I don't want to run
I don't want to shoot
I don't want to run from the police
I don't want to loot
I don't want a gangster's life
I don't want to have to look over my shoulder at night

Growing up in the big city
Born of a family in the dirt
Never much money to anybody
But it seems none of my cousins really learned
But I'm not like them, I'm not about that
I never was keen of violence
Always hated hate and loved love
Never got how they all missed this
Never understood how they could want that kind of life

Because I'd be a bum on the street
Begging for a penny or two
Before I was to go out and hurt someone who didn't deserve it
Or trick someone into thinking something false
I don't like to deceive, I hate it
But do many people think it's right
Crime doesn't pay, you can't win
There's nothing to a life of sin
At the end if the day you're left with shit
Your hearts turned to an empty black pit

A vehicle rumbled along a sorry excuse for a road,
A convoy trailing behind it

A soldier looked out his window
Watching the dust swirl up in clouds beneath the
Heavy vehicle's tires

He said nothing to his partner and they rode in silence
He, thinking of his perfect baby
Whom he had not yet gotten to feel the warmth of
In his arms
And his partner, he was sure
Had nothing but the image of his fiancée racing through his mind
She was all he ever talked about

They were close
As close as a pair of friends could possibly be
But rides were becoming increasingly more solemn
Unspoken yearning for home had become almost unbearable
These days the soldier missed home so much
And longed so badly for his wife's warm embrace
That he swore he could feel his heart aching

The solemn silence was broken as something caught the soldier's eye

"Stop!"

The convoy came to a halt
The soldier jumped from his vehicle
His boots making a hard thud on the ground below
He called to a group of Afghani children who had been
Collecting shell casings they would later exchange for food
In the middle of the convoy's path

The children looked up, alarmed
And scurried away

The rumble of the military vehicles again resounded
Through the desert
And the convoy continued on its way


Looking back
At the men in the strange uniforms
With the huge trucks,
A little Afghani girl
Caught a glimpse of the sunlight
Bouncing off of something
In the middle of the road

She rushed into the street to collect it
Thinking only of how pleased
Her mother would be
With all the money they would earn
From her painstaking hunt

The soldier saw the young girl
Dart into the path of the convoy

He shouted
And leapt from the vehicle
The girl looked up in terror
As she saw the big trucks
Getting closer
And closer

The soldier leapt into
The path
Of the oncoming sixteen-ton vehicle
Toppling the girl to the ground

As she sat up, out of the path of the convoy
Dusting her self off and
Trying to comprehend
What had just taken place
She looked into the road searching for her
Treasure
And saw it
Reflecting the desert sunlight
Just inches from the still form
Of the soldier
Who had just
Given her
His life

I didn't know exactly what your name was for a long while. You've been inside of me on numerous occasions. Sometimes when you visit, you stay for weeks, other times you might only visit for a day - whatever the length of your visit you never cease to leave me questioning my ..sanity  (If sanity exists any more)?

I can’t tell whether you’re part of me, or if you’re merely a confused visitor, who happened to once find some empty cavity in me that could foster you for a while, and have since returned from mere convenience. Either way, I still haven’t yet decided whether I like your company or not. We shall see.

I appreciate that you never let me become too content. You omnipresently remind me that I do not deserve to be too happy, too blissfully at peace with my surroundings. I thank you for that. It reminds me what I need to do, who I need to help, what I should do, and who I should be helping.

I don’t like how guilty you make me feel. I don’t like how I've grown to become frightened of what you might, one day, make me become. You've made me think and consider things I've only ever shunned others for thinking and doing. Why the fuck do you do that? Do you know how confused it makes me? You've made me feel like I'm only controlling about 90% of what goes on up there. I hate that feeling. I'm still in control, I know that much - but even that measly 10% that you've taken from me makes me feel robbed.

You've made me doubt my aspirations. This is what I probably hate you the most for. I know I want to write. I want to write about the people who deserve to be written about. I want to sit with them, I want to watch and feel their suffering, and I want to somehow translate that into words and put it in print for the world to read. But I don’t want what I write to become merely a story to the people who read it. I want them to read it, and feel it seep into their skin. I want them to feel the pain of the people whose pain I am writing to them about. I never want what I make to simply become a ‘show’ to people. But I can’t do that. That’s not how people are made.

You make me think I adamantly hate people. I know I don’t, I hope I don’t - but you trick me into thinking it with such conviction that, when you decide to leave me, I'm left wondering whether it was really you or I who put that in my head in the first place.

There are bad people in the world. Hell, most of us are bad. We are horrible. Our morals and our beliefs turn us into things we never wanted to be, but somehow all ended up as. And once we've become a monster, very rarely can we become the pure, good, perfect things we were born as.

But, I know that some people have goodness in them. I hope that I am one of them. It frightens me like nothing else to think that, maybe, I am not a good person. That I am as disgusting as the people who switch the channel when something comes on their television that isn't a fictional drama, comedy, murder-mystery, whatever, because they find it unpleasant. Or because it doesn't effect them.

I don’t want to be just another person who donates money to charities, walks around in old, inexpensive clothing, volunteers and help people, and does it because she wants people to look at her and think “Damn, she’s a good person”. I don’t want people to think of me as a good person. I don’t want people to think of me at all. I don’t want people to know what I do, why I do it, or how I do it. I just want to do the things I can, have people benefit from them, then remember the THINGS. Not the face or the name of the person who did them.

I want a stranger to think “Someone gave a homeless person their shoes. I could do that. I could give a homeless person my shoes. I have another pair, I don’t need them. That’s what I’ll do” and do it. Then maybe someone will see them and do it also. But to think that someone would think of the deed then link it to me, or to a face generally - that repulses me. It repulses me into thinking that, somehow, every person nowadays is objectified, and every object is personified. And it’s terrifying.

I go to sleep every night with that thought in my head. I don’t know who to blame for putting it there. If it was you, Electra, just make it clear that that’s the case. I will forgive you. I will still let you come back when you have nowhere else to go. I would just like to know.

For now, that’s all I have to say to you. I hope your stay is comfortable, and you’re experiencing a pleasant refuge from whatever you are hiding from. When you next leave, please make sure to leave me what is mine. I often find myself feeling, after your visits, that part of what I had has left with you - which, generally wouldn't bother me, except I've never gotten those bits back.

Thanks.
Love, your ever-accommodating E.

Things don't
Seem so hard anymore
I've got
A way out, now, and more
When she comes
Strutting down the street
I know
Past problems have been beat
When she says
When can we meet?
Squirming in my seat
Tripping over my own two feet

Everything is hit or miss
And they say
That everything's worth a try
And they say
Someone out there is worth you to die
And they say
Just keep carrying on by
Never let slip past your guard, a lie
Just fasten up your ties
Don't you dare be shy now

Just walking
Sidewalk cracks passing
Thoughts of you are fleeting
Time I've spent just keeps on leaving
Nothing I do is helping
Guess I just have to start accepting
What they say may be true
But thinking of you
Don't do nothing but turn me blue

‘The world around me
All this random stuff getting hurled around me
People getting burned around me
Life seems pretty hard… around me
I’m the observer, that fly on the wall
The observer, still on the wall watching everything around me crumble
Watching everyone fall
The one that’s unnoticeable, like the extra in a movie
A constant extra though, immovable… as much as these events really move me
I watch and wait…
And wait for what?
A change, I think
I think I’ll change…
Tact
And do something about it
But will it really make a difference?
My Input that is
Or, will it make no difference?
Would everything remain the same, with or without it?
I still sit still on the wall, if flies can do that, ‘sit’ on a wall
Considering moving over to the windowsill and watching this downfall
Of society, of the world around me
Financial downfall as well as social, not to mention moral
On second thought, maybe I’ll just hang back... and do nothing at all
For if I have learned anything from our leaders, it is that
Any input is…
Optional
Seasonal
Not to mention conditional
For to do anything about this without any profit or benefit in sight…
Well, that would just be plain impractical.’

An orphan turned
the footpaths for home
In the belly of empty streets.
I decided to fill the emptiness
But suddenly
The pavement gulped the outpourings of air.
Thinking of silent-movie companions
Laughing exquisitely
at the aloneness
of my plodding dissection.

thinking about giving away your secrets,
because you haven't for awhile.

and for each and every one you smoke a cigarette.

a drag of confidence gone.

it's four days in and I'm the girl at the mailbox.
5 a.m and already earning stares from the neighborhood joggers.

"hello mr. tomani"

another value tarnished.

call in the dogs,  shut the door,
in the end, you go back to your bed,
call off the experiment,
declare that side of you dead.

you would like to know what it is that you want.