I wake with my jaw already tight,
teeth grinding on words I haven’t spoken aloud in years.
Pulse riding high before the first ugly headline loads.
Coffee tastes like battery acid.
Tongue raw from the comebacks I swallowed yesterday
while idiots rehearsed clean excuses and called it growth.
I lace my boots like I’m wrapping hands
for a fight that never rings the bell—
just keeps shifting rooms and faces and uniforms.
Every memory they told me to “move past”
sits on my shoulders:
sandbags soaked in gasoline, stinking, heavy.
Impossible to carry without losing what’s left of my spine.
There’s no reset button on the shit they did.
No soft-focus redemption arc.
Only this quiet decision to stay lit enough
to burn through the next lie that tries to crawl in.
I keep the fury sustained.
No cooling system.
Just scars acting as gauges
and a mind that refuses to dim.
Let the pressure climb till the pipes scream.
I won’t vent it in prayer or pills or polite little hymns.
If this rage corrodes what’s left of me, so be it—
I’d rather rust loud than be polished into someone else’s tame reflection.
Turn the gain up till the chest plate rattles.
This whole life runs dirty on spite
and deliberate, sharpened insurrection.
They sell calm in plastic bottles and breathing apps.
Tell me to count to ten
while the same boots grind necks into office carpets.
Therapists with soft voices talk about reframing—
as if a new angle changes the fact
that some people only stop hitting when you swing back.
I tried the incense, the yoga, the mantras stamped on mugs.
Felt my pulse dropping into a flat gray line
that tasted like surrender.
So I built my own ritual instead:
distortion cranked, drumheads bruised,
lyrics carved with a box cutter
into the parts of me that still flinch.
This anger isn’t a tantrum.
It’s a generator wired wrong on purpose,
humming hot.
Powering every refusal they said I’d regret.
I’m not interested in being forgiven for how hard I clench my fists.
They trained me on fear
and now they want gratitude because I’m still breathing?
This isn’t random violence.
It’s maintenance—
oiling a loaded thing you never fire blind,
keeping the edge honed without slicing your own throat for sport.
Some nights the rage tries to eat everything:
loves, friends, whatever softness is left.
And I have to choke it back just enough
to aim it where it belongs.
But I never shut it off.
That switch is taped in the ON position.
With every insult, every theft,
every body they shrugged off as a statistic.
When the crowd thins and the lights cut out,
I’m still pacing the loading dock,
breath fogging, jaw stiff,
replaying every line I didn’t have time to spit.
Tomorrow they’ll ask if I’m ever going to let it go
—like this inferno is a hobby I can box up
with old shirts and setlists.
I’ll shrug, light another smoke,
taste metal on the back of my tongue,
and walk into the dark with my hands still shaking.
The engine stays red.
The tank stays poisoned.
And as long as I’m dragging this body around,
that fury rides shotgun—
uninvited.
And absolutely fucking welcome.