Hopefully
This heart finds tranquility
In the lies
I've warped around it.

-

I met an Angel
Wearied but Hopeful
For safe and blissful.

She looks passed me
For words to
Knit her Love safely.

I must be careful.
Her Light must
Shine for her firstly.

She looks passed me
Not for love
But for something deserving.

-

I want love like drugs
To fill pain that hugs
To close. I'm a Big

Boy holding my pens
Not slugs. Hurt was meant

To fill holes plugged. Sang
Too many love songs
For the wrong ones and

Now all that's left are
Names with empty chats.
Reread convos and
Thrilling rotting pasts.

-

Dear whoever,

Much of art is a love letter with two faces. At the same time you seek to honor your deepest self but also give a single voice to orchestrate your madness. Every breath you take is another moment gifted for another special thing. Every new thing a nakedly grandiose gesture to a society that either embraces or shuns you.

This is neither a letter nor story but a simple arrival at an impass of some sorts. I have reached nothing and it smiles back at me with more warmth than I've seldom felt inside or out. For those who listen I both thank and welcome you. We recognize each other in the blackness. May our madness bring us a little closer.

Yours forgotten,
i

-

My sleepless nights
Are always held captive by a familiar.

The boulder carried on broken shoulders.
The knife that digs deeper than buried shames.
It swounds me into despair
Masking self pity for self care.

A pit of monsters suppressed by fragile bars.
So far as it steeps deeper;
So it brings more friends closer.

Emotions turned to nightmares things.
Demons ripping at the soles of my sleep.

If only I could just count sheep.

-

Nothing better comes from you.

-

The night carries with it
something so cozily
ancient for us nighters.

Dark fighters, I call us.
The Sad Smilers.
The Dark Memers.

Hash breathers drinking tears
To douse the pain.
We Demon Romancers.

Truth Seekers, I call us.
The world broke us, so we
Look to the night sky

Breathing in its love
To find hope again.

-

I have learned
To fill my empty
With the broken shards of me
That I couldn't share with others.

And that's okay.

-

The time of sharing songs is dead. We don't bare our souls to each other anymore. To be honest most of us have so many walls built up around us. Elaborate barbed wired concrete mazes leading to blackened centers. We burn what's left so no one else can burn it themselves.

I've had my fair share of bonfires.

But every other day I hear a stranger humming the lyrics of my favourite 2am song. A kindred spirit in a world barren and empty of connection. I hold out hope but then I remember that the time of sharing songs is dead.

-

I was meant to lift heavy things.
After all, isn't that what my ancestors did?
Strong black royalty
Forced to serve emptiness and cruelty.
Hands outstretched to god in loud prayers returned with silence and sorrow.
I wake up 200 years morrow
Lifting those same heavy things.

Guilt is my slave whip.
My mother needs to remind me why I am birthed.
I carry what she can no longer bear.
I sing the anthem now that has made her throat sore.
My soul is shackled now from its soaring dreams.
I must now crawl in the dust and dirt and scheme because dreams die every second On this earth
They say;
"True worth is found on the strong backs of winners."
They never say;
"Men and women who count themselves unbroken sinners."

You boy in your ripe young age.
Ripe for plucking and picking.
You carry it now.
Their stories are now jammed in your ears.
Their crushing life failures yours to bear.
No day is yours no night is sworn.
Every rest is theirs as you work from dusk till dawn.
You were birthed bloody and warm to lift these heavy things.
I was meant to lift these heavy things.

-