We Survive 

We walk with bullet holes in our backs

But we survive

And we don’t wear envy yet – but we drink sugared tea to forget

And we survive

We march for the bus in worn out shoes
and sometimes we lose

But we survive

And those bailiff’s love letters are the price we pay for our freedom.
We’re hungry now
but hungrier to be free
and we’re often beaten shamed

But we survive untamed.

Alice Smith

Who can hear

My silent scream, mouth wide open screaming with no sound

Who can hear

The pounding, heart beating, banging, drumming inside my torso

Who can hear

My tears, flowing, cascading, in torrents within my mind

Who can hear

The stillness, no movement in my soul

Who can hear

The void, echoing inside me, a gaping canyon

Who can hear

My frustration, anxious moments, helpless fear

Who can hear

My love falling, down into the core of the earth, buried for eternity

Who can hear

The deafening sound of your deafness

Anon (54)

Pain

Overwhelming it nags at me like a demon pulling me further into this blackened earth

Squeezing life out of me with your crushing embrace

You stab me over and over and I’m bleeding from everywhere but especially my eyes

I splutter blood curdling spouts out of my mouth choking to breathe with every beat of my failing heart

Tears into me with searing ferocity I’m in a sadist heaven that I never chose

And a flash of your eyes in vitriolic victory like a big game hunt kill

And then nothing but numbness the world spinning around like a graceful sphere as I enter an ethereal realm

Like Alice through the looking glass I’m there but I’m gone

I’m erased but present and you laugh and smear and scorn

While I cannot remember anything but this pain.

Oh this pain….

Anon (54)