I found my thoughts too linear so
I drew a dark and scarring line within my mind
I yearned to see the rising sun and
My gaze shifted toward the west
I longed to hear the nightingale’s song and
A flock of carrion crows flew in from the north

I grew weary from travel so
I pressed on over many cruel miles
My stomach ached with hunger and
I began a long and patient fast
I wanted to hold the world in my arms and
I pushed the ground and sky aside

When I needed so deeply a companion
I shunned all and withdrew to a hollow
I worked toward a more righteous life by
Embracing the role of hypocrite
I desired to cleanse my body so
I drank poison amid cretins and dinge

And when I reposed in my loneliness
I saw you holding a scarlet shawl
I knelt at your feet and
There I found peace

In misplaced demographics, an underlying figure
Gets lost in the middle of double-helixed bound’ry lines
Dissolving past parameters, confounding to the mind,
A deadlocked debate decides if pain or love is bigger
It’s like the world’s hardest riddle, answers buried deftly
That no savant or prodigy is able to surmise
And the truth does differ from what words can now describe.

I’ve learned that one can tread life’s forest with a steady course
And with the best of intentions and stark, concerted path
Turn winding bends ambiguous: mistake a birch for ash
So to end the tiring journey in tangent to its source
The nature of the Earth is neither white nor black
It’s more like the palate used when blue becomes grayish sky
But, then again, it’s not this easy to describe

Inside my head there lies a circuit, closed unto itself
So, through this loop I’ve learned to see the difference between
Progress and regression, what has been and has never been,
Is like finding from a deck why each hand differs that is dealt
But the answer matters not, for the circle spins again
It’s kind of like the ocean where the calm and break collides
But, then again, it’s not this easy to describe.

I’ve watched a daunting fog descend upon my clouded eyes
It curbs the hue of ev’rything to darker spectrum shades
So this shroud submerges light until definition fades,
Frustrates the sense of passion; luster steadily subsides
When the mind’s only window is comprised of rippled glass,
It’s like a drunkard’s double vision having not imbibed
But, then again, it’s not this easy to describe.

Each step I take grows even more uncertain than the last
If I could convey to you the shape of this confusion
If I could draw a diagram or picture of delusion
Then you and I might, together, construct and raise a mast
So with to steer life’s wayward ship back toward a purpose
At times, I’m unsure if living’s just learning to survive
So, in this pall, I reach you now, and in you I confide.

Now and then, I feel the clock stop ticking
I feel the parallels, keeping us on track
Let loose beneath an even greater force
And the world becomes honest

If this force were to submit and be humbled
Enough to take a name
I might be tempted then to call it love
But it is more than love
So, I might call it safety or warmth, too
But, so special seldom does it strike me
That I have yet to dare name it

All I can properly give to make clear
A better sense of why this force
Does shake my mind
Does shake my heart
Does stir in me meaning otherwise uncompelled
Does the clock stop
Does leave the world honest, de-comprised, unparalleled
Is to tell you

It holds like unconditional arms of a mother
It smells like just the right cooking from
Just the right turn of dusk in grandma’s old kitchen
It feels like a spot where the trees’ shadows
Leave dancing strands of filtered light
To brush a shoulder on a breezy summer
It sounds like a silence to the clashing sounds
Of all life’s petty games, forfeited
The players unshackled from hollowing rules
It looks like your first celebration
Where your mind did not know to wander out
Beyond the confines of the joy engulfing that moment
It bends time
So that each instance of its presence
Melds into what it was then
And its next visit will bring me to now

When I feel the warmth in how
I love you so
I can see my child smiling back
From long ago

I am angry today
Angry because all the core is hollowed
Angry because content became arbitrary
Angry because lies can so easily be packaged, sold and consumed
As honesty
And in consuming, leverage is given to the machinations of the lie
The machine is now whirring
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the happy monster, hollowing out the core
Processing all the content
And spitting it back indistinguishable, shiny and price-tagged?
Can you feel the great shudder of humanity
Yearning for its heart
Searching for its passion
Longing for its character?

I am angry with the greedy for their philosophy
I am angry with the weak of character for perpetuating
And building from the blueprints of greed
I am angry with the politicians who broadened the roads
Guiding emptiness to our doors
I am angry at the vast apathy, seeping from out doors
Flowing over each road and filling the cracks in the system
I am angry with each individual I have met
Who had a chance to let go of an empty façade
And choose to do something human
But who chose, instead, to look down
And push forward in the lie
I am angry that what is good is lost
To what is practical

I am angry because healthcare is not about the health of people
I am angry because education is not about learning
I am angry because news is not about being informed
I am angry because food is not about nutrition
I am angry because work is not about contribution
I am angry because music is not about sound
And art is not about beauty
I am angry because being a person is not about relating
To other persons as they are
But about relating to their function in the lie
Their function in the aforementioned and hollow
Shells of what once served as our pillars

Yesterday I was sad
I felt saddened by loss
Loss of people and meaning
Loss of a future that now seems impossible
Loss of purpose and agency
But then I realized something important
I realized why my heart still pounds when I see children
Beaten by police for speaking out against the lie
Still pounds when I learn of rebels
Still pounds when I see the truth growing up through
A crack in the road
Still pounds when I hear the slam poets
Yelling at my generation
I realized that sadness is what one feels
In the process of giving up
And anger is the forerunner to action
To life and to love

In sadness we absorb all the pain of the lie
In anger, we pull tight the raw sinews of our sadness
And shape stones of the pain we’ve absorbed
And though we are all mortal
At least, when we die in action
We send a message that reverberates
Through all the machinations of the hollowing lie
Through all the squandered hearts of society
Through all the ages and spaces of consciousness
We will be human
No matter the cost
We will be full
No matter the loss
We will relate to each other as we are
And we will not believe the lie

When you strike out in just anger
You feel all the camaraderie of history
Of those who shared in the common understanding
Of justice and of fighting for its attainment
And in that moment of action
You are not alone
A thousand immortal fists bolster you
Each one shouting “truth!” loudly and in a straight line
An unwavering line that does not bend
To time or place
To odds or probability
To fear or hesitation
To hatred or malice
To resources or means
Nor to any limitation

The only one true sin that man can enact
Is to forget love
And in forgetting love, grow detached
Fall into sadness and despair
Fall into apathy and neglect
Fall into the void of their core
Fall such as to forget what they deserve
And the punishment for true sin is to be alone
I, for one, would rather embrace the vast love of truth
And companionship of anger
Than wither into sin
Cold and lonely

The flesh of which the body holds its form
Objective mass, so grateful, held in debt
And I the glutton, swelled from thinner norm
Destroying each whose faith was lain unkept

‘Tis known to me that life a body met
But I do hold the life therein with scorn
Although the marriage seemed adroitly set
My mind from home is rent, forever torn

Would I could once remove the skin of thorn
Betrayed and jailed, as I indeed deserve
As flesh enfeebled me to acts forlorn
For my misdeeds no tears should lie reserved

That hide were forged of thought would be my will
Within the vaulted mind is beauty still

A secret stage to live out dreams
Water rolls down the pane in streams
Filtered blue ray on blouse undone
Bedroom eyes in the midday sun

Gone like a passing summer rain
Dried and forgotten yet again
Warm light shines through the last droplet
Crumpled clothes in a back pocket

Look of June and the smell of spring
Young hearted steps a sidewalk king
Evening paints horizon line
A smiling boy with girl in mind

Sometimes heaven taps your shoulder
Some times wait though we grow older

One hundred fervent handshakes
With the bearer of neglect
The pall of days has fallen
Where our lives did intersect
And I grow melancholic
Wading through the disconnect

Oh, I stand, I sit, I lie
In this tower where I’ve kept
And my legs have lost their strength
Else I would surely have leapt
Now, I sadly tread circles
Wading through the disconnect

What was pure evaporates
Like the fleeting white of snow
So pool the melted hopes I’ve failed to protect
Dreams, used to fill the voids, now shape disconnect