It starts softly as a whisper
streaming like a graceful
melody off the tongue of the
most faithful,
the most graceful.
The way it climbs and swirls, if
you placed a paintbrush between
its dashing fingertips you could
create a work of art;
the kind the common man can view,
the kind the usual see.
This art could build a castle if
you let it;
It would block out the world of
tyranny and
broken spirits and I,
I would rather be a held
prisoner behind the fortress walls,
seal out the smoke clouds from
my nostrils with concrete
and artistry.
I would rather be surrounded
forevermore by the energy
escaping in tendrils from
picture frames and half-written lines
constructed out of pure emotion
with the
scaffolding of hearts stretched
too thinly.
My bones crack under the
pressure of the atmosphere and the humidity
that has been instilled in us
all,
installed, step by step, by
a system that claims to prepare,
by a society that claims to
accept.
My veins bleed under the knife
of normalcy and
the postwar photograph eyes that
follow me wherever I go,
the purse-lipped mouths who are
impenetrable to
the songs floating around us;
they look as if they couldn’t
let light in if they tried.
Behind my eyes and underneath my
skin I can
feel you.
I can feel your words and your
glares and the
grip around my intestines of
your rejection, your forcible
conformation;
“what’s not you is wrong.”
I know. I’ve heard it before.
But I would like to challenge;
if millions of you’s have created wars,
if millions of you’s have helped
children find solace in the barrel of a gun,
if millions of you’s have
created so much wrong
why,
why,
why on Earth,
would I ever choose to be like
you?
Forgive me if I’m incorrect or
out of line or maybe too brutally honest
for your paper-thin ears,
but what you are is wrong.
What you’ve become these last
few years is wrong.
Your words speak to me out of
ledges that try to entice me
and blades that call my name;
falling into your trap is like
skipping off the edge of a cliff,
what you don’t say feels like a knife.
Tell me how that’s NOT wrong.
How many others have you taken
today,
How many others have you hurt
today?
I was always warned to use the
buddy system and self defense but who ever thought
that high school words would be
the ones to kill us?
I was always taught that
diseases and mistakes would take me.
Who ever thought that you could
die from a word?
You cut us down. You break our
bones. And why?
Oh right.
Because we’re not you.
I’ll choose to start wars of a different
sort,
the kind of war that can end the
inner turmoil ever present in
the lungs of people like me.
And these bones? Yeah they crack
but that’s so flowers
can take root.
With the blood that you spill
from me
they are nourished fuller and
fuller until from the base of
my soul they burst out of my
mouth to
speak the truth.
So thank you very much for your
uncalculated,
unbridled evil,
your irresponsible use of power.
Your ugly jokes, smart jokes,
“loner” jokes, and the shoves to the ground.
Just so you know,
I still choose love.
It starts softly as a whisper
streaming like a graceful
melody off the tongue of the
most faithful,
the most graceful.
The way it climbs and swirls, if
you placed a paintbrush between
its dashing fingertips you could
create a work of art;
the kind the unusual judge
fully,
the kind only the true can
appreciate.
