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Steve Page Dec 2019
When you give yourself permission
to be vicious
you can cause fear to rise
doubt to take hold.
No doubt, worse violence
is avoided
and disorder,
ordered,

but when you let your vicious out,
it's a ****** to put back -
and even when you do,
it'll know its way back out.
Memories of adolescence in uniform
Myka Dec 2019
x
your sword is pointed at my neck,
so go ahead and slit my throat.
you'll see no fear in my eyes when you do.
the tip of my dagger already did its job,
and soon, the poison will **** you too.
Carlo C Gomez Nov 2019
Year after year
--at daylight savings--
he kept moving his clock backward,
but never forward,
until he wound-up in the wrong century.

He then slept in masks,
his dreams repeatedly
disbanding and reforming,
as if in someone else's show,
but it was his hallucinating set-list, for sure.

He lived at the call of the void,
feeding off peppermint sticks
and clusters of chokeberry,
to help ease the pressure.

One phantom summer,
he read The Joy of Euthanasia
from cover-to-cover, over and over,
until he could recite death.

He poured his heart
into his new work
as an artist of tacenda,
--yes, he kept a lid on it.

And when the pretty young bees
buzzed about underneath
their brazen parasols,
he'd smile up at the sun
for her complicit glow:
the warmest days
always drew them out to him,
like honey on the tongue.

Now naysayers may keep
him out of Canton,
but one day, like most serial killers,
they will name a school after him
and his hijinks.
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
At a party, a gym,
anywhere the lighting is dim.
Along the shore, down in the subway,
during an overnight stay.
On Christmas morning,
by the fire where she's warming...

She is the hunted.

Amidst war, conflict, and revolution,
in the confessional during absolution.
For retribution or initiation,
after a movie premiere's celebration.
In the pool, the jacuzzi,
when drugged and woozy...

She is the hunted.

When did the female species
become a personal plaything?
An implicit right of lords, masters, and kings?
A gratification tool to sadists & seducers,
ego-fed athletes, even film producers?

She is the hunted...
in this cathedral of misogyny,
an unholy ground where hands
can never come clean.

At what age, Malusha, did your little boy
become a ******?
Malusha Malkovna was the mother of Vladimir the Great, who in c. 978 infamously ***** Ragnhild, the prince of Polotsk's daughter.
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
"Every survivor of ****** assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."

Rainwater of
the Elysian fields,
you assuredly do
like to drown your winged heroines?
You write them as strange
bitter narratives,
spurious to the calling
or as a bit of
bloodletting go.

The history formed around either
her breaking at the seams
upon the witching hour,
and her own home village
pillaging her claims
in the bonfire;
Or the arcane notion
no woman shall give testimony
against a neighbor
on the occasion he's a man.

Yes, she cried 'no' at the temple gate
Yes, she repeated such entreaties
But she'd also been into the ale
and wore an overtly
fetching carousal dress
you incensed.
Let her dam break
Let her try and flood us over
you mocked.
She was only a wayfaring angel
one reckless bird of passage
What type of wounds
could she inflict?

How easily you lost sight
of her will & halo
becoming stronger than fright.
Down she poured in antipathy,
until covering your gaping mouth!
It wasn't rain that killed you,
for you were the rain,
it was her blood calling out
that finally did you in...
When it comes to ****** assault and/or harassment, a woman's voice needs to be listened to and believed.

Inspired by the poem "Dark Sky, One Star," by fellow HP writer Ashly Kocher.
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
~
Precious Padma
You dearest aquatic flower
You grew in murky waters
Unblemished by its impurity
But come they did
To ****** your petals
And leave you a burning stem
Never can they take from you
The spirit of your plainsong
It continues to grow in your sisters
And in a time and season so near
They will sing your hymn
As one substantial voice
The changing winds will then
Lift it higher

~
On Thursday, December 5, 2019, a 23-year-old **** victim from Unnao, India was seized by five men, including the two people she had named in her previous complaint to the police, and beaten, stabbed and set on fire. Still ablaze, she walked nearly a mile, seeking help before finally calling the police herself. She later died in a New Delhi hospital, prompting protests of violence against women.
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
He loved to teach...

He loved to teach her...

He loved to teach her abject lessons
      in elevators and on stairwells.


She hated to learn...

She hated to learn from him...

She hated to learn from him the inherent
       danger of buildings.
Nearly 1 in 4 women in the United States have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime.
Elijah Bowen Dec 2019
people **** people
with nothing but fingers and hair
and their very heavy breath.
their breath like a crow beak
before crucifixes of straw. like a tightening banishment of a lung.
remember when we would blow it
onto our car window and create that
consistent mirth of fog to
begin in?

the bodies riddled with bullets that flank
the highway are no such thing.
the schoolchildren lying face down in the corner of the closet are no such thing.
they are just winter coats with schoolchildren to fill them
for the time being.
no amputation of what’s mine
will aid them into the grave.
no mass communication grief. so
why would you call it a mass grave when in truth it was just a pit i dug to fill with crowds of people who died under the pretense that they had previously done so,
that nothing was new under the sun.

and when people **** people like people
do with their instruments
as ways of extending themselves into the world and into the marrow of our body
obliterating organs of people with their stretching of the muscular rib, shoulder.
one eye closes firmly.

it’s nothing but a hand gun
as if to say a hand eats the gun
and makes it whole.
as if to say the reinforced metal door
exit plan for people who are being killed by other people clicked shut and locked
15,000 years ago and i can’t quit slamming what’s left of me into it.

your kid is very dead.
but then again so is mine.
suppose they killed each other.
suppose they both made the mistake of dragging their small, stupid bodies through the trajectory of another body in the first place. in the chip aisle of a gas station maybe. in theaters this christmas.
in the midst of a good song that began playing on the lobby radio
just a minute before,
oh yeah before,
things really got going.

i saw people killing people
on television the other day
with their
whole bodies,
devouring themselves like surgical gloves
slick with oiled consumption
and bleeding out
and i could do nothing.
some kids died just because
and they told me so and i was told nothing could ever help them because they were just people and they were dying.

“breaking news” ended up just being people again.
in those moments, i was eating breakfast.
our houses were very quiet and needed me in all of them, grandfather clock over CNN, clarifying what has already been
committed and committed again.
the cipher was others lost blood.
jackie Dec 2019
she was sunshines and smiles and
dripping red knives
laughing and aching and touching and crying
and everything
and nothing at all
Somewhatdamaged Dec 2019
Born for greatness
Got stuck in this gutter full of madness!
He was all that you call life
Then the conditions and circumstances we put him in
He turned out immoral and vile!

Now in the pursuit of paper
Thinks he's after happiness.
Forgot how black his heart turned over
Even after saying never
Never will I become like them but just better.

Better he was
Born for greatness
Little did he realise
He was really good with violence!

It was'nt just about the money
He said.
Its about proving they're wrong
With his crooked smile
Never did he realize
He has become a part of something
That he never wanted to belong!
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