Sometimes home doesn't feel like home at all
The hate you harbour,
the words that pour from your mouths.
Moments of bliss are a disguise
I look in the mirror
I am not foreign to the pain in these eyes.
In time they say, things will change
I wish everything would wash away with the rain

I run from everything you are
I hide from the scars
I try to forgive and forget
but when the memories are reality now it is hard

It is a routine these child like schemes
I am tired as you must be too
Home no longer feels welcome
I wish it would be
Everytime I come back
I regret the decision
Everytime I come back
I hope things have changed
But when you have been living this way for so long
what can I say....
Oh what I would give to hear you say...
I am happy.

Because I'm sick of deep
Bored of emotional
And the 'touching' poems put me to sleep
I'm tired of the tearjerkers
That used to make me cry
Exhausted all the fast workers
That made it hard to sleep at night

So if you're looking for something deep
For an endless well of wisdom
You won't get it from me
I've made my share of those and then some
I'm retiring from the business
Of poems that hit the heart
Because my heart's a bit black and blue
So I'll find another art

Perhaps I'll make you laugh
With silly little tales
Perhaps I'll make you mad
Until you rant and rail
On how bad a writer I am
But at least you'll soon see
That no matter what I do
You get no tearjerkers from me

You want to ponder yourself?
So be it!
Do so when I'm not around
Because when you start spouting philosophy
I'll be the first to skip town
So if you're just as sick as me
Of all the contemplating frowns
Pick up the happy script
And put those sad poems down

Shaking hands to match my insides
Where a meaty heart quickens neath a milky bone cage
Uneven lungs twitching
Half filled with soot slithering up throat
Twining to ebony flume
Shaking head to match my hands; asphyxiations byproduct

I never know how far I'm supposed to
run to satisfy you
to placate you
to silence you.

I never know how hard I'm supposed to
sweat to drown out your words
and keep the venom from pouring through
the cracks in my heart too wide to
cement.

I never know if I can bleed you out of
my system through the broken skin
of my calluses torn off by my own
desperation.

-trj

A man with a gun
Steps from an allyway gloomed
Aimed it at me
And froze me where I stood
He said, "Son, lemme ask you a question.
As death stares you in the eye,
Are you afraid for your money,
Or do you fear for your life?"

Neither, was the response
From between those clenched teeth

I am unselfish in materials;
you can have all my things.
And my body is ready
for when the angels start to sing

"I think you're lyin'"
Said the man with the gun
"I can see it in yer eyes,
I bet you want to run"

If you do what you do
and you say that you may
then my family'll be left
in such disarray
My mum will become
but just a shell of herself
and my dad in his grief
destroy a lamp or a shelf
My sisters will wear black for a week
My brothers will search for you in the streets
Who knows better than you
where these streets can take?
My Woman may die from a broken heart,
and my children may never know
that I was there from the very start
My friends will all cry
and spill a beer in the dirt
and my dog may become violent
as he guards my last worn shirt
My grandkids will know
The year that I die
But they'll never know like knew
the joy of a grandparents smile
I do fear this in my death, good sir
but I've no fear of dying.

The man shook his head
shaken to his core
His eyes stared for a moment
before they met mine once more

"Get out of here", he said in tone real low
"Go, and speak of dying no more,
For I am the son of a father
Who was killed when I was four"