Voices of Survival
1. My voice is not an angry mob
pummeling quiet tones
to promote teen anarchy.
My voice does not take violent breaths
hoping to make my audience spit up blood.
My voice
is not a hyperventilation, airy theatrics, and searing curse words;
that’s not what I need to get my point across.
Throughout my life my voice has been a ginger tea breeze
against the bullying absinthe reality.
Golden skin, sexual hunger pangs for daddy pain
with the bravado of swearing hypocrisy to her motherhood.
My mother: undertone of my speech.
The zigzagging measure of conscience versus popularity
paints school, teens, Facebook into that
microcosmic whisper that fades back into the shadows of the walls.
A relationship, shouts rising in me, as he does in my heart
but remains a secret like waiting to stay in bondage
for love as long as it doesn’t sting.
Choices transform flesh-bitten guilt into
a voice with a recognized soul occasionally,
with the sound of a humanity stained future.
My voice was never acid pouring down a throat
or a runaway looking to the street to be my mother
or even a rebel bleeding the pain of my mind out through my flesh.
My voice squanders the never-ending walk to individuality,
attempting to mend the broken pasts of my nightmares,
attaching to hopes that will become my sanity.
My voice is the panting, screaming, begging waiting to hear itself breath out life.
2. They take whatever crumbs are left of my dignity
wanting more than love’s scraps
until I’ve rotted with bitterness.
There is nothing to lose that hasn’t already been lost
Fragmented screams of self defeat smoke up my lungs.
I cough up pieces of my mother
Distant, cold, and ugly tar of a lost cause
spouting in plastic bags my future.
I can’t breath.
My mother screams over my oppression
Hoping to silence my restless rebellion
Fleeting to deal with the past.
My father and I fight each will to care
like the defeat of disappointments
crushing our dreams for another’s love.
Boom. He hits me between the legs
with the memory of my father;
leaving like he will after silencing the cries of my thighs.
I land swollen with a miscarried voice in tact
waiting to stop the blood and begin to heal
in the presence of my own motherhood.
Spreading grudges take the beat of my heart and stomp on it
with a series of arguments concluding my innocence.
My voice is coughing, hacking, and sick of abandonment
waiting to be left alone with happiness.
3. Seeing my brother’s body killed my voice.
The streets were busy running my mouth
while my mother was spitting out change.
Bullets looked my brother's soul in the eyes
and punctured my heart's screams.
His blood shed down my mom's eyes in tears
drowning out the sound of tomorrow.
I wept my brother's voice,
hoping to forgive it's silencer.
Still breathing in the smoke of his gun,
silent in the gang of cemented violence.
We were both imprisoned to solitude,
handcuffed to a numb reality.
His murderous stare laughed demoniacally
in my face as the police took him away.
That stare raped me for days without end.
Falling through doors of insomnia
and sitting next to mute pity
at school, at work, at home.
Slipping away into the oblivion of that stare
unmerciful to the loss of life it provided me.
My family,
streaked in the shadows of strangers
faded away like my voice
to the Hell of my brother's death.
Blinking back flashes
of nightmares in time
waiting for the stare to devolve back into darkness.
My voice is waiting to inhale strength and rest.
4. Our voices are here to move on
from regurgitations of the past
to spit out the poison that's slipped down our hearts
and pray for the success of our souls.
In between losing a voice, God happens
coming from our core
biting through fear and torment to hear
songs of conviction restore life's blood flow.
In each rising tomorrow lives the voices of our survival.