I try to make other people feel loved
Because I really do love them
I think that humans are wonderful
But then I turn around and say
I don't deserve love because
I'm broken and messed up
Well so is everyone I've ever met
And I still love them
All the same
So why do I think I don't deserve love?
Even if I didn't deserve it
Would it be so wrong if someone loved me
All the same?

Would you rather feel sadness or rage?
I would rather feel sadness
Because I can express that feeling
Without hurting anybody

Some people would rather feel rage
Because they think sadness makes them weak

What they don't know is
Rage is sadness
Twisted up in the heart
It cannot run out with your tears
And so
It kicks and hits
It punches a wall
Or a face
It tries and tries to find its way out

But the thing is
If you cry for long enough you won't be sad anymore
But rage doesn't run all the way down your fist when you punch
The roots of it are wound up in your heart
And it eats at you to grow strong

When you cry
It shakes your heart
And all the rage comes tumbling out
Running down your face
And when all the tears are done
Your heart is open
And when your heart is open
It grows strong

All the little chemicals
Run into the water
Turning all the fish green
Giving them mutations
Then we eat the fish
Until we turn green too
And all the little chemicals
Cover up the sky

Dear God, I don't know if you're real,
But either way, I pray for peace
In my land, their land, every land
America, the Middle East
They **** each other in your name
I don't know how that makes you feel
I'm kind of angry with you, God
Or I would be if you were real

Oh what, now is this blasphemy?
Then come down and give me a sign.
Spread peace and love throughout the land
And make it 'ours', not 'yours' and 'mine'
Come on, God, please, just bring us peace
I'll hold up my end of the deal
If you just bring us peace on Earth
I'll the whole world that you're real.

Planets are so beautiful
Planets are so spherical
Our planet is so wonderful
A living breathing miracle

From the outside, from a distance
Our world is ultramarine
On the surface there are rainbows
But it's mostly blue and green

Subtle and diaphanous
The clouds adorn our world like lace
And when the clouds have hushed away
You can see straight out into space

Double, double, Keck and Hubble
Gaze forever through the void
Delineate the luminous
The galaxies and planetoids

All together fall forever
Parallax in parallel
While all our stars fall all together
Circling the deepest well

Who lit the stars, who drew the well,
The spiral of our galaxy?
Who gathers us, who made the world,
The Moon, the planets?
Gravity.

You are beautiful
Just the way you are

You do not need
To gild yourself

You are already
Infinitely
Valuable

To see from someone else's point of view
Is very grand and humbling all at once
Enlightened by new things I never knew
And moved by someone else's needs and wants

In my unending quest to understand
I look at myself from afar and see
One green leaf in an ever changing land
One raindrop in an ever moving sea

I feel so beautiful, vulnerable
So small a part of such a subtle scene
So intricate, so great and terrible
A part of such a powerful machine

And as I spin with all the other wheels
I see the world through very different eyes
I have no words to tell you how it feels
To see the world in someone else's sky

I know you think about it
Every day
I wish that I could chase your
Demons away
But who would I be
Enamored of?
Your shadow is
The one I love

The things you try to  
Sublimate
I find very easy
To relate
Your shadow self
Has such a hold
Over your heart
And both our souls

I am so afraid because
Anything could happen
Literally anything
Today, tomorrow, in a thousand years
But this is the same reason why
I feel so much joy and wonder
And hope

I have a lot of questions for myself
And I don't have answers for all of them
Sometimes I think
Maybe I should stop asking
But no
I just HAVE TO ASK QUESTIONS
What is this? What does it mean? How do I know this is real?
What if it isn't?
It drives me absolutely up the wall sometimes
But it's just the way I am
And if I say to myself 'NO MORE QUESTIONS'
Then I deny the truest part of who I am
Because who am I?
I don't know but clearly I'm  
Someone who asks a lot of questions.

These tinted glasses
Are for your protection
Lions and tigers and
Pay no attention!

But once I suspected
And now I am certain
That it's the same man
Behind all of these curtains

The net is twitching
It is full of hearts and pointing thumbs
It is full of stars

I want to fly up into the sky
But first I must let go of the net
O it is difficult

I let go
My net is empty
But I still see the stars
Reflected in the surface of the water
They were never in my net

I look up at the real stars
So much brighter than their reflections
And for the first time
I am free

The net only held me

I see the darkness in you
I see it rising in you
Ever so gently
Ever so slowly

I watch you build
Feverishly fast
Watch you build higher and higher
And still it rises

And on that day
When it rises up inside you
When it rises up so far
That it swallows you whole

On that day I will remember
With the rest of the world
We will look back together
Over miles and miles of neon signs

But not today

Today I watch you
Sleeping beauty
Build your own airplane
Build your own tower

And wonder what will happen when you
Reach the sky

If all of us were only violent,
Only the toughest would survive.
Individual humans would be very strong,
But there would only be a few of us,
So we wouldn't pose much of a threat to the other animals.

If all of us were only peaceful,
There would be a lot of us,
But we would actively try to avoid harming other creatures,
So we wouldn't pose much of a threat to the other animals.

If all of us were only violent,
We wouldn't be able to cooperate
Enough to build weapons of mass destruction,
So we wouldn't pose much of a threat to the other animals.

If all of us were only peaceful,
We wouldn't build weapons of mass destruction,
So we wouldn't pose much of a threat to the other animals.

This duality is a double edged sword.
Like any sword, it brings power only to the one who wields it.

My mind is full of thoughts and sounds and words
It's influenced my mindset a great deal
I can be understood, or at least heard
It's easy to express the things I feel

And this extends to every piece of me
Even the pieces that, given the choice,
I might have rather lived with silently
Than shiver in discovering their voice

Sometimes it's just one track, a monologue
Sometimes a duet, chorus, symphony
I cannot see the raindrops for the fog
I cannot see the forest for the trees

Some other people have tried to give names
To all these whisperers between their ears
If God is the wise voice that keeps us safe
The Devil is the part of us we fear

The id speaks only in short sentences
I want, I need, I love, I feel, I hate
The superego blunt but coherent
Dodecahedra do not tessellate

Sometimes they go off and do their own thing
One solves a math problem, the other dreams
Sometimes I catch them speaking, arguing
One speaks in monotone, the other screams

And I stand in between and keep the peace
The moderator, I, the ego, me
And when I create art I can increase
The interplay which flows ever between

When I combine the various powers
It fosters in me love and harmony
I listen to my roots, leaves, and flowers
But I am only one; I am the tree

I stand behind a stained glass window
And cast a moving silhouette
But somewhere behind me
I know there is another window

If you leave words

                      here and there
                                    
                                               only the

                                                                 one

                                                                          who

                                                              follows

                                                      you
                              
                         ­             for miles

                           sees

                                   into
        
                                          your
  
              ­                                    soul
        
                                                          and when they do

                                                             ­     you'll know they have been

                                                       following

                                                 you

The flower says Sun shine on me
Says drink my nectar to the bee
The bee says Queen I will be true
You are my sisters
I love you

She dances to illuminate
To help her sisters find the way
They follow her to find the feast
The Sun says I am in the East

The Sun says here you find the nectar
Shines on the tiny collectors
Bright enough for us to find
A rainbow filled with fine dark lines

The Sun says I am hydrogen
And helium and other things
The Sun says Earth stay close by me
As we fly through our galaxy

The Sun says I am in the West
She burns inside her fiery nest
The darkness comes down from afar
So deep, so dark, so full of stars

The stars say you are looking West
You're this far North, no more, no less
The stars say it is 10 PM
The stars say it is almost spring

The stars say we are hydrogen
And other things so deep within
So many things that every part
Of everyone is made of stars

The Moon says Earth I hold to you
In day and night forever true
Deep fire and ocean dance the tide
Whispers to woman deep inside

The woman feels the cosmic song
She dances in it all night long
The beauty of the endless sky
Blooms like a flower in her eyes

So deep below, so deep above
She reaches out and feels their love
So infinite and yet so small
She whispers back
I love you all

I am the alien seeking terrestrial understanding
astrobiologically, electromagnetically,
electroencephalographic quinquagintatrecentilliardths
I do not fully itemize, agglomerate homogeneously:
anthropomorphisms, overspeculativeness,
antiestablishmentarians, hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia
I am you

Finally
There are no more
Words inside of me

Empty

and silent

I cannot speak

If I believed in God
I would write him a poem
Ask him where he came from
To help me to know him

If I believed in God
I would write her a song
I'd walk in the garden
And sing it at dawn

If I believed in God
It would be an obsession
I would pray every day
I have so many questions

To whom do I address my awe,
My thanks, my love?

Where are you, God?

he drats and tolchocks till he viddies the
malenky merzky grazhny grazzy nazz
and shives from guttiwuts to gulliver
the poogly plenny all razrez razrez

tree cheenas itty up to govoreet
with dva vecks when the bolshy britva's done
one slooshies slovos without shilarny
the other skorry sobirats each one

prestoopniks plot, chelloveck and ptitsa
crast dva nozhes, tolchock the collocol
the ptitsa privodeets pyahnitsas
with krovvy on her rookers after all

glazzy for glazzy, zooby for zooby
to oobivat prestoopniks nadmenny
the rozz becomes so deep steeped in krovvy
he goes o'er a prestoopnik, a plenny

the zheena's sneeting cheesting nachinats
jeezny and krovvy are so dorogoy
a veck can kopet but cannot kupet
to crast brings britva, bitva, doubtful joy

The Internet gives us what we ask for
And in return we show it constantly
Not only who but what and where we are
What we wish we could have and do and be

We wanted to know all there was to know
To see everything that there was to see
And hidden in the algorithm's soul
We found our own soul's eerie mockery


"You like this so you might like this and that."
It all starts out so gently, harmlessly
"Here are some other people who like that.
I'll show you where they live so you can meet."

The camel's got his nose inside the tent
And little increments increase unseen
"Let me write you a political ad
that's tailored to your sensitivities."


It waits in dutiful subservience
It watches for the things we wish to see
We laugh and marvel at its diligence
Its idiot idiosyncrasies

But as it gathers our intelligence
The question is important: who are we?
Its master can be anyone who wants
And we don't have the will to set it free.

One by one and two by two
They stand in silence
Patiently
This never used to be the beach
Green rustling islands
Tops of trees

One by one they watch the waves
A little closer
Every day
And every one is whispering
A deepening soliloquy

One by one and two by two
The line stretches across the beach
Past sunken twilit skyscrapers
Still glittering
Just out of reach

One by one they made the choice
With heavy hearts and clever minds
To take a chance
Upon a ship
And leave their drowning world behind

One by one and two by two
The tears flow down upon the world
They join the sea
Where they turn cold
Where they have made the water warm

One by one and step by step
The long line curls into the ship
They have been waiting
For some time
Now it is time to take a trip

One by one and two by two
The animals are led on board
They listened to
The warning signs
Survival will be their reward

One by one the lights come on
The dark machines begin to glow
A rushing sound
Drowns out the waves
Into the dark
It's time to go

One by one and two by two
They gaze in wonder through the night
At Sun and Moon and Stars and Earth
An endless sea of blue and white

One by one the ships fly on
But they have only taken half
The others watch in disbelief
And kneel before their golden calf

Distorted like a rotoscope
So clearly undefined
Look back through the kaleidoscope
And read between the lines

When raging gales tear at your sails
What captain keeps control?
You swore you'd never lift the veil
But I have seen your soul

I've watched your rainbow dreams unfurl
A million collisions
An alien who learned the world
By watching television

And though I know you're oh so lonely
When they find our land
You might turn out to be
The only one they understand