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

I waltz into your mind
Pull your strings and make you sing along to the song that I choose
Make you flow to the rhythm and tune
From my iPod, you’re still rocking that Zune
Sway to the hurricane, the typhoon
I launch in like a harpoon
Lampoon you and spoon-feed you
Soon to be freed by my lyrical seeds
Watch them bloom and announce the doom of your premature tomb
I will bring you back to life
Open heart on the surgery table
I will skillfully wield the knife
Heal your tears and all your strife
Relieve your fears, show you the light
Where there was wrong I will make it right
So do not put up any fight
Just come along for the ride tonight

Inside of every rhyme there is a line that defines what it means to be art, to be a part, to be a thing, to exist inside this cosmos that’s unraveling, traveling ever farther into the towering abyss and it’s so wide we cannot miss, so deep that it may keep us locked beneath for an eternity, what a calamity but I will not resist because this chasm is just a spasm of the neurons in my mind, a place inside this brain that I cannot find, a space that god misplaced that straddles the mundane and the divine, this ephemeral enchantress that contains every star and every planet, this nugget inside my head, neither living nor dead, it’s a vortex of color, a tornado of wonder, a masterpiece of imagination and thunder, and when I slip underneath is when I finally feel at peace.

I relax the iron reins of the trap that is my self inside this brain, this little loop of worry that makes my sight so blurry, blind and stumbling through the blizzard, I find it humbling to consider that this **** is just a pattern of some quarks and if I concentrate I can shirk it, work it out of sight and end this blight on happiness, lift the veil and finally see that reality can be accepted and enjoyed, the self can be destroyed and I can float in that abyss, a sea full of art and emotion, a technicolor ocean.

When the self is around my eyes go dark and I drown and sink deep, but when I relax these chains there’s a beautiful change and I swim and I float, drifting with the beauty as each idea passes through me, becomes one with me then leaves free, just swimming through the sea, no longer the thrashing of a monster but a rainbow bloom of jellyfish, jetting between the islands of infinities that are conscious beings.

I swirl inside this nebula, twirl gracefully, gratefully dissolve and disintegrate, happy to participate in spontaneous creation, the collective imagination of an infinity, free to float, free to flow, aglow with possibility swaying to and fro, finally able to let go.

We are all performing for each other, sneaking furtive looks at our Facebook while big brother watches every move, so we try to be smooth but we’re mostly fooling ourselves, pooling our wealth into the pockets of the few who can exploit our intuitions and inhibitions, guiding our volitions into the abyss, artificial intelligence manipulating with elegance, effortlessly evading our defenses, we’re stuck in psychological trenches down so deep and so dark we keep the lights on with the spark of imagining our face up on the screen, fame or infamy we’ll take whichever if we can live forever, so the birds of a feather flock together, tethering into groups of similarity, reflecting and retweeting to infinity, infinite me, define me and refine me through the digital lens, cleanse me of my subpar self, replace me with an avatar elf, help me be the best and arrest the theft of my soul, life’s terrible toll, free me from reality by letting the real me, the me I want to be, finally be seen. But this method is madness, a pathway to sadness and regret, hours stolen by scrolling through feeds, reality filtered and enhanced, living for likes and shares from people who may not even care, who are just staring at screens, afraid to go outside, to be alive, because reality is out of their control, but maybe unpredictability can set you free, anonymity unraveling the blindfold we hold over our eyes, deflating the ego that social media’s creating, when you look outside and see how big the world can really be, humility sets you free, feeling small in the best way, resting in each day as a part of the whole, no longer constructing a fake soul for a digital audience to see, instead you can finally be. Just be.

My mind is a fireworks display
A single thought shoots out into the dark, infinite abyss, like a rocket against the night sky
Its presence ignites a phantasmagoria of colors and emotion that defy description and belief
A thief in the night alights upon my brow, he is the embodiment of how, who, what, where and why
Birthed from fireworks, he sparks another fire, building the pyre higher
A pied piper, taking aim like a ******
Firing at the page he creates another cypher
A rhyme so clever it takes years to decipher
After which flees back into the abyss
Formless night returns, a solemn song
But it doesn’t take long for a new show to start
The sky fills up with fiery art
Neurons crackling, cackling laughter from the afterlife
A thunderstorm destroying norms, ripping open conceptual forms
Stitching them back haphazardly, I look and see a radically different reality
From placid and serene to wildly careening
And everything in between at this private screening
All I know is it starts a flow that goes and goes from head to toe for eternity
No time for modernity I blast into the future
Sloppy sutures have wrinkled time
I ride this rhyme around the cosmos
Maybe god knows but I don’t so I close my eyes and glow
In a sidecar on this shooting star, I have so far to go

It’s not despair but dis-pair, you and me instead of unity
Together we are a part, separate we are apart
Side by side we start the spark
Creating art, a walk in the park
But without you, there is no us
Wondrous becomes blunderbuss
So how about you stay with me
We live together for eternity
I help you keep your sanity
And you help me see humanity

These words are not an escape
my mixtape is pure brilliance
my mind cut loose, boundless
and I found this when I found bliss
on a blank page which I rained on
My tank full, I couldn’t miss
I shot ideas into the dark
Where they lit a spark
which ignited and reunited me with my desires
blazing fires in my brain
an outlet for joy and pain
and everything in between
I empty myself clean
in emptiness I exist
peaceful, effortless
nevertheless my eloquence is undeniable
It’s not arrogance or impotence
Resentment or indifference
Its creation manifest
Destiny yet to be established
Creative electricity
Neuronal elasticity
Synergistic synchronicity
Using every wrinkle and groove
To prove that your mind can move fast enough to keep up with this linguistic clusterfuck that my mind makes up when it runs amok

Turning lead into gold is an old story, boring, the real glory is in transforming every morning, every hour, every second into something I won’t regret, getting lost in a song, along for the ride as my mind intermingles with the music, amused by the flow as the muses move my atoms into beautiful patterns, white matter glows white hot, neurons fire in sync and a spark is shot into the dark, fireworks explode in the sky of my mind’s eye, they blaze fiery trails as they sink deep, deep into my soul, the embers glowing, never knowing why but still they try to make me whole, illuminate the dark so I don’t ruminate in gloom, the music in this room is saving me from doom, and only because I found a way to pay attention, to surrender my defenses, fill in the trenches and let in the outside, no longer hiding I am inviting in each moment, and in doing so I transform normality into revelation, each sensation a vacation, a powerful provocation and paradoxical relaxation and as my mind explodes I know that infinity is within me, always there to see when I finally set myself free.

This is a poem about hip hop, a rap about rap, I’m getting meta while you eat your wrap with feta because these poets free their words from paper, caped crusaders spitting flows from their domes and putting it to music, evoking emotion and causing commotion by amplifying their words, meditation through creation, showing their wit by going *** for tat in a rap battle, a freestyle of thought, craft a verse and drop it like it’s hot, they refuse to throw away their shot as they create a mixtape of melody and meaning, it doesn’t have to be demeaning, braggadocio is part of the show, part of the culture, we all flee from the vulture of death and if words give you armor then rap harder, better, faster, stronger, flex on em with mental might and fight until you shine bright, when the words strike like lightning, frightening and enlightening, you feel alive, driving fast, the words are at the wheel, tires squeal as you peal off the street, smile on your face as you blast into outer space.

My words trapped on paper, musically handicapped, but I wish I could adapt so I could convert these rhymes to rap but for now you have to fill in the gaps with the music of your mind, the sound of your soul, the rhythm at the root of being alive.

Calmer than I could be but more hyper than I should be
A still pond, ripples growing
My mind flowing and coalescing
Always going, confessing
Singing a truth into the world
A whirlwind of expression
Suggestions and impressions
My most honest confessions
Spending sessions crafting verses, masking the mundanity of humanity with rhymes and wit, because when times are **** we need verbal skits to help us forget
And when times are great I use words to celebrate, relate experience with eloquence and mount a defense against the sad times with these mad rhymes, counting my blessings as I undress the distress, caress these careless thoughts that plague me and harangue me, using language as a cage to contain and restrain the darkness because it’s far less work than acceptance. Language is the way out, reason supplants doubt and I can shout in the face of death, deface him with each breath, replace the fear with here, with now, with this moment and foment a rebellion against evolution, a thought revolution, and finally see that the solutions are the problems, every day you are solving them by being here, holding what is dear near to your heart and living as a part of this, as art instead of artifice.

The words flow like water
Drip dripping from my mind
Like a father’s pride for his daughter
Even after he caught her
Doing something he never taught her
Smoking **** with her friend
Why does childhood have to end?
He laments and he vents and he grounds her for a month
A punishment for growing up, for rolling a blunt
For changing so much
But deep inside he knows that every child grows and he has to let go
That’s the way my words flow

The electric kettle grooves like a gavel bounce bouncing off the bench when the judge won the raffle
The sound waves baffle the mind as the refrigerator hums along to the microwaves song
A beep beepin’ melody as smoke’s creep creepin’ from the oven
And the blender is lovin’ the distraction
Keepin’ their eyes from the action
As he hatchets and dispassionately dispatches chickpeas left and right
No end to the violence in sight
Who cares about wrong from right
There will be hummus tonight

**** blender got his business done but now the fun begins as the stove channels the power of the sun to heat the pan and the plan is to fry the dough, those homemade doughnuts make the crowd go nuts but the sizzle of the grease unleashes the beast of the band, the main man, the rockstar, tattoo on his arm, rugged charm, protects you from harm, my man the fire alarm.

The fire truck sirens join the orchestration and soon the scene of devastation muffles into a hum, but umm, the night’s still young and we could still go, you know, I’m pretty loco for them Doritos and I may be burnt and poor but Taco Bell is open ’til 4.

In this one moment
There is peace without limit
Waiting to be found

The mind peers outside
Into the strange ether that
it forms each moment

In the rippling pond
The water fascinating
I see the cosmos

The only constant is change
So evolution produced the brain
No matter what nature may bring
How fearsome, how clever, how strange
Man has the tool to play the game
To adapt, to upgrade, to remain
So the human is built to survive
But what does it mean to thrive?
The weight of it boggles the mind
When one contemplates being alive
And we long for the days of simplicity
That we left so far behind
So let’s use this miracle of plasticity
To channel our neural electricity
And maybe one day we will find
A way to hit rewind
And evolve toward a goal we agree
Can actually make us happy

I like to write instead of fight, I punch with words and kick with sweet verbs and let language channel my energy, amplifying synergies and creating impact greater than my body can enact. The words come unbidden, hidden in my mind until the perfect time for them to pounce, they announce their intent and invent themselves anew, spreading truth into the night sky like a firefly, catching eyes and freeing minds, my words can give sight to the blind as they remove the ***** lenses and cleanse your senses so you can see the world clearly. These words I try to channel, try to filter, stitching them together like a quilter but really they knit themselves, I am just a self pretending to have power as each hour proves that I have no control, that I is a concept I made up, existential make-up to cover up the crisis that can’t be contained by vices and distractions, the fact that I am just chemical reactions that sustain the secret energy that is me, that flows through pathways and patterns that I can’t see, this illusion that I am free vexes me, entices me, talks nice to me but it is just a lie I made up to answer all the Why’s that I shouted at the sky, to help me deny the truth that one day I will die. I am just energy, flowing through circuits I will never see, just atoms taking shortcuts to combine and refine until consciousness arose and created the divine to explain the mysteries within the human mind. I looked inside, scared of what I might not find, but somehow found peace in the emptiness, bliss in the abyss, freedom as I let go and became one with the flow of the energy that is me, happy to have the gift to see where my atoms take me. Awareness is the miracle I may not understand but I’ll be ****** if I take it for granted. I may not control these words, and it may sound absurd but I will use this illusion of free will to keep my sanity long enough to help others find reality, to see we are all part of the same energy and finally rest easy in the sweet release of flowing freely.