James Diaz
The Time Of My Life
Once I was born
And ruined
And so much was lost along the way
like a broken radio I kept my parts intact
even in silence
I waited for signal return
an unlikely kind of wild
like maybe forgiveness is always unearned
and whose hands were first to shatter me
also loved me and so on and so on
is it a god, this thing in my band-aid heart telling me
how to breathe like a bent arrow through luck-shot air
my god, kid, can you believe we made it this far
and you’d like to laugh it off
but no matter, it matters, you look a lot like them
your people, your kin, your kind
they went wild on you, ate you up,
my god, kid, don’t you know you had to come this way
along the riven path
that your bones were already lit and your blaze is beautiful.
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2018). 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. 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.
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