Voices of Survival

Thu, 01/09/2014 - 12:54 -- jskin1

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.     

Guide that inspired this poem: 

Comments

MVP-Most Valuable Poet

you live to write

you write to live

let your voice be heard

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