They've gathered at his daughter's house,
I passed cars pulling to the curb;
The patriarch has been replaced,
His chair now sits usurped.

Will someone raise a glass to toast him,
Recount some craic to roast him?
Praise his assets,
Shush his regrets,
Strum his unplayed guitar.

They'll share feasts on his bench,
Conceive on handmade beds,
Take down a book from his many shelves,
And talk as though he's there,
Sleeping, unaware.

     What was it that he said?
     He talked of love a lot.
     Did he get it right?
     He shared what he got.
     Did well for a sot.
     He could turn a *****,
     Write a verse,
     Right a wrong,
     Could dialogue with who knows what,
     And if he couldn't fix it,
     We knew we were *******.

They just might go to sleep tonight,
And dream as though he's there,
Still sitting in his chair.

My dear poetic friends,
I can no longer bear to lie, there's something I must tell you: I fear I'm going to die.
The other day I got real bored, so down my street I roamed. I ran into a man dressed sharply in black, whose sockets were dark and hollow.
I looked a bit closer at him, to see that his face was a skull. While gasping in shock I took a step back, and he gave me a smirk that was... dull.
He grasped my wrist and held on tight, then shoved his face inches from mine. He clacked his jaw in a robotic way, then whispered 'Its nearly your time'.
The reaper delieved his message quite clear, it seems death is coming for me. This here is my formal funeral invitaions for you.  
I hope you can make it, Vi

Dear Self,

For you it is November 9th, 2016. Despite all odds, Donald Trump is president. Mike Pence, governor of your home state of Indiana, is his VP.

You are 17 right now. You were born into a world run by George W. Bush. You spent your whole childhood hearing your parents yelling at the tv, angry at the Texas governor in the White House.

You grew up in Obamanation. You saw months of “YES WE CAN” and “CHANGE” stickers going up, and a magnet your family still has get put onto your refrigerator. You heard your mother’s sigh of relief when Barack Obama was announced the 44th president. That was half your lifetime ago.

You spent the last year following the campaigns. You were not surprised by Hillary Clinton running again. You “felt the Bern” of the somewhat radical Independent candidate previously unknown to you, Bernie Sanders. You laughed off the wild reality tv star Donald Trump’s campaign.

Months went by. Bernie and Hillary were fighting hard leading up to the primaries. Republicans slowly started to drop out. Big names like Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christie left the race. Bernie didn’t do good enough in the primaries, which was upsetting to most of your friends, your older brother, and your mom, who all voted for him. Ted Cruz fell off, defeated, in May.

It was down to Hillary and Trump.

You followed the comments made at their rallies. On their social media. You heard a lecture about the election from Josh Gillin of Politifact at Indiana University over the summer. You won an award for an opinion piece you wrote on Trump. As the election day grew closer, you watched every presidential debate. You analyzed them in class.

Last night, you stayed up until 4 A.M. to see the results of this election. You sat through excruciatingly slow interviews, political analysis, and different predictions. You couldn’t turn away from the blue and red maps, the aggressively American backgrounds, the anxious masses.

The tired tv hosts were right, it was a nail-biter.

As Trump gave his victory speech, you wept.

You wept for the months you spent wishing this wouldn’t happen. You wept for the 1920’s suffragettes, for the descendents of MLK and Cesar Chavez, for the Orlando victims. You wept for me. The people I joined. The people who will join me.

I am dead.

You learned in your final moments that homophobes look like normal people. They are not all rednecks with beer guts wearing ten-gallon hats. They are more elusive than that. They can be dressed smart. They can have friendly voices. Familiar names and faces.

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend killed you. Someone you live near. You might have passed them in a car. In the mall. In the school hallways. It was someone that people you knew,  knew. You probably could’ve gotten their Twitter handle if you had heard their name before.

You were killed in a city that VP Pence had once stood in.

People tried to learn about your killer. Were they someone you knew? Someone who just went crazy? Someone who couldn’t handle who you held hands with?

You were too young, the local news anchors said. Your school administration said. Your mom said.

Mike Pence didn’t say anything at all.

Your friends didn’t say much. They cried. They withdrew. They wore baggier clothes. They bought switchblades. They washed “*****” and “ladyboy” off of your tombstone. They wondered about joining you, voluntarily and not.

The school newspaper’s headline: DEAD AT 17.

No one thought it would happen to you, except you. You stayed up late at night, imagining your funeral. The first thing you did in the morning was practice for your wake. Every time you left your house, you were a dead man walking.

No one  believed this more than you did.

The news anchors said it was just one of a string of murders. People said it was an isolated incident. Your friends said it was a hate crime. Your mom said it was the worst thing that  ever  happened to her.

There was no question that you were gone, even when they found you- chest jumping. There was only one thing to wonder: who was next?

Not an if, but a when.

I hope the when is  never.

All my love- to you and everyone else,

Yourself

What are you,
All you foolish humans
That **** each other
Everywhere, every year?
What good is it,
All your mad efforts
That you live and die
To generate hopeless fear?

What have you done
All you foolish humans
That live by rules
But not by laws for peace?
Where is the pride
In what you create
In all your short, sad lives
If the genocide will never cease?

What of the children
Insane selfish humans
That go to sleep
Perhaps never to wake again?
Who in the world
Which of our fellow humans
Can we put our trust upon
If it is not the most powerful men?

What is learned
With your **** and pillage.
Are you much better
Counting up your evil rewards?
Now you have murdered
Robbed and imprisoned
All those who live by the plow
Laughed at by those with swords.

We are the fools
If we think might is right,
That strength is shown
By money in the pocketbook.
We only need to
To take a simple body count;
To slow our greedy rush, and
Take the time to take a second look.

He was never a part of this world,
not really, but rather like an extraterrestrial
from another dimension

A silent observer
with a pen between his fingers, watching
and making notes of untied shoelaces

He used to write rhymes about
the wonders of life, isolated in his bohemian
house and a tiny window his only reminder
of the existing reality

He was never a part of this world,
not really, but the odd bird chose to come out
of that door, eventually

When my time finally arrives,
Finality holds no surprise;
But please remember
To close my eyes,
Shut my mouth,
End my lies.
Lace polished shoes
On my feet,
Cross my hands
Upon my chest,
Comb my hair,
Let me rest.
And tell the truth
When you speak.

(and if it's not an imposition,
lay me in the right position)

Dispense with the hyperbole,
There's hell to pay,
I assure you.

Here lies the memory of a girl
Who used to have a heart of gold
Who was filled with warmth and happiness
Until the world went and made her cold.
Here lies the memory of a girl
Who heard music and sang along
But now she lays vacant with tears in her eyes
When she hears that exact same song.
Here lies the memory of a girl
Who wished upon the stars
But instead of counting wishes
She now spends her nights counting her scars.
Here lies the memory of a girl
Who would play in the rain,
And now she spends that time using it
To wash away the pain.
Here lies the memory of a girl  
Who didn't guard her heart
But who now has 6 inch steel walls
To keep it from falling apart.
Here lies the memory of a girl  
Who believed in happy endings
Who's heart is now broken
One she's constantly mending.
Here lies the memory of a girl  
Who is now dead,
Who paints art on her skin with needles
Replaced by the demons in her head.

I am God's draft,
something He was meaning to finish but
got distracted in the process with rainbows and tulips,
the birds and the bees,
certainly the much more beautiful and riveting things.

I was born three days late so I am always apologizing to
other people for my tardiness but mostly to myself for
constantly missing the good parts.

The angel keeping an eye on me would have six fat books of
the lies I've shamelessly spat out for almost two decades now
and I wonder if they would let me stack them up so I could have
even just a peek of what heaven looks like after Atlas
finally decides to retire.

I constantly think about death, tragedy and loss.

Maybe it's because of my problematic playlist or
the sick humor of my friends. Maybe it's just me trying to find
meaning in everything and studying things but in the back of my head
I can picture the philosophers howling in laughter.

Maybe it's because they know I'm meant just to be a draft.
I read somewhere that
                               *A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.

Feel free to mourn me when I’m gone,
When I will not be back again.
It’s natural to grieve at death
For those who miss you so, I know.

But don’t forget to celebrate my life
And all I’ve done on this fair earth.
Be full of joy about these things:
Immortalise me for my deeds.

I hope to live for many a long year:
If possible cheat Death immortally,
Perhaps by going somewhere safe
From the Grim Reaper’s deadly scythe.

I hope for many table tennis wins
And trending poems, before I leave this mortal coil.
Iambic rhythms throughout cyber space,
Free verse expressing a greater vision.

I’ve planned ahead by writing this,
And might have jumped the gun maybe.
But when you read this out perhaps,
I might by now be Free.

Paul Butters

© PB 19\6\2016.