Baby I Scar; Draft #1 (from Brainstorm #2)

This one goes out to all the people
who think that I have nothing meaningful to say:
that I am not poor enough
abused rich crazy popular enough
assaulted burned victimized enough
whipped condemned smart enough
or that I haven't been stepped on enough or
that I've done too little or none at all of my own stepping

do I not pay taxes to this great whirlpool windmill of hate and death and hypocrisy
and feed the rich blame the poor
and how can my hands wash clean when daily it is my people my color my culture shitting in the shallow end
acting like cannibals eating each others hearts on the daily news?

I can think and love and ache as much as anyone else who has felt the wounds of long recovery or the woes of quick stricken fear,

we are one and one are we, being the verb goes singular to plural
but that's just how grammar works, maybe accident prone is fate's
mix of chemicals and colors in a Meth lab.

needle can I lick taste the bitter drugs before they rush through your veins
before I fall backward in a passed out slumber backwater night walk.

My head never stops thinking
I lay awake in bed
best memories and past nightmares
never let go heart racing for the lives not going up to the top of the cup
these diminished hopes and lost expectations.

Not dead I still have an opinion on what it must be like to die
Not killing but still have an opinion on murder
the spiral of deprecation it leads us on
and I will fail long before and long after a celebrity is made famous
for dodging a question or a country is made famous for its lack of luck
dismal fate laid low sometimes in mind by us and everyone.

And don't I too help pay aren't I complicit in this machine that keeps my brothers and sisters down that steals and takes that doesn't look back,
having some sort of inside deal on 22nd century eyeglasses.
They see in 3-d.

My skin may not burn but I scar baby I scar.