child abuse

THIS LITTLE BOY

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

I was doing some Spring cleaning which involved putting some things away in storage. One of the things I was putting away was some photo albums that I had. Yes there are things as pictures like real photos from a  camera roll. I started flipping through the album and I came across this photo. I was a cute kid of only 8 years of age. I look at his smile and it’s way to surreal. I can’t understand how I had so much resilience. How at that age I just smiled for that camera when I was living in so much fear. This face in the picture was beaten all the time. I walked on eggshells and already knew how to look at body language and the music mommy was hearing. It was from there that I knew whether it was going to be a great day or a day where I had to stay far away from her as possible. At this age I was so scared to speak or move for mommy ruled with a strict iron fist and a painful backhand.

At this time in my life I was molested multiple times. I was deathly scared of him and he was persistent and made sure he got his 3 visits in weekly. He also silenced me with bodily harm and threats of death. He was the one that instilled the fear I had of being alone, of being around multiple men at the same time. He was the reason I was a bedwetter. The beatings I received because of it. He gave me anxiety every time which was constant because he was always around my family and lived on the same block. He tainted my belief of what love was. It was him that made me believe for a very long time in my life that love hurts, love is non-existent. That all I was to offer was sex because who the hell wanted to love a faggot! He became the blue print to the men I would love- unavailable, not mine, secretive and 2nd best.

That little boy in the picture already knew how to fight mentally. I already knew that life was not going to be easy. That the world was cruel and I had to maneuver around it. I had no voice at all let alone an understanding so all I had was my mind. All I had was music and make believe places I’d transport to in books. There was no safety at all and I wouldn’t have any till my teens. I was broken in so many ways that I can’t believe I am here. Though sad to see this pic I salute that little boy who hid all this in that smile if for just one second. Te amo negrito porque viviste una tragedia y saliste campeón. I love you little brown boy because you survived huge tragedies and came out a champion.

#37 CUANDO EL PERDON ES FUERTE WHEN FORGIVING IS STRONG

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

It’s been a minute since I sat and wrote. Between directing and rehearsing for my one man show I haven’t had the time. Exhaustion (a good tired though) claims me right after a shower and laying up min the bed. I don’t last long. No it’s not age.

I had just finished performing at the Ancestry show. We had to pick an elder and write about them. It was a set of questions and from there we came up with either a poem or monologue. I came up with both. This performance hit home. It brought a lot of things into full circle (no pun intended). Seeing the other elders and how active they were and how they reminisced about their homeland was beautiful.
The person I wrote about was my mother. The lady that held shit down when rubbing nickels to make it through was an everyday task. I spoke of how through all the hardship she went through on a personal level she still showed up to grow up. How she assumed responsibility for her part and never faltered. As I was saying the monologue it all came back to me. How the breaking apart of her spirit through the deaths of her daughters to the rising from the flames like a phoenix to raise her grandchild. How through the rapes and molestations and being illiterate she still found a way to provide for her family.
It made me realize that my upbringing had a lot to do with her past. That she came from a generation that you took all the abuse and just kept it moving not taking time to heal. You just put a huge band-aid on all that pain and tragedy, shoved through it, stifled it so it wouldn’t crush you. It reminded me that she never came from the school of let’s talk and hash shit out. She came from shut the fuck up’s and get over it. She came from never express for it will be your demise, your weakness. She was brought up from those that hated her because she was a burden not a joy. She came from having to watch herself from sexual attacks from the same kin that was supposed to protect her. She came from a time that regardless of the odds she couldn’t accept failure.
She came to a world that spoke the strange language of English and was not kind to what they thought Puerto Ricans at the time were savages and worth nothing. She left behind her lineage, her ancestors, a beautiful island that was supposed to bathe her in sun and left her scorched and resentful and bitter. Left her with a sense of dishonesty and the lesson that family is not always on your side and friends were a dollar in your pocket.
It was all of these things that ran through my mind that I realized the forgiveness I have to give her. It was this epiphany that made me realize she really did the best with what she had. I had to admit that she never received nor never knew how to give these things that too many is taken advantage of. I also understood that she loved the best way and the only way she knew. Shit I can even be honest and say that with her upbringing and all the betrayal and treachery she went through she was able to give us all that wasn’t given to her on some level.
I forgive her. It allowed me to shed so many things that not only made me feel an immense release of guilt and pain that I thought was my fault but rectified hope in how my relationship with mom is.

#16 SOMETIMES ITS NEVER EASY

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

There are days that the world wants to remind me where I came from. It takes me to a place that full memories of what I went through literally shake my core! It comes in waves and in full color. I can see the faces and actually the smells as well. It pisses me off! It makes it clear why I went through what I went through. It helps me make sense of why I gave my body over and over and over again thinking they would stay. Thinking that they would tell me I’m their one and only. Never realizing that I was really chasing the father that was never present. That I never had a male figure show me how to love myself. No hugs of reassurance. No “you can do it”! I feared it all and found worth outside never within. 
Looking back at my youth it makes sense why I was so loud and abrasive in my teens and early 20’s. This defense mechanism that was screaming “help & hear me!” I was in fear of not being accepted. That at any moment I would be hurt physically, taken against my will because they were able to see my weakness. 

I understood why I numbed myself because to feel it all would’ve found me with a switchblade to the wrists. It was way to overwhelming for me to admit that I was made a fool of, made fun of, betrayed and looked at as weird, less than and not to be heard.

I was raped and molested so many times that I thought this was how love was supposed to be. No affection, no nurturing not even kisses just primal and predatory. They not once even used sweetness in their words. I was a filthy fagot and this is what happens, this is all I was good for. It was so bad that I stopped fighting and just assumed position for there was no fight in me at all. They all hopped on, did the deed and then threatened me within an inch of my life. Each and every fucking time!!!  

It’s days like this when I’m tired and I’m up against the wall that it reminds me that I survived this and I have a fucking purpose. That these stories can give hope. Not every princess marries her prince but she sure as hell can have fun looking for him without giving up her freedom to love and search. This journey every day won’t allow me to be ordinary. It holds me accountable every time I perform it, write it, speak it and share it. It helps me know that I am going to be safe and that my story and experience allows me to look into people’s eyes without fear anymore. It reminds me all the time that even though shade exists there is just as much good. Thank you to each person that live, loves and laugh through these ugly storms of memories.

GRACE OF

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

As I wait for the bus on 125th street & Lexington (Spanish Harlem) my eyes take in the multitude of active addicts walking the streets. It conjures up a lot of feelings. I go from praying to remembering. 

As a recovering addict I know that so many of these addicts, men and women, are caught in a spiral of pain and anguish. They’ve become prisoners to life’s circumstances. So many of them abused sexually, violently and verbally. As long as they stay active  in their drug intake they will never know that they don’t have to carry that burden. It’s not theirs to carry.

I look at some of them and I don’t know if it’s a mutual lock of the eyes but I can see the ones  that were betrayed and taken advantage of by someone that was supposed to protect them but instead were beaten and spoken to till their spirit became wingless. I can see that they cannot and will not replay any of those moments unless they are in a haze or cloud of smoke.I can see that in their eyes, in the way they speak but most importantly in how hard they do drugs. They are trying to numb out what happened to them. trying their nest to push it down very deep into Never Never Land. They don’t want to allow that pain to become tangible or overwhelming not knowing that it is fear of letting it go. Be no fool there is a fear in letting go. Even when you know it will benefit you you refuse to even ignite or give space to all that pent up hurt and anger and sadness. Those in active addiction have become best friends with their demons that it feels like they are literally letting go of an immediate family member.  They have become so accustomed to that pain that it makes them feel incomplete if it’s not present. 

I know this fear and pain all to well. I can remember when the pain was better than feeling the reality of what had occurred in my life at the hands of those I was supposed to love and trust and be safe with. I recall roaming those streets searching for that ultimate fill in a strangers touch or in a clique of undesirables. Trying to complete myself with something that was absolutely different than to what inflicted the pain. I ran away from me and into the arms of addiction for a very long time. As long as I felt something that wasn’t empty or hurtful then I was OK. 

What I didn’t know was that I wasn’t alone. That I could survive. That there are things I can do and apply that will help me cope and forgive. Shit I would learn that I can forgive the ones that inflicted all this hurt and fear and pain. All of this ran through my mind in 20 minutes, the time it took for the bus to come. This journey has been an incredible 48 years. I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t want to repeat it but I don’t regret it. 

DONT LOOK AT ME

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

I always noticed that look and what it meant. You know the one that men give you that lingers on your body parts that stick out or jiggle as you walk. The body parts that our parents made sure we covered. That lingering look they gave us that usually came with a slight smirk that looked innocent to others that might just glance quickly but to us it made us feel naked. These men making sure that the minute we were within their vicinity it bore into our space even if they were a few feet away. These men making sure that they were acknowledged through our uncomfortable side eye. We knew who these men were, what they wanted to become in our lives. Predatory in every way with no intention of becoming nothing more than a hurt. No more than wanting to dominate our spirit. Us, subjected to these feelings just from their stares. Our instinct telling us that their intentions will never be good. That at all costs, no matter what we are never to be alone with them. These men who usually are married, with children, hung out around our elders inner circles. We knew that they wanted to do things to us that not even their wives would allow them to do. 

I grew up my whole pre-teen life with THOSE eyes on me. It made me go through body shaming, it made me want to stifle my voice so I won’t be noticed. It made me question myself and asking what I did wrong. Misconstrued my definition of trust, it confused my perception of what love was supposed to be. It put the word protection in a whole different light. These men instilled fear at an early age. They proved to me that elder men were never to be trusted. It embedded in me that men are never to be trusted when you are by yourself. It took away from self worth because if there were no states there was no love when in all truth there was no love. It made me not understand the difference between lust and love. So I tell you men all the same thing- DONT LOOK AT ME 

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

In my time and age I have decided to take care of my mother. Though our history is iffy in the sense of what I knew was right and what I know to be wrong changes and has caused hardship, one thing I am certain is that this woman has always loved me. In her own manera she gave me the best of what she had.

     My life growing up was hardcore. The things I was subjected to like physical abuse was enormous. The beatings I received at her hands were crazy. As a kid I deserved a few of them and even then not to that extent. She was ruthless. An assassinator when you got out of line or did things not to her liking. I walked in total fear of this 4’11 lady. She did whatever it took to have her boys in check. Manners were instilled with hard fists, wet leather belts and plain old screams and insults.

    She worked all her life. That is all she knew, it was all she was very good at. Coming from the poor countryside of Puerto Rico she vowed that when she was on her own she would never need for anything. Her work ethic was crazy. My mother was sick with it when it came to producing product as a seamstress working piece by piece for pennies in a sweatshop.

     She wasn’t the type of mom that had great conversations with me. She pretty much had rules and regulations and they were to be followed to the tee. Education for her was a major thing. There was no excuses to why you couldn’t achieve your goals scholastically. She made sure we had clean clothes, a roof over our head and a hot belly. That was all one needed y van en coche! Since my earliest memories of her there was never an empty Christmas, there was never a holiday that there wasn’t pasteles y pernil at the table. She did all this by herself and I do mean by herself. She relied on no man.

     It would be years that I would walk around being angry. At first angry just to be angry, then realizing angry with her for the way things turned out. I was angry that I didn’t have the great Brady Bunch kind of family. Hearing how it was for other kids and realizing I didn’t have that just etched deeper into my skin the anger and resentment. After some real serious issues I had to deal with in my life that left me almost dead, acquiring some clean time and gaining a sense of self was I able to understand that my mother had no choice and really didn’t know better. She gave and gave all of herself the only way she knew. It was then that I realized that everything she did was for my siblings and I. It was then that I was able to let it go.

     I can’t blame her for what she walked with. She didn’t come from a time that you shared your family things. Shit it wasn’t till I started writing personal essay and memoir that I started to hear her story. I had to understand that the abuse she went through she never learned to let go. This process of getting better was never taught. She had to live and keep to herself those demons.

    We are in an age where you do speak, where you don’t have to settle, where there are choices to everything, (even though we may not like the options). I had to understand that the ones made to protect her and keep her safe and have her best interest at heart took her and abused her. They took everything she was supposed to be and everything that kept her alive and abused it, fucked it, beat it, abandoned it and most of all never nurtured it. I came to understand that her reasons for living was to run away from a place that left behind endless memories of torture. She had to make herself hard and rough. All this before she was 13 years of age. No one looked out for her and in turn trusted no one. She was endlessly taken advantage of in every form till she came to New York and made her own story.

     Knowing this I can no longer be angry at her. I cannot hold her to all the beatings I got. She didn’t know better. She didn’t understand that there was a better way. She didn’t know how to dream and that so many things can happen if she just believed. To her it was just work hard for your home, provide for your children and that is all. Life didn’t come with extras.

     I am not saying I don’t have great me memories because I do but those are my teenage years and I made those memories. Abuse was rampant for me as a kid. Emotional starvation was a regular thing and it wasn’t done intentionally. Again she didn’t know. She literally was oblivious.

     I take care of her now and wouldn’t have it any other way. I love her. I have learned that she did what her heart told her and she did it with a ferocity that makes girls into kings. Yes I said kings. But she never got rid of all that was inflicted on her and by the time her children grew up it was not a thing that she cared to deal with. For her it was too late and there was no sense in peeling a scab to make it a new scar.

     She has been with me a month and a half from this writing and one thing I can say is that she hasn’t lost her comedy. She laughs often and hard. She loves her music and still enjoys singing. There was a time when she wanted to pursue a career but again dreams were not allowed. When we play that music she goes to this happy place and sings her ass off reminiscing about when times were carefree and music held a substance of dreams.

In my time and age I have decided to take care of my mother. Though our history is iffy in the sense of what I knew was right and what I know to be wrong changes and has caused hardship, one thing I am certain is that this woman has always loved me. In her own manera she gave me the best of what she had.

     My life growing up was hardcore. The things I was subjected to like physical abuse was enormous. The beatings I received at her hands were crazy. As a kid I deserved a few of them and even then not to that extent. She was ruthless. An assassinator when you got out of line or did things not to her liking. I walked in total fear of this 4’11 lady. She did whatever it took to have her boys in check. Manners were instilled with hard fists, wet leather belts and plain old screams and insults.

    She worked all her life. That is all she knew, it was all she was very good at. Coming from the poor countryside of Puerto Rico she vowed that when she was on her own she would never need for anything. Her work ethic was crazy. My mother was sick with it when it came to producing product as a seamstress working piece by piece for pennies in a sweatshop.

     She wasn’t the type of mom that had great conversations with me. She pretty much had rules and regulations and they were to be followed to the tee. Education for her was a major thing. There was no excuses to why you couldn’t achieve your goals scholastically. She made sure we had clean clothes, a roof over our head and a hot belly. That was all one needed y van en coche! Since my earliest memories of her there was never an empty Christmas, there was never a holiday that there wasn’t pasteles y pernil at the table. She did all this by herself and I do mean by herself. She relied on no man.

     It would be years that I would walk around being angry. At first angry just to be angry, then realizing angry with her for the way things turned out. I was angry that I didn’t have the great Brady Bunch kind of family. Hearing how it was for other kids and realizing I didn’t have that just etched deeper into my skin the anger and resentment. After some real serious issues I had to deal with in my life that left me almost dead, acquiring some clean time and gaining a sense of self was I able to understand that my mother had no choice and really didn’t know better. She gave and gave all of herself the only way she knew. It was then that I realized that everything she did was for my siblings and I. It was then that I was able to let it go.

     I can’t blame her for what she walked with. She didn’t come from a time that you shared your family things. Shit it wasn’t till I started writing personal essay and memoir that I started to hear her story. I had to understand that the abuse she went through she never learned to let go. This process of getting better was never taught. She had to live and keep to herself those demons.

    We are in an age where you do speak, where you don’t have to settle, where there are choices to everything, (even though we may not like the options). I had to understand that the ones made to protect her and keep her safe and have her best interest at heart took her and abused her. They took everything she was supposed to be and everything that kept her alive and abused it, fucked it, beat it, abandoned it and most of all never nurtured it. I came to understand that her reasons for living was to run away from a place that left behind endless memories of torture. She had to make herself hard and rough. All this before she was 13 years of age. No one looked out for her and in turn trusted no one. She was endlessly taken advantage of in every form till she came to New York and made her own story.

     Knowing this I can no longer be angry at her. I cannot hold her to all the beatings I got. She didn’t know better. She didn’t understand that there was a better way. She didn’t know how to dream and that so many things can happen if she just believed. To her it was just work hard for your home, provide for your children and that is all. Life didn’t come with extras.

     I am not saying I don’t have great me memories because I do but those are my teenage years and I made those memories. Abuse was rampant for me as a kid. Emotional starvation was a regular thing and it wasn’t done intentionally. Again she didn’t know. She literally was oblivious.

     I take care of her now and wouldn’t have it any other way. I love her. I have learned that she did what her heart told her and she did it with a ferocity that makes girls into kings. Yes I said kings. But she never got rid of all that was inflicted on her and by the time her children grew up it was not a thing that she cared to deal with. For her it was too late and there was no sense in peeling a scab to make it a new scar.

     She has been with me a month and a half from this writing and one thing I can say is that she hasn’t lost her comedy. She laughs often and hard. She loves her music and still enjoys singing. There was a time when she wanted to pursue a career but again dreams were not allowed. When we play that music she goes to this happy place and sings her ass off reminiscing about when times were carefree and music held a substance of dreams.

OF SOUND BODY AND MIND

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

OF SOUND BODY AND MIND

The breathe she exhales brings it all into full circle

The wheels of this dysfunction turn round and round

A false lotto drawing filled with less future

There is no relief in what’s to come.

It is laced in burden.

Saturated in the inevitable.

Prayer serves as a calming balm unto a hurt spirit.

You cannot teach the old dog new tricks; for rolling over is all it ever knew.

Rocks break from stubbornness.

Ideas transform into rage form into words,

that hold the weight of predecessors that never knew what cycles were.

Accepting that to go forward is to fight a war that has no soldiers in it.

Queens can also become leaders to uninhabited kingdoms.

Desolation is served in a bottle labeled barren.

Drinking till drunk to a disillusion of justified righteousness.

Never chasing each swig with change

AND YET I STILL LOVE HER…

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

Mommy was there but wasn’t. She was always a provider. She worked really hard all the time to give us the necessities. At home there was no extra. We ate every day but there was never things like cookies, or treats. As kids we went to the usual Seven Lakes and Coney Island, the occasional Boricua festivals in Red Hook. Everything was kept on the hush from us and as we were growing up if we caught on it was just changed into another way of doing shit so that we the kids couldn’t notice.

Mommy wasn’t there for us emotionally. She had a severe hand and gave out backslaps and beatings on the regular. Emotional to her was you can do better or is that it. She was proud of us when we went to the next grade and it was rewarded with a few dollars. When we did our catholic passages (Communion, Confirmation) she threw the party and next day things went back to normal. It wasn’t really a big celebration. After a certain age there were no more birthday cakes. Just a hug and that was it. Mom was very attached to getting her goals done which were, again, the basic. Rent, groceries, bills paid. Everything else was extra and was spent on the ever occasional pernil or pork chops cause if we were eating that then shit was good at home. Yes when the holidays rolled in we had the full on dinners of pasteles and pernil with arroz con gandules but getting older even Christmas’ were not the same. As a matter of act her biggest moments of affection was when we would get sick. Then came the constant touch of her hand or her amazing chicken soup.

Mommy wasn’t the one to give advice with a loving touch or whisper. If she had to tell you something it was usually crass and said rudely. Like not taking her advice will result in your downfall and if that happens JODETE!!!!

In my core I do know that she loved us but in her manera, her way. She fought for us and at times never gave up on us. I look back and can say it couldn’t be easy raising 3 boys alone and one of them is a gay child that went through all the phases from dressing up like a girl to then an addict to then a grown man. Not once did I hear her say get out or leave my home or you’re a piece of shit. It is those moments that I replay in my mind that lets me know that yes there was a genuine love.

She gave what she could and what she knew. She wasn’t a child that was given love at all. Her parents died when she was young and after that she was a burden to whoever she stayed with. She was passed around to any elative that needed a maid or a babysitter. Education wasn’t pushed. She was never allowed to dream and if she did it was shot down immediately with a,”una negra como tu jamas!”  This is when I understood why she was the way she was. Why she wasn’t affectionate or pushed us to dream and why education was her biggest thing when we were growing up. It made sense why she worked so much to make sure she never worried from where her meal was coming from or depended on anyone or any man for that matter. No one ever gave her anything when she was a kid. It made sense why she was so strict and heavy on the hands because growing up she was beaten all the time. I totally get it. It doesn’t mean it didn’t affect my upbringing. It doesn’t make the scarring any less painful.

What this realization does is give me a sense of forgiveness. It gives me a huge understanding as to the why. It doesn’t help that she grew up in a time that pain and suffering was never shared, it was never spoken of. She came from a time where weakness was never shown and you learn how to cry dry, no tears. You became numb to shit and never ever crumble at all. It made me understand why the bottle became her best friend.

It made me realize where my fear came from, where my hurt of not being understood came from, where the lack of intimacy came from, where as a teenager my tough exterior to chase people away came from. It put into perspective how I will always have to go back to my childhood when I am healing and getting better with self. How the layers upon layers continue to reveal memories that pop out from a time where I was to numb to realize had happened.

With all this being said I love her. I love my mother because it’s ingrained that without her there is nothing. Even though there was a lot of crazy there was also a lot of great. I take her work ethic everywhere I go because with no education and illiterate she made it. I take her no holds barred attitude that she always showed the world because she was only 5 feet tall. I take her laughter because no matter how bleak and desperate shit got for her she always found time to laugh. I will always love my momma but like I said some days it doesn’t make my realizations hurt any less.

BEATINGS

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

     As a kid I had a big fear of my mom. She ruled with an iron fist, a fast slap and a quick hit from the chancletas. I walked on eggshells for most of my life till my early 20’s. Looking back it was easily interpreted as borderline child abuse. Now me being the oldest I received the brunt of the beatings between my brother and I. My mother spared no one. It could be anything from the wet leather belt in the shower to the extension cord to wooden hangers. Whatever was in her reach or she can use was utilized to the best of her ability. She always found the spots and GOD forbid if you covered yourself with your hand it only made things worse.
My mother was a very heavy drinker. I would say that is how she coped through her own fears and traumas. Not that I knew this when I was young. All I knew at that age was when she was drinking it was for me or anyone to just stay away from her. I learned that when she was drinking depending on what music she was listening let me know if she was drinking for fun or drowning in sorrows.
Writing this brings back memories of:
Sad music blaring from the pile of 78’s
La Lupe says no more love, Los Tres Condes sings that their heart is breaking.
Mom walks with beer in hand and a fifth of Bacardi sits on the table.
She sings her heart out with every swig
The memories of La Isla and the teen angsts, the treason and the sudden deaths.
Motherless and fatherless she came to Nueva York.
To live like Americana. Make money like a Blanca
Like an esclava.
Cause without an education and illiterate you sit at the back of the line and wait your turn.

Now let’s make it clear that some of those beatings I deserved but a lot of them I didn’t. I was always nervous that she would either remember something that she was still mad about or just nitpick enough to give her a reason to hit me. I’d also like to add that I am not saying my mother doesn’t love me cause she sacrificed a lot for us but her version of love was not like the ones I read in storybooks or saw on T.V. She wasn’t really a very affectionate person. She only said I love you when it was attached to a slap. Any compliments I received were far few and between. My mother really worked hard all her life and provided regardless what man she had in her life or supported.
There was a time that she beat me so senseless but it was the way she was taught. I had learned that in her youth that she was abused in every physical and mental sense. At the hands of her own family they were more burdened with her. I was so scared of her. Getting older and going through my own awareness I was able to understand her reasons. She was under 5 feet and it was difficult for her to have control in a world that she had none growing up.
I was the kid that when she called me over to hit me I actually walked and never ran away. People called me stupid but I knew that if I ran away it would be worse and I also learned at a very young age that what she was capable of doing to me when we got home and she was drunk would be ten times as worse. I chose 1 of the lesser devils.
As I came into my 20’s she eased off. It was just that I outgrew her at almost 6 feet. We get along still. I love the ground she walks along. I respect all the things she has done and her life story itself is amazing. She is a true warrior in every sense of the word.

 

SILENCE, LOVE AND TORTURE

Posted on by Andres Chulisi

They told him that he had to be quiet.

That no one wanted to hear his voice.
That it’s not important what he had to say. 
He was different.
He lived what he felt.
He spoke what he wished.
Not a clue to how the world perceived him.
What he searched for was freedom.
What he felt was a need to be.
No one knew that home was a danger zone.
Going to sleep with bruises was normal.
That his mind was under assault because of his identity.
Outside on the streets was an easier life than the one he called home.
Concrete jungle Mass was open
and church was liberation that was serving 
the holy Eucharist of realization.
There were no messiahs preaching the good word of acceptance on moms make shift altar.
Leave The Father, 
save The Son, 
help me Holy Spirit.
The street corner congregation was looking to stone him.
They didn’t agree with his religious zeal of identification 
with his 
live and let live radicalness.
Unique was yet to be an epiphany.
Their change was set upon eyes that saw their life right but not his.
Poor broken spirit 
in desperation you sought an answer.
Prayers were pleas for death.
No one ever spoke or asked him.
He sought comfort in solitude. 
The last date was midnight, a blade and a purpose to live in
After-life.