Enslaved in a wave of consciousness
Where criminals live like predatory animals
A mind-made society
An undercurrent of malicious activity
Institutions disguised as truth
Where secret knowledge is the most power
The wells are dry and the tap water is going sour
The carefully planned language and images we are sent
With irreversible impact, truth and time will reveal what it all meant
This whole society is a masterfully crafted scheme
And I know others experience and see its transparency  
To hurt everything in and around it
All for money
Welcome to the conspiracy

I can’t ******* breathe
From your cigarette smoke
and these awful feelings
I bite down on my lips
Peeling the skin out of nervousness
Driving home alone
Watery eyes staring through a rainy window

So tell me if you can
Help me try and understand you
How you’re a man of many masks
what is really going on below
because I’d die just to feel what you know

But maybe through the saline
Will bring a revelation pristine
And I’ll accept what’s best for me
because in reality
you only care about yourself babe

and I know you’ll try to come back
but you used up all your selling tactics
And backhanded compliments
And you end up sitting around and feeling sorry
Drunkenly
You cordially invited everyone to your pity party
and now you say you’re going insane
And I’d bet
There's already another girl at your hip
Right now you’re talking to your cigarette
And I know you’re type
And I know you’re saying
“But babe, I can’t help it
I’m an artist”

She was a child of the forest.
Birthed on a bed of moss
and swaddled in beech leaves.
Her first cries shook the trees,
as they reached branches out
to stroke new infant skin.
They coaxed her spirit into the bark
where it seeped into sap and through her veins.

He was a child of the sea
Born of the waves and rocks
placed in a cradle of sand
still wet with his mother’s blood
the sea winds stole his first breath
And cast his soul to the depths,
he would always return to the sea.

They were sun and moon lovers.
She, the daughter of golden light through leaves
He, the son of silver glints on dark waves, fleeting.
She would find him on nights of the harvest moon,
walking along the shore, stop him from running
into the sea.
He would find her at noon,
lying in the leaf mold beneath the trees
her eyes cloudy with sunlight.
He’d cover them,
afraid she would go blind.

Star gazing from the backseat of a car
Watching the sky melt onto the rolling hills
Darkness enveloping the world around
Save for the sudden flashes of light in the distance
Music lifting my soul to a higher realm
I am a peaceful person

perhaps imprinting this razor into my thigh could be considered "grieving"
as you lying down in bed all day weeping
and perhaps my means of adjustment more productive
in that afterwards I could arrange a fake smile upon my face and move along
while you stay in that same place all day
(on those 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets)
listening to that same song
although both our mental states as shattered as broken plates after the plate tectonics broke underneath that chestnut oak
in oakland

She cut her finger while slicing bread,
no one gasped, or winced
with her exclamation of "****"
aimed towards the bent, saw-toothed steel.
She bloodied a kleenex,
then strangled her fingertip
with a band-aid.
She didn't mind the sight of blood.
She'd grown used to it in childhood.
From scratching the welts
left by mosquitoes till they were crimson.
She remembered accompanying her little sister
to a routine checkup
and the nurse looked down at her scarred legs
and asked if there was anything wrong
with the big one.
It was the first time
she learned to feel shame
for her scars.
In fourth grade she had a crush
on the class clown.
She liked his black hair
and blue eyes
and he made her laugh.
He ignored her.
Later, she found out
he called her pimple-face behind her back
by then, she no longer cared
what he though, feelings had faded,
but the pain of being told
you were second to last
in the classes "Beautiful" rating
(second only to the freckled girl with tiny eyes).
She learned her crooked teeth were things to be ashamed of.
Braces helped, but four years of wires
and widening her tiny jaw
with medieval, key driven devices
that prevented normal speech,
were hardly an improvement.
She learned pain was beauty,
but being able to take pain well
was not beautiful.
Being able to run swiftly,
having monkey-bar calloused hands
and strong arms,
only made her unfeminine.
She did not sit placidly on the swing-set
admiring her fingernails,
screaming,
when a fly buzzed past her ear.
She rescued frost-winged bees from being crushed,
laying them gently in the grass.
She held back tears when the asphalt stripped her palms.
She wanted to be brave.
Respected for the strength she thought she had.
That did not come till ten years later.
He called her a water nymph,
jumping from rock to rock like a small child,
though childhood had long since gone.
Laughed as she caught salamanders.
She cut her toe while they were walking together.
It began to bleed.
She said nothing, thinking it would stop,
letting the blood fill her shoe.
He panicked a little, wanted to carry her.
She refused.
But he bandaged her foot, gently,
like a morbid Cinderella,
as she washed the blood out of her sandal.
He complimented her graceful run.
Things she'd wanted noticed
for ten years.
She didn't know when she would find
another
who saw her, as he did.