Right Here, With Me

They can say they’ll treat you better, but I do. You gave me an hour, I’ll give you words you’ll never forget. Warmth and endless laughter are mine to give, and I found your ears worth every ounce of time devoted to creating them. You think that you’re less than, so you take their cheap one liners as a token of promises they know will never be kept. I know it doesn’t make sense now. Trust me, some things never do. But when I quiet my head, there’s one thing that does. That one thing is you. In spite of all our distance, and all the difference, the common denominator is that I care. I really care. You’re everything I asked for, yet nothing I ever deserved. And I try to treat you as the star that you are. There’s so many admirers, but when they go to sleep, where are you to them? You’re right here with me, and that’s the only place I’ll want you.

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Divisions

Why do I let the ocean divide us. The tide of stars, the crest of the moon sailing over me. They are beauty, but they keep me away from you. I never learned to swim, because I was too afraid of what I might swallow. Wind and waves toss and turn unexpectedly. Skull and crossbones tell me too many have already tried and failed reaching you. What makes me any different? What might keep me from the same watery grave? Push me in, and I might not ever come out. Not because I love it, but because I need it. I need to know what it’s like to drown, what it like to be on the edge of death, yet never cross over. That’s what you deserve. A man who can be killed and never die. Through the trenches, across the corpse laden valleys, and deep within the tripwires of night. I go where they say no one comes back. I come back to where they say none can go.

As I See It

Frayed fingers tips struggle to grip the pen that trap these words to the present day. If they had their way I’d never hold them down. Always floating out of my mind, into the future. Some days remebered, others left as if never thought. I write so much, so little is left to my imagination. I don’t imagine, I reimagine. I see the world as it as, and I write as it should. Harping on violence and death only tells them that I want more. That I need more. Justification is not pure. Vengeance is criminally blind. Judiciary systems chop off hands blindfolded. Hamstrung by our own weaknesses we create enemies that exceeed our greatest strengths. We run in circles but hold up banners. We stand over another human and say the war is won. We fly to the moon then say god does not exist. If humans were any less intelligent, I’d say we were publicly educated.

Fight

I don’t have a fight song

If I could ever

Contain my battle

To 3:24

Then let me bleed out now

Before I get a minute more

Of breath

Of life

Of time

My fight song

Is that I even know

What a song is

My fight song

Is that I even know

I’m fighting

People make up memories

Just to give themselves

Something to be upset about

But I know across our oceans

There’s someone dying

Now that’s worth crying out

Fighting tomorrow

Doesn’t save the souls tonight

We can pour out drinks

Until the ground rattles

In intoxication

But until we get tired

Of going through motions

People will keep dying

You’ll keep living

As if everyone is alive

Between Us

Inches between us. Desperate miles. The wheels lift off the tarnack, and everything fades to black. Blue for my heart. Green for my eyes. They don’t deserve your kindness. He doesn’t deserve your body. Control yourself. It’s okay. She’ll come back. She always does. But that was the summer, and it’s almsost a new year. Sometimes I wish I could quit on all my commitments and come find you. Listening. Through the storm, through the pain, through all the people that push you to edge. Let me carry you again. It’s so hard finding time to talk. It’s so hard finding moments to step out of the simulation and become one. I really got to learn something about you today. Sobering but necessary. I needed to be reminded of the fighter you are. Underneath that pretty face is a. Warrior. You might know it, you might not. You might now. They don’t tell you, but they should. And if they won’t, then I will.

Poetry Starts

Nobody picked me first for anything. Games. Dates. Movies. Dinners. Lunches. Parties. Friends. Calls. Texts. Dates. I was always picked last. If I could gather them. Somehow, all of them. In front of me now. If I could stand on the mountaintops and scream into my twenties, thirties, and forties. Until I died of exhaustion. Take a look at me now, don’t bother at looking where I’ve been. So far, so long, anxious past. Good riddance, anxiety in the face of the public eye. I make my own memories, dreams, and watching my words fly gives more confidence that this can be done. I don’t need affirmative action. I don’t need pity, sympathy, or empathy. I just need time. It took six years to reach this goal. And now that I’m there, I feel it’s time to strike again. Finally, after nineteen years of bitterness. Somebody picked me first. To lead off a publication of poets. Incredible. Devereaux Frazier is where poetry starts.

Show Me

Don’t show me your body. Show me what’s underneath devious skin. Deceptive layers of flesh are hardly attractive in the darkness we dance in. There are galaxies of inevitable possibility within you. If I can reach inside I’d find the stars. NASA looks up, but I look straight ahead. For what I’ve already found, for what I wish to. Love isn’t just a four letter word that tells you I care. It’s a four letter word that tells you I don’t care what they think of us. If this reality is too hard for them, then find another one. But this is here. This is now. And this. These hours. These moments. These memories. This laughter. This family. These words. These publications. It’s mine. Mine.

What It Needs

I never know

What I’m going to write about

Some days

I just plop down whatever words

Come to mind

Sometimes they come to me

As I’m in action

Other times, long after it’s happened

My favorite lines

Are the ones that I never expect to breathe

The ones that ride on tears

As they leave my eyes, knowing they’re free

Locked up pain I release into heaven

No longer capable of weighing me down

I used to have a hard time forgiving

I used to want revenge on everyone

Because I thought I had to

My ego insisted I needed to take action

When the best course of action

Is often none taken at all

I take insults worth a grain of salt

Because I know I am not the source of their pain

Simply a conduit of release

Rather than bidding them heaps of curses

I hope they find the peace I did

It’s not the pain that changes you

But the recovery

And through my metamorphosis

I’ve found a new sense of compassion

For the world, for my self, for the future

The world doesn’t need technology

It doesn’t need a new breed of human

It simply needs you to stop thinking

You’re the one that knows what it needs

FINALLY: PUBLISHED

Z Publishing House recently released the Maryland, Carolinas, and Virginia edition of their Americas Emerging Poets of 2018 series, and I WAS PUBLISHED IN IT!

It’s truly been an incredible journey, and one full of disappointments and thoughts I might not ever reach this goal. Since I started writing at the age of 13, I hoped to have my words in a book. Through my own personal blog that I’ve run for nearly three years, countless writers groups, endless books, and hundreds of poems (many of which were terrible), I’ve discovered and re-discovered a part of me that I never knew I had. Now i never knew how I lived without it. For those that follow me on here, Instagram, and other venues that have published my words (SpillWords, Teen Ink, Blood Into Ink, Go Dog Go Cafe, and many others), thank you for always supporting me and encouraging me to keep writing. Even when it was hard, even when I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. If you don’t mind taking a look, and maybe even buying, I would greatly appreciate it!

Seeing Myself

I see not my breath, but I know it exists

I see not my heart, but feel it beating

So too I do not see god, but know he is there

No mystical mystery, no need for a ceremony

Just a walk outside my door to embrace

The integral harmony in all I do and see

How everything is made to work together

For each other, not against

It’s hard being human, imperfect and dirty

Underneath clouds that give us life

And a sun that gives us light

Impossible to comprehend it all

And it seems like all I do is fall

How easy is it to remain subject

To whims of slave masters unseen

When I am created to rise above

I have a million dreams, and I am free in all

I live

To fight and keep my breath unadulterated

Darkness surrounds and seeks to permeate

The fabric of my integrity

Life feels so much deeper now

That I’m older, I see loopholes

I see fatigue, I see a mess of me

I see misery

I see

Me