"Tornado"

You can listen to the audio above as you read this poem about drugs, loss and sadness

October 29, 2009…
I lay back flat,
At the base of a tornado
Facing
A
Spiral kaleidoscope
Of glass chards
Ripped
From bits
Of misfit existence,
Twisting
At dangerous distance…

Reflections,
From my social mishap chronicles,
Fell victim,
To the prison
Of personal holocaust,
Where I was nothing more than a number in the system,
A lost vision,
Lined up at death camp
Waiting
For the methodic removal
Of my personality…

And as I lay back flat
I remember being young…

See I had this friend named Joe who meant the world to me.
Joe was,
Perfect splatter paint
Branded,
On life’s bland canvas,
Outlandish and candid,
The one who didn’t stand me up stranded
When family did…

We grew up together,
The ones never
Getting letters,
From girls in class 
Saying,
“Do you like me?
Check YES or NO”,
Never the ones 
In style,
Or in the know,
Just lingering
In the shadow,
Of this quid pro quo
Plateau
Below
The standards of what others thought
We ought
To be,
Although,
We had we
And see,
That was enough for me…

We were sleepovers,  
To Saturday morning cartoons,
Afternoons 
Of forts in the woods
Defending fabricated monsoons, 
Typhoons,
And enemy platoons,
If I ever felt minute,  
Like a grain of sand,
Joe was the comfort of a desert dune…

October 30, 2009…
They found Joe dead today

Cold
From a heroin overdose.

He was
Bunched up, bruised, banged, battered and blue,
Eyes rolled so far back in his head
I can only imagine he watched his last thoughts
Passing through,
I thought
Can this taboo be true?
Was it really your cue 
To bid adieu?
Cuz it feels like they ripped liberty
Right from the statue,
A rusty shank carved
A dark hue,
Tattoo,
In my heart…

I remember your mother,
She was a queen we underrated,
Now berated
With desecrated images faded,
The child that she created
Now outdated,
And she’s sedated to this faded state
Of aggregated hate,
Jaded,
And now invaded ,
By a life unaided,
So Joe
I pray you went to heaven,
Cuz from what I hear,
Hell is over-populated…

Now comes this struggle 
To stay strong through the hurt,
To establish values
And not revert
To the havoc I reaped
When I caused my static,
So I remember your smile,
So charismatic,
Before you went on that erratic
Path
As a heroin fanatic,
Systematic and problematic,
Yet just another struggling addict
With an anticlimactic 
Finale,
And now
I just got these lines of 
Didactic mathematics,
And the toys of your memories
In the dark corners of my mind’s attic…

This feeling,
Is lonely and strange,
The wrench in my gut,
A lunar phase change disdained,
A foreign exchange
That rains pain
And stains
Like blood from the veins
Of your lifeless remains,
And I persist to contain 
This throbbing feeling 
So profane,
So all I can do,
Is beg to some higher power,
to grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change…

One of the strongest triggers that sparks slam poems, unfortunately, is love and loss. Death comes in many forms, which means each spoken word piece about death can be quite different and unique. Poetry slams provide a forum where poets can dig into their emotion to talk about their issues, their story and their message - it's not uncommon to see them (us, me...) get choked up on stage when performing work about loss. This piece is about a friend I grew up with and how a world of drugs, heroin and addiction took over. The piece talks about how that affects the lives that touched his.

Other recommended poems based on this one:  WAR  |  INTRO  |  I SEE YOU THERE  |  TO ME

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