You're Free

You're free darlin
go sleep with  that man
Go fold into his sheets and thrust him into the space of your absent heart

You're free darlin, 
to be unencumbered by the prisons of love 
You're unsullied by those offering validation and affection

You're free darlin, 
burning down men like a fire feasts on natures beauty leaving only death, ashes and wreckage. 
Don't let reality phase you. Accountability can't keep you still.

You're free darlin,
running like a liars tongue in some shitty bar,
telling you all the lies you  choose to believe.
You're free to devour that bullshit bite by bite, grinning in the moonlight.

You're free from the antidotes that cure your favorite poison mindsets. 
Don't burden yourself with knowing that this phase ruins you for the life you truly yearn for. 
That doesn't matter. Rattle loud and proudly the chains across your neck, that make you a slave to him. 

Look at you now woman, 
you can go anywhere except back to me.
Tonight, It is I who am free. 

Answers

You want answers
but silence isn't easy to spin
you know, deep behind my eyes, 
I see what you are, and where you've been. 

You ask for answers,
but you already have them
you're begging me for words in hopes that I might say something other than the truth

You insist on answers
That maybe the syllables would mute the heavy silence speaking directly to your guilt
You're angry because you think you've lost control
Im angry I ever allowed you to think you had it. 

In Another's Eyes

She asks me will you come see me at the bar tonight?
She smiles an affirming smile with her eyes alight
Her friends surround her to catch a glimpse at me 
They've heard stories and tales of the type of man I can be. 
Their whispers and laughter and girlish gossips spread
and I laugh quietly in my head.

She lavishes my attention and presence 
but the night ends in distance. 
She holds my hands during the day
and laughs in his arms at night. 

I speak of foreign concepts like virtue, honor, worth, and value. 
They speak the languages of consumption, conquest, orgasm, and dominance. 
Her and him tell me the same things with different actions- 
You won't win with goodness. 
You won't win the way you are.

In the daylight she tells me I'm one in a million, the rarest of the rare. 
She tells me what a good man I am and how well she speaks of me. 
and in the night they laugh together. 
In the night they laugh at meaning. 
 
The laugh at the mere notions of truth,
as they cover themselves in self delusion. 

The House of Suffering

 This is a story of how I acquired scars, physical, emotional, and psychological. 

Being in need of a babysitter and not knowing anyone capable, My parents  looked at an ad in the local “Penny Saver”.  Mom called all the references  provided to verify the babysitter that they had found was qualified. However as it was then- any person providing references could give you a number to a friend or family member who could say anything they like. In the start of my time at that place meant that I was being dropped off first while my brother and sisters were off at school. I wished that I could have been off with them somewhere instead of inside that house. The abuses that would eventually unfold didn't start right away, there was a period of adjustment and settling in before the masks and pretenses slipped. The babysitter whose name I  think was “Susanne” was a tall blond woman with an upturned nose that accentuated her large nostrils. My mom chastised me for rudely laughing the first time that we met her because I didn't understand how she got the nose of a pig snout. She had two kids of her own. A short haired strawberry blonde boy with freckles about five or six years older than I was, and a daughter with long brown hair that was slightly younger than him. I thought that girl was the prettiest girl that my four year old self had ever seen. She was my first real in person crush.  I wish that wasn't the case, I wish that there was some other formative situation that gave me a first impression on attraction. They say that subconsciously as adults, we try to fix the broken pieces of our childhood. This house and that girl were a broken foundation that built an entire mindset of my being unlovable that towered through my life.

A child's mind is a slab of marble to be chiseled and sculpted, refined into something beautiful over time. The psychological abuse was the first thing that started. “Susanne” had an affinity to cruelty and toying with perceptions. While my siblings were at school, she would deliberately avoid feeding me. It pleased her to taunt me about being hungry and promise to feed me while she'd laugh as she denied me food. I would be banned from setting foot in the kitchen and she would ask  me what I was hungry to eat. Once I told her she would tell me that exact food I had just said was in the kitchen but I wasn't allowed to have any. She'd laugh as I would break down crying, partly in hunger and partly in anger. “We have pizza, do you want some pizza!” she would exclaim. I'd break out in the standard excited little childlike dance as hope would fill my little body. “It's in the kitchen” she'd say.  I'd walk into the kitchen and she'd say “You're not allowed in the kitchen, looks like you don't get any pizza.”
She'd then send me to “time out” where I would often be left until I fell asleep. If I made noise, I stayed in time out. If I asked if I could come out, I stayed in time out. Time out is a normal teaching tool in of itself, and a gentle way of teaching kids discipline, but not the way this lady would do it. Any tool, no matter how great its purpose, becomes a weapon if you're beating a child with it. I spent most of my day punished until my siblings would arrive after school. There was always a bit of a shift when they arrived since my brother is older and was more aware. He used to be protective of me back then. His suspicion was aroused every once in a while when he noticed that almost every single day I was in the corner when he walked through the door. In retrospect, I don't blame him for being 100% certain, we were put in time out at home as kids so standing in the corner in of itself wasn't unusual or uncommon.
The incident with her son was a different form of abuse. Sex isn't something that is easy for me to discuss outright, and sexual abuse even more so. I remember it though. One afternoon I was put in time out, and her son told me to come into his room instead. He was wearing green G.I. Joe army pajamas and he kept peeking out the door. I was worried I was going to get in trouble because I wasn't standing in the corner and if “Susanne” noticed I'd get punished even longer. He seemed to lock in on the fear the way a shark senses blood. “Do what I say or I'll tell that you're not following instructions” he said to me as he stood in front of the door to keep me from leaving. He took down his pants and he told me to touch him. I didn't want to, but I was also terrified of the punishment I'd get from “Susanne” from not being where she'd explicitly and repeatedly told me to be. Fear is a powerful  paralytic and it had me frozen still as he took down my pants and touched me. When he heard his mom's footsteps coming out of the kitchen he shoved me out of his room with my pants still down. I stood in the hall in terror, fear, shame and confusion. I stared directly into her  anger, and inflamed wrath as I received more punishments. There was no investigation, no questioning why I was standing outside her son's room with my pants down- something that had never occurred previously.  I was the recipient of her  rage, grabbed by the arm and dragged me back into the corner.

The physical violence came at the hands of "Suzanne's" daughter. Maybe I understand her some in hindsight. I doubt she started evil, but evil is the mold that she was destined for. Maybe it was by her brother, maybe she was the previous subject of the abuse by her mom before I arrived. I don't know where their father was but he was never there. I don't excuse any of their abuses, but looking back I at least understand the soil in which her violence grew.  When my brother's attention was catching on to my repeated confinement, the Babysitter still had resources on how to inflict suffering by proxy. She would lock her daughter and I in a room for hours, and her daughter would take that injustice out on me. I was being imprisoned in closets. She would beat me. She would lock me in hampers for hours and hours until my arms and legs would cramp from being in the same position.  On occasion we were allowed in the back yard  where there was an old rusted swingset with a ricketty slide. “Susannes” daughter would wait until I was at the top of the slide and push me off of the side so I would land square on my shoulder or neck. I landed on my back once and as I laid there with the wind knocked out of me I could only think I was going to die as I couldn’t even gasp for air.  Her mom would watch it happen numerous times. I just wanted to play and be a child. This is where justice shattered in my mind. When I would tell the babysitter about the injuries, the beatings, the pain, her response was always to punish me. “You're lying. My daughter would never do that.” she would say after she watched after her daughter ripped handfuls of my hair out. I was punished for telling the truth. Shame and guilt were forced upon me as injustice was exalted. I was learning that my life had no actual value. My existence and presence was an imposition.

I was trapped. My voice was stolen by the punitive retribution that comes from speaking the truth to those that not only hate hearing it, but hate those who speak it. Every day mom would drop me off at this house of suffering. Every day I would cry clinging to her dress with tiny fists, begging her to not leave me there. Every day she would tell me to go back inside while she got in her car to leave. Every day I would run as fast as I could chasing her car for blocks begging her to not leave me. Every day I would sprint towards the one that was supposed to protect me, love me, shelter me from evil. Every day re-enforced the idea that I was not worthy of love, not worthy of justice. Every day I was abandoned and alone. Every day I would walk in the middle of the street back to the house of suffering crying alone in my existential pain,, before I would be subject to the tortures of the day . 

I can't really be angry at my mom for not knowing. Had she known what was going on- there is nothing that would have stopped her from homicide.  As an adult she and I have had conversations over the years  where she expressed immeasurable sadness and remorse for not being more aware.I can't help but  hold a great deal of grace for her at the time. She was detoxing from drugs and alcohol. Her marriage was in shambles. Her husband couldn't stay clean and sober. She needed money to support her kids as she was losing her income. She should have seen it, she should have understood something was wrong- but I understand why she didn't see the trauma. At the time it read as separation anxiety from a strong willed child. In her mind, I needed to learn that she had responsibilities and that she'd see me at the end of every day like usual. I don't hold anger or resentment towards my mom for not understanding what I couldn't say, couldn't speak on, and had been conditioned not to report. She didn't know, and she couldn't see. When someone is surrounded with matters that cloud perceptions, overwhelm the senses- the mind will often default to sensible explanations.

My brother, because he was starting to question the frequency of my punishments, began to be a recipient of punishments himself. One day Mom arrived  to pick us up and found my brother in the front yard being forced to mow Susannes' lawn to keep him out of the house. “Why are you out here? Why are you mowing the yard in 110 degree heat with no water?”She asked him. “I'm being punished,” he informed her. It was about this time that Dad was starting to piece together that all those “normal” bumps and bruises and deep scratches  from “falling down in the play ground” were happening far too frequently to be normal childhood clumsiness. I wasn't falling down with bumps and bruises at home, just Monday through Friday under her “supervision.”  He and my mom began discussing that things weren't adding up in the stories that the adult babysitter was telling them, as we kids presented with mental and behavioral problems. There was a day that my dad finally understood that it went beyond neglect and the evidence was undeniable. The daughter had been particularly furious that day. After locking me in the hamper for hours, she determined it wasn't enough. She lashed out scratching at my face. She grabbed my right arm and she tried to claw my veins out on my right wrist. I had gouges of my flesh ripped out and my wrist was bloody. The beaming red anger in her face and the contempt in her eyes are still unforgettable.  She had done damage that couldn't be dismissed so casually by saying “he tripped". I cried out with blood smeared across my arm and ran to the babysitter. I stood there bleeding literal proof of the damage and injustice that was being inflicted on me. I wanted her to understand. I didn't comprehend that she had no intention of understanding- she was choosing not to confront the evil in her children, the evil within herself.  “I'm bleeding, your daughter hurt me” I choked out between tears as a trail of blood was running down the forearm I lifted as proof. “You're lying, and you're in trouble for bleeding on my floor.” Her daughter had just tried to rip my veins out, and to this day I still have the scars to prove it. I was punished for bleeding.  When Dad arrived to pick me up he stood in the livingroom and looked at the bandaids  that failed to cover the sins against me. He inspected my wounds and asked me what happened. My Dad was someone I trusted implicitly. My dad was someone safe. I told him she hurt me. The Babysitter tried to laugh it off as “kids being kids”, telling my father that I was making up a story and that I was the instigator. He looked at her daughter without a scratch or bruise upon her, and back at me with crusted blood staining my shirt. My dad knew. He'd figured out that at best this woman was negligent, and at worst, was harming him. He spent the next ten minutes setting her straight about how she'd failed. I don't know if he knew that I needed to see him stand up for me or if he was just so angry that he didn't care how it went down. I watched my angry father vindicate me. He sent me out to the car and he continued to say what he had to say after I left. I never went back there after that day. He and my mom decided that we were to never set foot in that house again. 

The Duty of Men

War be the work of all men in time
 Be it spear in hand, or the bladed mind
To lacerate self of death and woe
To contend against the inner foes

War is the burden of all living men
Against ignorance of self and sin
 The siege against cowardice or vice
Against destruction drawn to entice

Seed the virtue of a life yet to gain
And no arrow meet you draw eternal pain
War is the business of every man
Within or without, his duty stands

Fool Me Twice.

Fool me once they say, 
and shames on you. 
Fool me twice, and the pains on me. 
The shames on me. 
The grief of having trusted you is on me. 
It's on me that I still believe naively in goodness
and repentance. 
I'm broken with optimism. 
It's in my eyes that I didn't see it. 

Fool me with the words like "I love you", 
Baby, love doesn't do that.  
Love doesn't sink its teeth into my skin 
and then lock lips with them.
Love doesn't hold my hands and look into my eyes
then stand right behind my back in their arms. 

It's time for me to wisen,
It's time for me to change. 
Fool me once, fool me twice, 
They're breaking good men, mistaking them as nice.