I apologize for what you read here,
Some people may not believe what they read here.
You see, my generation, is shot down on all accounts
I don't play a victim in this scene, I take a higher route.
They brush me off as joker, dreaming of waking up
I've been climbing trees for fruit but now I'm on the ground shaking them up.
I'm not looking for a handout as my career track shows
But who am I, among these gods, to deny a poor man clothes.

See I'm living in a world where, when I'm old and grown,
The social security I'm paying into will be unknown,
Men and women my age are going on war tours
Left their minds overseas and come back abandoned poor,
Still forgetting what god I'm supposedly fighting for.
I sit patient as they tax my metophorical tea
Then turn on the TV and see riots in the street
As if this history just isn't skipping a beat
I couldn't care less about your race or sexuality,
About your religious ideology, or the identity you see.
I'm looking you point blank and just asking if you're happy.
Because these streets look so bleak
While holding a connected world in my hands,
Still so afraid to speak because everything has to be
So contradictory and couldn't we agree
That my generation is bad
But the previous one raised me.

A lady I work with, she works eighty hours a week
Her old man's at home wearing medical bills as shackles on his feet.
She keeps fighting strong and he keeps pushing on
But they ******* them and take the cane their standing on
Maybe I'm naive but this system just seems so wrong.
You can tax me for education,
Take a dollar for someone's medical bills too
This money is so common, there's only one of you.
I'm not looking to pick a fight
I'm just stating what I believe is right
Throwing down my pen, cutting sharper than a knife.

Old fashioned
was
the latest thing
in fashion
years ago.

For all the women in my family who have come before me.

I vow now
to give myself the space to be kind to myself when I am faced
with our family pattern of self-hate

I will not spit in my face and demolish myself
I will stand with forgiveness
dripping from my eyes

I vow now
to utilize the opportunity
I have been given
of being free from the burden of being molested or ***** as a child,
I vow to respect myself, share my body with this respect
give my partner this respect and dance
the life giving creation song       with a heart

fleshy and vulnerable
landscapes of plains and bayous rising up across my skin, my folds will nestle medicine gardens
Inside of my ears I will plant Ceder trees

I will step into my strength, into my power I will rise
like a hot air current moving from the land up to the sky to form storm clouds
in a system of elegant design

I recognize
with this mighty power comes the power to be gentler still
so whilst the storm plays her play, I will also maintain
the quivering softness of a spring stream
high up in the mountains green
long grass wildflowers
melt from within me

fragrance heavenly.

For all of us I vow
to live a life where I utilize the power I have inherited
and I thank you
with these actions,
I write your songs in my movements
Your strength, poise, grace, ambition and genius has not gone in vain
Your stories live on inside of my veins

with these words I call out to you.