Bus leaves in five minutes
Might as well be five hours
One minute feels like an eternity as
The rain begins to fall

Memories cascade
Over vibrant realities
Becoming bitter

As time rushes in
And love
Rushes out

Conversations become entanglements
Divisions of independent thought
Turned quickly into
Perfidious satire

The Thump Thump Thump
Of your fist
Against my heart head and face

I coexist but cease to exist
Hiding behind an overzealous pair of
Designer sunglasses    as if
Donna Karan
Could cover up the shame of your Designing

Thump Thump Thump
Fist wailing
Glass shattering
Relationship broken
The pieces scattered over time

Thump Thump

But I  love you
I thought you loved me  Thump

My mouth
Becomes a metallic ritual
Of beating drums  
Played out in blood
Upon my emotions

The bus leaves in five minutes
Echoes through the station...

Enter: Insecure like your neighbor's router.
The girl next door vs. an identity crisis
Caught in the torment of her name
Konfusion
The Konstantine of your dreams
In a nightmare of reality
The relationship
She fell out of
To follow a polluted path
             To become
                    A misled materialized martyr

After
He says to her,
Something misogynistic
about her role
Or what he thinks he can control
To put her in her place
She's just a pawn on his chessboard
Never a Queen he should be fighting for
Using her body as a human shield
to avenge his own shadows

Exploited.
This is their daily
He's the blade 
And she's the self-harm
Tracing the anti-battlescars
Writing love on her arms

Just when the knife couldn't cut any deeper
Somewhere between 
Too far
And fillet o' soul
She had enough 
but didn't break
Just felt her ego pull

Broken/Free
She packed her eternal baggage
And hit the runway
Running on the emptiness inside.
Fueled by frustrations
To keep the fire burning 
Before she doused herself in the elixir

A hungry ghost 
purging patience 
In spite of everything
Soon to be made up 
And lined up for the onslaught 
Led to slaughter what dignity she has left

She says, "Oh, but I'll show him now. I'm not his precious little prize"

...

I'd grab a knife and let it tear through my flesh
to rip out this inner strife if it wouldn't lead to my death.
My soul shivers he beats on his chest in fact that's why I breathe
on this ****** to try and relax. My mind is stretched to the max
my head needs to detach, my soul needs to eject.
Hotheaded armed with an icepick.
Hacking away at this ice that my spine grips.
My thoughts are confined in a space as small as my iris
and I'm behind iron bars of anxiety that I constantly have to fight with.
I've become a mass murderer, locked in a psychiatric ward as I **** my parts within, erasing my kin, the ink from the teardrops darkens my skin.
Fallen to sin. My world in the dark. A void shaped like a heart.
Yet this Tinman retaliates against the wizard of Oz!
My torch an everburning question mark
answers? That's the past but Life throwing hooks so I HAVE to dodge.
Hits exit Pause-my-world which I create so I can spit back in the face of God!

You awoke a sleeping giant, a savage beast, a lion
My soul roars everytime you see me sighin
I won't ignore these tidings
A frozen force is rising
Close to war my broken core redefines defiance.

So I will stand my ground and fight
go bar for bar with life.
Proudly wear these battlescars
you'll be astounded by my might
A star upon my sky
My reach is long and wide
You see I'm strong you're weak and wrong
I no longer hide
Because I don't have a mind
I am guided by the light
my sight set on my rage
replace my blood with hate
bleed and rust and easily crush
this tyrant in my cage.

Would you love me if  my skin was beautiful
a perfect porcelain
without scars marring my skin?

Would you love me if i had full lips
the delicate kind
that kissed roses everday?

Would you love me if i had a straight nose
a feminine one
that looked perfect from every angle?

Would you love me if i had doe shaped eyes
an innocent pair
that showed my inner purity?

Would you love me if i had an unbroken heart
like those of newborns
trusting and joyful every passing second?

Would you love me if i had a clean soul
white as the first fall of snow
never to have known of darkness and unimagninable hurts?

Would you love me if i had a muscial laughter
like gentle gurgles of a stream
never a note out of place in its symphony?

Would you love me if i spoke in soft tones
never to utter a curse
with diplomacy ruling my tongue?

Would you love me if i was this check list
of what others considered beauty
seemingly the ideal whose hand a task to win?

If you could love me as this
erase meat once from the chambers of your mind
leave no trace of my presence visible
i would be sure to disappoint your wishes and dreams
you held on high pedestals

For i am riddled with battlescars
and my words would only voice my honest opinions
my body breaking the mould of ideal perfection
my heart a shattered vase taped together
my soul steeped in darkness yet riddled with wells of dreams

If you could love my imperfections
If you could love my soul
then you and i could possibly be together
as imperfection but never alone.

Shells and Hopscotch, Kites and Stars
Treasures found on sea wet sands
Cover up your battlescars
Hold them tight in your cold hands

Mimsy, mimsy, swear your fate
Hold his face and kiss his cheek
He’s here right now, it’s not too late
Don’t turn away or be so weak

Toss the stone up ,it's so high
Don’t hold your breath or close your eyes
You’ve hit the square now don’t be shy
You have to jump, you have to rise...

You got so high! Now grab the string!
It’s caught the wind and makes away
It strains like some great living thing!
The past is gone. Now is today.

The stars, the stars so brightly singing
Don’t watch what’s in between, the Dark
They catch our eyes like bright birds winging
Don’t just hear crows. Listen for the lark.

Shells and Hopscotch, Kites and Stars-
Children's things? Not just, I think.
Don't pet your pain, or count your scars.
Relax. Life's quicker than you think.

Fallings out and shooting stars
ragged unseen battlescars
Your love was an illusion
unaffected by my desperate
attempts at profusion
Given to bouts of sensitivity
my tender loving could not
turn you on to me
and you grew cold to my touch
unfeeling and sold for a ****
I could have loved you hard
I guess that's just hard luck

Cottonmouth kingdom.
Bloodshot million-gallon-gaze.
Brewery breath.
Battlescars.

Headache like horses over the hills.

Bukowski without the
Brilliance.

If you really want me
to waste your time with my superficial sense of adventure

developed over 20 years as the
perfect formula for fun, alright.
I promise you'll see right through it.

You'll realize in a second that all we really need
is whiskey
Netflix
That all these road trips
cigarettes
rooftops mean nothing
give us nothing.
On a regular basis I'd walk in on you cuddling reptiles that litterally can't have any compassion for you.
isn't it just like you to have
compassion for
something that
can't
love
you
back.

I'm not the charecature you deserve

I'm not jacked or covered in ink.
My battlescars aren't from poverty or violence, or consequences of just generally being a bad person.

My "battle scars" are all from loving too much.
I'm so naive that I think they're just as awful as anybody elses.

You won't love me.
Don't get me wrong
If you were truly interested
I'd show up wearing
a box of chocolates in my hands
and not much else.

You are a goddess.
have absolutely no reason to be looking up to me.
I am not that interesting.
It's all a game.
you've been alive long enough to know
the game is *******.

I'm flattered by your peaked interest, willing
to give you the night of your life.
Something tells me you want more than just flashy lights on blank canvas

You want stardust.
Yes, I'll look at the sky with you.
So you might find what you really want.

my phone rang today and the caller id was restricted,
before i even answered, i knew that it was you.

"hi, how are you?"
a voice filled with a dose of memories,
a voice that sounded like nights spent
laying awake, thinking about how to hide
the marks you left on my body,
the battlescars of a little girl being drafted
into something she was not ready for,
maturing overnight for the man who
she thought she was ready for,
being afraid of how he made her
feel as if she didn't deserve anymore.

"i miss you"
brought me back to the night
that i came home from spending two weeks
in texas, tanned legs, brimming with stories,
but you only wanted me to apologize for
leaving you alone for so long.
i want to go home, take me home,
no, no, no. please stay with me.

"you know that i'm sorry."

grabbing my wrist,
your love was the color of petunias.

A matriarch of splendour
Her soul birthed the rights
Of passage to kings her trunk
Hoisted the heads of toddlers
To the apex of the African sky
A seasoned warrior a pinnacle of hope
Her bark bear the brunt of
Battlescars and hieroglyphics
The crowning glory of her delight
Is her children paying homage
To her For over six thousands years
Long live the Baobab
Long live Her Majesty

Hanging out in my room, I'm alone and I'm naked
Sitting, wondering why you and I didn't make it
Every man in my life ends up being a fake kid
I've got a dark demon and never will shake it

Clicking poems out now slurping down some black coffee
Thinking I'll really do it, and nobody can't stop me
If they wanted me here, why did all of them drop me?
I'm salty and sweet, so you choked me with toffee

My abandonment itch is so easily triggered
With no dad and no brothers, my heart grew disfigured
Sweetest strawberry patch in all of the vineyard
Every vintner passed by never even considered

I love myself, know myself, truly am learning
This caustic behavior toward me is burning
I see stars when he mars battlescars I am earning
I am left bent and selfless, possessed by the yearning

"There is only one god,
and his name is death.
And there is only one thing
we say to death --
'not today.'"*
Day by day it gets a little harder
but these traces on our wrists
we wear as battlescars.
So we say --
not today.

Our heros keep exiting the stage,
Leaving us their music, art, film, and literature.
Their athletic accomplishments,
Their political discretions,
And hidden battlescars,
Their scientific and medical wonders.
Our ancestors left us the wheel and fire,
The family unit and our extended compatriots.
A good lineage always starts in the cave,
And helps us make it through the night.

As hard as you push, As much as I bleed,
The tension between, Is not what we need.

Which hurts you the worst, to love or to lose
The left or the right,which way do you choose
You stab, I scream, we both hit the floor,
I’ve loved and I’ve lost, but I miss the before.

Before all the *******, before all the pain
Before all the battlescars, caused by your name
Before the initial, before the conclusion
Before the beginning of this war that we’re losing

After the tears, and all of the bloodshed
The knife in my chest, you know that I am dead
You think, you think, oh what have I done
The lights are all out, no longer is this fun

Do you miss the before, when the fun was just harmless
Do you miss the before, or enjoy being heartless
Do you think of the after, or can you not see
The killer inside, was all along just me.

Dear you,

Thank you.
Thank you for the butterflies you've supplied me for years.
The jitters I felt just by the thought of you; What more of seeing you?
Thank you for the warm hugs; a tight embrace that made me wanna lose my breath.
For the long walks and with your hands to hold, I never felt afraid to sweat.
Thank you for the petty fights and your sweet apologies; for it made me smile from ear to ear the moment I open my eyes to see.
Thank you for being the reason I looked forward to another sunrise, wishing to be given another day.. everyday.

Thank you for making me cry at night. I would have never slept, if it wasn't for the tired and puffy eyes.
Thank you for the lies; for it made me realize that we can never be sure of what lies ahead of us.
That no matter how we picture tomorrow, it won't always go like the scene you had in mind.
Thank you for crashing the things that took me years to rebuild; it made me see how capable I am of doing it over again.
That nothing was actually stopping me from doing so, but my own fear.
Thank you for the crippled legs; it made it hard for me to walk away, but it wasn't impossible either.
I may have felt like dying, but the thirst for a new start made me wanna do more.

Lastly, thank you for the battlescars; for every time I look at it, I will always remember how strong I've become. That if I ever happen to be put to test again,
I'm sure I'll win this time.