Death dealers

The death dealers are all around us

Held in hands and fired with sulfur and gun powder

The tools of children

The things of teenagers

The dealings they do inhabit

Across seas

In schools

In houses

On the streets

All around slinging death to the youth

To rip through flesh and bone

Tearing spinning at hot velocity

Death has been dealt and a life is gone

A young boy

Unassuming of the shadows at work

Where the death dealers hide

Or in waistbands

Or in holsters

In a flash

The metal shards of the bullet bouncing off the road

With the body still warm

With the blood and life of this young boy

Fading fast and then he is gone

Again and again

Things that have changed me

Drugs and alcohol

Love and heartache

Poverty and homelessness

All laid a foundation to metamorphosis

For which now has inhabited the inner most crevices of my mind and by this time tomorrow

I will be changed and by this time on the next day

I will be changed

Again and again

Until I am who I will be

Such things to be true

Between the devil and the deepest of blue seas

A voice calls out in loud sharpness

Licking my ear with a needle

Piercing through with honesty

Of life

Of love

Hardships endured through the most of inconvenient of times

Thus spells a word out of nothing  

Only with poetry

Shall such things be true

Into the stones

The dusty road beneath me

Led me on

Like a pre-set path

All the history

All the old stories to be told

Surrounded me

In the brick walls

The forgotten stones

The faces dead and gone to pass

What do they say?

What have they seen in time?

The brick colored faces on the wall and with a flash

History was and is being made and has been made

As it was always to be

Each second

Each minute

Each hour

Each day

History is etched into the stones

Slowly writing the pages of a book that is thick and leather bound

Just as my pages are being written so are these words on this very page

Up in the trees

It’s in my hair way up in the trees

Way up in the trees I can see it all

The couple arguing in the sunshine and making up in the rain

The poor boy scared shaking

Under a gazebo in the breeze

The people who suffered and strained

I can see this all up in the trees

Walking along the sidewalk

I can see the new family out walking in old rain puddles as the sun breaks and shines

The church across the street

The park goes

Enjoying the new spring and the falling leaves

I can see all this way up in these trees

Void noise

I remember being in a car with my mother and siblings

Driving and the radio was on

My mother screamed at us

SHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

She shouted and we listened

The radio blathered on

My siblings and I tuned it out as if it was static on the radio

Void noise from which our ears would pick up

An empty station

Just as we were empty

Without knowledge of war

Without knowledge of tragedy

We sat in the car quiet as my mother veered off the road and stopped just as many others did

We heard as the buildings smashed into a fiery ball

Depictions of debris and people falling were retold

Over and over again

Over and over again

We heard something

In which

We should have cried

Wept for the others who had died

Yet we laughed and giggled like any other day

Too young to know of the horrors

Of an event too far outside our car

The station went dark and my mother gasped and turned

My siblings and I were laughing and playing

Our ears closed off from the empty station playing void noise

Loneliness

Loneliness spreading

Fast like a gas fire

The more I breathe

The more it feeds

My heart pumping fast

It feeds

Tears fall from eye

Lost lovers and failure all too familiar

It feeds

Its covering all of the house now

On the blinds and couches

The walls and picture frames

It feeds

Melted plastic toys

Slowly falling to a pool of nothingness

It feeds