will just make myself true
even though
I don't shine in your Universe
even though
I am just the dying star
you have stepped on
on a lonely night
when the moon was shining
and the night on your heart
was covered with clouds.

I am the shooting star
falling
dreaming
of your eyes
of your smile.

In silence, I know
I am the only shooting star
with a destiny of its own.

A star who doesn't smile
nor falls
A star who just leaves
like the smoke of your cigarette
in the wind.

I am the shooting star star
you didn't see
the one who loves you
and you did not
believe.

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

I let my dreams hurt me,
helped hope hang me out to dry.
I watch the world go crazy
and sometimes I wanted to die.
Still, in the morning
just before I remember my life
I get a glimpse of hope
and the irony of it all
makes me laugh.

#hope

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Seventy-Four Miles

Seventy-four miles
To go back to the last place
Where the seven-year-old
Still felt safe

Back before
The depression
And suicide attempts
Where he tried to electrocute,
Poison, and cut his way out

Back before the confusion
And loneliness
The dangerous
Expressions
Of discontent
Back before all that rage

Back before the
Belt, brush, board
Broom, mop, physical
And verbal
Abuse

Back before
The Freddy Krueger
Nightmares

To a place that had changed
Where everything
Just seamed
So much smaller
And all the kids
Had gone so much farther
Away
Only I remained
In that delusional place

Seventy-four miles
To find
You can only go back
In your mind

#nostalgia #memory #traveling

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

And all the king’s men
Were a cursedly rotten bunch
Took the corrupt out to lunch
While their allies launched
Bombs that eviscerated
The hearts and bodies
Of the foreigners and natives

#war #violence #greed #corruption

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Things In The Water

In the choppy Sunday waters
A piece of cardboard
swims just below the surface
only inches away
from the safety of the grassy shore.

Farther out a plastic bag struggles
slightly submerged
it cannot decide
whether it should drown
or fly away with the wind.
Instead, it floats wide open
******* in air
but never escaping its purgatory.

#nature #water

Oct 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

With a few lights of potential love
hope cracks my steely exterior.
My guard drops.

I dream of folded fingers
wrapped around my neck,
Of gently caressing her skin,
Of poetry and passion.

I try to restrain hope
to a reasonable buzz
because I know there is no love
and I am always right.

Truth sours hope’s dreams,
curdling them in my stomach
reminding me
there will be
no happy ending for me.

So like a good little soldier boy
I march on
tapping my drum
and writing these
sad love songs.

#heartache

Sep 2016

Graff1980

Does Not Want

The world does not want
one more poet activist
crying out against
all injustice.

The world does not want
a moral philosopher
plunging the depths
of the lies we tell ourselves,
discarding illusions, and
barely overcoming confusion
to become a better human being.

The world does not want
another hopeless romantic
faithful lover,
god under the covers,
explorer, and discoverer
of all untraveled depths
that women possess.

This world does not want me
and I am almost okay with that.

#humanity

Sep 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

Stand silent stand still
Don’t think and don’t feel
Don’t fidget at all
And you will get paid
Security shift ****
At this bank

Sep 2016

Graff1980

Untitled

She sleeps now
With her wilted roses
And crooked
Cracked sidewalk
Such a broken walkway
Gentle gardener hands
And piano fingers
Plant and play no more