What lesson do our children learn
when watching children
****** children in their classrooms
what value do we give their education
when seperating best friends forever
by filling one heart with grief
and putting the other one in its early grave
what child needs to know
the weight and velocity
of the bullets that tore
their once safe world apart

how many tears will it take
to drown out the greed
that allows the trigger of the gun
to be in such an easy place to reach
and the moment of silence has had its turn
and though it may have brought
some small comfort
it did not take the pain away

now we must raise our voices
for the dead
we must raise our voices
for those who have not yet died
we must raise our voices
and we must be loud
louder than the money exchanging hands
louder than the bullets and the bangs
and louder than the rat-a-tat-tat
machine guns song

its more than a matter of safety or control
its the value of the education
we too often forget
forget to teach
forget to remember
forget to live by
the education of kindness
the value of generosity
the need of empathy
the lesson and the gift of love

that we are all the same
no matter our birthplace
no matter what flag we sleep under
no matter what name we whisper
when we offer our prayers
and our hopes
we are all the same
we all live in the same house
no matter how many walls divide us
no matter the mountains between us
no matter the oceans that separate us

we are all in one house
and we are all connected
by the one thing
the only thing
we need to both give
and to receive  
the lesson and the gift of love

let us teach this first
before anything else
because without it
the education we give our children
will continue to be washed away
with the lives of all the children
that we fail to save

Men were made gods and gods became men
and cats dreamed themselves kings and queens
as dogs gnawed lazily away
at the bones beneath the robes of death
and butterflies flutered from the heart
that beat within her ribs
and life ran like a child learning to fly above the clouds
and the stars made not a sound
and from the silence echos made
music did softly play from roaring waves
that lead the way to mermaids graves
where their skulls did sleep in troubled dreams
were men believed themselves gods
and ruined everything

It all started so long ago
that even time cannot recall
where or how it all began
and I was not there
but somehow in part I was
and you as well
though we don’t remember
in the traditional way of remembering
yet we can see in the ways
that leave our eyes blind
that we all were there
in some small
yet infinitely important way
a thread pulled from the nothing
that turned into everything
a spool of love unfurling in waves
of sound and dance
and life and death
and Vincent yellow stars
and pastel ballerina Degas
and time melting into pools of Dali
and sounds trapped
in in the silent world of Beethoven
and the drum beat of Kerouac
and the flowers of Baudelaire
and the drunk truth of Bukowski
and something lost
in the shape of memory
betrayed by what would become ego
was the simplicity of joy
before we had flesh to cover our bones
and bones to move our flesh
and our hearts where stars
that dreamt against the emptiness
in the space between what was
and what could be
and in the pulse of becoming
and into the flow of being
and with the birth of want and need
we gave ego sharp tooth and claw
and drew lines across the night
and dived eternities horizon
into heaven and hell
and pulled the gods and devils
from a hat that we found
upon a corpse that was once
a man made out of snow
from a land where winter
was not cold and bitter
but had a gently warmth
and easy fire that was calm and clean
and things of all sort knew
that the need to be loved
was no more or less important
than the need to love
for time was a waste of all
when absent of the art of love
and now what are we
if we are not allowed to dream endlessly
if we are not allowed to love infinitely
if we fail to live kindly
if we ever forget
the art of love
then the beginning may as well
have been the end

Just a figment of a dream
lost somewhere in a fragment
of my imagination
sold to a pound of flesh
for a heart of sin
and a love forgotten

and inbetween the this and that
of facts and reality
I drift aimlessly through the ocean
of blue and grey mist
in the spheres of your eyes
and wonder who was dreaming who

if none of this is real
and if you're not there
and I'm not here
what is forgotten
must have been remembered

and somewhere the devil
must be laughing
at the cost of what I do
by doing nothing
instead of daring
to become something more
than what I am

is it worth the price
if all I have left
is a figment of a dream
lost somewhere in a fragment
of my imagination

His body fell to the ground and his pulse slowed to a stop and the colors of life in his eyes drained to grey and the last bit of air exited his lungs and he laid there motionless and silent and his chest opened as if his ribs had been cabinet doors and his heart floated up into the sky and into the night and through space and back and forth through time and it was alone in the vast emptiness of it all and with all its scars and stitches and broken and missing pieces it hummed and it beat and it remembered...

it remembered the name in every stitch and every smile that had stolen and kept a piece of it and every heartache in the story of every scar and every love that had ever made it laugh and sing and dance and fly and it remembered all the joy and misery and failure and wonder and everything that had made its life worth living and somewhere inside it smiled

Our love...  
you say we once loved each other
and this is true
and you say maybe there is no fixing us
and before you say anything else
let me remind you of this
our love is buried in a casket
you built with the hands of your betrayal
and the white lies painted on your teeth
that you use to spit out half hearted apologies
that only mean you need something temporary
a place to play pretend while you search
yet again for someone better
but you’re having trouble
finding someone to blindside
as your past keeps crashing
into your present
and that makes it harder to be manipulative
as your lies are bleeding through your massacre
and the color of your eyes
are heavily saturated with desperation
and don’t mistake this for hatred
and I wish you no ill will or harm
but there is no us
as you walked away from that
of your own free will and choice
time and time again
after I forgave you time and time again
only to find the same dagger
leaving new scars in the heart
that was still at that time
beating for you
and it took time
months and months
and years and years and years
before I realized the only thing
you could give me was false hope
that turned quickly back to misery
and that enough was enough
so I placed my still heart and our love
in the casket you painstakingly built
and let you bury it
and you buried it so deep into the ground
that it fell through the earth
and is now a satellite circling the earth
high above china
and much like you it shines in the night sky
as pretty as a star
but completely artificial

You may not have pulled the trigger
but your fingerprints were on every bullet
that left the barrel of the gun
so when looking at the dead heart
pinned and bleeding on the wall
know you did your part to stop its beating
and that innocence is something you can't reclaim
with the white lies painted on the teeth
framed within your crooked smile
and now I see your beauty
was nothing more than smoke and mirrors
off the reflection of the gun