Abuse

It’s not black or white
No one will understand
I went through something
I’m still processing
I am sad but I don’t understand why
I am loved and I am in pain
Why can’t they stop hurting me
I’m too young to protect myself
I need to protect them
I need it to stop
Why can’t they see I’m hurt
It’s all a blur
Memories are a blur
The feelings remain
I’m ashamed
I’m angry
I cry for my family
I cry for me

The writer perhaps has lied,
Let's think it was his mistake.
You'll meet your tomorrow blind,
Until you today awake.

Each day is a kind of lesson.
How thoroughly have you learnt?
For what did you spend it racing,
If you've got a **** result?

Replace your concerns to whiskey –
It's absolutely okay,
But precious time is risky
Be wasted on groundhog day.

I tried on several of my father’s
old Brooks Brother suits
just before his funeral,
trying to save myself the expense
of an outfit I didn't need.  

Each was too tight on the collars.
too short on the sleeves, each
crotch inseam strangled my manhood.
I had outgrown them all.

Almost all of it will go to Goodwill-
except maybe for those old coal wingtips,
(still in their slightly battered but original box)
heels and soles worn down from hospital rounds,
the leathers evenly laced, spit and
polished to a proper navy shine,
solid and smooth, enough to go from
monolithic to Marley vinyl
without missing a beat.

I could almost hear “The Great Pretender”
play as he glided my future mom
(literally,”The Beauty Queen of Fulton Burrough”)
across the ballroom floor, and then,
suddenly stop, and leave her,
as the hospital pager buzzed on his belt.

All my father- a short, balding but
approachable looking guy, with the
devil’s goatee- ever needed to win
my mother over, was Nat King Cole.
What he left her with, was Harry Belafonte
swooning his existential sorrows out to her-
“Day-o, midnight come and I want to go home.”

I smelled the stale odor of talc
distinguishing itself from moth *****,
and was tempted to slip them on,
but figured the cost to resole them
wouldn't be worth the price. Besides,
that oxblood polish would be too hard
to find.  I left them there for the next
tenant to decide their fate.

This fiend, he's black
but not in colour.

He tracks: not you
but your brothers' brother.

He wins and jeers
and sits and cheers
and loses and who says
strange words that confuses.

But for all his whim
and dashing trim
he's bound up, wound up,
he's ready for sin.

This skin he bears, drained and cold,
grows thin with wear, and frees his soul.

The Prantercalt lives inside
he's cosy, got a stellar ride,
but anger burning,
envy churning,
these the weapons at his side.
Don't let him out,
he'll run about,
and you'll find your mind'a turnin.

"For the righteous Lord loves justice. The virtuous will see his face."
Every time I unshut my eyelids, time and I enter a race,
I drag my body out of bed, go to the bathroom to wash my face,
brushing off, like it is dandruff, the feeling of being misplaced.

What do I see lifting my gaze? There stands reflected in the mirror
an emulsion of an unmitigated taker and a poor giver,
and if there aren't any Gods, I know he is a firm believer
that the beauty of the word is nowhere but in the ears of the hearer.

All I see in that reflection is a young man, completely lost
in the sound of old people outside playing a game of draughts,
and on his neck, a rosary from a sailor, all chipped and coarse,
pulling him down to the full basin, with a weighty lyrical cross.

His eyes are empty, on his pale forehead there is a suspicious gloss
like that of polished marble, the reflection is a cemetery of thoughts.
Every second I spent writing, I am now doubting its worth,
all amounted up to nothing, now a mass grave for thousands of words.

I understand that the misfortune of a tongue that is so ill-fitted
comes with the duty of not vocalising everything, keeping it lidded,
so with my memories on paper and with their purport still vivid,
i comprehend the gravity of all the verbal sins i have committed.

An emotion or an illusion?
When you think, you are.
When you want, you can.
When you don’t—can you?

A state or a fate?
Do you decide it, or not?
Is it in your mind,
or beyond thought?

Is it materialism or a bond,
a lasting memory of years along—
a friendship, a relation, an achievement,
or nature’s quiet appreciation?

Is it real, or is it fake?
Something defined, or something I make?
A gaze into eyes,
or a stare at the stars?

If it is peace,
does it shine in the night sky?

Is it beautiful, or merely calming?
Cool or exciting—does it differ for all?
A claim to most,
or the worst of all?
Found in small things,
or in things that are not?

A sip of coffee in the cold,
or a cool breeze in summer’s warmth?
Is it in birth, or in death?

Up until now, more or less,
if I am in confusion,
so are you.
Asking yourself—
What is happiness?

You are my weapon,
my avenger,
the one I unleash
on anyone, anywhere.

Anyone guilty
of my lack of effort,
my frustration,
or of not being kind.

I fire you
for the things I lose
or the ones I fail to overcome.

I keep you tied to my waist,
always loaded,
but never well secured.

I **** you,
like a revolver in my hand,
and pull the trigger
with reckless passion.

It’s an uncommon thing,
To be someone that can elicit emotion and thought,
To have a presence that invokes passion and desire.

There are countless things that can drive us to be better,
To reach higher, to strive for more.

Words on a page, echoes in music,
The light that brings the world to life as dawn breaks,
But those don’t look you in the eye.

They don’t stand next to you,
Breathing the same air.
They don’t laugh in a way that sticks to your skin,
Pulling you into a moment.

And it doesn’t seek attention.
Without effort, it’s a presence that already holds it.
With no intention,
It exists in a way that can’t be ignored.

It’s an unfortunate thing,
That most are seen but not felt,
And I used to wonder what it might be like
To have that.
I was envious.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to realize that I am lucky,
Because I get to feel it.
The shift when you walk into a room,
The way the world pauses—not because you demand it,
But because even silence seems to recognize you.

And because of people like you, I don’t need to be the one who lingers in the minds of others,
Because I get to witness something rare.
I get to be moved by it,
To know that for a moment, I was in the presence of something unforgettable.

And that, I’ve come to learn, is its own kind of significance.