Multi-Ended Strife

There are no surprises
When you wake again
Avoiding enragement
At the realization of repeated pain

A mental Tylenol could suffice
If only the reality of this strife
Would repeat just twice
Instead of this infinity spice

Dashed over every anxiety
Dousing each sorrow completely
Until it consumes entirely

You are left here
Forced to go back up the hill
Forced to meet the Vulture
Forced to feel its attempted kill

Hoping that one day
You just might not show up
To a venue with no view
Except that which is meant for the few

The ones who claim
They have some superior name
All the while identifying the same
Ruleset for this forsaken game

Humbly they view
The shredding of nothing new
Wishing you could escape
Yet, holding you down with gorilla tape

It’s more than a personal drive
There’s no ability for the love to survive
We must find a community to strive
Fighting against a lunging knife

Working to leave the Vulture

Working to reinvent the Upper

Working to rewrite our Future

Working towards Hope

Hope of me
Hope of thee
Hope of we
A future set free
of individual identity

Yet, we can’t escape this feeling
That we are what we are not
A necessity of division
Present within derision

If we can pull from that which stabs
There remains a potential to flee
From that which makes us bleed

Whether it be back down the hill
Or further into the clouds
A night sky will drown out
That which we must kill

A sacrifice
Left behind on a hill
Meant to allow for passage through time
A nomadic prince screaming, “PRAY TELL!”

A Job-like job
Duties meant to cripple
Funnels of people
Lining the pews of the steeple

Mourning the loss of the child within
Praying to the lords above
Help this young boy escape in time

For his mother to say goodbye
For his father to let out his first cry
For the time you’ve hoped and dreaded
Has arrived at your doorstep

A grown man
Journeying into the fold
Never to be seen again
Except for a call through phones

Messages on a screen
Memories having never been

When you’re trapped in the past
Your future comes in a moment’s last

Unwavering in its confusion
Ever-growing in its presentation

There are nights when you’ll fall asleep
Dreaming of those tiny hands and little feet
Wishing to hear a 20-pound pitter patter
As you relieve your morning bladder

A wish for mother and father
Heroes of the dark
Companions of the journey embarked
Knowing the future holds cities much brighter

And the demons begin to whisper
Little nightmares into your ears
Hour after hour of deathly peers
Taking the soul of a child unfiltered

But those days are gone
You wake in a sweat tasting the tears of last night
Holding onto the blanket soaked in life
Until the last scent has fled from fiber one

The babe once held beneath
Has been released to the Earth
Resting calmy and natures feet
Waiting for a call of return

Whether outgoing or incoming
That call which never comes
Flooding your minds home
With images of a voyaging darkness

Stretching across the skies
Reaching out to the lost souls
Looking for a home in their soles
Filling their holes with an absence of lies

The cold dark embraces all
Filling the voids in us all
Carrying hope into the life of us all
Drifting into a pool of us all

What once was still remains
In the scent of a blanket
Within the scrapbook pages
And the tear-soaked rags left in drains

Never fully washing away
Into the ever expanding blue abyss
Taking time to address
All those relatives missing a final kiss

Continuing to fade into the black
Until the next familial heart attack
Joins palms in the mist
Floating forever onward
No longer missed

We’ll meet again
When the time comes and the night fades
Just before we get an answer to this awful charade