The trees are naked.
They look down on us
like scars.
And I'm ashamed of it.
While children were swallowed up
in angry soil
born in hungry war zones,
I was drawing finger bones.
I was painting your spine like river.
And I'm sorry.
I'm fighting the only way I know how,
because I never learned how to use these fists.
Girls would beat me up on playgrounds,
but now
their wombs have been stripped of their innocence.
Against their heart,
that broke out in tears when they stepped into the clinic.
But at least I'm doing more than just wishing.
At least I'm not sealing our sisters and brothers
in body bags.
I'm trying to leave an impression.
Because I met this girl
who had a voice like hand grenade
and I'm hoping my tongue
is like a shotgun
so I can hold it to the head of the hurricane
and tell it to stop.
I can't hear poems when you're screaming.
But I can feel the hose that you're beating me with.
I can smell the cigarette butts that breathed death into the lungs of brilliant girls.
I can see the scars that were left on the wings of the angels that are now men.
The trees are naked.
They don't like to be cold
so I tried to cover them with blankets of words
but they shrugged them off like snow.
I'm sorry.
I'm doing the best I can.
But I spent too much time scraping the skin
off of clouds with my fingernails.
And I found the place where God left us.
He never told us what to do.
But daddy said to be strong.
Don't cry Johnny.
Be a soldier Johnny.
Fight for what's right.
**** so you won't be killed.
Be a monster.
I knew women who wrapped their
prayers into telescopes
and went stargazing in steeples.
They claimed they could see God.
They said that their sons would return home.
But the only soldiers that come home
remain in caskets.
We're hungry.
And I'm tired.
You look as if you've been weeping like a willow.
I know my fingertips are raw
with words of forgotten anthems.
The trees are naked.
They're tired of mother nature being *****,
she forgot to take the pill
And I forgot what it means to be alive.
So I watched snow falling like ghosts
watched the streetlights turn into halos.
I poemed a river that was shaped like your spine.
I hope this helps.
Don't tell me that prose is useless.
Because that star strangled banner is
just a mark of shame.
We need some rain to clean the blood from our hands.
Need some heartbeats to make our music.
It's hard to read poems that are carved
into the prison bars
of a birdcage,
full of our sisters and brothers who recite
Bible versus for parole.
We've been reading the lips of Death.
And it's about time we stopped.