Drowning in
Dread
From toes to
Head
Falling a
Part
From end to
Start
Weeping clear
Tears
Indulged in
Fears
Loss of my
Rights
Losing the
Fights
Illegal mar
Iages
High priced tar
Iffs
Corrupt and
Gone
Mauled and
Drawn
Hicking up
Sobs
Filling cupped
Jaws
Screaming in
Pain
Shouting in
Vain
Drowning in
Dread
From toes to
Head

A fire in my veins, it burns and spreads,
No solace found, my pain instead.
It courses through me, an unseen dread,
My heart beats hindered, slow and dead.

I gasp for air, my breath a plea,
To regulate, find sanctuary.
Isolation's grip, it smothers me,
Abandoned here, in misery.

The spreading burn, a growing blight,
My center bleeds, devoid of light.
Rot consumes me, without a doubt,
From inside out, it spills about.

My vision blurs, my words a mess,
Organs churn, enduring stress.
A fleeting glance, at moments past,
Life lived too fast, it couldn't last.

The forecast grim, my future bleak,
A question haunts, my soul to seek:
Was it all worth this fleeting chase?
I shunned the breaks, embraced the race.

Lost in the maze, of fleeting fears,
My peers' applause, drowned out my tears.
Exhausted, striving, never to stand out,
My grotesque form, a silent shout.

"Leave me," I begged, a final plea,
But now the burn consumes, sets me free.

the hands on the clock stall at the center of it all, unmoving
everything , stutters, slides, stammers around them
silences bubble up in the swamps of entropy
in these celestially celebrated serenades.
I grind my heart into a paste
for sealed mason jars
to be opened when
the nights
flare up
yearnings
of yesteryears,
to be comforted
with the tastes that eluded
my tongue, in all the years I left behind,
in the bags I left unopened under the bed,
Straight from the planes I pulled them from.
These are back aches from staying still in the buses
That carry me from one moment to another, place to place

Visions of cornea, the sin etched into blank husks,
Concocting of-the-brain bouts of ephemeral greed,
Ever interlinking with visions of violent dissent,
Once more printed 'pon cornea-husk—
These are the ******* Imprints!
The rancid souls of subterranean devils,
Gaping, flat-footed, throughout the course of time.
The memorandum of a navigation substance
Used during rituals for the ascension of the dead;
An imprintation upon the blank entrance void,
Interlocking the locations of ******-dread.

That voice
Inside your head
The untrue you
Past and future dread

Remnants wanting to shape
Events that are not facts
Wanting to control
Anything else

The low burning blues
Up from the underground
Seen when life around
Is shining

Fly above, look out
Beyond your self
Take a peek
Glide right back in

Into your spirit
Into your hope
Turn fear into angels wings
The universe needs you
To stop trying to fix it

When I was a girl
I thought I could be anything I wanted
I didn’t realize I would grow up
To be a woman
That I was forever ‘and her’
Instead of them
That my father loved me
As an exception
And I would have to witness my sisters
Wither away in happiness
I found out that I was not the ‘public’
In public transportation
That I needed to switch my grocery run times
Every now and then
Discovered the places where a hat
Could be the best weapon
On Sundays, I dress up and buy pretty roses for my table
To keep from remembering that
If someone wanted
There was nothing I could do to stop them

It’s getting to that time of year;
Where life dulls,
Hearts tighten,
And days just mull through.

Because when the air becomes frigid
And life passes in slow motion;
Dread piles,
Like the dead leaves on the ground.

And when I feel that familiar unnerving tug
Like a leaf that tries to hold on,
As the chill of autumn approaches;
I know that
We’re closing in on another year
Without you,
Mom.

The memory of
that night on
the pier, when
we scrawled our
names onto the floor
with a pocketknife,
and dreamed of when
we might show
our children,
but the children we
never had will
never know,
and the scratches
on the wood will
fade, stepped on
by countless people
who will never know of
our love.