Troll

Once upon a time,

You and all your kind
lived underneath bridges,

Had ridges for ribs
that dropped off into empty chest
as if your hearts were all stolen treasures,

As if an excavation crew were hired to dig up
and remove the part of you that let you feel.

And while the world above you invented the wheel,

You stayed put,

Knowing it would one day need to roll over top of you
to get to where it's going.

You had an endlessly flowing supply line of food.

You began to brood over humanity
and made meals of our hope,

As if crushing our spirits would make your mirrors
cast better reflections than the ones they gave,

As if the only way you could save yourselves
was to make the world ugly
so no one could notice you hiding in it.

You learned to knit pain into a kind of camouflage,

Treated hope like a mirage
that you could use to lure in your next meal.

You lived off of our fear,

As if you could taste what we feel.

And every night,

As the moon read bed time stories to sunlight,

You took darkness as an invite
to head out into the world.

You curled your hands into wrecking balls.

Your breath became squalls.

You made rocks rumble.

You made lands shivers.

You made boys and girls pray
that someone would deliver them from you.

We told them you weren't real.

And then one day,

The world changed,

But you all stayed the same,

Just migrated from living underneath bridges
to living underneath information super highways.

Days and nights become meaningless,

Each already deepened chest became an abyss
that no one would ever find the bottom of.

Concepts like love fell into your gravity.

We turned ourselves into life preservers,

Hoping to save as many as we could
but the fathers who stood guarding closet doors
and the mothers who secured the floors
underneath beds,

All shook their heads,

Not knowing how to deal with you.

You,

Who crept into our lives,

With tongues like knives,

Stabbing your words into our skin.

You began to begin
uploading yourselves into our homes.

You had computer screens for eyes
and software for bones.

You turned your hate into stones
and hurled them at beauty,

As if you couldn't bear to see anything other then ugly,

Anything different.

You had fingernails like flint
and scraped them along decency,

Hoping we would be the ones to all catch fire.

You all had smiles like one way barbed wire,

Not meant to keep us out,

Meant to keep us in,

Voice like a firing pin,

You spoke in explosions.

It isn't cute,

It isn't funny.

You have talked strangers into death and laughed.

And as each family learns to graft skin
over the wounds you have them,

You hem yourself into the scar.

You have coaxed the sober back into bars,

Handed out cigars at memorials,

Offered nooses,

Cliffs,

And pills to those
who unfortunately found you
before they found help.

You have praised suffering,

Waltzed in between tragedies,

Gracefully dipping misery
as if we would somehow be impressed
with the dexterity of your animosity.

You have cheered on rape,

Dashed through police tape,

As if it were finish line in a race
of who can be awful first.

Even now,

You somehow see this as an invitation
to turn your keyboards into catapults,

Wondering which one of you can be the first
to hate this best.

Your loathing,

Already dressed in riot gear,

Ready to incite rage,

As if each message board is a stage,

Where you recite hostility,

Turning Freedom of Speech
into Freedom of Cruelty.

We are stuck with you,

The same way you are stuck with you.

Your mind is glue,

And it keeps malice fastened there
like cheap wallpaper.

We were once upon a time told that none of you exist.

We dismissed you as make believe or myth.

Now,

Armed only with resolve,

We can no longer tell ourselves
that you aren't real,

We will not let you make your dinners
out of the things we feel.