A single mother
Shot twice in the back of the head
For twenty dollars crumpled away in her pocket
Sweat
Accumulated from a twelve hour shift
Soaks first
The ***** bill itself (then the jeans of the perpetrator)
As his sneakers depart the newly developed crime scene.
The woman
Bleeding out in the street
Becomes trivial talk over family dinner

These things happen.

A priest is beaten to his knees
Symbolic representation of
Pleading
To a higher power.
Prayers fly first
From his mouth (then hit ground level)
Where they meet his teeth,
Both of which scatter the parking lot.
A rosary becomes his focus while three men escape
Taking only his
Wallet and a sense of security.

These things happen.

A girl looms over the eighth floor balcony
As she counts every passerby below, first
In her head (then again out loud.)
Emotion becomes causation split second
Everything inside spontaneously
Bursts
Pooling blood mimics graffiti wings across pavement.
Her quick descent becomes gossip
Among school yards.

These things happen.

Muscles flex firm in my jawline
Visual declaration of what my brain is processing
When you casually say
“These things happen”.
Somehow
You manage to justify pointless tragedies
Dismissing them as facts of life
While I boil away in hand made paranoia.
These things don’t just happen.
First
There is cause (then there’s effect).

See
I can’t accept the notion
That walking out your front door every morning
Is some Darwin's gamble
If that’s what it all comes down to
Reproduction and survival
I probably won’t place any bets
Because I refuse to accept
“That’s just how the world works”

They shot me in the south
Hung my brother up to die
Wet and ret swinging to death
Till he **** himself

One summer shower to clean the mess
But not enough rain
To wash away
The blood stains on the tree

In all honesty
I am grateful
That those hateful
Mother ******* shot me
For their brutality was the story
Written on the skin of my kin
Whips and chains
Spirit maimed
In the years that
That injustice remained
Trail of tears
Stolen children
Beaten
But I got off just getting shot

They burnt my brother
And his husband
Turned them
Charcoal and barbecue
Poured gasoline
To see them flailing and wailing
Didn’t even see it on the news
And all I can say
Is I am grateful
I didn’t go out that way
Ain’t that ****** up

When a man raised as a punching bag carries the weight onto his offspring he must leave the guilt at home. Reject the awful truth that he him self is a careless boxer. He fights teddy bears and screaming dolls not knowing the effect it has on the unaware children from his lovers womb. This kind of ignorance destroys the home not alone the beating hearts of little ghosts. When a man raised with nightmares carries the weight of his childhood he must leave it in a ghost town.

We do not walk away from the echo's of combat
in fact, we embrace it....
the shadows of death haunt us
but we like to believe that we haunt the shadows

I'm a ***** for your lips and drunk off your touch
I'm the biggest dork when I'm wet with your love
I just want to drink you, I've never had enough
The poison's in me thick and I know soon death will come

Me, I'm a raving lunatic, I'm mad
Crazier than Carroll's hatter and his Cheshire Cat
I'd put three red hotels on the top of your head
Collect all of Free Parking then crawl into our bed

I am the venom if you are the pain
I just want a thousand years to revel in your name
I can count my true loves on one single hand,
But you I can only count one of because that's all that I've had.

I'm a cylinder of evil, wrought with torturous pain
Dizzied by the spinning of my circuitous brain
I'm needy for your antidote before blackness courses through my veins
And the moon hits its fifth phase and I turn into a werewolf again

I've never wanted to **** around or catch a second look
Now I've been on a carousel of women, full of hookers and crooks
My wheels are thrown sideways, my skin's full of threat
I'm sick with the tantrum, The Fever that missing you gives

I'm weaponized and viral, cursing but still in command
My flags in the ground and I'm taking over this land
I've written a new bible about blood and rock 'n roll
Surrender your body, because I've eaten your soul
I am the poison if you are the watch
I just want to be drunk off your breath and live inside your touch

The thunder roars and the rain pours
black boots ***** in the mud
a serenade of feet, all in unison.

2.
The roar of artillery shells, the golden blaze of fire
the crumbling masonry, the rotten corpses
the tears of mothers and the letters from generals.

3.
The throat slashes, the mustard gas
the iron tanks, the flamethrowers
the bayonets and the noble foot soldier.

Greed, gluttony, indulgence, selfishness.
These are all characteristics I've seen
From a human who chose such a supposedly selfless career.
Funny how the less fortunate prey on the wallets thicker than theirs.

Their is a large difference between intentionally wronging
And misguided, assumptions that only misguided souls make
This is a public service announement,
Mom's in wild will protect their offspring to the death, I'll leave it at that.

Phone calls, emails, texts.
Don't believe everything you hear, don't disregard it either.
Play your pawn carefully sir, as your next move
Very well could be your last.

I just care about society until one of my own crosses me,
I have respected you by not interrupting your rendezvous,
Respect of the crest of M would have prevented your sad demise
Hopefully next time lessons shall be learned.

yours truly,
the m.h.d.

He watches a life burn down to dusty ash
From a tiny, yellow gas flame
That lights the cigarette in his hand
That churns out words from his troubled brain.

A writer's violence hides, not in his eyes,
But in angry, quivering palms that trace
A venomous, untidy, familiar scrawl
Reducing her complexity to scribbles on a page.

Though he mourns the memories of happier days
He feeds it all to his carnage.