Crying

Crying (in honor of Shannon)

Every day I cry when I think of the hurt

Every day I cry when the lassitude’s of destruction

You have laid on my poor grieving heart

Come crashing down on my head

“It’s not you, it’s me” you said

It’s not me that broke up my world

Made it all come crashing down

That was you too

It wasn’t me that had to break up with my voicemail

That was you as well

All the time I’m stewing in my own head, crying

Looking at pictures of us, crying

Thinking about your family functions, crying

Driving to and from work, listening to pitifully sad love songs

Still crying every step of the way

I try to call you and you ignore my calls

You won’t let me have closure and end it like a grown up

So I have to sit here stuck in infancy

Trying to figure out how to do anything besides cry

I need to pick my heart up again

Restructure the pieces back into a solid figure

My heart is broken and I want to make it whole again

But I keep crying

I want to move, yet I keep crying

Stagnated by the way you left me in the dark

Holding and consoling myself, and still crying

"An Akili Carter original"

When Love is Madness

When love is madness (in honor of Marni)
When you cannot figure out what is going to happen next

When every word they say goes through your chest

When those words crash into your heart like shrapnel

The love makes you mad like you have no sanity

All you can say is “you drive me crazy”

So as you drink in his unpredictability

He lives in insanity

But not as in crazy

He keeps you off balance emotionally

While he drains his emotions in liquid libation

Stifled by sporadic emotional masturbation

Today he is emotive, tomorrow he might not be

You want to return to the first days of how he used to be

The time when he used to be so sweet and caring

Now all he seems to care about is everything but you

When love is madness you try to remain stable

When love is madness you attempt to smile

There’s no medication or therapy to fix this hurt

There’s no one person besides him, whom can Aleve this hurt

You want him to grab you and hug you, to relieve the hurt

So tired of reliving this hurt and pain

I just want to be normal again

I so often forget what is normal again and again

Never knew if we were normal to begin with

When you cannot figure out what is going to happen next

When every word he says goes through your chest

When those destroy your heart and prevent it from beating

When love is madness

The madness seems never ending


"An Akili Carter original"

Through the bottle

Alcoholic mother, father, and brother

Drinking always the lone thing that connects them together

Liquor the substance that appears thicker than blood

For their family

I try to sit back and look at things objectively

But get so angry that I feel like I need a drink myself

Want to take the drama and displace it for her

Want to destroy the negativity and transform it into something more

They are always looking at each other through the bottle

The only strong family ties seemed to be sewn together

Amongst the beer and vodka goldschlager and grey goose

I look at she and she only looks sad and hurt

Even though she looked for more from them

They were always looking back at her through a bottle

Incessantly swigging, shot-ing, and chugging

The alcohol lubricating the pain that has been omnipresent

Dusting her heart with glass bottle shards

Cancer, homeless, locked up, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg

Dancing around each other in an alcohol hazed stupor

Her mind numbs and slows as if she was drinking when she sees them

I see them, meticulously destroy her

She wants them to show love and share their hearts

But none of them know how to express anything but criticism

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”

And the drinks take them back into their cold closed off hearts

Not knowing how to tell their sister and daughter that they love her

Not knowing how to express love

Looking for love she is

But all they can show her is the empty bottle

The empty loves in their life

All I can do is show her that at the end of the day

Empty bottles are just empty bottles

"An Akili Carter original"