I keep watching my America morph
into someone I don’t know, My America
is all cicada songs in sweltering summer heat, trees
as far as I can see, covered in
potential, people who keep trying, but
this America, the one led by a spray tan, is drowning
in hate based on skin tone. Gone is the promise of
the brave, replaced by the violence of the weak
minded, and all I can dredge up is a mourning song
because I’ve been trying to reason with hate mongers and
I can’t. I’m tired of my streets covered in blood, my t.v. screen
covered in hate, more hate, always hate, bursting
from dams of men who cower in the darkness
afraid of the light. It all makes me wonder if I ever really knew
her, if maybe I created something beautiful from air, and
maybe that’s the reason I can’t find her, because she
was never really there, she was never really my mine.
spider up her thigh in the dimly lit room
held down, stared down
embers of the abyss snap around her
My father sexually abused me.
When I got married,
I hyphenated my name.
No one questioned it at the time.
But in the middle of my parents’ late divorce,
everyone wants to know about names.
Nietzsche warned us not to look
long into the abyss, or it will look long
into us.
It was finally
his home until
abruptly
his mind flashed
all the times he had entered a
boy
i was depressed,
and i wanted
to take a
walk;
you said you'd join me—
didn't mean i wanted
netflix and chill,
it happened before words came
to tell me how to feel about it
newly connected neurons torn apart
or perverted—
forever firing blanks into the microbiological air
As a child
The lessons taught
Can bring a pain never thought.
The lessons on trust
And heartache
Sear the soul.