Hurricane fighter
Life and death celebrator, Spicy food eater
Street performer and Harborer of ships
Weather-beaten, resilient, colorful
The City that Care Forgot

They tell me you are beaten, *****, and old, and I acknowledge this, having seen your streets and limping buildings, water-marked and sagging
They tell me you are cruel and dark, and I agree, I've seen the voodoo shops, and the papers speaking of crimes
They tell me you are raucous and crowded, and I respond, "Yes, I know. I have walked through her streets and through the ear shattering sound"

And having said these things, I look again to those who ridicule my home, my city and tell them:
I dare you to bring me news of another place that's been beat down, and yet time after time rises again, singing even in death and anguish, wearing the dingy but bright colors of life

Laughing in the face of defeat, walking proud, and even as its guts tear each other apart, she sets her jaw and keeps moving forward
Fierce as a gator grappling with a hunter, clever and bright as a bird
Battered,
Falling,
Flying,
Soaring,
Hurting, healing, grinning
Beneath the ******, dirt smeared face, she smiles with a brilliant grin
Beneath the harsh reality of injuries and setbacks, fire dances in her heart and soul
Dancing even as a wizened soldier knowledgeable in pain but carefree would
Twisting and spinning over and around obstacles, taking the occasional hit, laughing in the ***** air, lifeblood of the city coursing through her veins
Dancing!
Laughing the weather-beaten, resilient, colorful laugh of Youth. Proud to be a Hurricane fighter
Life and death celebrator, Spicy food eater Street performer, Harborer of ships,
The City that Care Forgot

I want to be at the harbor, not to be one.
I want sea salt waves to lap at my toes
Not to hold on to this until I explode
Please I just want to go, not be this.
I cant shake the feelings of being left behind
The fact that I can strip down naked
And you see through to the other side
I am searching for you gaze, like the one you use to cast
I want to be at the harbor,not to be one.
The one you look at last.
So I search for any place to be
any place at all, as long as that place isn't me.
I'm crumbling and dull
I cant hold on to all of this
I wont anymore.
sitting at the harbor
letting waves take what I cant be
letting the harbor, harbor me.

Just when everything was pieced back together, it explodes.
Gears and pulleys no longer function as they should.
No respect, or decency for an abused harborer of blood.
Each time stripped and pulled apart.
Restructured with stitches of lies and broken promises.
Cracked open by the unworthy.
Tainted by ***** hands, and chipped blackened finger nails.
Cut and infected, poisoned and bruised.
Stupid thing.
Crying "love me, love me!" over again.
**** it learn!
No longer make yourself out of soft, breakable, easily torn.
Instead surround with metal and iron.
Impenetrable.
Make it so.
I blame you.
I will stitch your mouth shut with iron thread.
I will make it so that you beat only to live a little longer.
I will stop listening, I will no longer allow you to have a say.
You will become nothing to me.
I am sending you to the basement, I am taking all feelings away.
You will no longer roam free.
You will become my unspoken shame.
You will be the secret that I keep.
No one will come to know you.
No one will ever see you again.
You cease to exist this very day.
I will not feed you, I will allow you to die.
I will chain you up and watch you wither away.
You don't deserve to live for what you have done to me.
I trusted you to many times and now you must pay.
I lock you up.
I bury you deep.
The only link you have to me is the blood you pump through my veins.
I owe you nothing.
From this day forward you are dead to me.

I’ve held onto this too long,
and it’s killing me inside.
The self-entitled *******,
that we selfishly call pride.

My every waking moment,
every irrational thought,
every time that I blamed others,
for what my decisions brought.

Ya I have a problem,
and everyone’s seen,
but that is no excuse,
for the way that I have been.

I’ve been a harborer of hate,
till my cup overflowed.
I invited hell in,
and if you knew me then it showed.

I shut myself off,
and told myself that no one cares.
I stopped worrying bout others,
and stayed out of their affairs.

I was selfish, and stupid,
thinking only of me,
till the poison turned inwards,
on the me I used to be.

I’ve never hated someone,
so much as what I’d become.
The hypocritical *******,
of all that I’d done.

I know it might be too late,
but I still have to try,
because if the poison remains,
then I’m going to die.

I can finally see clearly,
and maybe that’s fate.
Either way I’ll find out,
so goodbye hate.