THEY walk / Just one / Alone on the cracked pavement / Toes dragging, head sagging / tripping over lines that aren’t there.
High tops / the likes of God himself /sanctified, glorified, / pearly white as the gates of heaven / Consumerism, cleverly disguised / as divine ascension, the righteous liberty of choice / the steering of your own destiny- / and yet / ... / those footprints in the dirt / seem only to last as long / as anyone cares to look.
THEY / THEIR / THEM / Words rarely respected / most often neglected / every conversation, a silent battle / for the right to exist as THEY see themselves / THEY are a complete deviance from / the suffocation of two / neither pink, nor blue. / THEIR body, our bodies / once beautiful in our youth and vigor / now condemned as destitute wastelands. / Reaped of any / dichotomized consumeristic value, / that the world instilled during our years of innocent persuasion. / We are dust now, society tells us / just ghosts of what the earth once bore; / our place is nonexistent in this world. / Little choice but the next, / a test with limited boxes to check. / Maybe they’ll listen when our cold, nighttime howls / are too loud to ignore. / Maybe one day, we’ll fill the ears with our voice / never to be quelled again. / But until then / existence becomes more a question than fact.
A red rover world; / it croons to us lovingly, / as does the sun coax the flowers to bloom / come out! the world says / come out! / our wayward sons / come out! / our wandering daughters / come out, oh battered children of the world / let us cradle your broken hearts! / let us see your tears! feel your anguish! / and maybe we will know you better for your suffering. / And so we came, and continue to come. / not all, but enough for the satisfaction of the status morale / Be different! the world challenges / And so THEY dare to live differently, / and by extension, dangerously. / We ascend, just like the logos told us we would- / only to be brutally thrown aside / because we’re all the wrong shoe size. / our punishment is most often internalized / we knew all along, our woes an offbeat cry / to the rest of the planets unwavering bass line.
Scrutiny badgers us, in the guise of necessity / when in reality, it is the / furtherment of our marginalization. / What’s in your pants? / What bathroom do you use? / How do you ****? / Liquidated words flow free like water, / but stay behind, slow and thick like hot tar; / it hurts just the same. / Has it occurred to you / that THEY might want to share with you / more than the anatomy of THEIR mortal shells? / THEIR minds, THEIR souls transcend ignorant thought. / Ask THEM something beautiful, because that is what THEY are. / Do THEY come together like a star, in a glorious explosion of light and motion? / Or is it more like a flower blossoming, fragile pulses beating under translucent skin?
The labels of today / the toxic expectations building up from within / like residual filth trapped under your fingernails / never gone, bound to return, nearly inescapable / and never directly addressed / for the sake of not / corroding. / The stars are within kaleidoscope eyes. / yes, dexterous hands have crafted this being / see the light, the mystique and wonder of / this stardust child, set to change the spin of things. / and THEIR heavenly shape is beautifully flawed / maybe marred by the solar winds of the sun / or glimmering with interstellar dust- / a lingering kiss of radiation / from THEIR time among the asteroids. / This person of universal intent / THEY must be big, and THEY must be brave / for whilst joined under flag and name, THEY are still just one / a lonely phantom wandering cracked, forgotten sidewalks / Where the lights flicker and the air is stagnant and thin. / THEY cast THEIR eyes skyward, searching for something / a twinkling like THEIR own, in the map of the vast unknown / A reflection of what THEY must become / to simply be.
In a way only the universe can, / it whispers back on the celestial winds / with an unnoticed correspondence. / One of those skidded toe marks / Has smudged the lines of / blue and pink / Hopscotch lines, much like unspoken, unbroken lines / that is where THEY reside. / the fray, the cusp, the precipice / THEY see THEIR world in the skidmarks / a grand spray of color, like the nebulas that THEY once knew / Not the line, but the divergence of what is known / into something new... / and a hopscotch hymnal, / a broken prayer on clumsy lips / not to the God with the high tops, / pearly and clean as heaven’s gate, / but to a vast and anonymous universe / is answered.
a post for the lovely people at the Thunderhead Writers Collective- hope you guys can view it now!