the road unravels before me and the horizon keeps running two steps ahead of me and I cannot stop from imagining what the earth would look like without us, how all this concrete and steel would be overrun with grass and vines, wildflowers and wildlife... wildlife?  wildlife would just be life without us here to label it by our standards of what is and isn’t “wild”, without the plague of what we like to see as “civilized humanity” and my mind goes into its own metaphysical pseudo rage at the terminology of that phrase... “civilized humanity”... are we civilized?... humane?... if we stop to read between the lines... if we examine the folds between the pages of our history books... if we don’t blindly swallow down the twisted perspective of the past... if we don’t willing believe the lies we make up about our yesteryears so we can see ourselves as hero’s... instead of the villains... the villains we only stopped pretending to be when the victims of our crimes rose up and fought back... the men in chains, the women without voices, the children forced to fight for words and ideas of old men too afraid to die for their own beliefs... and even now, day by day history seems to be stuck on repeat... a scratched record of wobble wax turning round and round as out of tune as we are out of breath, and worse than that we seem to be allowing it to rewind and tangle and gurgle out white noise and static, to take three steps back for every king of freedom we have let be assassinated... for all the X’s we have drawn on their necks to mark where the knife and the bullet and the noose..should slash... should strike... should choke the life from...their bodies... their voices... their hearts... because freedom is only allowed to be pretty in the eyes of a metaphor... it is far too dangerous in the hands of the of the general populace... far too fragile to let our “civilized humanity” be in control of... we hear the word anarchy and imagine it ripe with chaos... never admitting to ourselves that the only chaos that exists in the ideology of anarchy is our own inability to treat each other with any kind of social responsibility without the threat of some kind of punishment... we only have ourselves to blame that without “law”, there would be no “order”... give me freedom... give them death... I could paint you a picture, tell you a tale of two similar in every way but the ending... one walks away and one falls to the grave... the grieving see no justice and the living just keep on walking... i hear that only love can defeat hate... i hear these words echo back and forth through time... i hear them echo over the bombs of the past, i hear them whisper over the bullets whizzing into the future, i hear them in ever beating heart in this room...yet i cannot stop myself from wondering... why does it feel like we are losing... why does it seem like this is a battle love will never win... why do we keep fighting... love vs hate... love over hate... when if we don’t stop fighting... one day soon... I won’t have to imagine this world without us... and everything, all this concrete, all this steel, all our flesh, all our bones...overrun with grass and vines, wildflowers... and life

love capable of creating
hate habitually destructive
we would rather
spill each other's blood
than find a way
to mend one another's wounds
and why?
when hate nourishes the mind
as well as cyanide
poisons the body
and love can tend the broken
of past and present
and bring warmth in days to come
why do we give into
the short quick fuse
of anger and hate when love
is always there
patient and waiting

write me down in a tragedy
tie me up with metaphor
devour me with pleasures sin
****** me with lust
steal my last breath of love

would you be
the queen of muses
would I be
the fool of kings

what am I doing here
lost within the stars
I can only imagine
as your eyes

what secrets could I find
in the garden of your night
is there more than
forbidden fruit
hanging from the vines

would the sweetness
quench my thirst
or would I need more
and more
until I found
my tongue tied
my teeth rotted
my mouth dry
still hungering
still wanting
one more taste

what am I doing here
lost in a tragedy
tangled in metaphor
staggering between
pleasure and sin
murdered by lust
while stealing from love

what has our intelligence done for us
other than soften our instinct
slow down our reflex
made us into habitual
connoisseurs of convenience
curators of insta-gratification  
creatures of know it all
without the need
to understand anything
the universe just
a night sky out of reach
just a spattering of stars dot the sky
all the cosmos overhead
and we are too consumed
by the blue screens that feed
the narcissism of our egos
to look up in awe and wonder
to question the arrogance
of our intelligence
to see how little we know
about the things we know
as we have killed the view of heaven
with the artificial light of our pollution
facts blurred with faith
and we ignore all the fiction
that causes so much friction
that we allow our children...
that we force our children...
to ****** other children
boys feeling like men
poisoned by patriotism and pride
in such a rush to die
for the words of freedom
never stopping to question
the definition of the repetition
and redundancy of war
never stopping to question
the repetition
and redundancy of war
never stopping to question
the redundancy
never stopping
the redundancy
the redundancy of war
as we will not question the intelligence
that infects us with
the sovereignty to be exalted
by our own cruelty
how else could we excuse
our history that keeps repeating
keeps its transcripts written
in the death and blood of the innocent
mislead by prejudice and hate
taught by fear and ignorance
all brought to us
by what we call intelligence

why were we given these hearts
this muscle beating below our ribs
what good is it
if only driven
by the intellect of our minds
our self indulgent intelligence
why have hearts at all
if we never stop to listen
listen to the message
of its beating
its pounding on our ribs
if we never stop to accept the wisdom
it sings in ever silent word
words that need no definition
need no ink or blood
written down in a declaration
of its reason to be living
it needs not our intelligence to survive
our intellect to live
it has its own wisdom
the wisdom of love
and in our grand intelligence
we are too blind to see
too deaf to hear
too unwilling to feel the truth
of how useless any intelligence is
without the wisdom of love

is it something sparked
something found
or is it just
a passing thought
a fleeting urge

a rumbled hope
a trembled touch
a lost soul
in need of love

or is it a dream
of wickedness
a hunger
from desires flesh
to explore the forbidden
sins of lust

what was imagined here
between the lines
where words did play

what did fingers trace
while parting metaphors
tattooed on flowered thigh

what sound escaped
warm parted lips
where kisses lingered
in long drawn out breaths

was it something lost
or something found
in voyage through
a sea mist scent of love
over sheets soaked
in sinful sweat

where there bodies imagined
what happened here
as their words did play
between the lines

do you ever feel like
you need someone to hold you...
just hold you down...
just so you don’t fall up into the sky...
away from here...
here...
where you’re so desperate
not to be anymore...
here in all the heavy...
all this sorrow..

here...
where hate spreads
at the squeeze of a trigger
a storm of bullets
where bodies fall
that will not get up again

here...
where love crumbles
and the grieving
don’t get to catch their breath
before they find themselves
grieving again

here...
where the pain is everywhere

here...
where you just want
to let gravity go
and leave all of

here...

behind as you fall
into the sky