Back Ally Bar Fight with Your Heart (04.01.17)

Welcome back to the dirt.
Hands, rotting and crumbling,
Something not quite dead.
Little shambling thing,
Created just to move.

Can you still feel the breath leave your lungs?
How did you end up here?
Black, blue, bloodied.
By some unknowable force.
Did you tell anyone you were wandering alone?

Smart girls know to only walk on well lit streets.
You weren't a smart girl, were you?
Treading where others refused to go,
Running through where trouble resides.
And now you'll never be found.

You died gasping,
Grasping for someones hand.
No one came.
Perhaps, by chance,
Some kind rain will come
And wash you all away.

Don't Panic. Full Stop. (9.7.16)

Don’t Panic.
A mantra well spread
Throughout the the two lobes of my head
Like Jam and PB on bread.
Don’t Panic
A phrase repeat,
Words, simple words,
That turn brave men to meat.
No, Don’t Panic.
There is so much left to do
Feel the heat course through you,
Oh of course this would happen too.
Panic,
Yes Panic.
Sets in quick and sick
Can’t respond to a text
Too nervous to stand or sit.
I’m taking shallow breaths through my nose
Panic spread from head to toe.
Panic. Don’t Panic.
Panic.
Oh No.

As I've Grown.

As I’ve grown,
I’ve witnessed countless tragedies.

Whether it was guns or bombs,

In person or on T.V.

The world is a better place,

This much is true.
Less deaths thanks to disease,

Less things to kill you.

As I’ve grown,

I’ve come to disagree.

The mathematicians must not see

The world I see.

Graphs say the world is getting better.

Crime is going down,

The ocean is going up,
The shoreline is getting wetter.

But as I’ve grown.

The only things I see,

Are wars on drugs,

On terror,

On me.

From the time I was born,

In 1997,

I can’t count the number of

Funeral processions.

As I’ve grown,
I’ve seen people cry.
Watching millions of innocents die.

I ask the world,

Now that I’m 18,
What changes are left unseen.

Now that I’m grown,

I need to know,
Just where the future will go.
-H