A small needful fact
Is that 98% of women
Do not look like fashion models.
100% of American children
Are being lied to everyday
Told they are not normal
Told there is something wrong with them.
Another needful fact:
More than two million women
More than eight hundred thousand men
Are bulimic
Add, subtract, multiply, divide
Any way you try to solve the problem
It still exists like a parasite.
If any girl, boy, child, man, woman
Wants to escape these images
Running with cupped ears in the other direction
Hoping to save themselves
It follows them, rank with the smell of sewage
It is the ghost in the closet
Television set
Store aisle
Telling them they are not good enough
They cannot escape the lies so dense
Even their inner most breath
Is hot with deception
And so, even the most basic function of breathing
Becomes challenging.
Until we replace poison with water
Brokenness with holiness
Lies with truthfulness
These seemingly sorrowful statistics
Will never quite add up.

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

It was late afternoon
when the moon peeked through my window
as soon as the night went in to full bloom
there were a pool of stars
encapsulating my vision
I saw two pairs of spoon
crisscrossed up in the sky
and thought of you.

A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.

But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.