There’s a knot around my heart
Lassoed to my soul pulling strangling
I untie it
Little by little like a precious family heirloom
Unravel and let me free
Don’t struggle breathe slow
Untie
Untangle your mind
Shed the notion you have to follow the line
Let it drag you along
And turn whichever way you want.
Call me when you’re crazy
My heart breaks for those with a broken heart
Broken home
Broken roof broken car
Broke the bank
Praying for them I broke down
Turn it off
shut it out I can’t take it
Someone break their back for me
But don’t
I couldn’t stand to see you broken
I got it.
A virgin my heart is
Though it’s loved a thousand times
At least that’s what we’ll say it is
In terms of Catholic mind
They passed it down like the color of my skin
Mama had it, daddy too
Ask them how we got it – the story goes
Once upon a time not so long ago
My great great grandfather siphoned life from yours’s veins
like liquid gold
Made an industry importing lives
to provide more than enough for his children
Harvested your father’s organs
just to have a spare
Stole food from your table for dessert
Said Get your own.
when you ask for some back
In an act of kindness he set you free to a foreign land
with the clothes on your back and 3/5 of a life
You’re welcome.
Say Work hard become a doctor
Fix the broken bodies
born to your beaten children, yourself
Idiots.
We only wanted your hands
why would we lend one back.
Put a roof over your head once
Not again.
Ingrates.
I didn’t do it, my grandfather did
What’s past is past.
I didn’t do it my grandfather did
But what was passed was passed
And like a family heirloom I loved it
It’s lovely but it isn’t mine
We got ahead because we had their lives running through our veins
When they only had one
If I could give an ounce of your fathers blood back I would. I will.
Some how.
This might hurt a little.
Not as much as we hurt you.
How can you condemn one who screams
Cries of pain from the knife you gave them to protect themselves
Told them where to put it until they couldn’t breathe
Silenced at last
God, give our hands the strength to pull it from their backs
Shove it between the gears, stop the cogs in the machine
Let steel crumble as we scream with them
Silence won’t last
I romanticize them like a schoolgirl
Gertrude and Zelda
Let that be now.
Read their stories, see their art and it
feels like I know them
We make note of what is on our minds today
so they have something to send out
into space and say
This is us.
I can’t tell what is clouds and what is snow
capped on top of a mountain
but it’s all the same
In the same way that moonlight’s the same
as the sun and here with open and
angled moving lines
I am a painter of pictures
All the same.
Light walked through the front door with everyone else. Ran across sleek marble, skidding against the wall across like an excited child. It climbed the wallpaper, clinging to textures and scaling as high as could be reached. Exhausted and eager, Light skid down letting Gravity do the work. It pushed against the limits Shadow imposed, aching to see just a little more of the colors in store. Light crept slowly, stepped up casually, containing its curiosity of what could be. It caressed the corner, felt the edge and wished with all its might that it had fingers able to prise doors open.
But Light has to be invited in. Unless it sneaks, unassumingly, between cracks, in the gaps. Light is patient enough to be forgotten and eager enough to find a way. The most enthusiastic patron abound.
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