A ***** hybrid clouded his voice;
a southern drawl
and Midwestern daydream.
Mutt to himself, a fire to others,
a redundant reverie about a home
-- any home --
with pictures of bloodletting,
forgetting mothers, Adidas clad feet
belonging to hooded killers.

His hands sway in church
but his soul doesn't.
No belief in either concept:
God or soul.
Annoyed with the Christian claim
that one needs the other.
He speaks a voice that echoes,
then evolves into a rarity
too tame to flounder and fight,
too wild to sit and stare.

This home that is my body
is haunted by the demons
sleeping soundly in my head
My veins pulse in cadence
to the dreams in my mind
Memories of darker days
Nightmares peeling my skin
baring my desolate soul
before my own jaded eyes
My spirit dormant in this life
I walk like a ghost in the night
Spent like my withered bones
Alone in the mass of people
And like the molting cicada
I am the hollow shell
With lungs filled with dust
A heart keeping me standing
while i’m falling inside myself
waiting for the next breath

There are bodies in the sky,
And yet we have the nerve to
worship our own gods,
Hand-crafted,
Beings we cannot see.

We are stardust,
They are out being,
Yet we forget them,
And make ourselves so big.

Blood, pounding through our veins,
Never meant to leave,
I carve promises on my skin,
I engrave myself in memories and
tear my clothes,
Tear my skin,
As I fall into an inferno of ugliness
and sin.

Cigarettes **** - and I'd be disappointed if they didn't,
I listen while the oppressors say they are oppressed,
While we die because we are faceless,
Slaves to what they desire;
I think that maybe we are stardust,
But maybe we aren't but  punished dust,
Forced to breathe and live
and love as we see fit,
Forgetting the stars.

© A Tripp

*** for tat he said
And so we cut our scars, and our veiled secrets bled
Unto each other, ‘til we were both dead.

I always called him innocent to ways I was not
But then I realized as I watched his soul get shot
That we were both seasoned in sadness in ways we ought to have naught.

The two wept for who they never knew,
But they tried in vain to push through
Because they wanted oh-so-desperately to start anew

So I cry for the boy with the lost twin
And him for the girl with the mother who has been
But two hearts now conjoined, and together they begin again

When she lost you
Once and for all
She somehow lost her future

She's digging in the ruins
Of a once bright future

She doesn't have any dreams now
And her only aspiration
Could never support her

When she lost you
Her whole world started to change
As it always did at your absence

She aches and she cannot express it
She internalizes the pain

She cries in the car
So no one sees

She cries in the shower
So no one hears

She is nothing
Not because she has lost you
But because she cannot stop
Missing you

She has no one to hold her
No one to love her

She is a ghost of who she once was
The shadow that never got filled in.

steering wheel in one hand
cigarette lighter in the other
eating miles, blowing smoke rings.

I live, yet I do not wish for life.
I eat, yet I do not desire food.
I sleep, yet I never rest.

What am I?