I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

When she died, I was jobless,
sleeping on her couch,
and a few months out of the ward.

My mental instability helped me lose friendships, love, and my identity.

I used to hope death would touch me
and I did not know why I wanted it to.

Death instead touched her,
drifting like a gas, underneath her door,
into her lungs, erasing consciousness
like lavender being blown by the wind,
into marked a detergent bottle.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

A blue shock spread throughout me,
like the ocean swallowing animals
and forcing them to adapt.

I began drowning in water that looked like gas station slushee,
my ribcage hugging frantic gelatin organs,
beating alongside the spindle of time.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

My carcass became Sun-kissed from the burning of change --
my grandmother died before I could succeed:
my grandmother died before she could see me live.

I crawl through the coarse, wheat-dyed sand,
hoping the blood I trail can be measured in her love.

I hope to make her proud, to learn to work hard,
then harder and harder and harder.
To become fully healthy,
to become what she stayed by my side for.

One of the few.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

She said she was proud of me.
It probably was me and not her,
but at least someone is proud.

Chocolate colored Toms, Cool Blue and Navy, too,
North Face jacket, give me some individuality
I wanna feel ethereal; violently, annoyingly
happy. But the sky is as black as lonely cancer
without a soul mate; I know what it's like
to kiss as you erase her.

Hauntingly, melancholic instances ingrained
into my gelatin mind and
stayed.
And the smolder
from the brand on my shoulder
frayed.
I wish I could alter my reflection,
but the mirror I've bought,
somebody else
made.

White american men with
gold retriever dogs
smoke black hatred,
not recognizing a grey smog.
Scared of black, brown --
all atheists are ill --
but not afraid of greenbacks
or guys named Bill.

Okay.

Here's your day job. Here's your pay, Bob.
America the great.
If terrorists equal Muslim
then Christians equal hate.

You say it's not victimization.
You say it's not a hunt.
You say it's not intimidation,
but sometimes I think you
see people as witches, ****.

Christ is the answer, indeed.
Without Him we're all lost
and our souls will never be freed.
Like tears frozen in the frost.
Bibles, crucifixes to fix the diseased mind.
How much does a prayer have to cost
to be genuinely kind?

Chemtrails stain pages
and bleed as curses.
Gay rights to be denied,
according to bible verses.

Nursery rhymes and cult games,
all in the good old King James.
Archaic and inane,
like an alter sheltered brain.

Here's your day job. Here's your pay, Bob.
Use the check to pay
angels and evangelists.
Protect yourself from ideas,
and buy a white picket fence.

Mass graves breathing,
like beached jellyfish.
Ketchup packet pastels
painting a diner dish.
I sit and imagine
so many things and more.
I smoke ribbons of grey
that dance around
the diner door.

The people move
and have so much to say.
Watch them scurry and hurry
through the invisible day.
The sun's colors bounce off
weekly washed windows.
And I suffer from the certainty
that my fulfilled dreams
will fulfill me,
as I flick ashes into the world
for the wind to carry away,
dragging shadows.

There's a peculiar kind of beauty that can only be experienced
with the innate knowledge that the moment is fleeting
and the most intense beauty can only be seen in
the presence of both light and shadows.
For it’s often in the loss of a thing
that its worth to us becomes
most precious and by
letting it go with
grace we can
best savor
its purest
delights.
Realizing
that the pain
runs so deep only
because the beauty ran
so deep and that without
it having once touched us we
wouldn't now know the emptiness
of its loss, our grief will eventually turn to
thankfulness that it ever touched us at all, and
we will be left awed by the mystery of its haunting.