I hope that the world
comes to see my mind
and hope for them
to pray for my life.

Because they are never going to offer
me their hand
I'm over here in a distant land.

Suffering off poverty--
a place named 3rd world country
and none of them understand
that I smile while I bathe
standing on the riverside sand.

It's my peaceful cleansing
before returning to my shackles
the fear of living in this territory.

I used to have my neighbors
but now I have craters
and collapsed buildings
to keep me company.

Standing in the remnants
of a door frame
is the last place I ever saw my family.

Some of us chose to drown
swimming across the Aegean sea--
some of us chose to stay
so our children
could have a place on a raft about to keel,
but none of us chose to suffer
and feel like the entire world had turned against us.

The bodies of paradise
are the fledglings of humanity--
little chicks
that peeped for love
and instead found
what we attempt to purge.

Which is reality
instead warping
and mourning
the placate scene
into what our creation
has never meant to be.

I've become fond of
literature and statutes
that line a facetious library.  

One which mangles
others from stepping inside
yet holds the truest heart.

My finest lines
are not those spoken
but those read
from paper or stone,

because
it is only
to those un-living
the crēvit are not divined
and which Veritas,
can come find
*Amor est vitae.

I am
the beauty
that which captures
even my own canvas.

An illustrious
painting to things undeserving--
wrapping up ugliness
with the truth of nature--
these shrubberies
will hide
and protect those
from the dangers
within myself.  

Convincing
the world that
We are not dying or struggling,
but merely making art--
is this not the means of artistry.

If I do not suffer
then I will never complete
my Sistine chapel
or find the real Mona Lisa
hidden amongst these frauds.  

These fears are real,
and every day
they are realized--
where my peers, friends, family
say 'I will be fine"
so I act as if I am.

No longer eating
instead I portray the art of eating--
the sun has found out
I am defenseless against it,
but I still paint myself in the light
so my lilies can survive
off the energy draining out of me.

Today was the day
I decided to clear out--
no real reason to keep
the junk that has began to rot.

Smelly like moss on a crumbly tree,
or the fashionable nonsmokers room
smelling like there's been quite a few
rebels striking back at a budget motel--
probably because they didn't have enough
television channels, to pacify these poor souls.

The inanimate fixtures are posed for display--
once complex industry
were personified to a fleeting idea of 'purpose',
instead smothers its surroundings
with the validity of indifference;
the forgotten hallows that
truly signify my closing hours.

Inside me now
are the cooing sounds
and the beating wings of fragile pigeons
that seek shelter from a world
trying to forget them;
beginning to call them pest
even though they are snow,
so they must hide within me
and survive with my blood orchids
that begin to bloom--
spilling out of me.

My mother
My father
My brother
and even my Grandmother
are all liars.

They lie
not because they know
what they are lying about
but because their world
is built on the foundation
of false truths.

Do not draw on yourself with ink
because if you do
you will become sick--
is a simple lie
that is spread just like disease.

The true black plague
of this generation
is not a virus of biological form
but an infection of the mind
one that lingers in our thoughts.

It causes us to error
corrupting what is truth
for what we think is true--
over-implosion of convoluted thoughts
make even the simplest
of ink and skin to be mixed too much.

The convenience of information
has oversimplified our lives
and with it
people produce less
and consume more.

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.