To Lose a Human, to Lose Yourself

A Poem by Oveane

Ranting writing portraying my anger and impatience, through which I can do nothing for the one that I've lost. November 4th, 2016 was the day the police found him.

I have so much frustration that I just want to punch a tree until it dies.
I have so much anger that it has compressed into a thousand lies,
and WHEN I stop to think about the state of the world, I am enraged
because this is not a world I have created, it is what we have created,
we lie to ourselves, our children, our very people that we know and trust
only to delay our pain and agony another day, holding it within us,
thinking it's for the good of our future, all the little things.

I just want to scream, or laugh, or I wouldn't ever know.
I want to yell, fight, and I want to punch that tree
for taking someone I knew dearly; this is what it is, America;
so hard to explain feelings, passion, compassion, empathy, sympathy
Because we've only ever lied to ourselves. And what is the truth?

What would ever be the truth?

Need we keep ourselves in chains and binds?
Need we write a thousand miles' worth of words to ever
uncover what we will ever know about the world?

Must we keep losing lives, dying, seeing ourselves fall
in order to keep motivating us, reminding us to stay authentic
even though we lose so many people, we lose our voices,
we pretend not to care, even though there is yet still something
on this horrid earth that we do indeed live for?

We live because it is the pain that moves us forward,
we let others control us, and we won't be leaders because
we are scared, well I'll tell you, I'll tell you-
I'll tell you the story of the day I died.

Show, and not tell, they say, to keep us back, hold us back...
keep us under their ugly shells and their furious anger
holding their pain within themselves.

Two O'clock on a fine autumn morning.
Buzzer rings my phone out on the desk, text from my dad.
I pick it up; "recognize this kid?" He asks.
To my disbelief, I read the article on the press democrat news.

It's him. It's him. It's Kirk. I knew him.
And the more I read the article, the less I could ever understand.
That stupid man; getting himself stabbed, in fact,
so much that the police won't release how many times.
I can feel the frustration growing. The anger growing.
I pick up the staff I've held for so many years.
I examine its remarkable, weighted shell.
Thwack! Thwack! I stab at the matted floor,
Tack! Tack! CRACK!

The bond I've ever known and loved, thinned out and gone.
So much power in a single arm, strength I'd never known before,
from so many people lost, I thought I had them in my grasp, but
these ways and things they do to themselves, I can't believe it.
I can't believe any of this. I'm on the floor, clenching my gut in
both arms, as if I were the one stabbed, right in the heart,
right in the kidney, the liver, the lung, all the more.

I thought I'd had died then and there if not for me
raising my two good arms, gathering the two ends, and
holding them together; a perfect split two-thirds from the tip.
Then, I drop it. I drop it and clench my gut all the more.

I have come to learn that life is a privilege. To be outside,
to be anywhere else but the homes we know and love,
to be outside and not be hit or stabbed or robbed of the
ones who redirect their anger to any other living creature;
I vow never to become them. I hold the two ends up,
I accept it; I accept that it happened, whether it had to
or not, but if I ever find out who had done it, who had
killed an innocent bike rider that day...

Then lest it be known that by the two sharp ends of
this staff I await, eager to stab it into the shell of the
soul-torn and pained individual that would stab a man the
same age as I just like that, leaving them to bleed out and
die in the mud.

The police found Kirk a buried,
muddy mess on the floor from the rainfall.

If what builds us is our pain, then it is our anger that causes us
to give pain. So many times have we, the victims, been yelled at,
harassed, ignored, and shunned for existing. With the two ends,
I await the man who took the life of my friend.

I rest here, anger and agony, thirsting for revenge.
It only adds on to the rest of the pain I have collected over the
span of my short life, gathering mud within my soul, everything
I've ever known and loved clogged as my friend falls, and so does
my own family member fall.

I just think, as I am at my family's funeral, Kirk
is in the dirt, in the mud this whole time; so much energy
gone to one individual, when there are others dying, losing
their lives in this world, whether they bring it upon themselves,
or it is collected from a stranger they do not know.

Whether for justice, for honor, for hope, it pains me more
to compress the anger, because I know that I will not direct it
upon anyone but by the pumping blood of my own will;
I vow to become stronger, mentally and physically, for
if this is the world that you, I, and ourselves in America
will let happen to ourselves, then life is no different from
living now and living to see the Two O'clock news.

I await, limited ocean of anger, though it has far since passed
the boundaries which I had at first known. And now, I lie no longer;
I write with as much truth as I know. If there are always to be citizens,
laws, rules, regulations, taxes, tuition, and work, then in this society
with as much anger as possible, whether we may comprehend it or not,
we, the ones out there who can absorb this anger and dissipate it
await, await, and wait all the more; for the one who will once again
attempt to stab into our heart and souls, not knowing who we are,
and we not knowing they; those who will dare steal the life of another
then let it be known that we who hide are waiting for you to arrive.

I wait in the shadows so that I can see this burning, red light all the more.