Between the shaded veils of night
the smoke trails danced in shafts of light
in scores of changing melodies
as red hot ash burned memories.

I could smell your sweat and fear
the heat of lust and warm, stale beer
and then I'd hum so quietly
a tune deep down inside of me.

I sang a song inside my hull,
I sang to be invisible.
With rhyming cadence in my head
it wasn't me inside my bed.

You could not have what was not there
as you pulled away my underwear,
you'd penetrate unwilling skin
but I would sing my song within.

When I was "gone" you showed surprise
as you went limp between my thighs.
You needed fear to make it rise
and so a sick plan you devised.

Pretending ev'rything's alright
you asked to take me overnight,
a camping trip out in the woods
was planned to make me damaged goods.

The hunting trip, the rabbit's pelts,
the big oak tree, the leather belts,
the oral sex, the sodomy
all this shit you forced on me.

You took your gun and killed my pets,
said you'd make good on all your threats,
above this evil I'd still sing-
but part of me was listening.

Your choking hardness in my throat
could not cut off one single note,
as part of me would sing my dreams
another part puked gagging screams

til' on my face I fin'lly felt
the rabbit fur tied with your belt
with which you'd slowly suffocate
the shrieking child you loved to hate.

At last the quiet of the woods
became a dream for damaged goods.
Within my stifled, labored breath
I sang for God to give me death.

I lost my music somewhere deep
out in the forests where I'd sleep
with rabbit skin tied to my face
inside the filth of your embrace.

The tales you told, the way you lied,
the lame excuses why I cried
you tore my body, killed my mind
and I assumed that God was blind.

Those songs I sang, they saved my soul
but nothing fractured comes back whole,
the little boy raped in those woods
will always feel like damaged goods.