When you’re a PA, every day you try to make people healthy, but you have to be stealthy because only the really wealthy seem to care, the rest are trying to get by and they don’t ask why, they don’t cry, they just do, so it’s you who has to sneak some health into their day to day, make their pain go away without any lifestyle change, and it’s strange and outrageous but poverty isn’t contagious, so you treat everything else and hope that somebody else gets to the root of the problem, because you’re just a brute who will rob them of their copay when they really need a good job and decent pay, a balance between work and play, something to pray to and something to eat that’s not fast food, but you don’t want to be rude and you only have ten minutes to fit it in so you refill their meds and hope the feds don’t catch you giving pain pills to someone who’s not dying, even if they’re crying, you have to be tough, because life is rough and sometimes tylenol has to be enough, because they might abuse and you have a license you could lose and it’s not worth the risk, but if you’re not taking risks what is this, why are you here, why live in fear when you could be changing lives, giving high fives to patients who not only survived, but were given the tools to thrive, isn’t that what you’re striving for, and when you walk in the door the smile should be real, you should feel something, reveal the truth and heal deeper than the surface, because these are real humans and they’re worth it.

If values come from facts
That will axe a hefty tax
Relax a heavy burden on our backs
Unpack the despair of uncertainty
Track repair by rationality
With slack we can finally see
The factual reality
And actually move humanity
Past our shallow vanity
And into an eternity

A face is like a mask
covering the soul
either trying to mirror the inside
or keep the truth hidden

We may never know what is underneath
But we can try to imagine
and in that act
we better ourselves

Part 1: Birth

There is only flow when I go to the unknown
I roam an abandoned home
It looks like ancient Rome, frescoes and domes
I call out, the echoes tell me I’m alone
No phone service, I am nervous
I wander through these haunted halls
The size of a million shopping malls
I begin to feel so small
A sudden flash and I am dashed to the realm of vision
A photon’s silent fission causes a collision in my eyes
Chemicals climb my nerves like vines
They activate my brain
I gain the gift of sight
I can finally see the light
Technicolor sprites ignite from the night
They surround me and confound me
Dizzy with the brightness
My body dissolves to lightness
I am one with a firework show
I am an ember, drifting to and fro
I am the spark, the flame, the afterglow

Part 2: Escape

This house that was haunting me
Is less daunting in reality
To my surprise, I realize my eyes describe a scene I can’t contextualize
I’ve lost my corporeal form
I’m tossed but never torn
I am the fabric of the universe
I fold, tesselate, invert
There is no ground, no up or down
As I fill this infinite space
My mind is racing
My self erasing
I am carved into a simple tracing
I am a thought confined inside a casing
Cut down to size I rise to the surface
Shot into the sky, I gain a purpose
I stream toward an enormity  
I reach escape velocity
I smash into reality

Part 3: Dissemination

I am a thought that was caught
Shot into the moment
Because I am where the mind went
Sent into the present
A representation of an inner mentation
A random rumination
A rogue communication
An intuition loaded like ammunition
Fired from a rifle
Too late to stifle
I ram through the fog of resistance
I slam into existence
It’s survival of the fittest
If I fail to catch attention
I will fall out of this dimension
I am rescued by a mention!
My salvation is conversation
I am converted into sound
I reverberate through air and ground
My vibrations travel through eustachian tubes and neural grooves
I move the chemicals in your head
Make you think of me instead
Now I am yours to spread
Exhaled like vapor
Written on paper
Cell phones are my savior
With digital capabilities
I avoid temporal instabilities
Evade deletion by replication
Copy and pasted
Then excreted
I’ve been tweeted!
I spread through the interwebs
Integrate into inner webs
And now I am a part of you
Weaved into the heart of you
There’s no reprieve, no undo
I will influence the future
A humble contributor
Whether I bring shame or glory
I am a part of this story

Words out on paper
More like a laptop
I am streaming
Flowing
Gleaming
Glowing
Exploding with words that don’t want to stop
So I drop the ones I find
Blowing minds with my lyrical grind
My quick-witted witticism
Soaring above criticism
Filling up the catechism of religions with rainbows from my mind’s prism
Breaking free of this prison
Short circuit this system
The earth is shaking, cataclysm
There’s no mistaking, no masochism
Just linguistic synergism
You had better listen
To what you might be missing
The words to free your mind
These thoughts seem so divine
Elegant yet unrefined
Nature in its purest form
Raging, summer thunderstorm
Engaging, like a wormhole
Calm becoming turmoil
Live forever, eternal
My words dock on your terminal
They enter, suddenly internal
Whether heavenly or infernal
So much to see in a single kernel
So open up your eyes, dispel these lies
Capsize your ship and rise with the tide to the moon
Dispel this gloom and leave this tomb of a room
See reality in full majesty
Life is a mystery, not a tragedy
It is sad to be asleep
Don’t keep on snoozing
You are losing precious minutes
You should be choosing to get in it
So jump into the river of time
Swim and shiver in the sublime
You can break with rhyme and reason
Being awake is something to believe in

My words start as vapor
eventually coalescing and manifesting themselves on paper
but they are never really finished, they just diminish
until slow enough for me to catch
and dispatch them for my own use
but the truth is that I am just taking snapshots of a train of thought
that stretches to infinity
that is complexity and humanity
that is me, and so much more
I go floating through the door
I am ten feet off the floor
Drifting toward the atmosphere
Not there, nor here
I am near and I am far
I rise up to the stars
So high that I can see the earth
So small and insignificant
Yet utterly magnificent
It’s a matter of perspective
Consciousness is collective
So my view is not new
It is you, and all of them too
One is a universe, two is a crowd
Seven billion heads inside the cloud
Causing blizzards and acid rain
Never pausing our lizard brains
Paws and claws and vicious maws
Tearing at our sanity
Glaring enemies of clarity
We strive for perfect parity
But we are but a mess
evolution made us malcontents
We are revolutionary dissidents
Overburdened by stress
Too afraid to confess
So we swim in sorrow and silence
A waking nightmare, a quiet violence
When the path out becomes clear
You will hear a resounding cheer
As the human race takes its rightful place among the stars
No longer our own adversaries
We will traverse the universe
Going supernova with rhyme and verse
No more fear for the reaper or the hearse
No tears, we will find freedom from the curse
And each person will feel peace
Perching on Saturn’s rings
But only if we stop clinging to the ground
To the weights that hold us down
Weightless we can face this
We can stare into the sun
See that the journey has just begun
Shine bright like enlightened beings
Light enough to float through the ceiling
Might be tough when your mind is reeling
But it is just a feeling that will pass
once you fly into the firmament
And finally find enlightenment

The seal does not bother to ask why
It spends its days on hunt and play
And when it gazes at the sky
It does not wish that it could fly
It looks, it sees, it turns away