by James Diaz
I’m the kind of secret no one knew how to keep
pain pine and deep, I was wintry red
lotto scratch off’s walkin’ along the highway
wishin’ I knew what life on the other side
every kind of other side – was really like
then I drifted in my head for years and years
went to war with voices that were mine mine mine
took little scar-back roads up and down my body
laughed when I should have cried
cried when I should have laughed
someone told me one day; look kid,
you get to choose the kinda life
you’re gonna lead, fuck all what happened to you then
what’s happenin’ now?
I had no answer so I started digging for one
I dug hard, you dig, hard
broke ground
under stars so beautiful my heart almost exploded
I held a little version of broken in my tremblin’ hands
and outlined it in gold
I held the past out to the past
and I said; I am sold
on this life, I am sold.
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor (along with Elisabeth Horan & Amy Alexander) of the anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2019). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and prison/confinement. His work can be found in Yes, Poetry, The Collidescope and Isacoutic*. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.
(Make sure to also read James’s poem How You Belong in the World from the November 11, 2019 Weekly. – Elephants Never)