Elegy for a False Sense of Security

Tell me how you entered this poem, how you even got in

here. Where my parentals come from is where I’m coming from

and where where I’m coming from is from we lock the front door

and the back and the side and can’t spare a single extra key. Where

where I’m coming from is from we shut all the windows tight like

our eyes to an ugly view: a jail if I ever saw one, and maybe I did,

and maybe that was enough for me. Maybe you made the mistake,

by coming here. Unannounced. Uninvited. It takes a lot of talent

to step in someone’s crib and be welcomed without any alarms

going off, so shake your ass something dangerous if you can,

sing me a song real sexy-like or be suck out of luck if I feel

like shooting strangers today. If home is where the heart is

then four red bullet wounds across the chest of the city’s flag

say everything there is about my feelings toward you and

the whole damn world right now. Because it was my own

blood this time and yet I’m still here, and the funny thing

about that town and this one is that they both burned down

once. And down the hall they’re burning bud and I want some

kinda sorta but without the friends. Which makes you foe,

I suppose, as if you are the presence of all colors and I am

the absence of said colors. But maybe I got it backwards,

twisted it all up. It just hurts to have my hair pulled even if

it’s by my own hand. My mind is spinning blanks inside every

chamber; everywhere I turn on the TV they’re shooting boys

like what I used to be before I wasn’t anymore and when did that

happen? And what am I now? Are you the phantom or me, me

or none of the above? The last shadow I cast on a sunny Sunday

stole my wallet and bought this gun and all the rounds and all

the rounds at the bar, too. Where I’m coming from, when in love:

squeeze. When lonely, loan yourself some time and don’t pay it

back. Beware, because I’m both lonely and in love like the living

embodiment of the code switch. I’m polluted air and poisoned water

and whatever else they say except when I say I’m not and I’m not

one to play for a fool for the record. Fear me. I’m godly and I’m just

and just get the hell out demon and do come again. Come again:

it’s my igneous ire toward you that keeps me a live wire, and alive.