It is another year gone
Another day lost
And we children left
Have naught bought
A single shillings more
Of old dreams and sunlight

A bomb blast
A bullets blooming branches of blood
Stole another poet
Stole another kind heart
In pictures seen the ****** scene
The curdled young souls
The so called foreign fiend
Cannot find her scream
Cause photos are silent things
I scream in silence

Empty face, not metaphor
But ****** mess
Her face is ******* gone

The mother holds her child close
To pose for such a picture
A photo that will not find a smile
Because her face was hit by a bomb

Another child
Another parent
Mind blown
An empty crater
Folds of flesh parts left and right up and down
I wish I could burn these images on your brain
Because a father cannot un-see such horrors

I want you to look
******* look
And see what happens when you dehumanize
Spread hate and lies
******* look

You stole my last cigarette and coughed red all over the ashtray. Fountain like it overflowed with our combined wants. Your limbs seemed annexed from your mind and flew all over the place, like across my shoulders, and I had to wriggle out. You drew sticky lines in ash and spit, into a ***** table.

Your mindlessness serves you well, in times like these.

All I could do was collect the half smoked butts and construct them into something not new but at least poisonous. I keep it far from you, though you’re paying as much attention to this as the last bi-election.

Your mindlessness serves you well, in any time.

My smoke creates a protective screen between us, unhappily easily broken by a waving hand or a breath exhaled forcefully. But it’s all we have, so we sit quiet and in our own worlds. You’ve got bats and old songs in your head while I have ****** in mine. Every second of silence is a plot to **** you, every puff, a breath, a gift, a warning. I’d give you anything you want because soon you will be gone and I will take it back.

Everything. The gifts, lies, memories. So your mindlessness won’t serve you so well.

The only thing you get to keep will be a coffin and a lonely name. Keep philosophising into your glass. You want a tin foil hat? Is that your last request? Let me laugh as I dig the hole, I won’t trust anyone else with your death. It belongs to me and I’ll take you and what’s due with utter carelessness.

I close my eyes as you open your mouth and I dream up a better world. It is better because you are not in it. It is better because you are in a grave I had commissioned and then forgotten about and your name is spelt wrong and I had done that and the headstone had been kicked over and maybe I did that or maybe it was some other random marauder with more beer in their veins than blood and an arbitrary rage to exhale.

I woke up into a smoky haze when you touched my arm, asked me for a light. You'd bought a new pack of smokes and two pints. Maybe I can deal with you now. You touched my arm and I started and punched you in the temple.

You don’t mind.

In fact, you laugh and snuggle up to me, take a sip of my beer and steal my cigarette and when I say I can’t wait to **** you, you laugh as if there is no consequence.

We forget about each other as we drink ourselves senseless.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

It hurts to grow up, it hurts to stay
Struggle to survive, things don't remain the same
I see the violence, I see the hate, I see the pain
Another shot and others gone, it's just another day
Moving on, losing, it's confusing along the way
years gone by, all those around me change
the pressure is real, those fires untamed
we'll suffer in silence, our illness unnamed.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

kids grow up different around here
some kids grow into eternal fears
some come out alive, some without minds
harden their hearts, all to stay alive.
rewind, rewind, rewind.
if I could change a thing, they wouldn't stay in line.
tough love comes in tough times.
tell me yours, I'll tell you mine.
we'll heal together and find ourselves divine.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

when will things get better? I don't know
not anytime soon with this status quo
I wanna see my community heal and grow
not have them deal with ordeals and go
I don't want gentrification, miscommunication
love and support, it's my motivation
what are the implications of being left in this situation
a small population without consolation, left in suffocation.

Autumn gone in the winter
Keep warm, nothing else will bring her
back, if only we can go back in time
we'll learn to forgive, never forget her life
Autumn gone in the winter
keep close, everything else will wither
when the time comes, closer than expected
we'll find ourselves, our pain ended.

for all the times my consent didn't matter to you.
for all the times you told me that since we're in a relationship I should want to have *** with you.
for all the times I had to hide in the bathroom crying while looking at all the red marks and the bruises.
for all the nights I stayed up trying to catch my breath while you were sleeping beside me.
for all the times I cried during an act that was supposed to be intimate.
for all the times you grabbed me and said "please, baby, please? I love you"
for all the times you saw me crying because of the random man who tried to grab me on the streets.
for all the times I told you about my PTSD I suffered due to childhood ****** abuse.
for all the times you took advantage of me.
for all the times you hurt me, I am now going to conquer.

you have made me suffer through another type of abuse,
an abuse that many people don't realize real.
because of you, I suffered through domestic violence/marital ****.

I am not a victim, I am a survivor.

You don't know what it's like
To be violated
To be held against your will
And felt up
And leave bruises
By someone you trusted
By someone you thought cared about you

You don't know what it's like to be used just for your body
By someone you thought cared for more than just nudes
By someone who told you were cute and pretty

You don't know what it's like to tell the person who violated you
What they did to you
And how it made you feel

You don't know what it's like to receive a fake apology
One only to get you to shut up
But as you're telling him your point of view
And as he's pretending to apologize
You could just feel all the "I don't cares" and "will you shut up nows"

You don't know what its like to attempt to leave an uncomfortable situation
Only to be pulled back by the handle on your backpack
Unaware of what is going on
You thought you were leaving

You don't know what it's like to be held up against the body
Of a strong, tall male
Unable to push him away
Unable to squirm out of the situation

You don't know what it's like to be barely able to breathe
Because your face is pressed right up against his side

But of course you knew he was strong
He played hockey and baseball
But you didn't know he was that strong

You don't know what it's like to be violated by someone you thought you could trust, or thought they could protect you.

Let's not mention how you don't know what it's like
To be sitting in class, sharing your homework with another boy
Only to feel his hand on your leg

You don't know what it's like to sit in a room full of students
And have no one notice what is happening
And you've shot a look that says don't do it
Yet he takes that as a look to continue to go up further
Because he thought it would increase tension
But really he made your self-worth decrease

You don't know what it's like to have an unwanted hand go up your skirt
And you thought it was okay to wear a skirt that day
Just like you wore one every other day
Because the Kilt was part of your school uniform
But of course that made your visible legs vulnerable
And it's a good thing that someone else call for his attention
Because you wanted anything but his

And you don't know what it's like to make a scene
Or to tell someone
Because you're not sure if you parents will be more upset
About you talking to boys or that your got yourself into those situations

You don't know what it's like to stay silent
Because you don't want to make matters worse

But it's my body, why would someone think they have access to it?

Because you don't know what it's like to be sexually assaulted

I will put you up
High
High up the sky
So when you fall
You will fall hard.

There was a time in my life when I thought you could fix me.
The two of us were lost and scratching for meaning in a post-post-postmodern world,
looking for purpose and clarity,
looking for the black-and-white morality in our grayscale lives.
When fate left us reeling in a shared embrace,
I let my sorry *** believe you were the Big Bad to my Virginia Woolf.
Leave it to me not to learn from past mistakes.

There was a time I saw you as a hero, a martyr of some twisted kind,
willing to give back to me that missing piece that someone else had cut from my flesh long ago.
I saw your love as the highest I could ever earn,
and I was devoted to your work-- whatever that meant.

I never saw the casualties.
I don’t even know that there were casualties, but I look into your face and I can see--
blood has been shed,
and it was on your behalf.

You don’t have the kind of face that launches fully armed battalions.
Leeland says you look like a mall Santa,
but I think you make quite the lady-killer.
And I mean killer.
You may as well call me Lizzie Short.

And when your life or ours started to wane,
when I saw your empty promises for the broken vessels that they were,
I realized I didn’t know where I ended and you began.
I realized there were so many words in your textbook full of saccharine lies
and you were using all of them to keep me weak enough to stay.

Was I falling for it? Hell ******* yes, I was falling for it.
I wanted so desperately to have someone in my life
whose every word I could believe
without fear of betrayal or accidental abuse
that I chose intentional manipulation.
Better to know it’s coming, that was my logic.
Better to cause it myself.
Better if I’m the one who dips the cigarette in your poisoned blood and lights it.

You won’t end my life.
You look like it, you act like it, but you don’t outright **** anyone.
You just give people the means and method to end it themselves.
I’ve heard it said there are three types of people:
the type that lose to you,
the type that win and suffer the trauma for the rest of their lives,
the type that win and then become you.
I’m the third, and though you hate to hear it, I wish I’d been the first.

Some people are so grateful to be alive.
But not me.
Not anymore.
Not ever.

Has it arrived?
Why, why hasn't it?
The hands that run this place
***** and test my spirit.

Oh but I am patient,
but stand not to suffer.
These bullies,
they will hear from darling Mother.

Mother will not be charmed
by this, this
hair on my chin.
How will she hope to recognize
her little Monkey kin?

Where is the razor promised?
She will be here quite soon.
I scraped and clawed barbarously, but
my nails aren't meant to prune.

Equanimity.
Little Monkey, breathe.
Allay the palpitations
and the grinding of your teeth.

Count. 1, 2, 9, 4.
In.
Or was it 1, 2, 4, 9?
Out.
Oh, Mother says it's not vital.
I'm sure she wouldn't mind.

Wipe your chin off of blood.
Good.
And bite your nails off too.
You are, no, I - am patient -
until the debt is due.

-

Like that kid, what was he called?
John? Jim? An arrant name I'm sure.
He hissed and said he'd tell on me,
for eating green manure.

He ran -
that poor little Penguin.
What Mother bestowed to Monkey,
his did not bequeath to him.

A splintered piece of fence in hand
- why is the razor not here yet -
A fall, a squeal, he could not defend.
Cowgirl, concede, plead, then stab.

Prying open a chicken's beak
was cleaner than plucking out his tongue.
This Jack? Joe? This brown-eyed snitch,
thought he'd won because he's young.

I ejected into his open mouth - no loss,
to assure my secret stayed unleashed -
and I never quite liked brown manure,
unlike Mother's eyes - a jade-green finish.

The Penguin family - an unexpected crowd.
All of them - mother, father, and two other browns.
They all screamed and the father lunged, but -
penguins can never beat Monkey on ground.

Each one felled by fence's tip.
1, 2... well the father was elephant-big.
And the others combined would make one more.
So two Elephants by Monkey's score.

-

My fingers with nails freshly removed,
evoke an image of that wooden stake.
Dripping and wafting - suspicious acerbity...
...I think she's here! 1, 2, 9, 8...

Blood-grimed hands no longer throbbing,
for it's all right now, dear Mother's coming.
She will kiss you and speak with her peridot eyes,
sing lullabies and... Where is my Mother!?

You bullies promised me Mother was coming.
Liars! Are you hiding her from me? Mommy!!
Monkey was good and waited meekly for you.
You thieves and brown-eyes, what did you do?!
And where are you taking me, if not to see her?
No I don't want to sleep, I want a moment with her!
Count your debts
- all of you -
for I have a patient nature.
You will all pay - when I get my promised razor.