Who's Your Dealer?
Art from www.poshmark.com (art by bri_tan)
My dope dealer was my doctor, Prescriptions Kept me running back, Until I just laid and couldn’t feel the attack. With no way to escape, now I’m always under.
My dope dealer was my teacher. Messages stuck with me until I couldn’t think for myself. What I passed put me in a class I couldn’t drop, so I graduated to rehab, where the black boards were security guards. Dressed in chalk white. Resembling sheets that covered and were never peeked from under. Big smiles-some missing teeth- made me think of pills. Hard and bitter, which messed me up on the inside.
My dope dealer was my parent. What I learned and carried put me through situations I never imagined. I loved and judged. for the right and wrong reasons. My attitude and weight changed with the seasons. Cold, hot, gloomy, breezy, sunny, dark, and I always left my mark.
My dope dealer is myself. I AM, what I believe and tell... Sometimes it’s detrimental, disgusting, and hurtful. But I follow those up with loving, positive, sayings I feel in my spirit.
What I hear makes me wanna kick the habit. Running back and forth, stuck undecided. I never knew anyone who truly quit something bad before their life ended.
I was raised to NOT-BE -A-QUITTER.AND I want to be a winner. I know the only way for me to fail is stopping myself from healing.
What I’m dealing has to please me, more than family or women. And I feel I always need to please them, or I’m a bad product. My environment right now is a mess-needs cleaning-they say it’s close to godliness. That’s how potent my dope needs to be.
Everyone’s Problem
You are not your problems-unless you refuse to solve them.
I heard Jordan Peterson say something similar.
These types of statements always make me wonder “how we make simple things difficult.”
Reminds me of staying where you don’t want to be, because you came with someone who doesn’t want to leave.
Sure, they are strong and independent, but they also rely on you for strength.
Huh, I said rely—like really lie, because they could’ve gotten here on their own. They used you so they could stay new, whole, lose themselves and be kept together by a chaperone.
When chaperones lose the one, their caring for—it’s disgusting, like hurting a newborn.
Stranger Danger
You want to know how they knew how to hurt you. They learned it from you. Friends become strangers forced to teach familiar lessons. All because you refused to listen.
Listen to me.
I know you're asking WHY?
I’m about to tell you.
I've been deaf for a- lot of years. And since were being honest it’s only been during everyone who's loved me's lifetime.
YES.. It’s possible, Because I didn't want to hear the truth. If you loved me, you had to take my faults. And if you left then f!!k you. But don't think for one second, I'm putting up with your aggravation.
My Nana used to say " The older they get the dumber they act" She kept it real about men and women.
I was smart enough to know being alone after you screwed love makes you desperate. Searching and begging, thinking all that pleasing will keep me. And it did. Kept me using you. The same escape that keeps addicts on the move.
Are you hearing me now?
No? You feel me tho. Heart kicking, from your mind flipping, muscles spazzing, remembering when… A stranger got their revenge.
Strange because you loved how the two of you were the ones who would be forever.
But all that lasted were scars and trauma. You were lied to and betrayed, trapped in hurt even after you realized you got what you deserved.
You want to know how they knew how to hurt you. They learned it from you. Friends become strangers forced to teach familiar lessons. All because you refused to listen.
Child Support (Part 2)
Fathers’
We’re supposed to help and support without court mandates or too late death bed gatherings and prayers. The best way to do that is to be honest about the times we didn’t figure it out— which for a-lot of us is our entire lives.
We need to listen without interrupting, judging, or injecting our own sob stories using our child as a therapist. Dumping our shit in their lap for relief. Catching them off guard for approval and acceptance.
Allow your child to come to you— without sinking them deeper into the life their asking for help avoiding.
If fathers treated their children like a ball game, dice game, the blame game, or the pimp game, every child would be well rounded and never feel love was missing in action.
Nahhh, Fuck that tho. That’s the problem. Dead-beats don’t take providing serious, so they cheat on responsibility like at their point in life, it’s ok to be curious. And in all fairness, it is—just not at the expense of… Ahh who am I kidding. Grown up’s always find an excuse and swear it’s a valid reason they ain’t shit.
FATHERHOOD AIN’T NOTHING TO PLAY WITH. Absent parents lead to dropped futures. Fuck boy, you can’t build or heal, sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing. Plus, I always thought you was the real deal. That’s what you always bragged about. With your friends, whom now that I think about it, had an eerie resemblance, ya’ll were twins, from fathers who must’ve screwed over the same type. Bragging, chasing, flirting with other women—who never seemed to mind a child.
“What’s that saying? —, women don’t want men who aren’t wanted or taken.” I read that somewhere in the pussy scriptures-or one of the books written by pimps--great fucking literature.
Running through excuses is not a hustle. Teaching youth to play through falls, scrapes, and bruises YOU inflicted—is a healthy neglect—encouraging babies to grow up and pass the same test.
A Better Man’s World (how conflict resolution made me a better man and father)
Today I realized,
I am great. Because I wasn't resolving my mistakes.
So, I stopped despising my kids for theirs. That feeling may not last all day. But I know why I had it. Because I want the best for them, and they are making some of the same bad moves I made. Some are new and some of them are also good.
But when anyone doesn't listen to a man, we (men) feel like we are being threatened. We think this person must not respect me, so they must be plotting an attack and, will be a problem in the future.
But if you to pay attention, you'll realize you're not listening to them either. You’re too occupied with getting your way to see that your way isn’t working for them, and didn’t work perfectly for you either. You had to adjust and still do.
Everybody wants something different and that doesn't make them wrong. or a threat.
The goal to conflict resolution is to leave with peace- not- more- conflict. That can be hard because we fight ourselves to resolve everything. Men always want to be viewed as strong. And we believe anything other than conquering makes look weak.
I had to resolve that emotion because I don’t want to conquer my kids.
Today I realized
I am a lover
I am a fighter
I am a coward (I avoid and hide from what I don't wanna do)
I am brave (I just admitted all these things to myself)
I am angry
I am peaceful
I just wanna f!!k
I just wanna be left alone
I want it all.
I submit to understanding myself and only resolving weaknesses that conquer my strength. Everything else is a waste of my time.
Kingpin's Diary
Art by Jeffrey Huet
I’m gonna re-live my hood dream of becoming a kingpin. Like celebrities, rappers and scientists, promoting drugs benefits.
Encourage youth to become addicts-to gain new experiences, speed up aging and overdose on the wasted talent parents never recovered from.
That’s the wave. Too high for help. Too low to get away. Crime pays if you have the money to make it legal. The business is global, the world wants more zombies, roaming streets, stuck behind screens, filling prisons, and experimental rehab facilities.
It brings attention. Gives me a name and popularity for something other than modeling for anxiety and depression.
Oh' stop being weak. Society created me. I am reincarnated for every generation.
But here's the secret, stop me now or your kids will pay later.
Please. I need you. To try me.
BLACK-LIST
Nenikas Art
Currently, I Am in the process of acquiring the income of the one percent. I have the mental capacity and clarity to see my past, present and future based on my behavior. So, I can reach and live in their dimension. Thats how I see myself. Don’t talk to me if you don’t see my vision.
Deep Thoughts.
Can a man’s deepest gifts be something other than seeds of life? Let’s fuckin’ find out.
Brotherly Love
I can make a body turn cold. Brother love is cruel. You understand, I didn't want the same as you. I don't stand for ignorance. It makes us look foolish.
Get close for control. Hugs set up alignment of coffins. Handshakes nail it tight. Finger snaps and hand claps sound like discipline and warning shots.
The signal people are onto you. Flesh hollers, but you couldn't be bothered. Deaf to the noise because getting off is calling. You Stay on point to be what you claim not to want.
Pressure
What type of pressure do you like? And where?
Throat or down below.
Hold up or press the throttle? When family looks at you like there’s no tomorrow. Do you dig the next mans or find your own bottom.
Lessons spew, like a parent’s tongue and food battling to stick. They pray it’s not crime lurking.
Murdering innocence has the world leaking like a hydrant. Sending it downstream only passes on the shit.
Press her. Pres-sir. Written on sheets, the ones that crumble, burn covering others or wash clean, when you bleed a lie, it stains, occupying its hold. When you stress the truth, it creates a terror—people run for cover.
Press and surely lose. Don’t take what bothers another.
Know-ledge
Do you know your ledge?
I know mine.
I accept my vanity without judging others for who they are. But ugliness that’s not physically attached to me is a burning image that blinds.
I don’t pretend I’m entitled to war because we disagree. But the title I hold in my mind says you need to provide my peace.
Making others happy doesn’t guarantee my own because sometimes I just don’t feel anyone deserves it. And the time I don’t want to be bothered is when people need the most.
Silently judging and holding a grudge makes me feel safe enough to move forward.
What I love now may take life tomorrow. But that’s not permission for you to ruin it for me with momentary sorrow.
Kill it.
Fuck it.
Love it.
Feel it.
Laughing is the body preparing to cry. All the same emotions we feel at the beginning and end of life.
The Happy Fool
I never had the mindset to find happiness in lack. I might dig up some motivation to get out, but comfort calls me back.
The hustle for survival? Lonely strength, encouraging submission of men and women, IF, I can help them, but don’t need theirs.
When you’re disciplined to take, you don’t notice it all escape.
Find happiness before tragedy hits.
Remember The Love
Image From Get Rich or Die Trying movie
There’s a freedom that comes with letting your mind rampage and dream up chaos until the tension releases and you feel the calm after an orgasm.
Reality shows we’re all a little crazy. So, we let our mind wander and think we’re lost.
But everyone has a landmark. Remember the little things you like and bring back that happy inner child. Thats the dream we have to keep real, and the reality we must not kill.
The Players Prayer
With the silence of a windy night, rattling door handles and knocking belongings off dressers. Donnie rushed to his confession booth. Cut the lights, stripped then jumped in the shower.
With a jerking movement, he scrubbed off scents that spark intuition. Men have it too. It’s called fuck into forgiveness.
The steam and alcohol vapors transported him to his dream vacation. Face underneath a waterfall. The Lover- boy drown. Then he panicked, thinking about the mess left behind.
He began as all desperate do:
Lord, please help me divorce myself.
I AM SO TIRED of my shit.
Please Please Please get me through this. I promise to never do it again… IF YOU HELP.
Donnie heard a voice and became scared and weak.
He clutched his eyes tighter. Listening closer, the voice sounded eerily familiar.
He thought; is it my conscience telling me to stop ass-betting? A straight up loss, even if I win. Live men know only dead one’s gamble on skins.
The voice said, “Last chance to behave.” “This ain’t a self-improvement seminar, you don’t get to leave with a promise to change for better.
Donnie said “I know. But sinners knoweth not how to stop. It feels too good in the moment. And the only thing we can’t resist is temptation.
The voice said “wait a minute. I need you to elaborate.”
He opened his eyes and saw his wife.
The Killing Joke.
PART 1
Every man for himself. Thrive on survival. The type that brings “What woulda been” love. Memories and “What they could’ve been” talk.
Stars who hated practice, but played every game to miss births, and birthdays, and forced selfish celebrations, from bail, fulfilled sentences, funeral services and graveyard visits.
We’re told “life is hard”. But dead boys’ bodies feel… Thats too tough to talk about, and all I hold onto to keep me strong. They leave a life of revenge.
Their girls get bent over to raise bastards, who make mothers suffer, running away from being like their fathers, who didn’t like drama and criticized reality t.v. but made their own on sidewalks.
We’re asked, “couldn’t they take the straight path”?
What’s that?
A blunt?
A line of coke?
A dope line, round the corner?
A bed made by the coroner.
Some say I think like the lost generation, but they find a way to grab attention every day and we always pay for it.
Part 2
You a funny nigga.
Oh yeah? You find a joke to avoid truth. The real nigga is YOU.
PART 3
Help!
Bang! (gunshot)
Mannn… Help ya self.
Bang!
Daaannng! Why you so selfish?
Click!
Go head, Kill yaself man
Why?
Man can’t afford to be helpless.
Bang!
That’s what happens when you reckless.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!!!
Dearly Departed:
Visit your loved ones. Tell them don’t restart how it all started. Tell them to imagine what it means to be alive and live their dreams. Show them that making enemies one with nature ain’t as important as nurturing love.
Let’s Ride
If I say I love, you. I mean it at that moment. But we all know nothing lasts forever. So, don’t be upset when it ends because nothing lasts forever. We can’t survive on history, or our future will be the stop where we get off.
DIG IT
It hurts good. Contorting. Reaching down, deep. Hitting, scraping, banging against a wall would make lesser god’s stop. But I’m trying to decorate. I have designer paint
I’m a producing mother-fucker
I feel you loosening. Wobbly. A shakiness that makes me clutch instead of run. Sucking me in.
I hold you until we’re both wrecked. A pleasurable assault that earns me respect.
Angry Therapy
Art by Louie VanPatten
I
Am a nice guy.
My smile might turn dagger sharp in a minute. I want to hug you and might think how easy it is to hurt you and swear you’re thinking about hurting me.
I
Don’t know what you take me for. And I hate I never will. You can tell me whatever you want. I won’t believe you until I want to be satisfied.
I
Don’t know why you’re looking at me like I assaulted you, because now you’re making me think about assaulting you.
I
Am enlightened.
Also tired of feeling my mind explode into fireworks. Thoughts ignite words that flame relationships. Sailing, and fizzling from view until lost.
I
Am not always like this.
I promise. But I will be again. Just like you will embrace it. You want someone to fix. Suck and fuck away your patience and strength. You want an excuse to regret.
I
Am willing to give it without regrets. Until…
I
Am alone.
Always… Running away from a calling. Breaking curfew to hang with the few who accept what I AM.