I don’t believe in God.
I haven’t for years
but I wish that I did.
I want heaven and hell so bad right now.
Then he would realize
That I was a coward too,
He would see why his world was on fire.
He would find truth from inside the black of his coffin.
Someone would understand
why my eyes might fall out soon,
Why my breathing has become dangerous,
Why my chest is exploding with every expansion,
And why I can smell the blood that runs
inside of me.
There is something in my bones-
a sensation which moves in every direction all at once
I don’t think this feeling has a word. They tell me it’s grief,
They tell me it will go away but it’s been crushing me slowly
Since August 20th 2009, 3:48 pm.
My sky, you were murdered.
The way you ate breakfast
somehow rubbed off on me.
A fact which my mom
generously reminds of every morning.
You taught me Kung Fu moves at age 4,
Made me love rivers at age five,
Age six, I saw you in imprisoned,
Seven, I wrote my first story,
Based on your own.
At eight, I had never felt so alone.
And at age nine,
you became a roaming cancer which I could not love.
Your veins held an illness
That could be read on the back of your hand
And up through your arms.
You looked at me with the eyes of a big dog-
Wanting me to pull you from your torture.
The fractures in your skull-
could be seen through your face. From what I remember,
you tangled phrases together to create a language of your own.
Slurring cuss words, stringing english with spanish,
and obscuring the meanings
of words you found insulting.
I still can’t capture
the way you said
“Cock sucker!” when you were pissed off.
You said you didn’t want me to be a bum,
So I wont be. You were never my hero
But you were my father. You gave me my name.
Some days, it’s all that I have
And I pull strength from it when I get scared at night.
When my thoughts are bees,
racing away at random
But always coming back
To the place that they left.
Last week I found comfort.
In the bathroom mirror,
I finally saw myself as a man and
Knew I was ready to speak.
“I’ll stand face to face with him
And let him know
That I will never forgive him.” I said to myself.
"Muere luego de rina en cantina"
the title read. Six short paragraphs-
cold and precise.
This guy, the writer
he's just doing his job.
"A murder,
that's the tenth one this month."
he probably thinks.
Another number.
But that number had a smile
A smile I once loved
A genius too heavy to escape
A pain buried in so much alcohol
That it could never be removed by those
who cared most
And a son,
A son with a name.
Brian Hercules Amaya.
