we were angry boys in the playground
mud more like war paint streaked on our faces, our knees

one of us was bleeding.

angry children, and we didn't know the meaning of metaphors so we called our prison real, and
just like that
it was

here: the only prison is the colour of our skin, or our ribcage or our lungs

the way your mother has bruises on her throat, finger prints on her thighs

how she kneeled by you all through the night, looking just to the left of your eyes,
telling you to just watch and the sun isn't coming up for hours but how could you tell a woman like that?

the first thing our father taught us was that everything in the body could destroy, be destroyed
he took our hands and our boyhood, taught us how to crush it, just like that
soft men and soft knees pointing fingers saying, this boy is a knife
barbed skin, belly full of daggers and when he opens his mouth there's already a gun

we're angry men, and we understand metaphors but we've made them a reality because what we can't understand we create anyway,
just like that
we're angry men, only with the hate bred from your hearts straight into ours, soldiers from birth, the soft men softer still, shaking their heads our fathers saying we went wrong, like they didn't teach us this
we are an army,
no boy to fight but the ones we grew up with, tearing the body apart, because

we were angry boys.