I always loved my grandmother
As most young boys do
She held me tight
Singing in her terrible voice
Sharing her world with me
I still recall peeling fresh apples
As we mixed and mashed for pie

When age overcame her,
When her body betrayed her,
When I was not there
When wounds are eternally fresh

Age came for me too,
With it, a swell of dark secrets
Ones of devils, so close to home
I wondered, what person could dwell
With family, in a home, here in hell
A grandafather I never knew, forked tongue
And perversions in the brain
His grave forgotten, while his scars remained

Perhaps she did the best she could
Turning a blind eye against a fiend
But as closed doors reveal themselves
A twisting vine of hate creeps and crawls
Sinking its roots in memories skewed
In rose colored glasses, as I unshaken gaze
Into the endless ripples of repercussions

monsters don't live inside my head
or in my heart, or under my bed
they walk amongst me-- in day,
and at night
they whisper honeycomb sweetness
in my abundant ears whilst
blinding me with pale sunlight.
monsters don't live inside my head
they mask themselves in a façade of
overgrown riverbeds--
deep-rooting themselves within my
oesophagus and i am choking, choking
oh but i cannot get enough of this.
monsters live
in bone marrow
in hair follicles
in overgrown fingernails
burrowed like a perpetual parasite
until they become a part of my DNA;
a mutation, the cancer that causes
paranoia and maybe a little psychosis, psychosis.
i am not crazy
i am not crazy
there are just monsters
there are just monsters.
they grip my hand as i walk down the street
intertwine their fingers into the cracks in
my bones and i do not fight back--
i am tirelessly tired of tiresome tug-of-war.

You are so much more
invested in
domesticated
or non-domesticated
furry friends
then Syrian refugees
who look more
like you and me.

You are so much more
invested in
a piece of multi-colored cloth
that ***** in the wind
a symbol
of an idea
that has not been
fulfilled
then the victims of
drone bombings.

You are so much more
invested in
a barely ancient book
then women’s rights.

You are so much more
invested in
police authority
then those oppressed
for centuries,
those brutalized
incarcerated,
demonized,
enslaved,
and murdered.

You are so much more
invested in
sports and reality shows
then education
and the pursuit of truth.

And here is what
your investments
netted you
apathy, violence,
greed, destruction,
pain, suffering
terror, and the dividends
are still pouring in.

you can write poetry without being a poet
I feel Bukowski sometimes wrote without knowing how
or why
just because he was Poetry
like how Gogh painted for love
or for his next meal
not for me
not for we
like how an athlete runs for running
and a singer sings for singing
and a sinner sins for sinning
maybe you can't become a poet
it must be in you from the beginning