I look beyond the black vastness
Of the infinite
that spreads out before me.
My eyes are closed
and I know
that the solid world
of reality
waits past my eyelids.
However, celestial explosions
of white, black, and green
flow through the darkness
that envelopes me.
I am sightless
but sometimes
as I breathe
I find my way
halfway between
the waking world
and the visions in my dreams.
Slippery stones
and water that gleams,
saran wrapped
potato beings
are strange portraits
of this unconscious scene.
It is the breath that carries me
as I float slightly
above my body.
It is the silence and solitude
that was forced upon me
by an angry and violent
human being.
Perhaps, it was the first steps
Of a ten year old boy
On his way to find
the inner peace
that still eludes me.
Or, maybe, it is
just a faulty memory
that deceives me.

My bifocals reject me.
Reality is not made for focusing.
It is made for massive blurriness.
There is no true form of clarity,
just varying degrees of disparity.

One man cries out to me
about how he is so hungry.
He has a bloated beer belly
that bulges out of his jeans.
He is crying about the purity
of his country, so angry
about the brown Muslim,
and so close to a stereotype.

Another man is merely weary.
Thin and drawn lines run down
wrinkling his withering form.
Each one that is found
is like the rings on a tree
reminding us all how he is aging.
His shirt is torn and holy as the mother Mary.
His calloused hands are as harsh as
the sandpaper he has been wielding.
While other yielding tools
play in digital pleasure palaces
of instant gratification
go on week long vacations,
he is working, fifty-something
going on seventy-two.
What is a Brown Muslim
supposed to do to prove
he is a good man?

Sister says it’s all gods will.
She loves all strangers.
She has faith and says that I should feel
the divine energy flowing through me,
but life is way more confusing
because more of the faithful
pledge their support
to the greedy and hateful

I can’t see through to the truth
The bifocals might have worked for you,
splitting life into two points of view,
but for me they are pointed askew.
Perhaps I need to find trifocals,
so I can focus on more varying perspectives.

Real freedom is not won
in a ****** war.
It is fought for
in small moments.

The walls are not
iron heights
and concrete made.

They are digital displays
that parade advertisements,
enticements to subdue
the brilliance of you
to a brand name.

But a free man claims
no exterior blandishments.
His passion is a forest fire
to the average candle stick.
He doesn’t give two *****
about the shirt he is wearing
as long as it fits
and keeps him warm,
while he watches the world
play whack a mole
with the styles of the day.

The walls are not
iron heights
and concrete made.

They are built up
pay day to the next payday.
Each individual tries to
sustain the quality
they have gotten used to
while slowly improving to.
So they struggle through
the tedium of repeated motions,
dull their tempestuous emotions.
Until, it takes a drunken weekend
to find the child inside that
life has brutally beaten into submission.

But a free man
feeds off the land,
takes what he makes
with his own hands,
and the help of nature’s bounty.
He fishes. He hunts.
Despite what the government wants
he immerses himself in the splendors
Of books and bountiful nature.

The walls are not
iron heights
and concrete made.

They are written by academics
and in critic’s reviews of what
other artists should say or do,
how they must bend to
a particular style or form
to acquire the praise and applause
of the frothing swarm.

But a free man writes
what he wants,
how he wants,
and when he wants.
He does not reduce
or restrict his language.
He does not hold back
letting silence serve
the servile gatekeepers.
He is his own master,
mastering his own identity.

The walls are not
iron heights
and concrete made.

I have not escaped.
I have my foot
halfway out
those iron gates.
Perhaps, I will make it there
one of these days,
or these definitions
of being imprisoned
will be the prison
that I need to escape.