Leftovers from a red hot feast
My heart turns gray with ash.
As smoke clouds infect my lungs and flow into my blood stream
Soon enough I was destined for suffocation from within

Volcanoes spit ash out into the atmosphere
I inhale ash and exhale happiness
Gone with every breath goes every smile I have thought of.
Disappearing with every breath my motivation flies into the atmosphere and burns up into ash.

A crackle and a pop and a slow burning fire in the brick fireplace.
Heating homes the old fashioned way,
I am ****** into a vortex to the sky where I can fully appreciate life.
Where the sun smiles down on all of the boys and girls and makes ashes glow with embers just wishing for life once more.
But after all, all stars burn out.

A forest fire rips through northern Montana.
Smoke filling the air while ash fills the heart full of burned memories and homes
Part of what once was life turns into the most innocent of monsters.

A volcano erupts in Pompeii.
A city paved in ash I am lost.
A family buried in an unmarked tomb
that they once called home.

Writing on the walls suggests propaganda existed since time has.
A man wrapped in a lambs wool tunic and a one inch coating of ash
Lays his head in a museum.

After all,
Ashes, Ashes.
We all fall down.

this is a shout out to the kids who haven’t cracked a smile since last summer.
To the kids who’s wrists turned to cutting boards
and stomachs intentionally went empty.

This is the anthem for saturday nights spent on the couch just asking yourself “why”
For hours spent thinking that it’s your fault your parents split and theres nothing you can do.

For the kids who drag a blade across their wrist and carve grand canyons into their wrists although its still not the same.

A song for the kids who crack their knuckles as a distraction from the glares they get from across the classroom in fifth period science.

A harmony to the kids who are trying so hard to fit in but cant seem to get the hold of the right words to stick on their tongue so instead the wrong words slip out of their mouthes and roll into a ball of embarrassment.

A five star dinner served to his four friends which left him three years later and two years later he was just one kid by himself fending off the monsters we call classmates all alone.

Another sleeping pill for the boy who prays with his eyes shut but cant sleep because his eyes have already been closed for hours.

A brace for the broken and the weak as the week drags on to the point where every word that ends in the letter y makes you want to pull your hair out.

A poem dedicated to the kids who cant fend for themselves in the jungle.
Its a hard existence.
But we can make it through.