Foreswear thy love
Thy breaking life
To challenge death
To barely survive

Foreswear thy time
Though ill-consumed
The antidote
Is a poisoned brew

Forswear thy seconds
That you rush upon
Racing to each new experience
Not resting or facing
The thoughts fast pacing
Thy reason is muddled
Left to your passion

You would have been
Better served my friend
Foreswearing the folly
Of flesh born pleasures
In trade for those made
Of the intellectual variety

I do not have cancer
or malignant tumors,
causing me to double over
in irregular
bouts of agony.

I have a job
and make enough
to buy healthy food
and some other stuff.

Never been
sent to prison,
and I got
a decent
education.
Plus, I get
two weeks’ vacation.

I do not have to
pick up and walk to
somewhere
hundreds of
miles away
just to be safe
from some
sick warlord
or hateful horde
of horrible soldiers
who want to ****** me
and my family.

I may not be
super wealthy
but compared to
most of the people
in other countries
I’m living pretty large.

I am the fortunate one.

Fair maiden hand
Be not maiden to man
But word warrior
Queen of your land

She, cause it is always a she
That matters the most to me
Him is me you see
And he is disgusting
So every good poem
Bares a she instead of a he

I wear my regret like a black spot
A dark shot in the heart
To remind me that I am human
And to remember how to be human

The alchemy of memory
Will not transform me
Turning gold into dirt
Does nothing to ease the hurt
I find little of value in this earth
All that is, is so transient
All my memories will go
The way of death
Partly fading into nothing
Partly falling into obscurity
So all that security
Means nothing you see

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

I sleep but even in my evening slumber
Hear the sounds of summers coming thunder
Cringing and receding from the screeching sound of screaming
Mother earth beseeching while her creatures keep retreating
Scorch marks scar the fragile dirt
Pox and plague for self centered worth
Rain drops heavy as anvils
Hitting ******* my ceiling tiles till
They plunder my vacant eyes robbing them of their wonder
I turn to my tormenter screaming at the thunder
Be gone foul tempest haunt me no more
For I am but a fragile human being and you’re a superior storm
With your vaporous manifestation shocking presentation in fluid form
The storm replied shattering the stillness of my life
With a bolt two feet to the left of me that seared my eyes
Sockets dry the storm left no tears to cry
Singed I sobbed silently heaving and weeping
**** you nature

We were cooked in hydrogen furnaces
Expelled and impelled out into the universe
For better or worse
Particles making their way
Through so many light years

Persephone let me be your shoes
To protect your feet from the sea
Of hell that burns before your throne

The stars cross the grand expanse
Exposed hydrogen bombs twinkling in the distance
While the moon in sheathed
In its’ grey cloudy scabbard

White rusted history reaches for
the heavens that most people
have already forgotten.
---------------------------------------------
Believe me I got to *** constantly
but I am ninety-nine percent sure
that I do not have diabetes.
------------------------------------------

Poor young mom so beautiful
wondering why she can’t find a man
while it is so easy for a ****** woman
to collect and discard them.

-------------------------------------------


It was the pinnacle of my teenage pain.
I watched the world through funhouse mirrors
with tv shows, comic books,
some real sad music and movies to boot.




Can you tell me why
you think you have the right
to deny the lights
that sparkle like
Christmas colors
in lesbian lover’s
eyes.

1.

Because I do not believe
There is any love for me
And that gender is a construct
Of this confused society
I state plainly or plainly post
For all who wish to see
My gender is not binary

2.
From one voice history flows
All hippie dippy flower child
All love and no fire power
Just truth and the hope
For a world where words
Can change dark hearts
To canvasses of light

3.
I choose my verses carefully
Line those syllables up in front of me
So I can see if I am a decent poet

1.
A child should never be taught to hate
And human beings must never be insulated
Or inoculated against the horrors of war
2.
There is no liberation in this economy
Debt is a slower and slightly greyer
Variation of slavery
No more cotton fields but prison labor
Tell me where is our great modern emancipator?
3.
You may be shocked
But the truth is
We are strange variants
4.
There are no perfect promises
Life guarantees nothing
5.
Tears of laughter
Veil tears of frustration
Improper reflection
On taboos and tragedies
Burning cities
And dying loved ones
This is not where the
Laughter comes from
But it is where the laughter
Is needed most

How can we not feel Adam’s pain
See the features of this creature
Tortured by people’s disdain
And not weep at his wretched state

Frankenstein’s creation
From his strange life equation
Electrical innovation
In that once marvelous now dead age

How can we not feel Adam’s pain
The child with no real name
Only a borrowed nomenclature
To define his human inhumane nature

Torches and Preachers calling for his head
Love denied never finding peace
This so called beast could rip us to shreds
Tear our flesh asunder and squash our heads

But when he speaks racked with life’s pain
A horridly embellished mirror of my own
My defenses break opening the floodgate
And the monster makes me cry

Where he erred
Was he could not stop.
Creation was like the
final throbbing vestiges of an ******
in his ego.
He came life
and birthed madness

I no longer need
A special love
To deliver me
Self-satisfaction
Becomes my ecstasy

I no longer need
That hopeful lie
To sustain me
To betray me
Spray me
With acid lust

Missing that
Sensual touch
Her eyes no longer
Hold that much

The hollow me
Is now full
Vibrant and free

I wanted to be dispassionate
To prove that I didn’t love anything like that
Resigned to old designs of loneliness
I was fine living with this benign cancer
Social disease of desires and needs
To want to plant my seed in your furry weeds
But you were bubonic ***** and ****
Violent without a fist to hit me with
No guns just lies and manipulation
Leaving me disgusted with me
But more disgusted with you and the whole love thing
The whole romantic scene that left a hole in me
Burying myself so deep into my mind
Until I finally realized
Finally opened my eyes
Let go of expectations
Freed my soul through *******
Emptied the veins of my frustrations
To be or become a truer version of me

Blond locks of hair
Made fairer still
By the tongue
Which she speaks
Parle vous francious

The rounded jaw
The smile so sweet
Jesuit silvou plait

In voice I hear
Her laughter there
But her words
I do not comprehend

She says to me
Salivee
And spends a kiss
Upon my
Lonely cheeks

Her fingers dance deftly across the white ivories. Music spills into the space between us. Chords bounce up and down. The waves of sound crash across time and space. They vibrate at a different frequency.
I touch the air swirling it around my fingers as if it were cotton candy. I can taste reality. It is sweet for now. Later it will burn like jalapenos, later still there will be a sea saltiness. For now the music continues, and it smells like tangerines.
Her light skin radiates with love. Hazel eyes reflect the pureness of the song. Tears fall and I find the saltiness of life a little sooner than I thought. The sound surges, creating barely perceptible mists of green and blue. Electric currents fire releasing the memory of another piano.
Wrinkled fingers connected to wrinkled hands connected to a wrinkled body vibrate. However, they vibrate at a different frequency. Sound escapes me. It is the thud of my heart beat.
The music continues, but now I can hear two distinct songs playing. The tunes mingle perfectly, becoming a new symphony. The mists converge creating a purple vapor which spirals and separates into the original colors. The colors converge then separate again and again. Repeating the pattern, they spiral like the ladder of dna.
***** blonde hair weaves in time with the dancing fingers. Curls cross each strand and become entangled in a beautiful mess. Above the stars spew out their own music. It is a strange static mess. I know that to someone it to is a beautiful song. A frequency spanning infinity and eternity traveling slower than light years; Swinging and singing in its own frequency.
The music stops, as does my breath, and my heartbeats. The colorful mist dissipates. More tears swell and fall softly moistening my cheek. The loss of beauty breaks my heart.
The young pianist turns, slides off the bench, and walks out. Cold shivers vibrate through my being. The taste of jalapeños burns in my brain. Light shatters and dissolves splitting into sparkling fragments, then split even more. I smell burnt cookies. A harsh light explodes through this strange white cascade and burns my retina.  New sounds force me back. In the distance a mangled voice says something.
The blur and slur of reality works its way into normalcy. I smile as my sense of touch returns. Cold cuffs comfortably restrain my hands and legs.

“How was it?” the voice asks.

“Amazing” I say. “Best trip ever. Now let’s change the frequency and see what else happens.”

Deception is the art of media, church, and state. It should not be the foundation of how human beings view and treat each other. That we are separate is a deceit. As humans we are all bound together, not in some magical web of destiny but as a human collective with a social responsibility to make this world a place of peace love and understanding; instead of a world driven by self-interest, and fear.

something in the cold air reeks of emptyiness and deppression. It is as if a dark beast is pursueing me and no matter how fast I run, quick I swerve ve, or smart I am I cannot escape its claws forever. I will be cuaght. I will feel it. Still I know that like the phoenix which explodes from the fire I will rise from the ashes better for the pain I have experianced.

The wind and snow rushes violently against my window pane
It sounds like a new kind of melody so I play it over again in my brain
As the cold from outside slowly creeps into my bedroom
It kind of feels like a frigid and frosty tomb
My feet begin to go numb as the warmth is drawn from
My beating heart and is expelled outward to my skin and beyond
It seems to dissipate into the dry air in my apartment
So I am trapped in this solitary snow confinement
Natures has denied me her grace and cool love
Even my mind is slowly consumed by the lethargy of
The inability to escape my frozen grav

We were supposed to be stoics
Standing tall and stiff as boards
Working hard till the shift is done
And don’t let anyone
See us weak
See the tremor when we speak
See the droplet form
See the weight of life
Shake us till we cry

We were supposed to be tough
But when friends die
When our children cry
When loved ones leave
We cannot always be
That ******* macho

A man could use a hug
A man could use a kind word
Sometimes we need a tissue
For each issue that makes you break
Takes a stake to your heart
Crushes us, crashing through to
The fragile being inside
The macho man can break
Just as easy as any mother
Baby brother, little sister, or other
After all we are only human

It’s kindness versus stupidity.
Good intentions beats censorship.
We don’t need repressive *******
To fight against insensitivity.
We just need information,
Intelligence, and the wisdom
To use it justly.

You put garbage in you get garbage out
Health food fanatics know what I am talking about
McDonalds, Arby’s and all those Buffets
Sluggish citizens working Twelve to ten
And to cover up their poor nutrition
We soup up the brackish black brew
Killing ourselves with more caffeine till
We collapse

You put garbage in you get garbage out
Good teachers with years of experience
Know what I am talking about
The tweet, the face book
Are superficial connections
Binge watching brain-dead reality show people
Speed reading unverified Articles
Peer reviewed paper by academic writers
Don’t get the press the talking heads
With party lines and hateful sentiments get

You put garbage in you get garbage out
Any poet philosopher knows what I am talking about
Flashing screens switching scenes while twitching teens
Sit texting banal and ephemeral things
No grand dreams but to be normal
No expansion of the human potential
Just block and block of picket fence prisons
Dreams are limited to advertised fantasies

Brown eyes
Brown hair
Down there
Skin folded or inverted in
Split ****
Who would go through this
If it wasn’t important
New hair
Hormone treatment
Doesn’t deserve
Your resentment
Life never offers
A perfect placement
Most of the time
We got to make
Our own happy space
New life
No more dissonance
Between who you are
And who you are
It’s more compassionate
To let someone be
Who and what
They want to be
Then to make them suffer
For your sense of normality

She is who she says she is
Perhaps in another time
Her muscles rippled with a mannish gleam
And her labors where of the masculine
Herculean

But now she is feminine
Concealing her strength
Beneath soft garments
Concealing her past
Under a new name

Genevieve
Who was once Gene
Now is free to be
Who she wants to be

The rooster
Becomes a phantom limb
Split and turned in
Sleeping
How freeing
For her outsides
To match how
She feels within

Thick lips strong chin
Broad shoulder
Deep voice
I am fascinated

It never bothered me
In fact I saw it beautifully
Variety in humanity
Why should you be
Bothered

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

I never meant to be a ghost
A white ethereal thing
Wasting in my hauntings
Fading till I become diaphanous
While other foolish specters
Float and laugh at me
In a horrendous cacophony
Yearning for the living
But knowing I am dead
Reaching for new lovers
But never finding their hands
Searching for old friends
Longing for lost family
But I am me
As I have always been
A ghost dancing in the wind
Cold white sheet shimmering
And pirouetting
Praying that someday the forgetting
Will settle in
And I will be normal

To me it’s a dead man’s barren land
Barely functional mostly boring
Gravel road with only two solid streets

No one meets a stranger
There is no danger of the unknown

People pass away becoming
A checkmark on a checklist
Five hundred to four hundred and ninety nine
Not including me

One water sac down and then another
One by one my family becomes deceased
Till this town feels like a disease
Till my instincts scream death trap

Heavy hearted but lightly packed
The road beckons and I leave it like that
A ghost town fading with the sundown
All my past buried in innocence and memories

And even though they are still very precious to me
I do not ever intend to return their again.

She took from me
Not one cent
That she could not
Give back again
Though I declined
Cause the debt was benign

She ate my food
She drove my car
A dented Ford POS
Did not always
Get her far
But I never ask
For the gas back

Still beating heart
Beneath my chest
She tore and scrapped
At my tender flesh
A monstrous action
For her own satisfaction
An undead fiend
Feeding on my broken valves
The heart attack
The love she lacked
So stole from me
What I sorely needed
And though I pleaded
Please give it back
She left the shovel in my breast bone
And would not return
My heart to its’ rightful home
So every night I cry in vain
Give it back
Give it back
Give it back

Give me stone lions
Guarding library steps
Grey gargoyles
Watching the city
As she sleeps
Keeping what secrets
They can keep

From dreamy children’s
Sighs
To crying bums
Bleeding on
The ground
As strangers walk on by

Give me the darkness
Echoing in each heart
The missed beats
Leaking valves
Because all hearts
Our broken
Even if we don’t
See it yet

Give me the lustful *****
Of teenage hormones
Hand flashing
Fastly unclasping
Drunk with ****** energy

Lastly give me the ghastly
The horrors
The violence
Give me the nightmares
So I can make poetry
Just give me something

Vice and debauchery are highly underrated
Underestimated by outdated modes of morality
But pleasure is the friend that chases away banality
Fights off the finality
We face existing in this space
Walking pounds of space dust
Apes we sprang from
Came upon some fun
Knew what is now forgotten
By some
You can’t buy one
Moment back
Before vision is blotted black
The spotted fact
That all we lack
Is fun
Forgotten in the rush to work
The race to hurt spirits
By contorting our flesh and mind
To the clock that kills our time
I am still feeling fine
But tell me how are you

Give me the obscene
Not the clean
But the filthy ****
The pink ****
The thrusting ****
If that’s what you want
Then that’s what I got

Give me the obscene
Let me clear the scene
Of what we have seen
What you call unclean
Cause in the past
The obscene was the underclass
The undercurrent
Miscegeny, rock music
Civil liberties for minorities
Hippies and other counterculture
Freedom and treasonous language

Give me your obscene
Cause that’s where the future lies
Not were perverts spy
On ***** secrets
But where the freedom of language
Leads us closer to being
Better human beings

So I’ll take the obscene
Instead of the mind numbing
Thought controlling clean

Sometime it feels like I am giving up.
That I borrowed too much stuff,
Like this idea from another,
Like some other person’s mother,
But the truth is that I missed it,
So I am giving up the dream of stuff
I never knew or had,
And sometimes when I am feeling bad,

I give up writing, deciding
Which word is inviting,
Which sentence is delightful,
Which verse is insightful,
Which line is to spiteful,
And fails to meet the mark;
Fails to tap the hearts,
But then I give up on giving up.

I have a glass heart
That bleeds red
But sees the living
And the dead

A fragile funhouse mirror
That reflects the world
With exaggerations
Distortions and misperceptions

A window that takes light in
And lets weirdness look out

A soul that doesn’t always know
What it is singing about
Whether it is a mournful dirge
Or a celebratory hymnal

The glass is cracked
On its way to shattering
Held together with glue
And love
Waiting for the breaking
But loving the unending bending
And mending of this fragile glass
Wonder

I am Bacchus intoxicated letch of the Greek Gods reborn.
In my drunken stupor I have fallen many times;
Succumbed to the charms of Goddesses reincarnate.
From the strict slick ice queen Shiva aka an engaged Christina
Destroyer of my soul, and its inspiration at the same time
Made me feel like your lover, should’ve seen the pain coming
Never should have let you in. In one fell swoop you cut my spirit.
With a cold stares you stabbed my stubborn stone heart,
And made me bleed agony like wine from a bejeweled chalice.
Christina, of all who cut me few had touched me physically.
You were hard to overcome, my cheap and ***** maiden.
Pale flesh tarnished with your many affairs before and after me.
Within a year’s time you had severed the emotional chord,
But there were others like the goddess Discord shifting seamstress
Of light and dark, daring dangers to inflame my heart.
User, trickster I will never really miss her, and her name will not be spoken.
My affections for her were merely a passing token. What a relief
That I never loved that immoral immortal ****** thief.
Amanda oh Amanda. My idiot Athena. My warrior queen.
My military goddess. We never consummated our love
Because you never loved me. With a whisper and a line
You kept me holding on; let you go one day and the next you would phone
Came back different then when you left, like a new you grew
From Zeus’ skull more powerful, darker than before.  For you I ceased to exist.
Rend my heart to pieces and instead I wished that I was dead.
That all those feeling could be shoved aside and never again remembered.
That your apathy had been fury and in your rage I was dismembered.
Jessica my dear Demeter harvester of my strange and deranged soul.
You were the first to slake my ****** thirst, hour lost to carnal lust.
I am sorry, that I was wired wrong and your love was not enough.
You deserved more than I ever gave you and of all my loves,
You are the only one who ever loved me back, so I am sorry.
Farther back than that is my greatest love swift and strong Artemis.
Actually I hope you never read or even see this.
Holly so holy a dream. With ***** red hair and freckled flesh,
With a kind heart that I will never forget. The first friend there to inspire my love.
The first soul I adored. You never wounded me, never scarred my heart
Never used, or abused, abandoned, or confused me with mind games or forgetfulness.
I will never touch you soft skin, or make you smile, but most of all I will never forget this
Yours was the first, the strongest, the deepest, the longest river in my heart, and the highest kindness.
For that you have many eternities worth of my love. The greatest goddess of all maybe
Your were actually Aphrodite.

She is gone
And eternity will not soften these sorrows
Will not change the rivers
Will not alter their course
Only set in stone stupidity
Those fallacies
That justify wasting this life
In favor of the next

He is gone
Though the nightmares continue
Wars are still raging
The heavenly host are not saving
The women from ******
And the children from dying

I am dead
King of corpses
Equal, more, and less to all
The master of dirt
I did not turn away
I listened even when it caused me pain
Even when it caused me shame
Even when the bad news came

God is dead
That never was walking *******
Excuses
We used
To justify the abuse
They do not work
The only demon that exists
Persists in ill intent

The frogs and the locust
weren’t so bad,
But when Moses attacked
With his snake staff
The river bed bled
Streams of red
Thick and congealed
Till the currents became scabs
For mankind to pick
Leaving long dry scars
In its wake
With no water for
The saints to slake
Their divine thirst
And though Jesus said
Suffer the children unto me
And that no one should harm them
It was the children
Who were hurt worse

God suffer the little children
While the little children are suffering
His mercy
Is an illusion
His righteousness
A delusion
If he is real
Than he is a ******* *******
Can’t or won’t save
The kidnapped *** slaves
The kidnapped
Child soldiers
The ***** altar boys
The ****** baby
The beaten innocent
Tears of anguish
And rage
Wet my face
Cause if this illusionary being
Can’t or won’t save the children
How could he save
The human race

Tempered by the slightest sound
I hear their feet hit the ground
So I huddle tightly wound in fear
And hope that my prayers keep them far from here

The boots shuffle in unison
As I tremble in terror of these dark men
Stamping their feet they continue on
Passing by on until the dawn

And when they pass I sigh in relief
Ignoring how cramped it was or how dry the heat
I made it through another day
Now I can go out to play

Outside I laugh it feels so right
I smile and giggle in shear delight
And wait for my other friends to come
I wait for hours but there is none one

Once again the men return
This time bearing torches so my city burns
Now my spot is no longer safe
I have to find a different place

The night goes on and I survive
To say the least I am surprised
But as I take a look around
I notice there is no one else left in my town

They come again two more times
Tonight is the third one and weighs on my mind
No one is left I’m here all alone
I bite my lip then scuttle home

Across the street I hear a voice
Halt or I will shoot is my only choice
Instead I begin to run
I run and run and run

The bullet paints the evening sky
As my blood drip on throughout the night
With no one here to hear my tale
I write it in blood to myself

They did not come with super suits
tight black leather, flame retardant,
massively muscled or otherwise.

They did not bring sacramental salvation
speaking in tongues while healing the sick
at the feet of saints and seraphim.

Instead, they came as strangers
speaking words of wisdom and compassion.
They came as counselors, and teachers
with kind hearts and good intentions.
They came to help and we are all
better for their goodness.

When she takes her pain,
the pitch perfect darkness
that has pursued her,
the sorrow from all of those
who misused her,
and uses it
to illuminate
the void in which
other hurting souls
ruminate.

When despite
the years of abuse
he makes good use
of said experiences,
pardoning most grievances,
attempting to prevent
similar suffering
for others,
and his first instinct
is to offer assistance
to those in need
and those who
don't really need it.

When there have been
too many unkind men
knocking
and trying
to take
what was not theirs,
and anger
stirs in her,
when strangers
come near,
but despite
the rage and fear
she spends her years
studying and working
to overcome
previous tragedies
and share those lessons
with the rest of humanity.

When one child cries
and despite
the lack of age
another little wonder
of human flesh
expresses
genuineness
and tries to
calm the troubled youth.

Long neck
Not some beer bottle
But a soft waddle
As his beak
Pecks and plucks
Roots, and grassy stuff
To munch

Black eyes
With a white chin
And a face
That goes
From black
To white
And back again

Feathers folded in
Light brown
Gray and fading
Flutter nervously
When he sees me
Approaching

Beautiful, distracting
Extracting me from my
Deep reflections
And ancient sorrows

I watch web feet
Walk into that small sea
And see a water stream
Follow him
As he swims
Away

With their indifference
lack of patience
and hostility
they scream at me,

“Go back to sleep
you black sheep.
We do not care
about the struggles
of all you others.
We do not regard
your pain as true
Or even equal to
our own.

Go back to sleep
and take the scraps.
Unless we decide
to take those back
trimming your thin skin
and adding to our fat.

Go back to sleep black sheep.
You are not allowed to leave.
We get to keep
you trapped in our greed
while we take what you need.
Just stay asleep
working and dying
while we are
high life flying.
Go to sleep…..

Wait wake up.
Another other
is coming for your stuff.
Vote for us.

Good little sheep,
now go back to sleep
to work and die for me.

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

I wish I would have known you better
Spent more time together
When I was younger
Still I remember your soft strange skin
Your quite smile played out every now and then
Your ancient mariner look
Though I never saw you crack a book
I learned later on you were well read
Now you are just as dead
All I have are dying embers, sparks of memory
Losing their heat inside of me
I wish I had known you better
But this wish is just regret
And you can learn to forget
What you used to regret
It just so happens that hasn’t happened for me yet

They say let’s make it great again.
They say they are American
but I don’t think it’s true
cause I’ve seen our stories
and our histories
and they don’t match like
they’re supposed to.

Seen better men then me
working shifts so long
that their eyes look like
they’ve been cut red with lightning.
At the end of the work day
they strain to stay awake.
Back stiff and popping
but there is no stopping.
They make it home
to see their kids
and do a little playing.
They do a little praying,
hoping that their work today
makes their children’s future better.

I’ve seen immigrants struggling,
learning a language
that is not their own
so, they can work
to buy their own home
and start a little business.
It’s not a dream I would pursue
but I respect the struggle.
Seen that Chinese family
move out and up
working hard and raising children
and in that circle, there is love
cause it’s family that matters.

I’ve seen liars spouting off about
family values
but they do not know
what real families value.
I’ve seen single moms
struggling to escape
the shame of
that so-called welfare state.
I’ve seen a mother of three
working, going to school,
and still making it home in time
to spend time with her kids,
to play and laugh,
to accept and celebrate their strangeness.
I’ve seen a mother staying up late
to hold her troubled daughter
to ease the pain that caused her
beautiful child to do
harm to herself.
I would not trade this truth
for any soft cloth, patriotic symbol.

I’ve seen strangers helping strangers
seen groups of people
putting sand in bags
and bags on top of bags
not to stop the floods from coming
to where they are from
but to give others a chance to live.
I’ve seen
pictures of people who rush into danger
not with guns a blazing
but with bottles of water and blankets,
with food, and shovels,
with hands to move the rubble
digging up the bodies of some
while unburying lost
sisters, fathers, mothers, and brothers.

I do not believe in your America
but if you claim that you do
then you would not do
what you regularly do,
lying about trying to make it great
while your just creating hate.
so, **** making America great again.

I have seen the America you are trying to make
and it is grating.
It is made for flag waving,
bible belt thumping,
poverty, child-abuse, neglect
electric shock conversion therapy
eugenics, lynching, segregation
slavery on plantations,
sexism, racism,
xenophobia, transphobia,
flat Earth creation,
climate change denial,
evolutionary denialist,
police brutality, corruption,
pollution, prisons for profits,
a war on drugs, and
a war on terrorism,
while war profiteering.

Intentional confusion,
dire delusions,
your America is
this paper white illusion.

But we are part of the race
that invented the wheel,
the steam engine,
the radio, the telephone
the tv, the computer,
the cellphone,
the printing press,
the spaceship,
that went to the moon,
put machines on Mars,
that learned to express,
great things in writing,
and painting,

You say let’s make America great again.
I say let’s start the enlightenment again,
start over as a world of friends and kin
hand and hand with grand ideas.
Till we can all feel connected,
and do the unexpected.
Let’s make humanity great again,

It is the snake that eats itself
Swallowing mortar and brick
From the bottom up
Consuming lives destroying families
Corrupting people
Greed begets greed
Desire begets desire
The top may stand for a little while
But as the building cracks
Floor by floor
The fallen scream
Said serpentine
Has cut the netting
Needing a helping hand
Quicksand men are sinking
Until one man stands
Deaf to poverty’s echoes
And then he starts falling
With no net to catch him