To hell with all this beauty
Tonight I am a monster
I am the snapping of the nail
The scraping of the blackboard
The taking of the mad hoard
I am the raging drunkard
I will ***** all over this mansion
Full of seismic cracks
Caused by my complete arrogance

The smell will rise like shame
There will be no running
From the greed I succumb to
Under this horror of a sky
There are rumbles and flashes
Crashes and screams
I will make you plead for mercy
Then I will carry on
No stopping me
I have set it free look
No hands
Only bitterness
I am tired of adding colour
To this grey scale morgue of life

I am tired of finding rhymes
Just to make it sound so beautiful
My bounty lies in hate tonight
Resent down to the bottom caverns
For a second wave of angry fits
Smashing the jagged patterns
Into one thousand little pieces
So I may chew on every spike
My gums bleeding my expression
I do not need to write

I need to etch them on the surface
Of my cold stone face of mourning
No light will beat upon this place
Tonight there will be no dawning
Tonight for one night only
You will wretch on my ferocity
Because I need my release you see
Not one thing you will say can stop
The cries of my sincerity

at age 10,
my mother pointed
At the small birth mark
On my left knee and said,
"Someone's going to love
You for that one day."

At age 16,
I told her that a boy,
One far away,
Told me I was unloveable.
"He couldn't be more wrong,"
She promised.

At age 19,
She picked up my prescription,
And cried,
"I don't want you
To get your heart broken,
Mary." She sobbed.

The empty encouragements mean nothing,
When a daughter has decided
That the need to be tragically beautiful,
Is more important than the need
To be exceptionally loved.

I remember the way
the alcohol
lubricated our words to each other
and she told me those three
poisonous words:
"I love you"
Except she added
my name to the end
to make sure I knew
how important it was.
"You're the only
person I've said that to,"
She told me that night
as we parted ways

The next day she told
me that it didn't count
and that she was being
dramatic
and I remained in place
amongst those
who function better
as shadows,
withering under her
light,
hoping to hear the
meaningless words
again.

Who needs terrorists?
They are redundant
When over 60 poor people
Can perish
In a raging inferno
Caused by their own council.

For years the resident action group
Were poo pooed by the authorities
With, “Don’t worry your pretty heads!”
When they warned about fire safety regulations
Being ignored
Just like them.

No sprinklers and only one fire escape
In a twenty four storey building.
Only last year the tower was refurbished
With cheap plastic cladding that’s
Banned in the USA.

Our prime minister has been accused
Of failing to show humanity
By only visiting the Emergency Services
To avoid the angry public.

All this has happened
Not in some God forsaken third world country
But in the fifth or sixth richest economy
In the world.

For sure, that all engulfing tower-fire
Has made the blood of the people
Boil.
Let’s hope this volcano does not erupt
Like the one that caused
The London Riots of 2011.
Let’s hope our administration
At all its levels
Learns something from this:
To Care for its People.

Paul Butters

It's been drilled in every poor man's head,
by a man only slightly less poor
"money cannot buy happiness."
But I disagree!
If you say that,
You have not watched your father scream at God at 7 in the morning,
questioning His existence,
as we get kicked out of
the second house that year.

I no longer find excitement
in new places.

You've never waited for the first of the month.
Every month.
In order to eat something other than spaghetti
and dollar store hot dogs.

You've never had your power shut off for an entire month
And watch as your family rips apart,
boiling water on the stove just to bathe.

Your parents owe everyone money.

You've never worked in order to buy your cleats, yearbooks, and school supplies.
Only to have your parents take that money, too.

You can send your vibes,
and tell me to think positive.
But the world is distorted!
Our lives are only better now because my family got jobs.

Before,
I watched a bulldozer
go through the house I grew up in,
as the bank sold our home
and built an auto-parts store over dirt
I used to ride my bike on.
The last pieces of my grandmother, crumbled.
My father stayed up every night
and slept through every holiday and birthday, since.

Is that happiness?

I never really felt as if
my mother had it all together.  
Her torch was
a brittle twig she couldn’t keep lit,
never enough stick to burn bright,
but just enough tip
for random flare-ups
violently fueled by
nobody knew what.

Her lack of light meant
she could not be trusted,
and her strained attempts at
love and affection felt like
a dream where
everyone’s speaking Japanese.

Her marriage to my father was
the modern day equivalent
of an interracial same *** marriage,
Catholics and Protestants
weren't supposed to mix,
and a toothless trumpet player
with an alcoholic bent
shouldn’t have lasted the honeymoon
with a spoiled, sheltered oldest child.

But father made it seem as if
they had it all together,
at least in public.
At home it was different,
he passed through our lives
like the winter wind,
everybody scrambling for cover
when he showed up.

He slept at odd hours
and worked and drank
and drank and worked,
blowing quickly from one
to the other, 
never standing still long enough
to notice the demons at his heals,
the demons that took forever to catch him,

but not mother.
They caught her when I was quite young.
I could see them in her eyes
from a very early age and
father could see them too,
but he did nothing
to protect her.

They’ve been together
over 60 years now, overrun by what
I would call a thick purple nothingness –
an eerie, detached existence within
the smothering cadence of monotony,
yet somehow, unbelievably,
they still have hope.

Hope for God knows what

all they have is their
unspoken hatred of each
wrapped up in a make believe
so strong and lived so long
that their demons are now
a huge white elephant
lounging about the house
loosening their bed screws,
pounding on the bed springs,
moving through the vents
and interfering with
the reception of Catholic radio.

You might call it insanity,

I say everything that
once mattered to them is lost,
yet again,
they still have hope.

Meanwhile
we overachieving children
suffer our own maladies,
a misfit bunch of
dysfunctional lovers running so fast
we’ll be 80 before the demons catch us.

But who am I kidding?
From father to mother to me,
their demons have been my closest friends
as long as I can remember,

ever since the first day
I saw them in her eyes.