And on the eighth day god looked at his children with utter despondency. And on the ninth he abandoned them entirely. And years later he looked upon his project called mankind with feigned surprise and whispered to death, “Look. Stare straight into the son. Is it not the darkest light you’ve ever seen?” And then he sold us all to the shadows.

Playing a game of tag

Across the rocky dirt

The pebbles scattered in the

Field of children

Of all classes full of

Life and games

We run and run and

Run till we can’t so we

Hide to not be found

And to not be captured

Bound along the edge of plastic stones

Away far far away from the chasers

Tired sneakers pound the ground made

Of dirt and clay

A Breeze sways the trees and a

Cold snow showers over our warm

Friendship

Bye playground full of

My classmates and my

Dear

Friend.

Your musky scent was clothed in magic

I breathed your scent and backstroked

through your crimson blood of betrayal.

I turned my face to your sun

and saw your beauty as you promised

me the world on your platter.

The sobs of your wind laughed at my pain.

My nights with you burned quickly

as I drank you with my eyes

gulping your music in my hunger.

I felt your tarnished knife in my back,

my exposed rouge wounds dripping

fresh blood of the kiss of Judas.

My universe trembled as you

were lying and I was dying alone.

You went back to your other life

tossing me like a used shirt

into your hamper of deceit.

Empty air washes off your taste

from my soul as my heart marches on,

refuse pile of bittersweet memories.

The wind whistles in each of our ears as we fly. Higher and faster than any of us alive, we soar through weathers unspeakable to our kind. Gliding through clouds then skimming through waters. Our strength  grows together as our efficiency keeps us alive. With the same burdened responsibilities we fly. We are brothers in the air. 

When strong we lead, when weak we follow.  Our potent leaders tire and step down for the next mighty forces to charge our flight. The formation never breaks. With vigorous commitment we are unshaken by the miles we fly. Our common goal keeps us disciplined because only together can we reach our mark. That has been our most natural law.

And yet, there is nothing natural like an anchor in a race. A debilitated soldier. A rusty cog in the machine. A weak link spotted from the corner of my eye.  A weakened joint across from where I glide. We both having just stepped down, I rejoin one end of the formation and count the seconds for my commrade to reach the other. Each second more eternal than the next. He flaps his weakened wings with invalidity. Frail and almost incapacitated he eventually reaches the other end. Even when he’s making the least effort out of the rest, he is still flying with strain. I watched the tumor in our system as his breakable resistance dooms us. I turn forward in disgust. The exact same labor was done by each of us yet all showed composure, but my friend on the other end. But, I cast away my concerns and give into my own resolve. We were nearing our destination.

It was time to land. Our Powerful leaders landed first followed by the recovering champions. Me and the susceptible degenerate across from me would land last. It was finally our turn to reach the ground. I let him get below me so that without hesitation I could eliminate the thing that threatened our order. With surging emotion, I rushed to attack . I sunk my talons deep into his feathers. His blood had drenched over my talons as we whirled through the sky, neither giving in. But as expected, he wavered and I positioned him towards the ground. My wings, never exhausted after flight, pounded the air as I aimed for the ground. We crashed on soil with him underneath me. My wings spread in victory and I basked in ending the imperfection that resided in the flock. The others only observed what needed to be done. Without warning,  the disgrace pecked a chunk of my eye and rendered me half blind. With one swoop he released himself from my grip. His talons now wrapped around my neck.

The swift and harsh movement of his talons was enough for the snap to be heard. The others only observed what needed to be done.

Remember when they told us

That love was enough

That the world was fair

And to never give up

And we lived without care

Cause the stories they told us were true

Remember when I told you

My name at the store

And we both became shy

While we both wanted more

We decided to try

And we knew what we wanted to do

Remember when you told me

Till death do us part

Till the end of the world

Then I gave you my heart

And we danced and we whirled

And both our lives had just started new

Remember how we loved

So full of bright light

And we both were content

And it all seemed so right

Through where ever we went

Even when our small family grew

But I don't quite remember

When your mind slipped

Or when the fights started

When we went off script

When the plan departed

Just that I was left without a clue

Remind me when you told me

I wasn't enough

That you wanted more

Your voice and hand rough

You went through the door

Even when I cried and screamed for you

How I wish I could forget

When you served the divorce

When she caught your eye

When my life went off course

You didn't even say good bye

You just left me with a mournful view

Dont you remember when love was enough

To keep you here with me

And now here you are

Saying you're sorry

You shouldnt have left

Crying out your plea

Your tongue just as deft

As the day you left me crying for you

You want me to remember

When we were happy

When life was good

Our hearts were so sappy

So free of falsehood

And when we were one instead of two

But all that i remember

Is how much it hurt

And how deep it cut

How tears stain my shirt

You say you love me

But all I can here is goodbye from you

When you whispered

Candy sweet compliments to me

In the dead of night,

I did not

Could not know

That you spoke with stolen praise.

The phrase

You whispered was borrowed from another,

You never believed it or lived it

But I did

And you led me down the path that shouldn’t be followed

So here I am,

A remnant of your

Stolen praise.

You picked me up off cold ground,

Only to throw me down a cliff

I still haven’t hit the ground yet,

I’m still falling.

Getting deeper and deeper with the rusty razor

The blood is the waterfall called gravity pulling me down.

If only I knew how to fly,

Then I could be a vulture and eat you alive.

Give you a taste of the hell on earth you put me through

The razor blade the cuts my wrists

Is made of the words you spoke

The stolen praise

That was never meant for me

The blood it takes out

Some of the demons in me

Left by your words

Of stolen praise.

The lines crisscross like stitches,

Drawn in sharpie,

Each stick is a tally

Of the false words you said to me,

The stolen praise.

The last gift you’ve given me

The curse of heavy weights dragging me down

Each one represents a time I “failed you”

When really it was your failures.

I am weighed down by your failures that you

Chained to me

With your words of stolen praise

The next time you fail, I won’t take your weight. I’ll let responsibility crush you

I’ll watch you suffer in a tiny morsel of the

Delicious pain you put me through.

And then

I’ll be the one giving out stolen praises,

Stolen from you,

And you’ll be the one twisting and writhing like a worm on a hook.

I couldn’t see through your cigarette smokescreen

when we met in that gin-soaked joint.

Lovemaking between twisted sheets of new-dew sweat,

mummified within our cheap motel sarcophagus.

Who knew I was just another slab of ready-to-order meat?

Pick a number at the delicatessen counter.

I could taste invading lovers on you, the salty brine of them.

Standing sentry at your gates, tunnel visioned,

while they crept through my periphery.

And as I sit with spirits clouding my mind,

I wonder if my claws clutched too tightly,

if truly I don’t know the difference between lions and lambs.

Charlie Moss starved to death. I carried Charlie up to the Greenville Sanitarium myself. There was no money. The doctor looked at him despite it, but it was too late. Charlie died all the same. Doc said it was pneumonia, but I knew better. Good Ol’ Charlie starved and froze.

The work ran out a good while back. Most everyone we knew had hopped the cars for Nashville, or Birmingham, but when Charlie got sick I stayed there with him. That shanty was cold, what with the wind blowing in through the chinks, and Charlie was real thin. Hell, so was I. It wouldn’t be long until I was too weak to chop the wood, and then we would both freeze, if'n we didn’t starve first. I couldn’t cut wood fast enough now to heat the plywood walls of that shack, but I did my best to keep Charlie warm. With all of that though, there wasn’t much to do about feeding him. It was nothing but a damned shame for Ol’ Charlie, is what it was, that he picked the very worst time to go and get sick.

I knew Charlie Moss my whole life, going all the way back to grade school in Bristol, and then we did our service time in France together afterward. Once back home I courted Charlie’s sister until she ran off with a medicine show drummer. She never did come back home. I always wondered if she ran away from that town, or if'n it was me she ran from?

It hurt some when Charlie died. I cried a bit when I got back to the shanty alone, and I kicked that dog for watching me do it.

But for me the car was empty. Those able had already gone to where the work was, leaving the shanty-town long before cold struck the mountains. I jumped the train on the eastern slope when her speed was down, the wind shivering me in my shirtsleeves. I looked back once through the boxcar door and that dog was running alongside, but she couldn’t hang with it for long, could she? I mean, I would have brought her along, but how could I hold that dog, run with the train, and jump the car, too?

It was good that I was alone, my mood being sure enough sour. The rough plank floor of that car gravelled my ass with every clickety-clack, so that I was fairly miserable when we passed through the gap. I tipped my slouch hat down for a nap, but couldn’t sleep for thinking of Charlie Moss. They buried my friend with everything he owned, excepting that dog, of course. Charlie sure thought highly of that bitch. I expect he starved himself while slipping his slivers to it. That was the kind of friend Ol’ Charlie was. I had watched that dog lick Charlie’s face right before I toted him into Greenville. Charlie had smiled as he wrapped her head in his arms. I reckon that was the last time Charlie Moss ever smiled on this Earth.

Charlie would have been plumb disappointed to hear of it, of me leaving his dog to chase after the train. But damn it, if I didn’t find work I would like as not starve too, then what would that dog do? Hell-fire! She was better off than any of us! She’d go right on catching rabbits, I reckoned.

I left the train as it was sailing down off the Cumberland Plateau. It was a fast stretch, but distance was mounting. If I was going to ditch, it would need be soon. I hit gravel feet first, but from there it was ass-over-tea kettle, so that it hurt pretty good when I stopped rolling. It would be a long, hungry walk back to that shanty, and cold over every bit of this mountain, but I knew that dog would be there waiting, lying across Charlie’s olive-drab army blanket, never understanding why she was left there alone.

I knocked the dust and gravel from my duds the best I could, and started walking. I reckon I’m not the man to betray a friend, not even a dead one, nor his damned cur dog, neither.

It is 12:00 am. One minute after 11:59 pm and I wish I didn't have to count the minutes or bother my father.  Over an hour ago, when I first felt the pain, even though I really didn't want to, I had to call my father to tell him I needed his help.  That is when I started staring at the illuminated clock on top of my dresser. My eyes don’t hurt, but I cannot close them and I hear my heartbeat in between my ears.  When he picked up the phone he said, “What's wrong sweetie,” and he said it with fatherly love, and of course I believed him, even though I could hear what he was clinging to beyond the phone; the jokers, the laughter, the back slapping, the clanging of glass, all of it adding up to white noise and lies. Lies for some.  Some that don't understand. Not me. I understand. The Mona Lisa Bar and Grill is home; the place he goes to take a load off, eat his meals, fraternize with Jack Daniels, and forget.

“I'll be right there, I promise.”  He always says “I promise” automatically now, because I used to beg, “Do you promise?” until I stopped.  I stopped because I was afraid if he ever broke his promise that I would have to call him a liar to his face, and that is not something you say to someone you love.  And besides the way he says “I promise” is no different than the way anyone says “See you later”, when they know they will never see that person again. Does that make someone a horrible, terrible person; a liar? Does it? No it doesn't.

The pain began when I stopped reading in bed, not before.  Before I went to bed I had a very wonderful day. A day that almost made me forget. I went to school, I went to gymnastics, I went to my friend’s house, we did our math homework, and her mother made us a meatloaf that had cheese in the middle and we had cherry ice cream sundaes for desert.  I walked home alone and the house was dark when I got there. The door was unlocked like it always is. I tiptoed up the stairs, I took a shower, put on my pajamas, and went into my room to read. On page 101 of To Kill A Mockingbird, I heard a scream downstairs and the sound of breaking glass. And then I remembered. I was hoping my mother forgot about me, and she would stay downstairs with her rage, so I put my book away and turned off the light and that is when the pain started. There are many nights I can’t sleep, but this night is different. I'm pretty sure people can't sleep when they are having trouble breathing, unless they wind up not breathing at all, but then they would be dead. When my father finally gets here, and I know he will, he will take me to the hospital and they will ask me what's wrong and I have to figure out what to say because I don't know how to explain it other than the pain is everywhere. Especially on my chest. It has been getting progressively worse since the phone call. It feels like a box of bricks was dropped on top of me now, and I want to move my arms and legs to push them off, but I can't because I am paralyzed. Maybe I am really dying this time and my father will find me in the bed dead, but I refuse to believe that is the way this is all going to end. He will rescue me any minute now and he will know to sneak in the house because he's afraid of her too, but he is also brave because he has more to be afraid of than I do because he's not supposed to come in here.  Brave and also lucky that he doesn't have to sleep here anymore like I do.

When I ask him why he doesn't take me with him, he says his apartment is too small and he says when he gets enough money he will get a bigger place for us, and I believe him, because I see the tears stuck in his eyes when he tells me this.  When I tell him after he picks me up what she has done to me, the tears do not stay stuck. They roll down his cheeks and into his lap. This is how I know how much he loves me, besides what he tells me every time he sees me. “Do you know I love you very much, and I promise someday everything is going to be okay.” Nobody else tells me that and nobody else understands.  And even if he is late, he always comes when I call. He never treats me the way my mother does, and he never even gets mad at me, and that is why I try hard not to bother him, but tonight I was just too afraid of dying. He will be here. I know he will be here soon…..Any minute now, because he loves me very much and someday everything is going to be okay.

I hear a lot of talk these days,

about how we need to teach girls

to follow their dreams.

We need to tell them

that they can study STEM,

or write a book,

or run the United States of America.

That sheerly from the force of their will

they can rise above being “merely a girl,”

and once all the cabinets are filled,

the next gen of chicks will give it a whirl -

Well, I say no.

We need to teach girls to never fall in love.

We need to warn girls about reckless boys,

the ones with pretty hair and gemstone eyes,

because those are the boys who are best at lies and

when they build you up

they tripwire every level

so that they can destroy the place

on the way out.

We need to tell girls that they can go far,

but not if they’re seduced by some dick with a car.

Girls need to learn that when boys say, “forever,”

it means “I want you right now, but that will fade to never.”

And if we fed every girl the facts

like he’ll feed her his lines,

maybe she’ll listen to the world

and believe her paranoia this time -

No, girls should never, ever fall in love.

Girls should never fall in love

because he’ll tell her that she’s a cut above,

he’ll spin tales of a future and where they’ll be,

but when she

is dependent,

that asshole,

he won’t even have the balls

to call it like it is -

He’ll say something like “a break”

and let the “up” be hers, not his,

and he’ll say, “don’t make me feel guilty,”

and she’ll realize:

This was how it was all along,

his comfort over hers.

We must teach these girls to never fall in love.

Don’t you see that when reckless boys

with pretty hair and gemstone eyes

write a girl a poem and hold her while she cries

she’s going to begin to believe that he cares,

so when she so much as dares

to say she loves him too,

he won’t have to chase and he’ll look for someone new -

No, we must make girls be like the reckless boys

with pretty hair and gemstone eyes,

because boys like those

never really fall in love.

#spokenword #slampoetry