This is the last poem
The month’s end

They lie in the rubble
As I take it all in
Crumbling figurines
Little toy soldiers
Falling
Little rag doll children
Dying

The wind does not whistle
Beautifully
Only mournful sobs
Sound here in this horror show

There is not enough power
In my heart to stop
What so many have started
So I shatter it on purpose
Break each beating ventricle
Into a thousand plus jagged parts

Red with life’s blood
Wet with life’s love
I pass out each piece
Giving as much power as I have
To give
Morbid love I know

Fractured and scattered among the nightmare
A song rings
The saint in me sings
Give it all to them

The bandaged people cringe and crawl
To them I cry
I love you all

Do not seek to balance me completely
Or sedate me so I submit meekly
I will speak softly ease you gently in
To the new truth we keep forgetting
I am not afraid of uncertainty or ambiguity
Life is not black and white and shades between
It is lush with green foliage
***** brown with earth
Hot and red bleeding lava veins
A sparkling spectrum of all life
Comes from the prism
From great sorrow can come great beauty
If you do not believe me read Poe or Keats
From great pain can come new and returning wisdom
If you do not understand read a book my friend
From all things can come new perspectives
Can come the resurgence the convergence
Of knowledge ever evolving all involving
Loving and preserving
Loving and destroying
To build something new
Or rebuild what we forgot we knew
In my imbalance I am alive
And if you do not have the courage to live so freely
If you are not that greedy
Then I will live it for you
And share things you do and do not want me to
I will be your poetic scapegoat
I will be your teacher
And in my words then in my death
I will be your loving martyr

It’s a privilege to speak the truth to those in power
But an honor to speak the truth to those
Who do not know their strength
To awaken and empower them
To see their movement

They will try to take the words
To tame the language
To anesthetize
Censoring
Limiting
As we lose one word at a time
We will forget
The next generations won’t miss
What was dismissed
And the flowers won’t bloom
The sun won’t blaze
The orange haze will fade
Dullness will set in
In the forgetting
Identity will be lost
Compassion will be lost
We will be lost
In the censorship

The streets bleed violence
But it’s not what you are thinking
Tv has got you drinking up
The new age of segregation
The cultivation of gentrification
One neighborhood split by the highway
One street built up with new projects
To expel so called misfits
Lies value profits over people
See specific skin colors as evil
Or at least deviant

So, I cry out across the canyon
“Tell me you don’t believe in it.
Please tell me you can see it.”

But even the echoes ignore me
How can I save humanity
If they can’t see what I see.

I Put one foot in the grave that I dug,
Take one last hug then I shrug.
Blood pressure rising,
from trying to fight the tyrants,
but it is a losing battle
and even I know it.

So, for every inch forward
I take a hundred and one back.
Till, I collapse ready for the dirt nap,
ready for the final pause,
but maybe someday someone better
will take up my cause.

I am a receiver
A born unbeliever
Truth seeker
Story speaker
Pain reliever
The giver
The writer
The new right
To lifer
Poet of the people
And dreamer

It runs so deep
The rage at sheep
When you let them
Switch the script
You got flipped
And fleeced
Had your morality
Phased shifted
While you were asleep
Subliminally
Subjected to group think
And you blame me
Go ahead
Point your guns
Direct your rage at me
It always seems to be
That the messengers
Gets you the truth
And then gets a bullet
From you

They can’t have me
Cause I was born to be
Living free
**** my society
I don’t belong to it
My birth is not a form
Of national consent
Babies can’t sign
Their legal rights away
Children don’t belong to the state
I was born naked
I opened my eyes to life
Not a servant of America
But a child of humanity
What links you and me
Goes beyond the constitution
Goes beyond international institutions
I am free when I choose to be
When I want to I will cross the border
Then the next one
Till I can walk a thousand to three thousand miles
To stand next to you
And you will know
That you are loved
And we are all free

They fed me my feathers
One beak full at a time
With red flecks on their neck
I picked and I pecked
After I fact checked
I gobbled them up
And now I can’t fly

I am defeated
The day was dark grey
Cold and windy
Cemetery
Blue flapping tent
Ready to fall over
And the Preacher
Droning on and on

Today I am tired and hungry
Trying not to eat the junk
That my friends put in front of me
Grateful for the plateful
Two hundred and seventy pounds
And I just want to eat then fall sleep

Today I am defeated
Both sides find no reason
A killer left unindicted
The marginalized left enraged
Sets the stage for more violence
And violence begets violence

Today I am defeated
So it’s no surprise
That the poetry is uninspired
Rage and melancholy
Are like spiraling lovers
Dancing in and out
Of each other’s arms

Today I am defeated
All the kind words are needed
But they only lighten the load slightly
My chest still stings tightly
The tears still fall lightly
Maybe tomorrow will shine
A little more brightly
But I cannot say for certain

Burn it to the ground
Not the block
Not the town
Not the police station
Or the nation
But the system
We have been raising
Needs razing
Needs blunt blazing
I’m raging
It was my mistake
In thinking we could be better
So start at the local level
And work your way to the top
Start with the clergy and the city council
Go ahead and hit Fox
And don’t stop
Till the bottom rises
Till the rich find their surprises is
Christmas gifts
Of coal and ****
Because they have been ruining it
Just burn it all to the ground

Everything happens to us
For us
Because of us
In spite of us
We are engines of our own enlightenment
Monkeys in the machine
Makers of our madness
Self-perpetuators
Of everything
That makes us
Our own human being

Don’t tell me not to laugh at the darkness
The heart is fragile
But also strangely agile
I don’t want to suffer in silence
Because you can’t handle the humor
In the land of sorrow jokes serve us well
A buffer buffet to soften our current hell
In sadness we isolate ourselves
But in humor that tumor
Gets a shot of chemo chaos
It may sting a little at first
But the thirst to laugh is there
And it helps