Yellow wings spreading,
Tumbling through the air
A stack of wooden boxes
Succumb to gravity
Your feet fly up, pants rip
One testicle peeking out
Like a mound of sand
Amidst an ocean of denim
But I saw. I watched
I laughed.
Your foot on the banana peel
You fell and I filmed
I’ll tell you a secret.
I put it there.
Safely I sit
Inside my iron maiden
Metal spikes line the walls
Resolute and waiting
The lock is on the inside
I could open it and go
But this prison that surrounds me
Is the only home I know
I don’t even need to stand
To escape this fear-soaked cell
Just have to reach my hand out
To enter into hell
The world outside my home
Fills me with such fear
My hand near the lock falls
Now my future’s clear
And so I sit
Inside my iron maiden
Knowing that I’ll never leave
Resolute and waiting
When you get close to me, do you see the regrets traced across my body?
They wind through the top layers of my skin like dried-up rivers on a faded map
When you touch them, the waters start to flow down the empty canyons.
The dust surrounding the banks grows green and fresh.
The wildlife revives and nestles into the protective mud.
Life blooms.
With that comes predators,
Lurking in the shadows of the foliage,
Mouths filled with heat and sharp
With that comes rot and decay,
Penetrating through the dark soil
Poisoning the bright water
So when you see my rivers of regrets traced across my skin,
Just pretend they are scabs and scars instead.
Better left alone and not picked at.
When I woke up next to you,
Your strawberry-blonde hair smelled of the time that
I picked the dandelions in the overgrown field behind my house
Unaware that they were weeds.
I brought them home, put them in a glass
Waited for my mother to see them
Puffs of flowers flying into the wind
Something died that day
A mess of expectation and innocence
I tried to gather the dandelions up
Instead I opened the door to the porch
Swept them into a pile and watched as
They slipped through the wooden slats into
The darkness below
There is a true horror in being hunted through the streets of your home
Every welcoming window become a medieval porticullis
Iron-wrought and foreboding speckled with rust from previous invasions
Every scared eye peeking through dull white blinds becomes
Jaundiced and luminous the eyes of goblins baying for your blood
Every dog’s whine or bark becomes the heat-filled sound of slavering hounds
Mouths foam-coated and filled with rabid breath
Your callused feet pound beneath you as you flee from the cackling mob
Get back here boy they call
And you think
If I was a boy would that stop you
From doing what you’re going to do
But you know that would not
After all, you watch the news
And you know the way this story ends
You can’t stand your ground
You can’t resist
You can’t do anything but pray and run
God does not listen to your cries
He sits impassive and apathetic
An old white man with an old white beard
More concerned with an unborn baby
Than a living man who needs Him
So when they corner you, their swords drawn,
You beg
I am not a monster
I won’t tell anyone
I have a family
Just let me live
Your cries fall on hollow ears
Your words are heard as incomprehensible
For never forget
In their eyes you are the dragon brought from a foreign land
Scale-covered skin lashed with scars
Heavy chains caging your wings
Fangs bone-white and flecked with their ancestors’ sins
You are the cause of their failures
You are the cause of their loneliness
You are the cause of their misery
When the monster is dead
They can truly live free
So they kill you
And you die
Their skin blisters and pulls back
Flesh falling in heavy layers
Their swords wicked and cold
Flecked with drying blood
Their clothes fray and rip
As their scales shred their way
Up to the surface
You look down and see the monsters
That had surrounded you the whole time
You always knew that they were there
Waiting for you to walk into the wrong neighborhood
Or say something with the wrong tone of voice
That would be all the reason a monster needs to kill
And now they have succeeded in their slaughter
They have supped on your soul
So they slink back into their homes
Sheathe their weapons
Shed their skin
Congratulate themselves
On a job well-done
For in their mind, who will remember you besides the other monsters?
You are not your job.
You are not your children.
You are not your parents.
You are not your thoughts.
You are not your body.
You are not your flaws.
You are not your strengths.
You are not your pain.
You are not your beauty.
You are not your self-loathing.
You are not your past.
You are not your regrets.
You are not your mistakes.
You are not your triumphs.
Instead, you are an explosion frozen at the point of combustion.
Instead, you are a freshly-birthed universe on the cusp of creation.
Instead, you are a perpetual point of potential surrounded by crossroads.
You are singular.
You are change.
You are infinite.
You are here.
Poetry Overdose 