My uncle slit a man's throat with a box cutter in my childhood home and didn't apologize.
Sitting in a circle filled with crack smoke and stale beer breath.
This is a shining example of what I've lived with
and the lengths I've had to go to escape the thing people call "destiny".

Thievery, lies, pressure, and violence
has been calling my name for the longest.
But I know the voice too well to be taunted.  

Words are my freedom and words are my piece of mind.
There is not a single substitute.
Whether poem, prose, or paragraph,
This is the only calling I've ever had.

I've lived with a hoarder, addicts, senility, and ignorance
in a variety of different combinations and forms.
At times, power, water, freedom, money, necessities, have all been an unachievable thing to me.
Lost to the vile goals of those folk I love.
I am the only one who sees the beauty in the fragile and odd.
The others see only a mess on a paper, and move their eyes to the nearest glowing box.

My father drowned when I was six.
My grandfather followed soon after.
My mother felt the stab of this and caved so many times.
I witnessed and shared the burden of her pain and grief.
My grandmother forgot everything she ever loved or knew, and short after passed as well.
Pets and possessions,
friends and followers.
All gone with a drastic breeze.
I am the one with the vision, but I am trapped in a shell of a city,
covered with that wretched stink of refined soy.

Will I be able to unburden the world from myself?
You all give me such great courage and allow me to share the beauty as I see it.
You all have such great skill with symbols and it makes me feel like home isn't far.
I want this. I want this.

If I keep breathing like the rest of the world
I feel I may miss the sound of the world's heartbeat.
But my death would not bring a solution for the ones I love.
Only a warrant for more death.
I need this. I need this.

With my words, I conjure up hell.
And hell brings with it the familiar.
Run little kitties, run.
The Doubling House and The Sequential Church will not hold forever.
My havens are temporary, but the craters are forever.
I will struggle till the pain becomes all I am
and I buckle under the weight of what I shouldn't have taken
from the mighty Atlas.

I do this for me.
I do this for you.

a supplicant at the celebration
the tattooed man is frozen in the
posture of flinging the dog meat of his soul into the river below
hoping to drown his sorrows and
with tepid conviction he swears his loyalty to the
gods of a lesser horde hoping to void the cost of saving his soul
such a narrow way to tread
such a dangerous thing to think
to dream casting away the meat curtails the rot

the poisoned fruit of the garden of eden
is strewn about his feet
as he sneaks through the backwater shopping mall of
his narrow existence
but its only an image
and the reality smells much different
its a much harsher drop in the bucket
it goes deep
far into the night
deep into the depths of the soul
far into the realizations and rationalizations
that makes up a man
day to day

held hostage to the ideal
that the vanity of self realization is a saving grace
mitigating responsibility for your actions
you can deliver the sermon but can you wear its shoes
its easy to see the other mans face
in the things we know are wrong
its easy to place another in the path of destruction
let them pay our price
but at the top of your last hour
its just you and whatever created you'
can you say that you were more than
dog meat feeding dog meat to the dog meat masses

Chain me to the ground,
I'm looking down
At the jagged rocks below,
Hold your breath,
There's still so much left,
I've just got to take things slow.

Steady mind,
I must be kind,
And be as patient as I can be.
Control the shaking,
The time needs taking
To find the better person in me.

I wish I had a voice
That could enchant
Every pair of ears
That ever heard me.

I would sing forever.