I felt sorry
for this sick soul within
that was too tired
to even get out of bed,
yet this bitch of a body
would,
not,
burn.
My mama always said
I was the most stubborn girl
she’d ever met
and I still believe this
to be true.
War zones
in my head of bridges burning,
their ashes getting tangled in my hair,
my feet blistering from the heat,
and yet it was these same feet which chose
day after night after day
to not leave this weary earth:
even when the fire surrounds,
lungs cough, and the eyes water
with blood, smoke,
and the screams of our dead in the air.
Watching horror re-runs
of the good ones
dying off,
twisting and crying
in their tortured head storms,
bedridden and scared eyes,
struggling to shake out
of their heaving chests,
one,
last,
breath
to say goodbyes
which they never
got the time to utter,
and left me here
to somehow
strive to add their holy words to the pantheon
so they would not be lost or forgotten,
but all I could seem to do was choke on
car crashes,
power play violence and cover-ups,
sirens screeching with the early yawns of morning,
and then going home to eat
rusty gold pieces that were
the currency of our times
laced with tar and acid rain
that made me throw up
brain matter and artistic vision
in my morning shower,
all gurgling and hissing down the drain,
which stopped up the plumbing
and my landlord added the repairs to the rent,
but I came out of that bathroom
with a big goddamn smile on anyway,
just for my own sensual pleasure,
proving to myself
I could still be queen,
and that no one,
not even me,
had control over
my wicked head.
And even after all of the liquid madness
I have witnessed leeking out of buildings and into the
street,
causing me to hope of vast awakenings,
I think
Jesus Christ,
there are still too many masks I meet
with their plastered on plastic faces
laughing at rape jokes,
or the “don’t give a fuck” stares on the sidewalk,
dripping apathy and ego,
faces in their phones,
three cheers for the hashtag generation-
they make my eyes roll back
into such extreme pounding headaches
that I had to leave the crowd
in mid sentence
and go smoke a long ass cigarette
then to find and fuck
some lipstick vampire
in a London alleyway
just to feel something
besides desperate and hungover.
And the cocaine kings
told me I was the
craziest freak show
they’d ever seen
and I grinned wide
until I disappeared
back into the wallpaper,
one wink to the moon
and left the planet
until next time.
