”How To Not Be A People Pleaser”
below are listed 10 bullet points
on how to toughen up,
on how to avoid the blow of others
wiping their ***** feet across
your ‘welcome mat’ heart.

Surely I have the look down, right?
Skinny jeans fit for skinny girls (who I am not),
tucked into loosened combat boots that have never seen a good shoe shine. Black eyeshadow smeared in the form of war paint,
"Today is a good day to die"

But the fact that this is all a charade,
that ‘looking tough’ does not mean you automatically
become some brazened ******* who does not let anyone inside
of your crazy head or heart,
loosens the grip you try so desperately to hold on to.

If you look the part, surely you feel it in your bones.
You feel the anger and the need to not be so polite all of the time.
Yet you still hold doors open, say please and thank you, smile at strangers on the street,
your mouth cannot form the simple word ‘no’ in fear of hurting another person.

So how can you not be a people pleaser?
You can’t. No matter how grungy you look,
no matter how loud you listen to rock ‘n roll
no matter how dark and damaged you let your soul appear
maybe you can allow yourself to become something you are not,
but you can not bury something you are.

As I sit here on this cold winter's morn
I ponder my life and what is now in store
Here on the day of reckoning before
The sun has yet to crest over the eastern sky
The moon still clings fighting to give one last childlike lullaby
Am I like the moon, fighting to stay
Not yet wanting to be chased away by the brazened sun.
The moon soft, comforting, familiar, like my past
The sun, harsh, brazen, unknown, sharp, new as my future can be
Shall I stay with my moon and continue with my soft light
or shall I rise in the eastern sky like the sun and shine with a boldness of things to come.
A scary new adventure.
A choice I must make, for the sky is changing from grey to pink.
It is time, the past I cut my strings.
No longer a woman-child, matriarch let me be.
My past, I let it go to float upon this winter's breeze.
Come upon me now sun, it is you and I, a new life for us to write....

Feast on frenzy brawl brazened claw
and cartilage fluttered all about,
it’s but the silhouette of the human self.
****** as simple and pure,
bleeding to bludgeon breath,
ghastly horrors of driving metal steaks
into the sullen degrade of a humble man’s chest.
The sickly of emotional fluid and flaw
thieve God’s breath,
but to glutton against
the flagrant screams of innocence.
We hollow corpses scatter beneath nightly flesh,
hunting out merciless.
Tis a gamble of ticked finger and claw,
just the opening of our manslaughter ball.