He Ain’t No Nice Guy
\nVCS <\/p>\n
They called him insane, the man of pain
\nThey called him lame
\nSome just said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’
\nBut none of that was true,
\nit was just an angle of the sun
\nbeaming off a diamond
\nHe didn’t ask for accolades
\nHe said, ‘I’m the boy in the box’
\nThey made him the holy ghost
\nThey said he moved through them
\nThey said he spread death on the air
\nHe said, ‘leave me alone’
\nThey said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’. <\/p>\n
He didn’t ask to be put in the center ring
\nHe didn’t ever want to have it be a whole big thing
\nThey copied him in every way
\nThey stole his hair and his poetry
\nThey called him a saint and took away his privacy
\nThey called him insane, the man of pain
\nThey called him lame <\/p>\n
They cut hairs into splinters to make each accusation true
\nUntil they drove him into the arms of madness
\nThat’s where I met him
\nAnd I could see why they did what they did to him
\nWith his nose broken
\nHis long hair hanging in his face
\nI found him on the mens room on the floor
\nA needle in his arm
\nHe whispered to me, ‘get back, I ain’t no nice guy’<\/p>\n
I sat beside him on the floor
\nthe tiles were cold, his body radiated heat
\nthe toiled smelled like shit and vomit
\n‘this ain’t no nice place to be,’ I replied as I sunk down
\nSo our eyes could lock <\/p>\n
I wondered if I was his hallucination or if I was his
\nEither way, he stroked my hair away from my eyes
\nAnd I felt his fingertips, as soft and real as a spring breeze<\/p>\n
‘They’re always going to do this to you, you’ll always end up where I am’
\nI nodded in understanding
\nLooking at him all I saw the preying mantis from the classroom
\nAnd he was the bug caught in her grip
\n‘So what do we do?’ I asked
\nHe laughed, his laugh echoed and then he stopped because
\nWe both knew how it was
\nHe was mad<\/p>\n
‘We pray.’ <\/p>\n
He took my hands in his and started to pray
\nYay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
\nI shall fear no evil
\nHe opened his eyes and I opened mine,
\nWe had each dug half moons with our fingertips
\nInto the other’s hands
\nHis eyes were the only thing in the room that wasn’t
\nthe color of bile or other exudate. <\/p>\n
When we had prayed and I was still there
\nHe said to me, ‘I shall fear no evil; but it still
\nsmells like shit and I still ain’t no nice guy.’ <\/p>\n
I saw the syringe had fallen from his arm and rolled behind the toilet.
\nA drop of his blood brightened the room on his forearm. <\/p>\n
He saw where my gaze had gone and pulled my gaze back to his and said,
\n‘Ain’t anyone got to be nice to know this ain’t real and we’re both
\nbeing eaten by the world. What’s a few painkillers between me and the Lord?’ <\/p>\n
That was the first time I met him, when I fell asleep in class
\nBut it wouldn’t be the last
\nCall him the Holy Ghost
\nCall him the Angel of Death
\nCall him a Poet
\nCall him a Priest
\nHe doesn’t owe it to anyone to be a nice guy but I rather think that he is. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He Ain’t No Nice Guy VCS They called him insane, the man of pain They called him lame Some just said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’ But none of that was true, it was just an angle of the sun beaming off a diamond He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2228,52],"class_list":["post-36457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-2017poetrymarathon","tag-virginia-carraway-stark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36796,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36457\/revisions\/36796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}