They called me a punk, a ******* ******,
an inconsequential gay man drifting in the harshest
light of the night, a swirl of hard, sunbaked
asphalt on my rough, pungent skin, dark, *****
consonants crushing my heart, unforgiving
diction twirling in my sore, stinging throat.

I did not know what could possess them
to break my vessel into a million, meaningless
fragments, a thinning gray vowel spiraling
into weather-beaten trees and leaves,
leaving me out of sync with my existence,
feeling like my limbs were struck by an ax,
embracing the scarlet blood as it covered
my metal and mangled flesh.

Look at my withered, yellowish presence,
a miserable, hideous sea of sleepless depictions,
a sweltering star, a shrinking moon disappearing
too soon, an inanimate object, a directionless
derivative, an insignificant horizon unable
to shimmer, a flooded dimension transforming
into nothingness, into a black sinkhole of desolation.

I felt like I was dying, a diminishing afterthought
drifting away into hazy spaceships, all blackened
and ceasing to rise again, the silence around me
a disturbing scene stripping away my serenity
as I slipped into somberness, feeling the endless
bead of tears stream down my raw-swollen face,
such trembling emotions, such drenched moments
making me feel not so strong as everything seemed
to turn into a broken blur, an unrhythmically depth
of terrible regrets, breaking me down piece by piece.