It's rotten work
It is for me
If it's me

It's rotten work
To get up in the morning
To keep breathing

It's rotten work
To make coffee
And drink water

It's rotten work
To eat when I'm not hungry
And get dressed every day

It's rotten work
It is to me
If it's me

It's rotten work
To go to work
To pay my bills

It's rotten work
To fake normalcy
And mask whatever the hell this is

It's rotten work
To not just sleep
Sleep and sleep and sleep

It's rotten work
It is for me
If it's me

It's rotten work
To drive each day
And not off the highway

It's rotten work
To be alive
And keep caring for myself–or trying to

It's rotten work
Because all I want to do
Is not talk, not eat, not drink

Just...sleep.

A piece of gum sticks to scuffed tennis shoes

Sidewalk cities all turn blue

Kitchen lights flicker deadly hues


But for the few that fear the dark

They stole a life, not faint of heart

A candle burns out, a dying art


Now all is glass with shattered bone

Growing cities turn to stone

Freedom from all that is known


So take a moment, two, or three

To look down, stare at your feet

Remind yourself of their defeat


Lest you face a similar fate,

Of growing old and growing hate

Release your fears and create

What the ******* looking at
I’m that loudmouth
Cotton-picking
***** ***** you heard about
I’m that slick-talking, big-walking *******
****, I am a *******,
*******
I’m a watermelon-eating, cornbread-munching, fried-chicken-smacking *****
I’m a black **** that will do anything for the white skin, for those white men, that little bitty white plan
That western thinking, that only got us sinking.....
Into generational oppression
Contemplating deep thoughts of depression
Like clockwork
Over and over again
Wait
Over and over again
Is my clock broken?
NO!
Over and over again
In this sin, we call life
Playing the game with a disadvantage
A Catastrophic injury
Not having all the tools to conquer
This constant relapse of cycles
Hating myself so much that hate you
Hating myself so much that I beat you
Hating myself so much that I **** you!
As I say,
Yes sir,
No sir
Yes *****
No *****
But hates his own kind  
A *****, who doesn’t sit by the door
But on them corners!
Right on that corner on 79th
Or maybe 78th, or 63rd maybe 65th,
Name a street, I’ll sip the 5th
As I plead the 5th, for crimes I did not commit
Feeling so bashful and so cloaked with indifference, that I cop a 5th
1st, 2nd, 3rd—5th
As I amend my thoughts
I understand!
Just another body to this cause
Again
I don’t think you understand my pain
So again
I’m that ***** not by the door but in them fields, crushed in between a jail cell and genocide
With homicide in my conscience  
Ready to blast nine shots by two Glocks in a ***** that looks at me crazy!
From being a crack baby
To selling to crack babies
From whips to chains
To whips to chains
Not knowing why I hate
But deep down inside, I am full of love
Unfortunately, I will never show love
Because I was never shown love
and in the deepest form of honesty, I don’t know how to love.
So, with not knowing the stereotypes continue
And forms a mind of its own
Hate!

I'm always worried people hate me
That they see my name in the notification and sigh
That they dread seeing me but feel guilty not to
That they say my name with spite and anger
when telling others about me

I see people and my eyes light up
I think there's do too
They have a bright smile stretched over their face
which I don't even know if it's true
or a false facade to hide their rage

Within the fortress of my chest,
two armies rise at dawn—
one clad in crimson silk,
the other in shadowed steel.

Love, with hands warm as sunrise,
lays flowers along the corridors of my mind, promising peace in a voice
that feels like home.

Hate, with eyes like storm-torn skies,
sets fire to every blooming thing,
swearing the ruin is mercy,
and the ashes, my salvation.

They march the same veins,
drink from the same pulse,
speak in the same tongue—
and yet their banners
will never fly side by side.

Some nights, Love wins
and the world feels golden.
Some nights, Hate takes the crown
and I sharpen my silence into swords.

But more often—
they lock arms in stalemate,
pressing their weight upon my soul,
neither yielding,
neither retreating,
leaving me
to live in the uneasy kingdom
where both are king.

"The heart of man is a divided river,
and its two streams know not the other’s course."
— Epic of Gilgamesh

...

Ugly ugly girl
You try so hard, but it never works
You paint your face to make it clear
You wear lashes so your eyes are big
And line your lips so they look full
You even try to fix your nose
The curl in your hair is to match your face
And the hairspray so it doesn’t go away
Lastly perfume so they say you smell sweet
Yet even with the money you pay
Or the time you spend
Stroking, drawing, blending for perfection
You still seem so broken
Like you’ve always been
It never goes away no matter how hard you try to cover it
Ugly ugly girl
You try so hard but it never works
You will never stop aching to be pretty
So you can be put back together

Grief is a strange thing.
It can have many masks and be many faces.
It can be anger.
It can be hate.
It can be laughter
And it can be an overwhelming sadness.
Grief is a stranger.
It is the man in an alleyway dressed in black.
It can watch you.
It can grab you.
And it can even make you one of its own.
It is in times of Grief we must fight.
We must crawl and claw our way out.
Because Grief can make us a stranger,
Even to ourselves.