My soul
My soul is the most beautiful thing on paper
My soul wants a lover
My soul wants a lover I don’t have to ****
Jesus Christ, I don’t want to ****

My soulmate
My soulmate is not here on paper
My soulmate is not a lover I have to ****
Jesus Christ, get over yourself
I don’t want to ****

My soul, baby child
Does not want to **** your lover
My soul, man
Is not your cadaver to touch
Is not your cadaver to cut

My soul is not here for more lovers to ****
Can I say it any louder?
It is the most beautiful thing on paper!
My soul is in tatters and blown
By all the ***** to ****

Soulmate?
I am glad my soulmate is not here
To see me cry
To crave my ****
My soul is a lover I don’t have to touch

Hey you
My soul is beautiful
Fragile
And ****** enough
Keep your open roses to yourself

These walls have so much to say.
Bleeding through the color and the grime.
That sinking feeling when you pray.
Hands clasped, eyes closed tightly.
With tears streaming down your cheeks.
Cumulating in a sick puddle on the floor.
I've been shipwrecked for weeks,
now, at the bottom of my brain.
All I see are these old bloodstains.

In times of duress,
4 AM and I'm stressed.
Backtracking and I guess
all the times that you pressed
me to express something more than ***
made me all too aware of my inadequacies.

Limping down the path with my shoes untied.
What I thought was the way of least resistance
turned out to be a farce, a joke, a big ******* lie.
But now I'm on the mend at the end of the road.
Kicking up dirt and choking on erratic words.
Now is not the time to offer your verbal guidance,
it's not like they're something I've never heard.
In search of something more stable and concrete,
I start to feel them growing - the wings of a big, black bird.

I became what you wanted me to be.
Feeling faithless, God is not here.
Lost in this darkness.
I'm still drowning.
What did you expect to happen when you did those things?
That everything would be ok.
That it wouldn't affect me, or were you hoping I evolved into the image you created for me.
Because I was becoming the person, you wanted.
A part of me still resisting, enough of me changed though.
Enough of me changed, and I started believing your ways.
You are gone, now who am I?

We love them
like we know them,
like each camouflaged
back pack wearing person
is a mother, daughter,
father, brother,
sister or simple son.

We love them like
they are war heroes,
returning champions
from the greatest
Super Bowl ever.

We love them
like a steak
overheated,
tenderized,
walking till
their bodies cry.

We love them
like they are sheep
bleating from the beating
of bullets, bombs
and lack of sleep,
pushing on
in the long walk.
Till, fatigue takes
every smile and
daydream they ever had.

We love them
Like gods loved
their sacrifices;
Young men,
virgins to life,
slaughtered and worshipped
then denied
the decency
all sentient beings deserve.

We love them
Like they are
chess pieces;
Place women
and men
on the battlements
for the expansion of
capitalistic gains
that wears the guise
Of democracy.
What hypocrisy!

We love them
like we hate them
because they believed
enough to bleed.
While old men lie,
children lie in graves
six feet deep
to many columns wide
and to many rows long.
Even if they come home
they really don’t.