Broken

When I was eight or nine

I started drinking

and smacking my pretend wife

when she came over to play,

me and my friends in the hood

would play cops and

serial killers

on the dark side streets

just north of Eight Mile

where the streetlights never came on

at night

where we never went back inside

to our parents, guardians,

or single mothers

who were strung out on meth

or puking up whiskey

after another man left.

My dad was always there for me though

he taught me how to love a woman

with my fist

and how to clean up her blood

after you busted her lip.

How to throw a bottle

through the window

then board it up

before the landlord started bitching.

But I don't know how to shave

change a tire

or what the difference is between a flathead

and a phillips

or even how to use a damn screwdriver

or wrench...

so tell me,

how am I supposed to fix myself

when I cant fix anything else?

Tattoos and Barbed Wire

When I showed you my body

I put down my hair for you

removed the piercings

and let the studded bracelets drop

to the floor...

You, the only one to ever see me naked

of both my clothing and my walls

saw Stephen

and realized that Chase wasn't nearly as strong

as he looked.

You saw the slashing patterns in the scars

that I told you were from fights,

and you realized they were only from fights

with tired old demons...

you saw how my pale skin looks strange

and unnatural without the counterweight of darkness

achieved so easily with black shirts and bandannas.

I was your other half

your yin yang symbol

that disappeared

behind the white backdrop of the world

when the dark parts of me left –

I don't exist to you anymore,

and I don't think I care.

I have trouble sleeping now

not because I miss you

but because I don't wash my mohawk out anymore,

and it's hard to lay comfortably

with that row of hard black spikes

glued up six inches

from my pale scalp

like barbed wire around my prettiest dreams and thoughts

preventing them from ever escaping

again.

Soul

In 200 years

everyone alive today

will be dead.

The enemies who tore me down

will be frail bones,

the whores who left

before I could wake up to love them

will be unable to move...

But I, I will be a ghost

a vague memory

a whiff of strange perfume

floating through the pages

of forgotten books,

the sound of a keyboard

being struck in the night

while a few citizens of that strange new world

lie awake in fear

of the poltergeistic rhythm

that my words will refuse to stop playing

on a stage before millions, or in an attic

with no one.

Tonight I'm typing

a million miles per hour

and this energy

can never be destroyed

despite whatever lies after the day that the lighting

in my fingers finally burns up, and they are folded

around a rosary

in a casket

before a funeral of grieving family and friends

or a funeral of no one.

Self Medicated

I swallow the anti depressant

with a big swig of wine,

the one that's bottle warns

“do not drink alcoholic beverages

while taking this medication”

But after a few glasses

the wine bottle begins to say

“do not swallow anti depressants

while drinking this medication”

I start laugh, hysterically at my own humor

then shove my fingers down my throat

and puke up

what I hope is the pill,

and continue laughing

not because I remember the joke

but because my puke is shaped like Texas.

Then I remember a girl I dated

who lived in Texas

the one who got away,

so I drink a few more glasses

until I throw up some more

and the Texas looks like Alaska

or the pacific ocean.

Untitled

I think I'll drink myself to death

just like all the greats before me

like all the brilliant minds

who lusted at the world's beauty

then undressed it, to see it naked

and for what it really was...

the minds who threw it's leather lingerie on the floor

only to discover all the nasty soars

on its otherwise perfect cunt

dripping wet with beautiful oceans.

The world lost it's innocence

when mankind raped it

with filthy, greedy cocks, lubed with oil...

and now she's a crack whore

who'll most likely die

from the diseases we left her with.

So I spend my nights drinking

and writing

leaving this used up world

for the one I create in my head when I'm drunk

just so I can get off

without that disease spreading to my soul.

I'll probably die a drunk

but at least I'll die with a soul, unlike so many others.