Author Archives: thenspeaksthesoul

0

tell me.

|

Tell me,
does it burn the roof
of your bitter mouth,
those harsh,
cold, cold words you spout
when you look in those
dark brown oval eyes?
Tell me,
does it make you cringe
on the inside,
every time you tell that
little boy
(girl-man-woman)
that he
should, maybe, just go die?
Tell me,
how do you do it?
How do you get so damn
God-awful hateful
that you could dismiss
the plight of someone
you don’t. even. know.
based on false premises
and stereotypes?
Tell me,
how does it feel
to know that you could be
the person to pull
the trigger on the
hypothetical gun.
I hope you feel it,
someday, that burden.
I hope you know what
exactly what you’ve done.

 

2

everyone’s a poet

|

everyone’s a poet these days,
don’t you know it?
charcoal marks on our fingers –
would be if this weren’t a
modern keyboard.
got a thesaurus
got a dictionary –
right at our fingertips.
let’s discuss the politics
of late-term abortion –
but for the love of the God
we sure don’t believe in –
make it pretty.

everyone’s a poet these days,
writing passion, fire, and nonsense.
paper mistakes in the waste
but not really cause we’ve
got a backspace.
notebook’s not a notebook,
not anymore.
guns belong in holsters,
not child hands, but
it’s kind of poetic
(and tragic) how another
kid just blew his brains out.

everyone’s a poet these days,
and they mean it.
don’t you question the authority
they got from who only knows
what kind of backwoods Bible.
history, history is a beautiful thing
when you have pictures of people
you can filter like cheap coffee –
sepia always looks a little better on
low calorie Jewish diet.
only 6 million people died.

everyone’s a poet these days,
damn keyboard warriors.

 

 

0

the thing you could be.

|

I get it.
I get how you can want to
wrap your hands around his neck
and squeeze until the life
fades from his eyes.
I get it.
How you can have such
a deep seated hatred
that you can lose yourself
in a fantasy of the macabre.
I get it.
The way the alcohol burns
away the bad day like a
match that sterilizes the needle
just before a shot of magic pixie dust.
I get it.
The way that being selfish is
so, so much easier than being
selfless. Yeah, but the guilt –
that will eat you alive.
I get it.
And I have never been so afraid
of myself as that moment,
that I knew I understood.
The moment I knew exactly
what I might be capable of.

0

more.

|

It’ll consume you.
It’ll burn through you
like a fire you don’t want to
be warmed by.
It’ll control you.
It’ll hold you, steer you
right into the flames of
whatever you’re most afraid of.
It’ll seep through you.
It’ll poison your heart
and your mind and your thoughts
until they’re just black. Real black.
It’ll drown you.
It will hold you underneath
every failure and mistake
that you have every made
until you cannot breathe.
So don’t let it.
Do. Not. Let. It.
Consume you.
Control you.
Poison you.
Drown you.

If you have to burn,
let it be passion.
Let your dreams guide you.
Let love seep through you.
Drown yourself in the happiness
that you deserve no matter
what mistake you made.
You’re not a failure.
You’re more than that.
So. Much. More.

2

gun smoke.

|

I see you, ready for war
with your gun and your attitude.
I see you there, armed too
with your judicial vigilantism;
your sentence would be swift,
in theory. Painless even.
I am not blind to what you see.
I see the world for what it is;
broken, but beautifully so.
broken, but tragically so.

I hope you never have to see
the aftermath of what I know
you’re capable of. I hope.
So beautiful through the haze
of a gun that’ll never stop smokin’.
Thing is, the thing is,
they were beautiful too.
Broken, but beautifully so.
Broken, but tragically so.

0

cracked.

|

if you’re takin’ a drag,
on last nights cigarette
watching the ashes
coast into nothing,
thinking about how
you’ve never been nothin’
let me tell you somethin’

you’re not nothin’
you’re a little bit of somethin’
you’re a little bit great
and a little bit maybe
full of grit and grind
and holdin’ on.
you’re perfectly cracked
don’t you see that?

 

 

 

0

devil’s choir.

|

stained glass and steeples
crucifixion, gold Jesus
holy water in the offering plate.
preacher man prays,
piano man plays,
are you saved?
are you saved?
hard pews and a choir,
homecoming, bible study
welcome all,
come one, come all.

bring us your wounded,
just not too deep.
He bled for you,
but please don’t bleed on the pew.
please keep your rainbow ‘brellas
in the coat closet.
at your house.
it might be raining,
but this Bread’s not for you.
and you’re too dirty
for this holy water.
even Jesus couldn’t wash you clean.

stained with pretenses,
stabbed with a spire.
crucified in the public eye,
not worth as much as gold Jesus.
drowned by holy water
in the offering plate.
preacher man prays,
piano man plays,
are you saved?
are you saved?
hard hearts and a devil’s choir
no home to go to, church sign says
welcome all,
come one, come all.

 

 

 

0

send the little children off to war.

|

send the little children off to war.
send them now, with their big guns
and their armor and helmets
and bullets and heavy boots.
quick, send them off now
before they have time to be afraid
send them now,
while their child-eyes remain.
let them go into the darkest of nights
for honor and bravery and selflessness.
send the little children off to war
and tell them you won’t forget them.
quickly now, lie to them and tell them
how damn grateful you are.
send them off now so they won’t realize
what they are leaving behind.
send the little children off to war.
send them now, with their pictures
and letters and cards and pens
and their laughter and smiles
and their happiness and life.
send the little children off to war.
send them now, with their big guns
and their armor and helmets
and bullets and heavy boots.
send the little children off to war.
send the little children off to war.

0

You can’t go home.

|

They don’t understand why I hate going home.
They don’t understand why you can’t go back.

It’s like driving into despair. It’s like ripping the stitches out of a partially healed wound. Every time. It’s like getting on a roller coaster that goes to fast and has too many loops and it doesn’t stop until I leave. It’s like driving straight into every memory that I’d be better off forgetting. It’s a tire swing and horseback riding. It’s best friends laughing at Friday night football games. It’s summertime in the country. It’s climbing out of my window in the middle of the night to lay in the grass and look at the stars. It’s the smell of hog farms. It’s putting on a dress for eighth grade prom alone and staring back at a stranger in the mirror. It’s the moving out of the house you grew up in because your mom is dead. It’s having to choose on Christmas who’s house to go to and never being able to quite please everyone. It’s the feeling of wanting so badly to be wanted and loved by strangers that share your DNA, but never really belonging. It’s fighting with your little brother that  you’re not allowed to hit no matter how many times he hits you. It’s never hearing I love you from the one person you want to hear it from. It’s needing your best friend to save you and watching her rescue someone else. It’s crying yourself to sleep every night of high school because you feel invisible and unloved and even the people who say they love you only love you because they don’t really know you. It’s carving words into your skin in the shower because you just can’t feel it on the inside anymore. It’s sleeping with her boyfriend because you want so desperately to feel close to someone who gets it. It’s fishing trips with my Granddaddy. It’s the beach trip with my best friend and my dog. It’s spitting coke out of my nose laughing through my tears in the bathroom late at night. It’s suicide notes. It’s holding a gun in my hand and just wondering what it’d be like to put it to my temple and pull the trigger. It’s work and softball and school and people who don’t get it when I say “I don’t want to play anymore.” It’s being tired. It’s being exhausted physically and mentally. It’s being nearly throwng out of my house for dating a black guy. A black guy. A black guy. It’s being bombarded by constant racism. It’s small minded people. It’s aging grandmothers. It’s broken store fronts and trash. It’s my dog buried in my – their- front yard. It’s my other dog bured in my – their- front yard. It’s dead dogs on the sides of roads because no one believes in fences. It’s like a bad joke of 50 Shades of Grey. Because everything is gray. Red gray. Blue gray. Brown gray. Green gray. Maybe it’s just the filter of my misery. Maybe it’s just the hog shit. It’s a hotel room. It’s a bar. It’s another bar. It’s white Christian people who don’t actually know shit – except for some of them. It’s 98% or something like that in regards to smarticle particles. Don’t come here for the education. It’s the smell of jackets and cologne and strange houses. It’s the taste of a first drink. It’s the taste of Sundrop. It’s the lights and the music and the total inability to dance in the only club I’ve ever been too. It’s Christmas night alone by a sad fake tree after driving for 5.5 hours in the downpour of the century. It’s running over your puppy. It’s watching another puppy die because you can’t afford a vet. And you don’t really know what to do. It’s being alone. It’s a lot of painful memories. I hate coming home. I hate driving into the past and feeling the same way  that I felt as a teenager. I hate feeling those memories and smelling those smells and just being there. So, forgive me, when I say, I absolutely fucking hate that place.