Today, I heard a woman
speak about indifference.
In my mind, a large charged clock was
laid out on the floor.
This wasn’t some small instance
causing minor turmoil.
It was every group represented
on the face of that clock.

And time’s, running out.

They spat at one another
leaving salivary freckles on the glass
face of this ticking time bomb.
And no one seemed to notice.
Hate met with hate causes rapid
explosions
of entitlement and lies,
brushing away honesty with a nice new
contour kit, make it look nothing of
itself.
Take mouths to baby birds
and spew in hatred and lies
with thin thighs and a new juice cleanse.
Raising people just like them.
They come back to the clock
and stand their places,
fragile looks on frail faces.
Swept away by the struggle
but still standing around,
standing their ground
And the clock winds down.
The suffering of humans can’t be
just left at the door.
And I imagine alarm sounds,
as I know, not in time,
not one will politely step down.

~kb

She cries, but alone
to no one and for nothing.

She weeps for her sorrows,
but to see them would be impossible

there are none to look upon.
She is in tears, in her head, but drops

of blood only appear. The reddish
lament of broken hearts, broken dreams,

broken promises and broken looks. She
waits, only for her horse, to take her,

anywhere but here.

~kb

I want to disappear,
but it’s not what you think. I’m on the brink of this thinking and off harmony chords,
that vibrate within
my slowly suturing skull.
Telling me things out of horror story gore. You wouldn’t believe the holograms
in my head
that bend light toward the dark and leave me hungry and bowed,
curled up tighter than Mom’s overnight plastic beauty.
So you can see, I just need to escape
for a while. I’ve thought this through,
I’ve written you,
explaining where I had gone.
Unfortunately,
I could find nowhere before this to go.
My shackled nerve endings followed me
to each place, no peace or no space,
just a new destination
with the same fat bellied demons rolling around in my gut, and I realized
one destination,
that couldn’t be touched
by fired frustration
or a black widow spider
spinning her web, biting the flesh of my heart.
I was already dead.
I have been, for a while and,
I couldn’t explain it to you.
The only way to make it stop
is to fight it where it is.

The shot to my heart
was an obvious choice to start,
make the spiders slither
to another comfy place,
and I thought about my face,
I really did.
That’s all I’m sorry for,
is you can’t look at my face,
but the dread in my head
was the absolute place
I needed to be free of and finally float through the earth.
And if you’re finding this letter
instead of standing bedside,
I need you to know,
I am free,
finally, alive.

~kb

The only streetlight for miles.
A lone standing work of art.
Moths flutter and bugs’ trials
to get into the light, use all their heart.
The vast black horizon
is filled with monsters and demons.
A place known to wisen
those who can find enough esteem in
their emotional fortitude
to take shadows to heart,
and let the blackness intrude
like a night’s work of art.
Those that stroll through black clouds
didn’t choose this jail sentence.
A mind that tortures out loud,
life feeling painfully defenseless.
There may be hope that still sings
I pray that it does.
Because in that darkness with things
I roam clenching my jaws.
I can see that lone light
I seem to walk circles around.
Hope’s singing just might
lead me to glowing ground.

~kb

Call me crazy.
No, really, call me crazy.
There is no but after that slaughtering word.
It just happens to be intermingled with me.

See, it’s not my fault I live with dark art
splattering my insides, pick-pocketing
my thoughts. And I’m sorry I can’t come
to that party, or bar, or your house.
I’m ******* at the moment, fist fighting
demons
you can’t see.
Or maybe,
you’d just rather not look.

I can compute tough equations, speak eloquently and with poise. Despite the noise. I am productive and kind,
always others before me.
But it’s never enough
because
someone
called me crazy,
and I believed it.
Despite the diagnoses,
believing you made me worse.
You infiltrated my soul, and I became
who you told me I was.

Words can be a curse.
So call me crazy.
It can’t break a heart
that’s been broken
for years.

~kb