someone needed to do this

The following is part of the 2019 May Poetry Feature at C4SS.

Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.

I wanna promise, I’ll come home. But if I don’t-

If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

Someone needed to do this. It had to be me, okay?

They’ll maybe try to make my corpse say what I won’t.

Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.

If I do though, just know that I wouldn’t go another way.

Ask me to stop giving you nightmares, but I don’t.

If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

All I did was make bits of color in a world of gray-

I don’t apologize for that. I’m sorry, but I won’t.

Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.

Sometimes by writing, sometimes fighting, I took any way

to know I was alive. I dreamt, as the dead don’t.

If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-

I ain’t sorry. I wish I’d do it every day

Someone needed to do this. Who will, if I won’t?

Momma, I’m gonna try real hard not to die today.

If some pig murders me, whatever the talking heads say-