When we lose
There comes to be a reversal process;
a rapid prototype souped into bitten rhythm.
And then you collide, like
light particles melting film to form
some replica of an inner war. What is it
about trying; what does attempt do –
Pacify? Resize? Boost the morale
of twentysomethings clinging
to past participles like the sting of a bee?
What can you do to stop the ache
of feeling like ****? What is there to grasp
when no light appears?
But then a day comes.
It’s all fine, with friends, with music, with
anything other than self-flagellation.
At which point I fight the fight not to stay
a mere summary.

So you think that you like “horror.”
Well, I’ve got some for you--
trying fleeing a burning building
with bombs dropping around you.

So you think that you like “kink,”
and want to be whipped and tied.
If you’d been a slave in the antebellum South
this could have been how you died.

So you like to play at “Slave” and “Master.”
What a ******* joke.
Some who were really slaves
died strung up with a rope.

You like watching blood and torture
when it’s on a  movie screen.
Aren’t you the lucky one--
you won’t see it again and again, in dreams.

If you’d ever lived outside
your privileged, First World life,
you would not find “entertainment”
in scenes of death and strife.

If you’d ever been a helpless victim
of cruelty or ****,
you would know it’s not entertainment,
but a hell, that some never escape.

Maybe everything is right
Maybe I had just been wrong my whole life and never knew what it was like to be right