Most of the political world
needs to reevaluate on
how indifferent neutrality
and tactful compromise
does not amount to
equal measures
in a thriving democracy.

And so it comes-
all at once-
like a swarm of horseflies,
plump and ugly,
filling the space around
the air that I breathe.
They are persistent, quiet creatures-
all but a low hum of a noise-
stabbing and striking,
then, returning for me
once more.

They find me
wandering peacefully
alongside the riverbank
while fresh, clean air fills my lungs
and the warm sun glistens off
the whites of my beaming teeth.
But, these horseflies are poison
infecting me with the vile they hold.

And suddenly,
I am so crowded
I'm sure I'll suffocate by the air
they are swarming around in.
Then suddenly, I'm so sure that
the river will swallow me in an instant.
And I am sure to drown in it's waters-
my own body controlled by
where it's current takes me.
So sure- that the sun will go dark
and the warmth will but be all gone.
The tranquil of this riverbank
transforming into the remnants of
chaos and disaster.

Until, at last, I recall that this poison
is just that-
Poison.
It's all but a temporary illusion
by an infected reality.
For I still walk alongside the riverbank.
I can still feel the air in my lungs.
And the warmth of the sun still embraces me-
it's light still shimmering in my eyes
and on the whites of my beaming teeth.

A sleepless night for an artist

is like the cry of a siren's call-

a journey through the mind

and

a deep incision into the soul.

How does
one single person
change
the world,
their country,
when the world,
their country,
finds comfort
in their
oppressive ignorance?

The law of energy states

that energy can neither be

created nor destroyed;

rather, it can only be

transformed or transferred

from one form to another.

I beg the question

if this could also reflect

the human soul's expression

of pain.

And though this would seem that

we are fated to the burden of a force

much bigger than ourselves,

there still is a transcendental irony

in the way we have the ability to

transform what would be considered

inevitable.

Will there ever come a time

that I find myself unable to

write the tune to

the same ballad twice?

I've always prided

this part of me

as my sole therapy to heal.

My method to self-preservation.

To speak without speaking.

To crack without crumbling.

To have vulnerability without being

vulnerable.

But,

which time will it be

that the thread within

the needle of my own words

is to stitch these

old wounds finally shut?

I see a friend in the face of a stranger,

but I let the stranger pass me by.

As quick as a cold breeze

brushing against me in the empty night.

A glimpse of a person

whom could have been

that piece of a soul who could

connect with mine.

A connection brought out by love

that is also not love.

An innocent love fueled by companionship,

of two souls recognizing one another.

Not as the conjoining of one

but as if journeying side by side.

Like that of children,

conjoining only in the soft comfort

of two, gentle hands.

I've seen a friend in the face of strangers,

but a friend is still yet to be.

In the loneliness, I wonder,

does the stranger see the face of

a friend in me?

It says,

“For all have sinned

and fall short of the glory of God!”

So, I ask you,

just how much have

I sinned in comparison

to the pedestal you

set yourself upon?

How much have I plummeted

beneath our great Lord's

merciful feet,

when I dare to challenge

the oppression of earth's

white-man evangelist bigotry?

I ask you,

most wise and knowledgeable

devoter,

just how far do I fall

from the Lord our God's

reaches of heaven

when I have questioned

on the magnitude

of our fellow man's

prejudice and injustice,

and you have not?

"Hatred" is the thing with claws-

that slices through us all.

And leaves a wound without it healed-

then, captures for it's thrall.


Torn by it's embrace with pride.

It infects all that it leaves behind.

But love could be it's mend

that keeps our hearts enshrined.


I've seen it rip and tear lives-

and play with them like prey.

Yet, never, in experience

it suppresses love with it's pain.

** Based off an Emily Dickinson poem

Here I sit,

amongst a silent chaos.

Desperate to find that

poetic literary justice

to my current life.

Yet,

here I sit,

finding nothing-

but feeling everything.

All I ever really try to be in my life

is genuine.

And I refuse

to be influenced to feel

that my effort to be so

is a fault

that means to be fixed.

I am not a flower.

I do not bloom just by the glorious

rays of sunshine in the spring.

I am not obliterated

by just the mere changing

of the seasons to the next.

I do not wither away when my

world starts to darken

and bitter coldness swallows up

the warmth of the sun.

I am not this fragile thing,

or delicate,

to the winter's icy storms.

The falling of dead, dull leaves

to the Earth beneath my feet

will not be the burial

to my very life source.

No.

You can not reborn something

that had never been destroyed.

I am not a flower.

I am a survivor-

in the light and in the dark.

When you are the persona of strength

it always seems people view you as if

you are sitting high in the heavens

on this light and effortless cloud

with large, white wings flowing

out of the bones in your back-

no regard to the ground below.

Your smooth skin is covered in

diamond platted armor-

impenetrable to

inferior forces.

You become invincible

in the eyes of them.

But when that persona starts to crack,

like sharp, jagged edges of

broken crystalline glass

that glorious veil starts to lift,

the cloud turns to crashing thunderstorms,

your wings wither to dark ash,

your bones start to brittle,

and you become fully aware

of the ground below.

Scar covered skin,

vulnerable and exposed

to, now, superior forces.

You are no longer invincible

in the eyes of them.

You are no longer invincible

in the eyes of you.

You are now

the tragic truth

of a revealed illusion

on what its means to be

the perception

of strength.

I am the one who is

always waiting.

Always anticipating

for what is to come

or what may come.

Waiting to become

better,

bigger,

than who I feel that I am.

Stronger than what

I think that I am.


Never fully comfortable with,

never really secure in,

what is present in

the moment.

I wait with

this expectation that

there must always be more

than what there really is.

That I must be more

than what I am.


There sets a purpose,

an endeavor,

before me.

And then, once more,

there's another again.

I anticipate for each and every

opportunity and probability,

then I wait- once more-

for what's to follow.

It's the story of a life

that has an inevitable ending

but with no one

foreseen wrapped up conclusion.


And maybe,

I could see this as just

my adaptability and ability

for such impeccable growth.

Yet, while I wait,

here plays out

each sequence of my world

that races right on past me

before I can even savor

the pure fulfillment,

the true wholeness,

of just one single moment.

And how that precise moment,

in a single instant,

can be gone.

I try to tell you

in the most subtle of ways

of how I struggle,

my dear beloved,

of why I am pained,

of where that I go when my mind has gone,

of what I want from you,

in these subtle ways

that doesn't compromise

with my own dignity.

That doesn't also expliot

my very dependency

on what I need,

of what I beg of you.

You have pleaded to me

a time before,

to tell you,

to show you.

But, I have tried to tell you,

my love,

in the most subtle of ways

Yet,

you do not hear me.

You will not hear me,

will not see me,

in a way-

Oh my dear love!-

that would also

spare me my dignity.

I want to write about you.

I want to voice

every part of you

that has clung to

every part of me.

A thick, heavy tar that you are

I can't seem to break free of.

I want to write about you.

I want to reveal,

every resentment I have

of the inevitable tie your motherhood

has had to mine.

I want to write about you.

I want to express,

release,

tear open my vulnerability to

every experience,

every feeling,

every heartache,

every wound

every trauma.

But, then, I am that quiet child,

once again,

brought back from buried time.

A shy child desperately wrapping

her tiny arms around herself,

sitting anxiously inside the presence

of yet another stranger's home.

How too often,

as well as unfortunate, it is that

I find myself feeling at odds with-

ashamed of even-

for being the person I am.

My whole being seeming to be

something so very foreign-

as if all I am made of is

far too immense,

and much too intense

to exist in all its entirety-

that I instinctively work

to melt myself down enough

to be filled within the jagged cracks

of life's very own looking glass.

Where I am to be

hardened, bent

to fit and disappear into

it's illusive mold.

Where I am no longer too much

of something then-

I'll be nothing at all.

I know how a strong woman cries-

and I also know why.

A hidden lump deep in the heart that festers

into a cancerous demise.

People do not stand on thin foundations,

nor lean on paper walls.

They use up space and add more weight

then you're left alone to bear it all.

When an Autumn
starts to truly come
I like to sing into the air
of the world
the sweetest spring lullabies
of much sunnier days,
just to try to
hide away the crumbling sound
of falling dry, dead leaves.

Sometimes, I fear that the passing of time

will be the ruin of all that makes up of me.

I hope not to be the consequence of

destruction by distraction-

fading away within the fleeting of life.

Sometimes, I fear my

responsibilities becoming like a weapon

for involuntary manslaughter.

I do not want each day to erode my soul to dust.

All of what I am

becoming the ground beneath

conformity.

I do not want hazy eyes in a dazed filled life,

each step I take almost simultaneously.

I do not wish the world to warp

my individuality.

I want to devote to my own

ideal of integrality.

And remember all of the

persistent passions

that have coursed relentlessly

through my veins,

morphing all that's evolved to me.

I can't really mark that exact moment

when I found it was my own hand

holding the image of myself

over the flames of a burning pit.

Watching as this thick, dark smoke

clouds over me in a blinding veil

and the edges of the image begin

to slowly curl in at the tips.

And I know

if I let the heat,

that's resonating off all of my insecurities,

lift yet another finger from the

grasp I have on my image

is just another step further

to letting it fall to be consumed

by the blaze.

And I know

I should pull my arm back to me

and save me from myself,

but I seem to be bound by a force

calling to me deep from the pit,

drawing me closer and closer

with the simplest of words,

"I am not good enough."

Of all the things
I could have been-
I am a stray voice
of a peculiar tone,
bearing no face,
stumbling within a crowd
of congenial strangers.
I am an astronaut
trapped hovering above the Earth-
not truly a part of,
not really connected,
but an outsider left
in love with the world
and all its beauty,
from a distance.
I am the painting
from a surrealist mind
of no name
that hangs in the
shadowed, empty halls
of a foreign country.

Like a smoldering
black tar smoke
erupting the demons
of the world's
very own Pandora Box,
it engulfs me with
a thick heaviness sticking
into the walls of my lungs.
I can feel every particle
burrowing into my life source.
And I cannot breathe
as these entities named
Apparent Cruelty,
Blind Prejudice,
Self-righteous Greed,
Conformed Ruthlessness,
smother me like a form
of slow dry drowning.
Helpless.
I am a foreigner to these presences-
they find no home,
no comfort,
within me.
But, then my sweet daughter,
reaches her hand out to me,
asking me to hold her.
And these entities,
they cringe away
from her touch on my skin.
Scurry away from the light beaming
from her eyes as she looks at me.
The world's Pandora box
around me slams shut.
And I can breathe again.
Because inside me
I house the embodiments of
Kindness,
Love,
Consideration,
Gentleness.
And in there, also, lies Hope.

A lot of times,

I only wish that I could

just believe in myself

to the same magnitude

that other people believe in me.

We are truly our own worst enemy.

Why is that?

Self-doubt is an infectious thing

that seems to spread alongside

the years you age.

And it tends to feed off

the things you like and love the most.

How do you break,

cure that cycle

with the thing others call

confidence?

Or even with

the thing called faith?

Sometimes, it's as if I've never awoken

from that dream where it's void of sound.

I open my mouth to scream my suffering,

yet, not a single word comes out.

I can hear the way someone is able

to hold the notes in a harmony

like the angels themselves sing

within them from the heavens.

I can see the way a light shines

in the corners of someone's eyes

as they hold the hand of a patient

knowing that is exactly where they're meant to be.

I can feel each graceful stroke

of an artist's paintbrush

where their body and whole being meets.

And all these moments,

I admit,

have made me envious

of their absolute surety.

I have become so engulfed by a life

that is not made to be my own.

Wanting desirably to have the assurance

of a solid purpose like theirs.

But in doing so, I have lost focus

of the recognizable aspects of myself.

Aspects that deserved to be admired

by my very own senses.

For, I can hear the way the softness of my voice

is able to ease the mind

of a troubled soul.

I see the way a light shines

in my child's eyes when she looks at me

before her.

I can feel each graceful stroke

of the pencil I hold where

my body and whole being meets.

And all of these moments,

I must admit,

are just the beginning

to what is my surety.

Sometimes, I find myself

trapped in an empty room.

But... this specific room

isn't filled with an oppressive darkness.

The walls don't whisper

a devilish call in my ears.

And cold doesn't capture me

in an icy embrace.

In this room, it is still.

It is silent.

It is hollow.

And I am just there

sharing space among the nothingness.

In this room I should feel peace,

perhaps even serenity,

but there I stand and

I am impracticable.

I am insignificant.

I am inane.

And I am entirely alone.

A dull, exhausted flame

deep beneath my skin,

hiding within a sheltered

part of my heart

that clings desperately

with its embrace-

begging not to be extinguished.

The flame flickers,

pulsing with the beat of my heart,

waiting, urging to blaze.

Ignited only from this lost part

of my soul

finding its way back home again.

The lost part of me wanders

in the desert void of distractions,

sails through the endless sea

of demanding expectations.

It beckons it's siren call.

But the pleas are muffled by

the mountains of piled sand,

swallowed up by the crashing of

the tidal waves.

What a great heaviness it is

to be an empath

surviving in a world

that is often discovered to be

egocentrically brutal

as well as incessant.

To be a collection of reticent voices

in this world full of such

powerful shrilling white noise.

To be determined as weak

by those who know not of

the very resilience required

that can only be formed

out of true humility.

I appear in my truest form.

Never tainted by the hands

of what others want to

craft me to be.

Never forged into a byproduct

from the assembly line of life.

I face this world head on

and straightforwardly.

Planting all of myself into

the foundation of the Earth

I stand upon.

And I never falter

with the cowering of

impressionable minds.

I hold steady.

I remain pure.

I appear in my truest form

for all those to see.

Refusing to repair parts

of myself

that are not damaged.

Allowing my soul to be

the graceful hands of an artist

who paints the canvas

of my world

through my eyes.

I've become a victim of the night

the predators they howl my name.

Heads raised up with their pride,

a haunting silence in their taunting stride,

waiting for me to come their way.

Once the dark night hides the sun,

the greatest devourers have temporarily won.

For within the depths of my mind they stay.

All at once, they swarm, they stalk.

Overwhelming me, encircling me,

as I start to fall.

I'm caving in and I want to break

to protect myself I ease into a mindless escape.

Then, as the dark night slowly turns to day,

they leave me to be left in this vacant state.

When I arise from my wake,

a foolish relief to find,

there's a short absence from their taunting stride.

But, once the dark night hides the sun,

again I hear the predators ignite their cry,

and I've become a victim of the night.