False promises wrapped in carefully crafted hashtags and campaign slogans (quelle surprise),
Bombs falling from the skies
like ashes off the end of a lit cigarette,
All the while we’re still busy
waltzing to the music in our heads.
Redux.
bare bones in the sunlight,
fear was our chariot,
now we’re dripping in hope.
break it down brick by brick,
tears of joy streaming down your face like fresh squeezed juice in the summertime.
bury me 10 feet deep, so I can finally get a good night’s rest when it all ends.
the crowd can carry on and play numb,
but there’s no respite when the morning comes
and morning’s come.
Imperium
Have you found your power yet?
Spent years searching for mine in the heart of some rebellion or another. A declaration, a fix, a lover.
Spent this summer marching through the streets, screaming for every black life snuffed out too soon.
Police, the Guard, and their guns couldn’t frighten us.
Slept for days until that unrelenting hunger, the flicker of the flame that once burned bright deep in the pit of my unconscious re-ignited itself.
Cleansed my mind, my body, my home with frankincense and scalding water.
Past indiscretions played out in loops like graduation tapes, but that sick, sad, nostalgia for times filled with high anxiety and melodrama is long dead and buried.
No need to be the loudest voice in the room, when the room quiets for you when you speak.
This mind, this body is my empire,
it’s crossed rivers and mountains and learned to transcend the inconsequential.
I see now that the wisdom earned through tragedies, both great and small losses of the past IS my power,
And this is my finest hour, there can be no doubt about that now.
Clad in my only armor,
blood, sweat, and courage.
Almost 30
Let your mind roam
to all the places you were never meant to go
all the rules you’ve broken
Non, je ne regrette rien
not a single lover or friendship laid to rest –
not a breathless night lost in karaoke
cursing, crying, drowning pain in whiskey
dancing in the wilderness
wild child running through the city
For that’s the charm of growing up
there are no real mistakes
just research
as we descend (into madness)
read me, scrawled out like half-finished poetry living in the margins of your favorite book
leave me – tea stained, dog earred, worn and re-examined like its pages
take me, as once I was, am now, and will be
there is no in between, no settling
(recite it like an oath)
poison dripping from their tongues as they kiss our feet yet inside they’re all just dying to feel some semblance of complete
rapt from the moment you walked in
fear no man and no opinion
letting your love abound instead of waiting for the world to love you
tenderness
soft slow kisses
our hands interwined, holding onto the moment our cells meet
skin caressing skin
when those compassionate eyes lock in with mine the tides rise, the sun sets, the city stands still
adventure with you takes form in multitudes
a trek through the wilderness, a trip across the country, an afternoon letting honest lips betray secrets
no mystery in our love, it overflows like the big brass horns on an Ella Fitzgerald tune
arrives warm and sweet like bubble baths and dinner paired with merlot over candlelight at home
in the end it all comes down to this, you’ve enraptured me in with your boundless tenderness
Hayden Winston 
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