Call him for what he is.
He is a poem:
a collective of similes and metaphors
stitched between horizon lines
unbounded to the spine of a book.
He is the stars bleaching the blackest skies,
proving that even in darkness,
beauty can still be found.
He is the beauty;
heartbreak woven through the riverbed of your chest
containing all of the wounds that have ever bled.
He is the regurgitated truth denied by our generation’s stomachs.
His existence is too much for anyone.
His throat is filled with gunpowder
and skin carrying battle stories to prove that
the world we are living in is at war,
but the soldiers who’ve fallen victim of walking the streets of their city,
a fatal diagnosis, or homes controlled by fists will not die in vain.
He makes sure of that.
He is the soul that dared to root his love
in soil notorious for growing hatred.
He finds daffodils under boulders and convinces us that if they
have the strength to survive,
we can endure the weight of the world against our bones.
He even has the audacity to autocorrect humanity.
And yeah, he is only 5’6",
but he is the best damn short story you will ever read.
I spent my youth biting down on barbed wire,
crimson dripping from my lips,
but he showed me that blood is better
spilled in the form of a slam poem.
And even though I try so hard to bury the corpses of my issues,
he performs autopsies on his and writes about that too.
He has taught me to never apologize for my voice;
that my words are a thunderstorm waiting in my throat
and that I should keep them tucked
behind my teeth until the drought.
For a while, I wore apologies like makeup.
And now, I know I look better without them.
But if there is one thing you must know when writing about a god,
it is to give it a proper name.
Be sure to write “Samuel Hawkins” as the title.