Shopping outfashioned hunting and gathering,
Processed beats fresh,
Groceries replaced fruit trees,
Malls superceded forests,
Churches outnumbered temples,
Countries dissolved to territories,
Places devolved to areas,
Paths broke down into highways,
Commodity converted to currency,
Laborers submit to machinery,
Masters engage in humbug,
Apprentices reduced to students,
Knowledge downgraded to education,
And education is deducted to a show of grades,
While schools are the stages,
And the corporate world is the bigger runway,
With work slumped to employment,
Wisdom demoted to profession,
Where in jobs are the only future,
Careers are the only success,
Clicking and pressing buttons are skills,
Computers are correspondent to brains,
Information refers to news reports,
Intelligence means up-to-dateness,
Browsing is preferable to reading,
Studying is in demand more than learning,
Viewing things flashed on screens yields awareness,
Transportation is to traveling,
As buying is to the three basic needs,
And needs embody worldly possessions,
Worldly possessions define happiness,
Happiness is due to selfishness,
Selfishness is traced to the lack of love,
The lack of love draws from the lack of faith,
Because faith stands for religion,
And religion stands for membership,
Where politicians are the gods,
Celebrities are the preachers,
And the preachers are the enemies,
While networking is equal to friendship,
And connection equates to communication,
Experiences require photos,
Memories necessitate uploading,
Souvenirs can be downloaded,
Smartphones are substitute to pets,
Gadgets are toys,
Holding controllers is playing,
Watching TV is exploring the great outdoors,
Internet is recreation,
And technology is a way of life;
While humans are scientists,
Nature is a guinea pig,
And the earth is a laboratory,
Where prices are misidentified for worth,
Processes are miscalculated as progress,
Impoverishment is confused with improvement,
And getting more is mistaken as getting better;
And then we wonder why
Homes have become houses,
Family members have become boarders,
Nations are separate species
Composed of tired and hungry citizens,
Children are monsters
Who are biochemically rascals,
Teenagers are zombies
Whose adventures lead to delinquency,
Adults are robots
Who just clang when touched,
And life is not so simple
As how it is said to be.

My window screens are funnels
For you to infiltrate
And surround me
Like midnight dew.
Float right before my face,
Embrace me like what real coldness
Does to the sides of my pillow,
And breathe on my eyes close.
Oh ghost of the night,
Help me sleep tight.

Sleep well, my darling.
Everything is all better now.
Good as new.
Good as before;
Before I came along
And took you with me
To this hard life
I thought we can get through.
But never mind that now,
I can manage from here.
After all, this is my mess.
I can clean it up
As *****-and-span
as I do your aquarium.
Come along now,
It's time to go inside
Your final jar-home
Where your groom-to-be awaits
To spend with you an everlasting paradise,
Apart from the tragedy in that tank.
Tell Turty I said hi, okay?
For the meantime,
I will keep this reality
With me
Where it can no longer
Let something die
Over and over again.
Goodbye,
Your real owner awaits you.
But please don't forget to
Visit your mother in her dreams
Sometime.

Sir James Matthew Barrie;
My childhood savior,
At last we meet.
I embarked on a journey
To seek out what you said
Would be an awfully big adventure
And gracious me, you were more than right!
This is a paradise.
Again, you saved my life.
Thanks for showing me the way out.

I will not
Go anywhere.
There is no
Destination.
Funny how
I have complete attendance
In everybody's
Funeral
When I won't even be
Present in my own.
I will turn
My light off now.

The books are wrong;
Samson is not his name,
But his last name.
Strength is his identity,
Though Jaime is what they call him.
He did not die lonely,
Nor will he ever do.
Regina Spektor got it right somehow,
As how people never do the first time;
A woman broke his heart
Whose name I cannot confirm to be Delilah,
She could have been anyone in his past.
But he married a woman named Michelle
And borne love by four beautiful children
With one which I know very well
And sometimes feel as if she were me
Or I were her.
But in his eyes I could not tell if I were her
Or she were me.
In fact, I could not see myself at all,
As if I am only, in those eyes,
A ceiling to keep from falling;
A mere test of strength,
Held up by pillars of sacrifice
And blocks of responsibility.
But I must be something else,
For there was something more
Than my nothingness in those eyes
Which keeps me from falling,
Besides those powerful hands
That steady the blocks
And secure arms
That lock the pillars;
It was his love regardless of who I am
That holds my blocks up
And embraces my pillars close;
His love which need me not contained in his eyes
For I am already contained in his heart.
I guess the writings on the wall
Failed to let us all know
That the great Samson's weakness
As well as source of strength,
Is not his hair
But his heart beneath that hard chest.
And so the legend goes,
Not with Samson's great strength,
But with his love as a husband
Which can cure a whole hospital
And as a father
Which can withstand all torture.
And his story will be told;
His love will be passed on
By his children to their children,
And they will live forever
In the name of his glory,
In the name of his triumph
Over the prophecy's false tragedy.
And not a soul will not know
Of how Jaime – the real Samson,
Was the strongest man of all.

I was contemplating
On a hot sunday late-morning
On things where I went wrong.
Should have's, shouldn't have's;
They seemed to be what went wrong
Until I got back to the present,
On the dining table
Where I was seated in front of,
When a lizard was now staring at me,
Perhaps disappointed with how
I did not feel him inching towards me
Or maybe wondering
Why I never notice
The things happening before me.
Now is this bird
Who just perched on the balustrade
And gave me a quick tip of the head
Then flew away,
Telling me to instead contemplate
On parts of me where I went wrong?