Today, I read, in the newspaper
about someone's daughter drowning
an accident,
an unforeseeable misfortune,
and I've come to the reality
that we can never know
the truth depths of what has happened to this family.

From this moment
their fleeting lives
will be droplets of water
that are trying to fill--
some void of where their
daughter used to swim.

And no matter
how calm the ocean becomes
it will always have the waves
that started from this day,
till the day; they too die.

It shakes me
and causes me to grieve for them
that I cannot share their pain
that as an outsider
I can only imagine the anguish.

I do not know these people
I have never met their daughter
and I will never meet them or her
but I can dream of their emotions--
it is a think haze of disbelief
"that something so terrible
would happen to me, my family."

And not only is their daughter dead
but they are empty--
They have now a room
full of belongings
that some how no longer belong
to anyone in the world.

Their suffering has only begun,
because the rush of death
leaves each person breathless,
and it is only when the air
decides to come  back to their lungs
and the ripples of the waves
have begun to subside
that their real world will set in.

And their bleakest truth will come to fruition,
as the family sits bedside
to an empty bed, where their daughter sleeps--
they will imagine the same as me
that maybe they're just dreaming--
when they wake up
she'll be back with them again.

I thought about two ideas
to write about and I
didn't write about either.

One had to do with
sidewalks and people--
the plundering
of personality
that happens
even when you walk
where it should be safe to be.

The other
was about technology--
that inside our veins
instead of polysaccharides
was the wires
to our electronics;
that stitch themselves inside
to keep us plugged in.

Maybe it was the in-toxicity
of having to try and fail
a persona that perpetuates
underachievement

or a rebel
that displays rebellion
by not rebelling at all.

My mind is the lackluster
of copper compared to silver--
its dull ensemble
may be its greatest achievement
a replication of someone else's words
because mine
lack the quality to be appreciated.

And my information for poetry
is irrelevant to the real world--
because these are analogies
they are the rhetoric of argument

the imagination of 'youth'
and from my age
deemed to lack understanding
so I cannot be president,
hardly can I speak,
nor should I be listened to.

Understanding
is something
that comes from
the daunting
reminder
that we are all the same

and it's not happiness
but the disheveled,
underpaid,
antagonizing
waiter
who launders around tables.

Being treated poorly
by people
that can't even
take the hands of time
to read the name
of a person that serves them life

the succulent roasted pork
with a side salad
or a bowl of broccoli soup
have more in common with
our suffering waiter
than the illiterate people.

My dreams
do not come attached to
the ideals of my people
or the sacrifices of another country.

Instead I am poor
and mine are clinging to life
the very idea of existence.

Mundane flashes--
not adventurous endeavors
nor flights around the world
this is what richly folks do.

Simply a mingler
someone whose life
flourishes around the bends
of florescent street lights
and panhandling
nearby a farmers market
just after sunrise.

This remnant is few
as these are neighbors
local countrymen
who stoically face
the world's deviation
and deprivation
from coexisting

by the bonds of
agriculture and personality
even as a beggar
it is but a joyous memento
to a world that
no longer thrives.

I'm a ****** of ambition
a clairvoyant
whose true sight can only
seer through my objectives.

I am juxtaposed from my life--
from passion and experience
feeling is a concept
that lingers outside the realm
where I reside;
by choices I was forced to make.

It has bibulous proportions
that consume my cravings
and intoxicate the senses--

So can we believe to be free
instead of circus-elephants
who plunged their trunks
into a trough of indecision.

Where caging and pushing
each other to perform tricks for the audience
is the normality of existing--

to be the scampering mouse
that lives outside their barriers
causes them to fear us
to stampede and
stomp until
there is only obedience.

Behind our doors
there is speak
of an underworld
where instead of Hades

lives the politicians,
but they are worst than the devil
because these folks were never
fallen angels.

governmental deities
whose sole goal is power
or the enjoyablility of having
not to answer any tough questions.

We pay them
not to find the fine line
or to do the correct thing
for our country--
instead corporations corrupt them
to hide their skeletons
behind closed doors.

How can we expect
them to provide for us
when their true investment is held in money
capitalism--
a form of life-sized monopoly
trying to collect all the paper bills.

Please steal my words
this means
they were of value
maybe worth a penny--
a lost coin on the subway

but at least they
were valuable enough
for someone to claim them,
even if you are poor
and that's the only way
these words matter.

You will set precedent
and from then on--
I will know
that someone has chosen
for me to exist--
that my words captured
at least a part of your soul.

That even me
a wordless fool
who's only skill
is to mumble
was able to
speak to the will
of at least one other person.