I'm Just Trying to Live

He spoke with silence,

the smokers lived there

Back in black alleys

with blacker, burnt air

But he was trapped

his chords rotten red

with his huffs and his puffs,

he left his voice dead

Momma whispered

"Erase mistakes soon!"

but she never warned

that mistakes erase you

What would give back his voice?

Maybe the angels heard,

they sent thick, ancient liquid—

Water, in word

So he penned honest prose

of shadows and thoughts,

of a child's green meadow,

and crimes that child stalked

The words that he swam in

flowed in water he drank,

they wrote the erased,

and a voice that now thanked

They ask him why does he write

Why's it words that he gives?

He takes a deep breath:

I'm just trying to live