I lost you just when the tailwinds started
God, they howled
Now I am swimming just a beat ahead of
the storm
I’m running for cover
and looking back for you
always.

Dear reader,

He was a child when misfortune came knocking on his door
His step fathe–
the monster entered his room drunk
It told him that he should’ve died along with his ****** father
The monster’s fist came crashing on his face
Baby teeth went flying out of place
He felt like he was dying
The whole time crying
His mother’s name he was calling
She came in running
With a rush of adrenaline she pushed the monster aside
A plethora of calming words she confides
And through the child’s eyes
All faded into the void
The wailing cries of banshees both scarlet and lapis woke his soul
Ravens in navy blue told him how the monster took his mother’s life
And how that poor beast took its own with the pull of a slipknot breaking its neck
Bulbs flashing,
Ideas popping above every head in the crime scene
Covering what was what the very definition of home
And much like that definition
Emotions left the child
Leaving nothing but pain alone

Like a single snowflake rolling into an avalanche as it falls down from the everest
Our child grew into a young man
And much like that destructive force of nature
He found it amusing
To wreck lives wherever he was put in
A red river rushed right out of a jagged hole
Stalactites and stalagmites,
Blood stained,
Cracked as they crashed on polished tiled floors
Just as soon as a five year old scavenger sees a half-empty bottle containing granules as white as the broken horses from before
Our young man empties his stomach and cleanses his mind
Regurgitating everything
He has taken in ever since he was put in the care
Of the man he just killed with stomach cleansers
Foster,
As cruel as his care can be,
Immediately took him to another plain
Pain followed right away
Like tailwinds that whip what a storm could not destroy
The rapture seemingly came early that year
Designated guardians fell like raindrops
Blood drizzled on printed flowers on the wall
As our killer wallflower craved to see handprints made of blood
Replace them all
Red seas emerged wherever he went
Not leaving a single body alive

My unseen hands touched the cold faces of bodies that met an early death
Just because they have met our young man
Now a revolting adult
It is my fault!
If I had not taken pity on that toothless child none of this would’ve happened
I cannot say that I enjoyed reaping the souls
Of those he enjoyed to reap too early
He was a convict giving a cruel verdict to the jury that didn’t know him
They did not choose to know him and that is also my fault
If he ever comes knocking on your door,
I apologize
For not taking his life as a child.

Sincerely yours,
*Death

the wind wants to be visible, and even has a new color to show us...the wind knows how we are and knows that some will taunt it if they see the wind being blown by wind. The wind will not be pushed around by people who want to make things they see disappear. So i do bad stuff and they can't even see me. I'm gay, but i also carry farts right to these judgmental people's noses. In yo face! The funny thing is, these people actually think it's their ****. Breaking wind huh? I just broke you dog! You can't break wind boy! You betta getcha a windbreaker! TBAG! Shut ya mouf! Tailwinds from now on *******!

'I Am'

Not a boy, but a storm with skin.
I am torrential rain, a collapsing
     a down-pour of life undone, a schism of floods, living water, a death, & a rebirth after a ten-month drought.
I am sleet, disheveled, heavy, a frenzied tapping
frozen fingertips against snare drums echo within shockwave rhythms after a ten-month drought.
I am pouring,
ingraining caverns of joy, & pain
through broken dams —
     cascading into forest fires leaving
    only ash.
'I am, I am.'

I am the black sheep, and the sun's warmth on your cheek, drying your tears after a long winter's bite.
I am dying tree branches determined to rip down the skyline, stitch-by-stitch.

I am the Phoenix rebirthing in scarlet, enraged.
I am the fists through Earth's many graves.

I am the Black Phoenix that never rises, rotten.
Eyes sunken, a gaze that still hits as a brass-knuckled fist
~
a thousand faces, they all look the same, in a thousand voices they speak my name.

A thousand words — one lie
like a storm
I do not hide
feel me in the air.
tripping electrical currents,
& blackening clouds
brewing over,
the darkening, and the sea,
raindrops beating windows
like fists smashing bones.
mind my energy,
hurricanes, tornadoes, whirlwinds,
swirling tailwinds underneath skin.
Though I've never seen it before
I've fathered a soul, so apocalyptic
       Born by war,
continuously hushed
by the hands of others, so frenetic
Growing with age,
anything trapped eventually becomes unchained ~

My soul is cryptic
but when the storms have
ceased their weeping,
& my lightning has
left scorch marks of the Earth - a story.
I hold the gentleness
of a summer breeze
in my hands.
The calmness
of Heaven's seas
in my heart.
One Angel, or One Devil,
never far apart.

'I am, I am.'
a loose-thread tear right through the fabric of reality.
——
I keep trying to find my footing,
the walls are made of glass.
Trapped, here, in the enmity just teetering
           over    the        gap.


By: Ashton Conor Amstutz

If I were to tremble to your symphonies
Of distant laughs & lunatic conversations
What was built with each passing moon
Wonder if it could be built again, perhaps.

If victory were never the preferable romance
Dust be gone for the daylight to follow
What must it then glitter about from
From sorrows, smiles & laughs, perhaps.

If foresight were a bank currency
With plenty tailwinds to our identity crisis 
What could all our monologues read
Dragging between dawn & dusk, perhaps.

If my loggerheads with myself were in question
So would be you, with yours I guess
Beating the retreat as we go along
Breakin' bread, muscles and bones, perhaps.