“Boys will be boys,”
The bully’s parents said.
All that talk of discipline
Went over their heads.

The older boys at school
Gathered around the kid
With the glasses on his face;
Knocked them off his head.
Their words questioning
His manhood and his folks
And nobody paid attention
To the nature of the jokes.

“Boys will be boys,”
The principal said.
He washed his hands
Now one boy is dead.

They waited in an alley
Until the boy walked by
A place they knew for sure
No one would hear him cry.
They each one ***** him
Then one guy had a knife
After he killed the boy
He called him a lousy wife.

“Boys will be boys,”
The police officer said
Then used his baton
On the black kid’s head.

A black kid found the body
Of the white kid in the mud.
He brought the local cop, who
Thought him from the hood.
He beat up on the black kid
And took him to the jail.
Nobody knew about him, so
Nobody made his bail.


“Boys will be boys,”
The juvenile judge said
He closed the case
Went golfing instead.

There were no forensics,
No witnesses were sought.
No evidence of quality
Was asked for or brought.
The system had its criminal
And quickly put him away
And that’s where he is living
Until this very day.

“Boys will be boys,”
Never really worked
It only ever pointed out
That the speaker was a ****.

The only thing I’ve ever been able to see without squinting through bad eyes has been ugly
and stupid
and worthless
each adjective another bullet to the body of someone who is already dead.
I left the bullets where I thought they ought to be—right where they were—lodged between vital arteries and anything dangerous; they were equally acidic beings occupying the same profane space.
I allowed my skin to grow over them as much as it rioted.  
I wanted to remind myself that they were a part of me now
that the least I could do was let them be
the way I had never been.

I have always been a non-believer,
naturally a very-much-believer slipped into my line of fire the same way the sun peeps its shy face out of grey.
But it took more than prying me out of my pad-locked shell to make me a believer too.
It took swimming the length of the ocean to find me in my shell first
then slaying the eight-legged monsters that shielded me from all things good
and every time I unwound the bandages in front of you that encased my wounds
inflicted from the sour tentacles of the beast you had to fight away
I expected the sting of your fingers fresh with sea salt to sting like hell
but you would remind me of how often you wash your hands
only not after touching me--
never after touching me.
I wasn’t familiar with the smell of flesh without it being doused in sanitizer;
The mess of my pain was just more dirt on their skin.

You were my savior
the only hero ever willing to carry a dead body with the same caution as someone who could still thank you with their lips—not cold.
You were red wine and I was holy Sunday
gnawing at the body of Christ
but you learned how to consume me still
without just swallowing me whole
instead savoring even the most overbearing bites of me that reeked of its expiration date.
You taught me how to let myself be consumed by something other than ugly
and stupid
and worthless.
You taught me how to let myself melt in the warm safety of your tongue
that vowed to speak of only sweet things.
But trying to recall that lesson was quieter in my ears
each time I urged myself to complete the daily routine of supplying you with a special pair of scissors
expectant that you would dig deep into my body
like everyone else always had
knowing that the gashes you created would heal slower and leave scars uglier than scars inflicted by the hands of anyone else.
I pushed my already-open cuts in your face
shut eyes and gritted teeth
awaiting the familiar feeling of the people you love
making their marks
in the center of your back.
But I watched your mouth form something that I didn't know could sound soft, something like "n-o", the first no that ever sounded as sweet as a yes.
No new stab wounds,
no tearing of tight flesh.
All you did was re-stitch me.
You caught my blood in its vanishing act.

With every stitch I watched as past words lost their dictionary meanings
ugly: beautiful
stupid: smart
worthless: worth it.
You drug me out of my grave and took the time to dust me off the way no one else had
hushed the knives in my own hands dripping in my own blood to fall to the ground
spoke the magic words that opened the gates of my chest so that you could squeeze the life into my heart again.
You took the eyes from your own skull for the sake of making a better scenery out of myself.

I don't have to squint anymore.
I can see "worth it" taking form of "worthless" miles across the street
and as you place your petal hands on my head and tilt one last time
I am watching myself do the same.

I spit the moon, a fingernail,
in the black eye of night.

Stardust was born
from the dirt of a lifetime.

I had the universe at my fingertips,
and blew it away like a kiss.

The world is a better place for my loss.

Listen, it's a beautiful thing
when distilled to its essence;
reduced to its purest form.
A paradox and a paradigm;
a paragon of perfection.
Epic in its arythmetic
progression; poetic.
Like Chinese arithmetic,
so hard it hurts. Yet soft
and exquisite, like a bubble
of love caught in a beating heart.
That place where poetry starts.