Blood Message

Slash

marked man

Slash/Slash

the rapists smile

Slash

owned

Slash

dehumanized

disfigured

humiliated

for Life

Slash

branded 

you are my w***e

Slash

randomness

don't even know

your f*****g name

Slash

ripping/slicing/cutting

22mtrs of

living organic thing

Slash

never f*****g liked you

Slash

go on, I f*****g dare you

                   SLASH/

                                  SLASH/

sniffing heroin off

Stanley blades

Slash

randomness

               and wrong looked wrong

                                                blamed

                 SLASH/

                                        SLASH/

                              sniff sniff

     the chib maker's blues

sends a blood message

                                  to you

                      Slash

uncaring and unconcerned

                              SLASH/

                                       /SLASH

Reviews

[Eilis]

The barbarity of youthful bravado leaving marks for the future. It’s a very graphic walk through (what I imagine as) a kind of inner-city violence. Though could be anywhere where the young are left to themselves. Young men slashing a way through life taking control in whatever ways they can.

I have a tendency to see the ways people lash out and become something volatile in a sympathetic light. I mean, we all need sympathy at times, so not saying that’s bad, just never can see things without the complexity of history (personal or collective) dusting them. Senseless violence is, of course, not the most effective way of climbing out of the dark hole of experience. But, I think that ever-elusive construct we call society has to bear some of the burden for the ways it imposes itself on humanity.

What always interests me is the fact that there is obviously something about violence that draws us in. So many popular programs on television are parades of violence and carnage and we just keep coming back. Speaks to some dormant thing in us perhaps. Our old-wild nature that has learned to temper the anger a little better.

I don’t know. Feel I’m rambling. Trying to quiet that cold, angled slicing of the Stanley blade reverberating through my head. It’s a visceral portrait of a certain kind of life or mindset, Gram. Well-painted to lead the reader down the dark path of the chib maker’s blues.

[gram linski]

thanks, Eilis, aye we seem to have an undying thirst for violence, most of us have probably thought bad thoughts to someone, at some time, but we have too much compassion and humanity to act so maybe living vicariously through the callous disregard is the appeal

[Chris Shaw]

A reminder not to walk in inner city areas at night. The surge in knife crime is horrifying. The violence by young people on young people, usually drug related is of huge concern. Ripping, slashing, slicing, cutting. Just writing those words send shivers down my spine. The victims become younger and younger, school kids fgs. You have summed up every mother's fear, letting their teenagers out at night. Death and disfigurement.

Chris

[gram linski]

aye terror of our time, on the bright side we don't have guns, think of how savage the next generation might be

[R.E. Ray]

Gram, you've certainly captured the graphic violence of such knife attacks. It's like a scene in a horror movie. It seems we have a increasing violence problem on the planet (less about guns, knives and bombs). I think it's a bad cocktail of desensitization (to violence and death) through social media and stirred up hated by the most vile fanatics. Regardless, what you've conveyed in this poem stirs a deep fear as we think about walking the streets.

[gram linski]

thanks man, always appreciate your reviews,, it is a sad sorry tale descending into madness, with no off switch or egress points of any kind

[John the Baptist]

Jack the Ripper could have written this one. Or maybe the guy who killed the Black Dahlia. Very graphic, especially the SLASH sound effects. This is your mind on drugs.

[gram linski]

thanks for reading, John, this is not my mind on drugs this is the ugly truth of knife culture, which is rampant, over here, much like you guys and your guns, lol

[John the Baptist]

Interesting that the UK has a knife problem. Has the govt. tried to regulate them?

[gram linski]

haha, the knife amnesty means f**k all, you get rid of dirty blades and keep the rest for best,