When I was younger
I wanted to be
Superman
Spiderman
An X-man
A man
Like Gandhi
Or MLK Junior
A writer
An artist
And through
All of this
A good man
So here I am
The poet activist
No leotards
I am not marching
Or flying
But I am trying
By writing
To make the world
A better place

Do you know what you are to me
You are my family
Like a brother to me
Why can’t you stop and see
That what they want you to believe
It’s like a terminal disease

The orange flower blooms with pain
****** fire will destroy our youths and then
Were back at Vietnam
With crying parents holding
Their young and dying children

And if the veil of time is torn
If the loom that weaves fate is shorn
Cut clean to the core of my bone
Then I may not make it home

Cause the bombs that hit Nagasaki
The mushroom death at Hiroshima
Was just another destruction
Of the long separated but Japanese
Family to me

And when the natives cried for help
When we stretched our wretched ourselves
To cross the oceans and find a better home
Did we have to **** our native kin
When they could have been more than friends
We could have treated them like family

It’s the dark cycle that seems to follow
When we make ourselves hollow
With distinctions like race and creed
Make the media forget or deny our history
Then the bullets fire and the bombs drop
And all those hateful crimes never stop
Makes us monsters killing our foreign family

We are a wall of lost children.
Tiny fingers fixing
the broken pieces
Of humanities innocence
mending her compassion,
sewing the stiches of
goodwill back into
her being.
Until goodness can be seen.
Till the stars look down
flaring with pride
to see our brighter side.
Children of the cosmos
fulfilling our purpose.

There can be dignity in suffering
Not the Christian kind
That sacrifices this life
For some sort of mythological reward
But the kind that takes their lessons in pain
And learns to be stronger, and gentler
The kind that teaches kindness
To those with so little to share
When the so called wretched poor
Places their faith in the goodness
Of a stranger a danger perhaps
But not a lapse in judgment
More like a hopeful promise
That swears we can all be
Better human beings

There are crimes so cruel
That catch a soul
And cause it to shiver

And some would have us
Return to those darken ways
Because of their beliefs

But there are ways to be better
And pondering such I ask
How many sorrows could be eased
By kindness
A gentle hand
A kind glance
A hug
A soft spoken word
Adding dignity
To the suffering of humanity

He cultivated a passive nature
Made peace to pervade his essence
A sterling silver soul
But it was contaminated
Little dark parts littered his white heart
Abuse sparked black spots

Pass all those authoritarian lies
He saw the demon within rise
Not supernatural but emotional
With every angry words heard
With every heartbroken day
With every hope lost the cost
Paid was displayed in his ever
Darkening ways

And the kindness turned to hate
And the darkness consumed the day

Unaccepted left abject in retrospect
Perhaps he could have saved himself
But for the lack of love
He could not muster up enough strength

As his resistance eroded
His intentions were corrupted
And acidicly corroded
Till his innocence evaporated
And all that was left was
The monster they made him
The thing that he most feared and hated
He became a sick distorted image of
Himself

They say wait
Things will get better
Wait it’s in god’s hands now
Wait it will all work out
Cause our lord has a plan
Wait
Wait
Wait
Wait says the man
We’ll I am tired of waiting
Of people debating
When I get the right
To be who I am
To love who I do
To stand up for what’s right
To fight
I ‘m not waiting
Tonight I write
For the rights of life
To get what we deserve
Instead waiting
For something
That will never come
On its’ own

Can you outrun the history
Of violence and oppression

If you felt every inch of terror
That was birthed from the bombs
Every bit of anguish and loss
If you paid the same wages of war
Then maybe you to would see
The inhumanity of drones

If your stomach growled
With a pain so deep
And you could not sleep
Because of the fears you keep
Maybe you would not stand
For this poverty

If every bullet hole
Cut partly into your skin
Leaving painful impressions
If the nightsticks bludgeoned
Your beloved
And you watched your oppressors
Armor up for in house war
Maybe you would abhor
Police brutality

If the circle of kinship
Surrounded more than just this
Small social club you claim
Then maybe the pain
Of others would touch you
Something as of late
It has failed to do
Maybe you could use
A little empathy

We got a history of killing dreams in the streets
One man stands up to be struck down
One leader who can’t be bought off
Gets his head shot off
If they can’t subvert you
They pervert the image of you
If they can’t use violence to silence you
They put a bullet through the heart to
And I get tired of trying to put poetry
And music to the truth
Just so you will listen
Tired of using the humor trick
To pierce that thick skull

What you weren’t told
You are the mold so break yourself
To make yourself stronger
And pass it on so it lasts a lot longer
So the dreamers can stop
Taking shots for all of us

I hear there is fear in your mind
The deep-seated preprogrammed kind
The kind that has soften slightly over time
From the cursing and calling negros mongrels
To the stereotypical fox news type portrayal
But it is a betrayal of our human nature
The denial of the better evolved brain
It is the maiming of our society
When we regress to the repressive ways
That we sought to overcome in our younger days
Some say things will never change
But the blood to brain-dead barrier can break
The rational can take hold with old and new love
With new scientific studies of all of us
We forgot that the legions are us
The whale beneath the boat
The behemoth that works and votes
The labor force that runs this country
The union of humans striving for a better world
That is us, in every tint, gender, ****** identity
Under each layer of skin there is a piece of me
And behind every strange shadow or reflection of myself
Is someone else different but in all the ways that matter
The same

One flower out one flower in
One lights shines
Another light dims
One struggle down
Another one begins
It is the nature of existing
That we must all come to
An uncertain end
And the cycles may not
Transcend death
When one leaf curls
Another bud unfurls
Blooming in the spring
Nothing is everlasting
Not you, her, him
And definitely not me