i've dreamt of you.

i prophecized a boy
with charcoal eyes
would allow me to taste
his poison lips.

what secrets are hidden
in your dark gaze?

whisper sweet nothings
and
c u r s e s
to me as if
lullabies
were made to cut.

love me.

**** me.

Shameful to feed your kids breastmilk in public, but yet we will feed them bullets in their public schools.

You’ve seen her every day,
and she’s quick with a smile.
Always laughing and happy,
and joyful all the while.

She fell in love young,
and married the perfect man.
She has two beautiful children,
and helps others when she can.

You’re envious and jealous,
of the perfect life she leads.
So beautiful and perfect,
and she always succeeds.

I bet you can’t imagine,
that she cries herself to sleep.
That sometimes she’s so unhappy,
that all she can do is weep.

I bet you wouldn’t guess,
that Mr. perfect likes to drink.
Or that he shoots up ******,
over the bathroom sink.

Would you be surprised,
if she lifted up her shirt,
and you could see the bruises,
and scars where he likes to hurt?

Would you be shocked,
if you knew those kids had seen,
the night he broke her nose,
and put a hole in the tv screen?

Would you be understanding,
if she came to you for help?
If she told you everything,
and you could see the welts.

Mr. and Mrs. perfect,
always happy as can be.
Next time take a closer look,
and I wonder what you’ll see.

He couldn’t see beyond the veil of mist obscuring the burrows
where the army of undead stood, where the price he had paid for living awaited.
In the gloom of a moon trapped behind a nimbus night,
they didn’t shuffle or groan or whisper terrible things,
nor did they appear grotesque and layered in slabs of their own blood.

He slunk forward to meet them, eyes darting in wild arcs,
skinned lips bitten a bittersweet rosy delight.
It was fear written on his face, not anger or pity or nostalgia,
or maybe it was under his eyelids, beckoning him toward what couldn’t be considered friends,
they were acquaintances of coincidence instead.

The sincere light had been snuffed out long ago,
back when people believed in gods who gave a **** about them—
now they had to make their own ******* miracles.
He might’ve laughed at the word if he wasn’t stuck in a place resembling the Asphodel Meadows…
they weren’t heroes or noble or mighty, they were the murdered, the slaughtered.

He joined his brethren, his body warded off in a grave he felt didn’t matter;
nothing changed because of his death or the hoarse public howl.
The ranks reminded him of the scene in Lord of the Rings with legions of men and women standing strong against a matching foe, but for the foe itself—
their foe numbered fewer, a cluster of pale beings with roaring eyes full of fallacies.

He couldn’t see back where he had burst forth from, but he didn’t try—
his fear hadn’t evaporated, it swirled around him… no, it coiled around all of them,
a mass of heaving exhausted dread spanning too many centuries.
They were all the same in one terrible condition, one method of mayhem done,
he fell to his knees and cried out, for he saw past the veil—

swathed in hopeless suits and scapegoat words, their nation had let another gun prevail.

"I hate American late stage capitalism," my Spanish roommate says.
But what can I say to that.
He's right; every second spent here is paid for in gold
or in crimson blood.
Reality pulses with stimulation,
but still,
the clock's hand lazily wanders, lethargic, about its face.
This pathetic, white-haired professor,
lectures on coding in the front of the room.
"American's only know how to tell the time by looking at their phones," my roommate says.
But I think to myself, now, computers are the only way we bother telling time anymore. Time has become precise,
But it used to be clumsy, more art than discrete mathematics.
The professor informs the class that we have to pay for the textbook,
and again for the software that will grade our code,
and the class doesn't even blink.
"Class dismissed," says the clock. Ironic, I know.
The blue light of our phones,
the kind that keeps us awake at night,
is turned on as we step outside.
"It's noon," I say, and I hear the echoes of gunshots in schools just like this one,
Where someone got tired of paying in cash.