William James once shot his sister in the back of the head with a BB gun; she retaliated immediately with a rake to the back of his skull. Both of them still bear the markings of this misadventure years later. This has nothing to do with poetry whatsoever, except for perhaps explaining the reason why he tends to speak in poems even when he tries not to. A member of the Steel City Poetry Slam in Pittsburgh PA, as well as the underground music community, William mixes the ferocity and sledgehammer subtlety of punk rock with the refined art of the literary world. Whether it's with a snarl, or a grin, he is dedicated to bringing as much passion, sincerity, and intensity to his craft as a mere mortal can. He is a fan of typewriters, coffee, and all cats.

Three Poems (March 20, 2011. Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!)

Runaway
(for Cherie Currie)

You are thin-faced and pale
too young to drive, sick
from too many cigarettes

shaking in your mother's
sequined heels – face smeared
with pilfered makeup –

there was no eulogy, no tears shed
for lost youth as you scissored
off your little-girl-golden locks, swept

the last vestigial traces of innocence
into a trashcan. Your face was stone.
The portrait reflected above the sink

was your Medusa, a prelude to
what you would become.

Drunk fathers passed out in driveways
never properly mourn the things they should.

One year from now, they will call you
equal parts “Jailbait” and “Goddess,” will
herald your existence as a saving grace. Your

voice will be new fuel to ignite in the
combustion chambers of the American
Rock'n'Roll machine,

and you will nosebleed in your motel room
trying to inhale the courage it takes
to live up to their expectations.

One year from now, you will
strip yourself down to “Sex Symbol,”
crawl prostrate on your front lawn to let

magazine photographers fuck you
with their lenses. You will become their
fantasy, their plaything,

their pulp-fiction whore.

The music they once loved you for
will become the distraction they ignore
on private nights spitting lust into their

open palms. One year from now,
you will flirt with overdose the same
as you once did with charming schoolboys,

will still smoke too many cigarettes, still
wander lost in wastelands girls your age
were never meant to know.

The temple of forbidden sex that you
were built on will collapse into a pile of
withered skin, vodka tears, streaked mascara,
emaciation.

They will count your exposed ribs to number
every way you let them down, will call you
equal parts “Junkie,” and “Slut.”

The only family you have ever known will leave you
to retreat into the California dust of your defeated
dreams.

But tonight, you are painted-face and full
of promise, spine erect as skyscrapers and
castle spires,

and while they sit in darkness, throwing
crumpled papers, food stolen from cafeterias,
cries of “Freak!” and “Loser!”

you are lip-syncing David Bowie on stage
at your high school talent show and
stretching middle fingers upward.

Tonight, you are
fearless.

How to Build a Castle/How to Kill a Wolf

It feels like you've been here before,
standing weak-kneed before some figure
of authority and discipline, reflexively
swallowing every few seconds in a vain attempt

to choke down the shame, the feelings
of failure, that gnawing dread forming
into a cancerous mass at the base of your
throat. You try to remember it all differently

than how it ever really happened, try to
reinterpret the past, but the past keeps
returning in the exact same memory as
every time before.

You remember the time when you were nine
that you were forced to act as a messenger
of your own shortcomings. You held a war-zone
in your hands; blood colored slashes on white
sheets of paper,

gossamer wings riddled
with angry wounds.

Every crimson lash marked
a question for which you had
no correct answer.

A note in the margin read –
“please take this assignment home,
have it signed by a parent,
and bring it back to my desk
by tomorrow.”

Professional thieves have never practiced
forgery with the same intensity as you,
hoping to strike the perfect level
of credibility so as to avoid the burning
stinging in your face

as you showed your mother
proof that you were nothing
but a failure.

It feels like you've been here before,
telling yourself with complete conviction
that this is all you'll ever be. It comes
in waves –

first, the crumbling confidence
as all positive reinforcement you'd ever
been given comes crashing down
around you; second, the crippling
self-doubt.

Victims of car crashes,
head on collisions at highway speed
have felt the same
compression in their chests,

and they – like you – were never
fully prepared for the impact.

And even now, it feels the same – you
wither beneath a harsh gaze of judgment,
negative appraisal that tells you

the dreams you hold in your hand
are shallow and empty. They expect
you to cast childish notions aside,
that you will live unmoved and complacent.

A day's work for a half a day's wages;
your every moment lived at the whim
of a clock, to streamline the profit margins
of the ruling class. Your every waking
moment considered their property.

Friends say it's best not to complain,
not to stir up the waters – you don't want
to risk the security of a stable foundation.
And you've been here before.

Voiceless. Defeated. Discouragement
carving trails of sulfur down your
cheeks – they want your silence.

It shows their dominion over you; it proves
that in this caste-system war of life
they have won. But you've been here before.

This is not unfamiliar territory that you
wander lost and confused; it is a map you
have burned into your memory, one you can
recall with unflinching accuracy. It's funny

how all of those fears become irrelevant
over time. The day you wake up to find yourself
expendable and replaced, the day word comes
down from accounting: there is a newer,
cheaper YOU at the door –

it isn't until we realize we are all living
every moment on borrowed time
that we can see the things that are truly
worth living for. It's funny how without
the safety of a plan,

you start to wake up wanting to wake up,
wanting to live every moment
you've been given. You've been here before.

You know there are a million faces
that would love to see you fail. Climb
on their backs. Use their sneering jawlines
to rise above the dust.

Keep fighting. Keep loving. Keep grasping
to break whatever is keeping you chained
to this parasite romance with what they call
success.

Don't you know all it takes to defeat them
is that you NEVER stop trying to survive?

Greet Death

In the field of forensic pathology, the term
cadeveric spasm
describes a certain postmortem phenomenon.
When someone dies in an especially violent
and emotionally intense fashion, their
fingers will clench tightly, immediately 
freezing
at the moment of death.

Soldiers have been known to die this way 
in battle, clutching with the last fleeting might
of their mortality

   the grip of a pistol,
   the handle of a knife.

Two months after gravity
combined forces with bad luck
to turn the clarity of my grandmother's eyes
into confusion,
death crept into her room to claim her. She
did not fight it, because she was sleeping,
peacefully,
her hands laid as flat as the vast
expanse of the Sahara.

At her funeral, the pastor said that
her death should be
a reminder to us all - 

   “No man knows the day, nor the hour
   at which his time will end, no man
   may predict the moment when he
   will draw his final breath,

   but the most important thing is
   that we be ready.”

Spoken from behind a pulpit,
this series of cliched aphorisms
has a very precise meaning: it plays
on the residual fear of hell
that lives inside each member of
the congregation.

It means “Death
is coming and God
will punish you if you have not lived
according to His purpose,

but if you have, you will live
forever
in an empire of His design.”

When I was 22, bad chemicals in my head
caused me to wonder if death had forgotten
all about me, and to believe that it
would need my helping hand. In the 
emergency room, I discovered that death
is a matter best left to the experts - 
and I was clearly no expert.

For the next seven hours, my body spasmed
so as to evacuate the poison I had foolishly 
ingested. With every heave, my hands tightened, 
clutching
with the defiant heart of an
overthrow at the capital

   the anchor of a lifeboat,
   the reins of a pale horse.

I held death's wrists with my hands, peeled
its clawed fingers away from my throat, and lived.

In the hospital, a man told
the entire group of us
suicide survivors
that the fact that we were all
gathered together was irrefutable proof
it wasn't our time, and there was still
work left to be done.

Some nights are hurricanes. Chemicals
in my head try to tell me that all I need
to become an expert is a bit of
practice.

I keep my fingers clenched tight
to remind myself not to go quietly.

If death is to bring me to battle,
I will not greet it peacefully, in my sleep,
   my hands flat as the vast expanse
   of the desert,

or fearful,
   trembling in the presence of an angry god.

There are things more deserving of our fears
than death;

   our life unlived,
   our potential thrown away.
   
We are called according to our own purpose.
We are the designers of our own empire.

We cannot know the day, nor the hour
when we will draw our last breath,

but the most important thing is
that we live completely,
leave nothing on our deathbeds,
and be ready to greet Death,
violently,
with a scream in our throats
and a fire in our eyes.