By James Diaz
can’t drown it out
the screamin’ through the walls
could be then
could be right now
so hard to tell in this fading light
one more knock
and you’ll let anything in
to stop the bleeding
of time
one small piece of skin
crosses another white moon
you swallowed whole
and aching out
the star dust
come catch the flame
and all is not well
but you’ll get it there
twenty thousand scattered pieces
at a time, hymnal blood
back porch of nothin’ you know about me
describes what I seen
how hard it is
always
to know when to stop
and when to go.
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (2018, Indolent Books) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma. In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and Prison/confinement. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.
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