She caught me on the street.
She wanted to say,
“Go fuck yourself”,
But
I beat her to it.
And so she did.
feel
The USS Towers: A Sailor’s Lament
There she is,
Rusting under the fucking waves,
Our eternal mistress sleeps,
steel heart still.
We’re topside now,
but her ghost still raves,
In the depths where our memories chill.
Her engines’ dirty growl echoes in my head,
stale AC’s sour breath,
salt on my tongue.
Our small destroyer,
pitching, we bled,
Puking our guts out,
God, how we are wishing we were young again.
Mess decks,
a cesspool of stories and grease,
Hot, nasty coffee could raise the dead.
Shitty midrats barely kept the cold at bay,
Bitter sludge burning holes in our head.
Tossed us around like goddamn rag dolls,
Yet kept the enemy away,
our steel mother.
After long watches,
fucking dead on our feet,
She’d rock us to sleep like no other.
They sank her for practice, our old girl,
A fucking exercise,
that’s all she was worth.
Silent rage burns,
as memories unfurl,
Of our home, our hell,
now in the earth.
One by one,
we’ll ship out again,
Join that endless fucking Westpac cruise.
No more bullshit,
no more pain,
Just the freedom we finally get to choose.
She sails on through the starry night,
Her crew aboard,
forever free.
No brass to polish, no watches to fight,
Just us, our old gal,
and the endless sea.
M.Hatter
Girl with Dirty Feet
Me and my girl,
the girl with dirty feet,
We used to pass the days by sitting on the porch,
the evening wind satisfying and warm.
She draped her legs over my lap
as waves of orange and purple
washed over us,
cleansing us from
the hard day.
Not a sound could be heard, except the soft
snores from our old dog
and an occasional giggle.
I lay in bed now,
70 years on,
I can still smell the
old wood of the porch.
I can still feel that warm wind
and hear the soft snores of
a friend long gone.
Most of all, I can
feel the weight of
her feet.
Oh, how I miss my girl with the dirty feet.
In the Yellow Maverick
Out on the open road,
a young boy, should’ve been in school,
instead, a passenger,
riding down highways from one trouble spot to the next.
We always left just in time,
before shit hit the fan,
before we made long-lasting friends,
before report cards arrived,
before we got comfortable,
before we called it home,
before we felt ashamed of who we were.
We hit the road at the right time,
fresh air through the windows,
deafening sound wind ripping through the car,
drowning out the local AM radio.
It was my chore to scan the radio dial
for stations we could pick up.
Fascinated by the concept of radio,
people off in the distance sending music
through the air.
At night, the dashboard and radio’s soft glow
offered little comfort.
No curfews, just slept when you couldn’t stay awake,
praying something scary wouldn’t reach in from the darkness
and grab you.
Daytime was no better. No reading, it made you sick.
Back to the AM radio.
Sometimes I wished I was another kid in a passing
car heading off to a normal life.
My mom, on the run from the law with two
little boys in the car,
swept away from life back home in Georgia,
now living out of a car always on the move.
Now we’re just white trash on the road,
littering the landscape.
Memory
In a dark, smoky corner of a forgotten bar,
Where the neon lights flicker like dying stars,
I sit alone, with a drink in hand,
A man whose life never went as planned.
My fingers trace the rim of the glass,
Each scratch a memory of a love that didn’t last,
The stale air heavy with tales of regret,
Of dreams unfulfilled and debts unpaid yet.
The bartender, she nods, knowing all too well,
The stories this man’s weary eyes could tell,
Of days spent toiling under a merciless sun,
Nights lost in shadows, nowhere to run.
My laughter, now, is a crackling radio, static and spent,
Echoing in a room where hours are bent,
Where hope is a coin tossed in a wishing well,
And fate, a dealer with nothing left to sell.
The lines on my face, a roadmap of sorrow,
Each wrinkle a path I’d tread again tomorrow,
For in this world of steel, smoke, and grime,
I’m just another soul, lost in time.
So, in the end, I raise my glass to the ghosts in the room,
To the dreams that died, the love that met its doom,
In a world that spins too fast for those who walk slow,
Im a man who’s been everywhere but has nowhere to go.
I refuse
To be sure, this is the craziest period of my life
sitting in this chair,
a helpless passenger.
A victim of the cruel, but with good intentions,
or so they say,
insanity.
So,
I refuse,
To be intimidated,
To be used,
To be marginalized,
To be over worked,
To be ignored,
To be forced to compromise,
To be disrespected,
To be forgotten,
To be patronized,
To be fooled,
To be beaten down,
To be raped,
To be told who to hate,
To be in a position of hate,
I refuse damnit!
I refuse to believe in them,
I refuse to let them bait me,
I refuse to let them categorize me,
I refuse to let them believe they are relevant to me,
I refuse to acknowledge the self entitled,
I refuse billionaires who believe they are benevolent!
I need to rise out of this chair of complacency,
turn off the computer,
switch off the phone,
put my feet on the ground,
and keep on trucking.
To leave this period of sin behind me.
I know, there is still good out there, somewhere.
A place just over the horizon,
in that warm yellow light at sunset.
Isn’t that where happiness lives?
I need to find the way, need directions, I need a map.
But for now…
I just fucking refuse. It is my right.
Isn’t it?
What do you refuse?
BlackDayz 