A Mundane Pride (Clarification of Terms)

You woke up this morning
And even though your body
Felt like it had suffered a small death
In the dark, sleeping hours
You got out of bed.*

*(Bed: A location to sleep or relax. A resting place that is no longer a resting place, but a battle ground. No truce or treaty tethers the ghosts that pace around the perimeter of its frame. Just the suggestion of a threat straining for closure and resolution to a too-long siege on memory.)

You took a shower
And even though the pounding water
Echoed panic, panic, panic
Can't you see the world is flooding*
Go back to bed
You stepped out, shook yourself dry
And were clean.

*(Flooding: Present participle of flood where present particles of water surge in a seeking wave. A wave searching for the presence of landmines left behind as reminders that your land will never be mine and my land will never be yours. No common ground. No soil to foster a peace.)

You got dressed
And even though your reading hands
Said there was too much here
Or too little here
Or this stretch of skin just won't do*
You put your clothes on with
A mundane pride.

*(Do: Past tense: Do not give in. Present tense: Do not give out. Future tense: Do not give up)


You made breakfast
And even though your appetite
Felt like a loss of control*
You ate.
You felt your food hit the bottom of your stomach
And took comfort in the solid sound of the reverberation.
You are not the dark center of the universe
You think you are.

(Control: Synonym: Denial)

You went to work
And even though
The frantic sound of typing fingers
Sounded like the lurid language
Of frenzied dragonflies whose
Vocabulary consisted only of the words
Not good enough*
You made it through.
You were good enough.
Even if it was just for today.

*(Not good enough - direct translation: Giving up all hope for a better future)

You went home.
Undeservingly exhausted
You crawled back into bed
Pulled the covers over your head
Made no promises for tomorrow.
You measure your lifetime in days now
And there are still hours* left in this one.
There are still minutes left in this one.
There are still seconds left in this one.
And every tick of the clock is a step forward
On the lifelong road to recovery.*


*(Hour: How I measure the moments when your stretch of presence doesn't stalk my memory)
*(Recovery: A mundane pride in re-establishing a routine to increase the amount of hours that I feel good enough; in redefining control; in doing more than saying; in not becoming overwhelmed by the flood; in brokering a ceasefire with the ghosts in my bed -- ending the too-long siege on memory)

This Black Body Pt. II

Black body an assumption
Black body an expectation
Black body a projection
Black body in the media
Black body violent
Black body a problem before it walks through
the door.

80% of black bodies graduate high school.
Record breaking
Still can't break stereotypes.

Black body collateral.
Black body disturbed the peace.
Black body gunned down in the street.
Black body a weapon.
Black body brokers peace treaty with blood.
Black body scapegoat sacrificed on the altar of racial pedagogy.

One black body killed every 28 hours
by people sworn to protect all bodies.

Black body unknown.
Black body featureless.
Black body homogeneous.
Black body blasphemous.
Black body never nuanced.
Black body seen in its entirety in one glance.
Black body doesn't measure up to Eurocentric standards of beauty.
Black body feels worthless.

Unnoticed black bodies develop eating disorders.
Black body can never starve itself of its color.

Black body alone.
Black body afraid.
Black body looking, looking.
Black body never found.
Black body lost.
Black body drowning in pools of shadow.

Black body absorber of light
Solar panel - Unpredictable, inconsistent, an unstable energy source at best
Black body absorber of light
Black hole - Collapsing, unescapable, kept at a cosmic distance
Black body absorber of light
Weeded out - Photosynthetic, artificial, fibrous, invasive species.

Black body blood-borne.
Black body tainted.
Black body carrier of biracial bug.
Black body transmits shame.
Black body inherits blame.
Black body a legacy of chains.

This black body trying to break free.
This black body a destroyer.
This black body trying to destroy assumptions.
This black body trying to defy expectations.
This black body trying to demystify projections.

This black body is trying.
This black body is trying.

3 Ways to Use School as a Coping Mechanism (draft)

1. Establish a routine
   Get back into the swing of things
   Wake up Brush your teeth Take a shower Skip breakfast
   Get in your car
   Drive to campus
   Go to class
   Go to class
   GO TO CLASS
   Be late to class and hope your professor
   is only looking at you weird because
   you are late and not because
   she can smell the scent of
   undeserved tragedy wafting from you
   like a failed attempt at aromatherapy.

2. Read your textbooks out loud
   Practice drowning out the lo-fi
   Buzz of your self-deprecating self-talk
   By reading in a clear, even tone even
   While panic is pressing against the back
   Of your throat like a detonator
   Take pride in the fact that you can read
   About survivors of abuse and trauma
   As clinically as a doctor reading an MRI
   And preparing to relay a terminal prognosis of disease.

3. Go to lunch with your friends.
   Even if you're not actually going to eat lunch.
   Even if they're not actually friends.
   Even if they're just long-term acquaintances you've met
   From having so many classes with them
   Go to lunch.
   Listen to the things they talk about.
   Pay attention to the way they eat their food.
   Think about how there are seven billion people in the world
   All eating differently
   Talking differently
   Having lunch
   And realize how ridiculous it is for you to rationalize qualitatively
   That one person is greater than seven billion.

Themes of Fire - Model #2 - Cycles of Abuse

There are many themes of fire
That refine the bond that trauma builds

In the beginning, he will tell you
That you are the only one that matters
You make his world brighter
Like the only candle that can fend off the
darkness
He is the warmth and you are the light
In this theme of fire
The flames are passion, love, and hope
But above all they are false

They are tongues of flame probing you for weakness
Probing you for vulnerability
Did someone break your heart before him
Did your parents not love you enough
Does your mind ever become your enemy
He will blame you
Tell you that your misfortune is your fault
That if you loved him as much as you said you did
Your life would be in line
He will raise his voice
So that you will lower your head in shame
He will try to kick you out of his car
In the middle of the bypass
Saying no one has ever pushed him so far
He will threaten to beat the shit out of you
And give you bruises to match the ones on your heart
In this theme of fire, he shows his true colors
You will see them as works of art
And forget one of the basic rules of nature
The more brightly colored an organism is
The more toxic it tends to be
In this theme of fire, he will rake
You over the coals
Dangle you over the flames
And claim that his not dropping you into them
Is a sign of love

Eventually he will calm down
And you will think that this tranquility
Is the result of your ability to soothe
The beast within him
No, it is only lying dormant
Like an inactive volcano
Waiting to erupt
When strategy calls for it
What you have to understand
Is that his love and anger are tools
To use whenever the time is right
When the circumstance calls for it
You will be so grateful for this moment of inactivity
For this reconciliation
He will tell you
If you just stop making me mad
If you just stop talking to your friends
If you just give me money
If you just hate yourself
Then I will be happy
And by definition
You will be happy
In this theme of fire
You will soak yourself in gasoline
And beg for his spark

As you will learn
Nothing keeps him happy for long
He will drain the life out of you
Until you are nothing but a shell of your
Former self
His instability
Will manifest in you as anxiety
Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder
Anything he can convince you will be cured
By you appeasing him
Your friends will call
You will tell them everything is fine
It is easier than saying that you are ashamed
For staying
That you are embarrassed for everyone
To see how small you've become
How close you are to breaking
You will go through this cycle
Until something gives
And something will give
Something always does
Hopefully
You remember your own flame
The candle that existed before the thought of him
You will fuel it with the hope that there
Is something better out there
Even if you don't know what it is
You will gather up courage
In a last ditch effort
And say, I can't take it anymore
I'm leaving
He will react predictably
With volcanic rage
And blazing anger
He will tell you that you are worthless
And shady
He will tell you that no one else
Will ever love you the way he did
He will ask you
Who is going to love you now?
Who is going to love you now?
And with a voice that for the first time
Recalls its strength
You will say me
I am going to love me now
I am going to love me now.

Stifling Someone's Essence Is a Form of Violence - Model #1 - Intersectionality

I am not simply one
I say to myself in the mirror
Contemplating the different layers
That form the whole of my being
The different intersecting identities
Borne from struggle and discovery
Invisible to the outside world
Yet so integral to the world inside

A friend of a friend told me that his
friend's roommate came out to him the other
day
Gathered up the courage needed to tell him he was
gay
His roommate said - Can't you just not be that way
Can't you just ace the gay away?
Better asexual than homosexual
Better me feel comfortable
And you feel marginalized
Adjusting yourself to my heterosexist tendency

The problem with intersectionality is that people
Always want to censor some part of you
Turn you into a shifting microcosm
of adjustable identities
They always want to change you

Part Two - A girl from my hometown
Has an aunt who used to be her uncle
Aunt Lily used to be Uncle Hawthorne
And like all flowers, bloomed when the time
Was right and the bud was too tight
She tried to explain this to a friend
But the girl wasn't all that good at botany
Didn't understand the struggle of transit
The struggle of a woman beating her face up
With make up so people will stop calling her a boy
The struggle of slipping into heels sharp
as daggers arrayed against the slurs of people
who would call her a man to stifle her essence

The problem with intersectionality is that
people will always try to stifle your essence
and keep you from radiating it.
Stifling someone's essence is a form of violence.

Part 3 -
I know this girl from Lambda Alliance
that everyone keeps calling greedy
She's bisexual
Apparently she can't pick a team
Apparently she can't pick a side
She can't just be bi
She's always only "bi for now"
Always bisected by people with
No concept of spectrum
No concept of fluidity
No concept of the damage that's done
When you force a person into two closets

The problem with intersectionality is that
You often find yourself running in and out of closets
Trying to justify the permutations of self
That make up who you are
That people fail to understand
That intertwine so delicately
Like a piece of art
A carefully crafted figure
Forging self into reality.

A Mundane Pride

You woke up this morning
And even though your body
Felt like it had suffered a small death
In the dark, sleeping hours
You got out of bed.

You took a shower
And even though the pounding water
Echoed panic, panic, panic
Can't you see the world is flooding
Go back to bed
You stepped out, shook yourself dry
And were clean.

You got dressed
And even though your reading hands
Said there was too much here
Or too little here
Or this stretch of skin just won't do
You put your clothes on with
A mundane pride.

You made breakfast
And even though your appetite
Felt like a loss of control
You ate.
You felt your food hit the bottom of your stomach
And took comfort in the solid sound of the reverberation.
You are not the dark center of the universe
You think you are.

You went to work
And even though
The frantic sound of typing fingers
Sounded like the lurid language
Of frenzied dragonflies whose
Vocabulary consisted only of the words
Not good enough
You made it through.
You were good enough.
Even if it was just for today.

You went home.
Undeservingly exhausted
You crawled back into bed
Pulled the covers over your head
Made no promises for tomorrow.
You measure your lifetime in days now

And there are still hours left in this one.
There are still minutes left in this one.
There are still seconds left in this one.
And every tick of the clock is a step forward
On the lifelong road to recovery.

Always Pretending

I think about writing a poem
To bridge the gap between your pain
And my own
I burn the bridge as soon as I build it
Aware aware of the futility of the task
I could never hurt badly enough to arouse your compassion
So I put my pen down
I click "yes" when Netflix ask if I'm still watching the movie
I forgot I was watching because I was too busy trying to write a poem
To get an emotional response from anyone
Preferably you, or someone like you
I think about how stupid it is to include Netflix in a poem
As a literary device
I agree with myself that I shouldn't worry about it
And should save my energy for things that should be worried about


Like

When is the money going to run out?
Will I ever get married?
Should I eat today, or have I had too much?
I have had too much.

There's a point when you become so self-critical with yourself
That your life starts to straddle the fine line
between perspective and parody
And you realize you're just parroting the perspectives
Of people who died long before you thought
It was edgy to have a suicidal thought

And yet, the generation I come from
Has developed a morbid curiosity
For visceral authenticity
Hidden in inner realms
With layers and layers of psychic fabrics
To protect our fabricated sense of selves
Be real with me
Show me where your stitches are
So I can pull them at the seams and
Make you spill your guts to me
Tell me how they simplified your identity
Made you eat even though you didn't want to
Talk me through the moment when you realized
That making love doesn't mean letting someone
Fuck you as hard as you hate yourself

Don't pretend in front of me
We are always pretending
Aren't you tired?

The Mother We Share

As you breathe and crackle
With the fires of creation
Spontaneously combusting
Into greater circles of life
Walking in your orbit
Like you own the sky
A crown of brilliant light
Circled around your head
Waves of air bending hazy and obedient
To the authority of your solar sovereignty

And I, the lesser twin
Born form the cosmic trauma
Of celestial violence
Waxing and waning
Manic and depressive
Stumbling heavy and strange in my orbit
You own the sky, but I visit it
As the extradited thief of a greater light
I use to spin my halo of a lesser gold
Waves of water bending tidal and taunting
To the wavering rule of a lost and lunar king

And if we come from the same womb,
Why do you see life so free, and I see it as a tomb?
If we do indeed have a mother that we share,
Why do I see life as a chore, and you see it as a dare?

Do you love me, brother?

Basilisk Boy

The nurse told me I had a great smile as I walked past her
And into the clinic.
The way she smiled suggested a woman who is often
On the receiving end of bad news.
We are kindred spirits that way.
Inside the clinic I am struck with the same
anti-septic, impersonal sensation I always
get when inside of hospitals
I'm a germ
I'm defiling this place
With my hypochondriac anxiety
The needle plunges into my skin
It's almost erotic
Vampiric as it draws blood from my veins
Dark, ritualistic -- I see why demons fiend for this
I examine my blood in the vial before it's taken
For study
Searching for any suggestion of extra microscopic weight
Reconning for intruders
For viruses
For anything that could disrupt my homeostasis
She told me you will know your results in 4 days at the latest
I smile they way a person who worries about the world does
She grimaces -- tells me I have nothing to worry about
You know nothing about me -- my eyes say
My mouth transfixed in that great smile
Days go by
I am festering in my own pessimism
Counting back everyone and anyone
That could have been an exposure
The only things that eases my fears
Are shitty cartoons and starvation and the momentary mimosa
Funny -- my body turns to stupidity and anorexic
Inclination when I'm stressed out
I'll have to remember that on my death bed
In that decaying voice that whispers jokes with
Death at his door
Put on that episode of family guy
No -- I don't want to eat -- I can't eat
Eating is for people who deserve to live
On the fourth day
The latest day
The earth-shattering email
Negative -- you are negative
The sigh of relief
The aversion of crisis
The weight of death lifted off every cell of my body
If not just for now
There is no intruder
No virus
No basilisk blood running in my veins
I am not the king of serpents yet
I would never wish that crown on anyone
For it is a kingship acquired through unprotected gambles
And pharmaceutical indiscretion
From being told your whole life
You are the sum of your sexual expression
Deified in one stroke
Demonized the next
But still
This normal heart beats only against its own walls
And not yet the onslaught of a viral intruder
There is a fear in wondering if your body
Is an ambling epidemic
Death walking
Breath miasma
Blood acid
No -- no basilisk here
Just a boy who made some bad decisions
Just a boy who understands the power of negative
Thinking
Just a boy who is safe for now
My body is safe for now
My blood is safe for now
For now sounds like a threat and a promise

Bomb Shelter

I'll ask you if you think it's possible to love a bomb shelter

You'll ask me why

I'll say it's because that's what I pretend to be

When I feel like the world is closing in on me

My meditative happy space.

To meditate or medicate?

That is the question.

These hands are not my hands

These feet are not my feet

This heart is not my heart

They are the brick and mortar

I bought with my defense budget

This skin is not my skin

It is 7 inches of hard, cold obsidian

To fend off the inevitable irradiation 

of an erroneous environment

You'll laugh at me because you think I'm making a joke about my dick

I'll tell you not to interrupt my existential crisis

It's serious

It always will be

I'll tell you how some days

Every word said over me

And not to me

Whistles like the mouth of a warhead through the air

Reaching terminal velocity until the detonation of impersonal conversation

Explodes all around me

When other eyes register my perimeter and then quickly look away

I feel like the landscape is splintering around me

The bombs go off in my vicinity

Razed by apathy

Barely missing me

Intentionally

Disguising this test of endurance

As a test of luck

I'll tell you how some nights

I can sit in a room full of people

And feel as desolate

As the aftermath of a nuclear fallout

The ruins of my city

Populated by the inevitable irradiation

This erroneous environment reeks

The macabre miasma

accompanying 

the smell of spoiled vintage

And silver aura radiating

Around the halos of skulls long in the tooth

No longer aged and wise

Just decomposing

As our vitality pretends we won't

As our mortality portends we do

I try to ward off the vapor

With the salts and silver smelted in

The enamel of my too short teeth

But they stay rooted in their canals

Guards of show, not of action

Wanting for hands to cover my mouth with

Wanting for feet to walk away with

Wanting for a heart to pump life and color

To differentiate me from this silver haze

I have become a morbid monument

To edify this radiated ruin

Populated by you

Fluent in the language of light and reconstructive criticism

Clairvoyant future demystifying the fog

I stood in like the water

Hanging in the air of a silver mist

Draped around the sullen shoulders of Chernobyl

With all your nebulous swagger

And talks of diplomacy between mind and body

You stand at my barricade

You look me in the eye

Then down at the weeds encroaching on my perimeter

In your presence, the weeds whisper flowers

Forget-me-nots if you’re romantic

Roses if you’re not

You run your fingers gently along roughness of my rocky walls

Spread your warmth on the coldness of my obsidian facade

Press your lips against my door

Reminding me of my mouth

And with it, newly formed I ask you

Do you think you can love a bomb shelter?

You say yes

I've even made it my home.

Heteronormativity Is __________

Heteronormativity is me having to bite my tongue
When my straight white roommate calls some kid a faggot
Over Xbox like the experience of being a queer
Can be trivialized into your momentary frustration
With a game that you're not good at
In fact, that's kind of what heteronormativity is
Being forced to play a game that your not good at
In fact, a game designed for you to fail at
Where the endgame ends up being the ended lives
Of too many people I care about

Heteronormativity is that night three years ago
When I got a text from my best friend
Saying, I love you, but I don't want to live anymore
And the grief and gash of wondering if this
Is the night that he finally follows through
And the guilt and gash of knowing that he didn't
But secretly hoping that he had
Because sometimes it's easier
To let a down dog die
Then watch it get back up to get kicked back down again.

Heteronormativity is when I was 12 years old
And my grandmother told me she was going to kill me
Because she found gay porn on her computer
And that if I didn't straighten up
She would give me to God and let him have his way with me
And by this point even then hearing the word God
Was me being reminded of every verse
Being used to beat me like a Bible belt
And the cruel irony that the black church adopted the same tactics used by slave-owners
To justify the dehumanization of black slaves
The cruel irony of the once oppressed becoming the instrument of not only their own
Oppression, but the oppression of others

Heteronormativity meant learning early on that survival meant laying low
Till I was old enough to move out and carve a life of my own
And even then going off to higher education
To become surrounded by privately educated Georgia boys
Who for all their culturally rich upbringing in Georgia soil
Still have the audacity to say to me
I like you because you don't act like those other gays
You know the ones that make being gay the only part of their personality
And throw their sexuality into everyone's faces
You're a real bro, bro
Excuse me while I go rant about how many girls I've drunkenly had sex with
Because  I convinced them that I was deep and emotionally vulnerable
By giving them all the same mix-tape of sad, acoustic songs I listen to when I run out of
Budweiser.

I am tired of being silent
My silence won't save me or you
I am inviting you into a conversation
I do not care if you're uncomfortable
Your discomfort does not preclude you
From the responsibility of opening your eyes
And seeing
At the end of the day I will just be angry and sad
And hopeful and trying to be seen

Heteronormativity is you being able to walk away from this poem
 just feeling uncomfortable
While this poem is the only protection I have
in this fight for a chance at a fair fight.

Trigger Cut Your Hair to Cope

Past beliefs led me to believe that missing someone is loving someone in the past tense
But the advent of your absence is evidence to the contrary.
Don't apologize to me.
I will never feel sorry enough to absolve us both of our sins.
I won't apologize to you.
You will never feel sorry enough to absolve us both of our sins.
I grew my hair out the last time you left and told everyone I was just
trying to grow an afro.
Really I was growing my hair out so it would be long enough to grab and
jerk my scalp off.
They say pulling your hair is another form of masturbation.
When I pull my hair it pulls my head and I feel like I can finally
control my brain.
But I know I can't.
I take LSD instead.
I take acid to buffer the thoughts of you.
But I'm worn down to base thoughts
How I want to fuck you but will hate myself after it.
How I want you to fuck me but will hate you after it.
Violator.
Destroyer of worlds.
But really just mine.
Companion of cosmic concurrence.
Lock my carnal crush on you in the closet
you locked yourself in as the carnal crushes you.
The worst of us know how to place our monsters under other people's beds
The best of us know these monsters will play well with the demons
playing strip poker underneath our pillows.
When you die it will ripple through the universe to my cell phone.
Even though I'm sure when you die I will never know.
Mortality is the furthest distance.
When you die it will be first.
When you die it will be brief.
When you die.
Will I be alive?
I hope so.
I need some evidence that I can live without you.
Your birthday is this Saturday.
I think I"m going to get a haircut.

On Grief

The problem I have with grief
Is that even as a young child
I was aware that the world
Didn't always have my best interest in mind
Rarely had my best interest in mind.

As such I took easy to isolation
Not so alien
Not so strange
Voluntarily an island
An insular prominence
In this ocean of processed emotion.

A complex coping mechanism
I handled with care in younger days
Like a gilded chalice
Taken only in the sacristy's privacy
When I believed in such things.

My inward lens
For outward trauma
Indulgent and introspective
Yet.

In the shadow of death.
In the midst of a funeral.
My lonely, buried treasure
Revealed!
In the scope of grieving eyes
More vocal and expectant.

Suddenly recreational reticence
And internalized reflection
Forced into the open
By those believing that the act of grief
Is valid only as a public display of
human reaction.
A duty to the deceased
A duty to those suddenly aware
that they are living.

How strange it is
To mix
Business with pleasure.

Twist Nothing

the story of me
told through the story of the storm
deep rumble gurgle thunder
quick whip crack sodomy lighting
white hot turn pitch black
white yes black no
and the ties that bind
the way we think
primordial conditions
ingrained by the tempest
shock sparks life
charges galvanization
we are all Frankenstein
looking to tell the story
of ourselves
through the validation of another
mismatching our self with the
discarded parts of another body
necromantic romance idiot
decking tragedy with maxim and proven
proverb
This too shall pass
The pseudoscience of feel good
by being nothing
to twist zero into infinity
nothing lasts forever
and thus become one
with the meditative echo
"ohm"
"ohm"
"ohm"
oh. no.
break my concentration with the thought of you
breaking the thought of you in the concentration
of unproving proverbs
The old adage: hurt people hurt people
so I hurt things instead to
throw paramedics and well-meaning holistic
healers off the trail of my bio-betrayal
stream of consciousness induced
by pharmaceutical nihilism
new mantra
"I do not care"
"I do not care"
"I do not care"
and in not caring
no longer suffer
but perpetuate
the miscommunication of heartbeats
veins and arteries cross sections of sky
Like powerlines
Yet broken under the weight of feathersnow
accumulated -- we tried
We have always tried.
Galvanizing glimpse into the story
of my story
by the eye of the storm
Beyond nonsense
Plotting non-sensical cynical
twists of storylines
like cardiac arrests twist bloodlines
i have always been twisted into your nothing
a futile attempt at forcing infinity

Law and Order (Confessional)

Bring in the homosexual!

The lawmaker says

In a tone – antiseptic and clinical

Like he’s announcing the onset of cancer

Though with less sympathy

No – none at all.

You stand charged with the crime

Of perverting the natural order

And defiling the sanctity of marriage

Under the laws of God and man

You are allowed a final appeal

Speak now

Or forever

Hold

Your

Peace.

                Friends, Americans, Countrymen: Lend me your ears

                You call me criminal and pervert under the laws of the land

                I call myself a casualty of your policy

                I do not believe in original sin

                I believe that whatever shame seated within my soul

                Is engendered

                Not inherent

                An artifice of hateful, unintelligent design.

                You call me criminal

                But I look in the mirror

                And I see a man who has loved people as hard as they’ve hated themselves

                Realizing the heart is too risky a fuel to burn.

                You call me criminal

                But when I turn on the T.V.

                I feel like a refugee

                Running from violence like the blood and water

                That ran from the side of your Lord.

                You call me a criminal

                But I feel like a historian

                Retelling the stories of boys

                Locked in the skins of their fathers

                Possessed by the need for approval

                Often times – they claw themselves out
                 Fingers down to crooked bone

                Often times – they hang themselves
                Necks hanging like crooked fruit

                From the branches of their family trees

                Nooses tied by the sins of their fathers.

                What you call a sin

                That breeds only contempt

                Is what I call a bridge

                Closing the gaps of compassion

                Between me and every other victim

                Of the scapegoat slaughter you offer

                On the altar to your God of love

                You carry as an ark of comely hate

                Rebuilding the ivory tower

                With the ivory bones

                Of the tragically impressionable youth

                You claim to save.

                With the promise of being normal.

                You call me a criminal.

                I am not.

                You call me a monster.

                I am not.

                You call me an abomination.

                I am not.

                Do what you want, but do not throw God’s name in it.

                Your God be my witness.

                If I ever make it into Heaven.
                I'm gonna rattle your pearly gates.
                I'm gonna scream above the angel's song.

                I’m gonna tell him everything.

                I’m gonna confess it all.