Underneath crumbling castles lays a kingdom of broken glass and broken souls. A kingdom declaring war with an empire disguised as a village. The kingdoms loss has grown since their initial declaration, after the loss of 3000 townsmen, women and children. At war across the blue and the white there is no shortage of red. No shortage of shed tears. No shortage of lost limbs and lost families not knowing what to do because the plague has taken their husbands and wives and ****** them into a war that was only supposed to last a month. 12 years later, the plague has spread and our patience spread thin and we have an urge to be the worlds kings and sentence those who don't agree with the crown to death. The kings changing over the years and the throne passed along. But we won't forget those princes and princesses who never got saved from the towers.

Driving down a small country road.
The year is 1946,
Brand new truck,
fresh off the line.
A warmth embraces my hand,
My fingers intertwine with hers.
A spiderweb of emotions and flesh.
Golden engagement ring rubs against my knuckle.
The newscaster on the radio telling us about another day without a glimpse of humidity.
She turns the radio down to where the muffled voices are barely audible.
"I love you." She says, observing me from the passenger's seat.
I look ahead at the road still.
"I love you, too." It took me a second to think about her French accent.
Desiree, her name.  
Flew over to America after Paris was bombed by the Germans.
I was the only person who took her for who she really is,
Wonderful.

Bombshells are strewn about,
Thames Riverside, England, 1943.
My leather war boots are poorly placed on top of a landmine.

Hospital beds are more comforting than a mothers hug.
"Sargent Jack, you're going home." The nurse says.
Off I went, that night I was sent back to Missouri.
I bought myself a new truck.
A 1946 ford.
Fresh off the line.
A warmth embraces my hand.
I look down,
Memories are slipping between my fingertips like blood from an open wound,
the wound being my mind,
not my head,
my mind.
Thoughts strewn about like bombshells.
Disorganized,
Written off,
Buried and left on the battlefield,
the corpse of my sanity awaits for nothing.
I'll never make it back.

How many tears does is take to make a river?

It takes a lifetime of depression and desperation for someone to give a ****.
It takes a broken home and broken hearts and broken spirits.
It takes a teenager years to get over their parents divorce.
A manmade canyon in the ground of the tears of broken kids and
Despair.

How much blood does it take to start a forest fire?

It takes blades upon blades being dragged against pale skin.
It takes the bandaids used to patch the severed hearts from bleeding.
It takes the whites of eyes turning to red from the cries of help but all you get is ignored.
It takes pain.
Irritation.
Anger.

How much skin does it take to cover a desert?
It takes the skins of buried kids who have laid to rest under 6 feet of soil.
It takes the skins you were born with and cut off because you don’t like the way it looks.
Cell on cell of skin. Every grain of sand in the desert is different like the swirls on our fingertips.

How much breath does it take to start a breeze?
You huff, and puff, and blow this place down but the only thing thats crumbling is your hopes and dreams.

Mother nature doesn’t comfort us at all.
She created the elements of life and death and sadness.
Just in disguise from our own minds.
A trick.
We fell for it.

“Lord help us remember that freedom isn’t free.” -Anonymous

Ready
Aim
Fire

End of the Civil War.
President Abraham Lincoln dedicates a day to remember those brave men who have fallen on the field of battle in a pool of their own blood.
For their country.

Ready
Aim
Fire

World War 1.
Soldiers come home in body bags
Or without their own legs.
Arms.
Or eyes.
Men come home with stories they’ll never tell or ever want to think about.
Most men stay where they have fallen.

Ready
Aim
Fire

December 7th, 1941
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor killing well over 2,400 soldiers.

June 6th
1944
American boats touch the soil of Normandy Beaches.
73,000 pairs of American boots run along the trenches.
Most of them never leave.

Ready
Aim
Fire

1950 to 1953
Americans were shot at and killed in Korea.
Hidden in the bushes,
Korea only battled with ambushes.

Ready
Aim
Fire
A conflict in Vietnam from 1955 to 1975.
“Do not shoot unless shot upon.”
One of the bloodiest wars American’s have seen.
Men came home to be welcomed as villains
To be littered on and verbally **** upon.
Many men committed suicide.

Ready
Aim
Fire

September 11, 2001
Hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center’s and the Pentagon.
War has broken out against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other armed rebels.
War is out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A shot in the dark for those men and women who get shot in the dark,
Peacefully in their sleep.
By men they have trained.
Vehicles blow up and lives are taken every day.

Ready
Aim
Fire

During an average day in 2013
22 war veterans commit suicide.
Every day.

Thank you.

Ready
Aim
Fire

this is a shout out to the kids who haven’t cracked a smile since last summer.
To the kids who’s wrists turned to cutting boards
and stomachs intentionally went empty.

This is the anthem for saturday nights spent on the couch just asking yourself “why”
For hours spent thinking that it’s your fault your parents split and theres nothing you can do.

For the kids who drag a blade across their wrist and carve grand canyons into their wrists although its still not the same.

A song for the kids who crack their knuckles as a distraction from the glares they get from across the classroom in fifth period science.

A harmony to the kids who are trying so hard to fit in but cant seem to get the hold of the right words to stick on their tongue so instead the wrong words slip out of their mouthes and roll into a ball of embarrassment.

A five star dinner served to his four friends which left him three years later and two years later he was just one kid by himself fending off the monsters we call classmates all alone.

Another sleeping pill for the boy who prays with his eyes shut but cant sleep because his eyes have already been closed for hours.

A brace for the broken and the weak as the week drags on to the point where every word that ends in the letter y makes you want to pull your hair out.

A poem dedicated to the kids who cant fend for themselves in the jungle.
Its a hard existence.
But we can make it through.

Leftovers from a red hot feast
My heart turns gray with ash.
As smoke clouds infect my lungs and flow into my blood stream
Soon enough I was destined for suffocation from within

Volcanoes spit ash out into the atmosphere
I inhale ash and exhale happiness
Gone with every breath goes every smile I have thought of.
Disappearing with every breath my motivation flies into the atmosphere and burns up into ash.

A crackle and a pop and a slow burning fire in the brick fireplace.
Heating homes the old fashioned way,
I am ****** into a vortex to the sky where I can fully appreciate life.
Where the sun smiles down on all of the boys and girls and makes ashes glow with embers just wishing for life once more.
But after all, all stars burn out.

A forest fire rips through northern Montana.
Smoke filling the air while ash fills the heart full of burned memories and homes
Part of what once was life turns into the most innocent of monsters.

A volcano erupts in Pompeii.
A city paved in ash I am lost.
A family buried in an unmarked tomb
that they once called home.

Writing on the walls suggests propaganda existed since time has.
A man wrapped in a lambs wool tunic and a one inch coating of ash
Lays his head in a museum.

After all,
Ashes, Ashes.
We all fall down.

I love you like a funny joke.
I'm smiling because i just remembered your punchline but  I always seem to forget it.

I love you like an artist loves his first painting.
Although there are flaws, they are what makes the painting unique.

I love you like my favorite band.
I know every word to your songs and and desperately want to talk to you but I never get the chance since you’re touring in bigger cities.

I love you like a kindi-gardener’s fresh box of crayons.
Rarely touched and taken well care of.
But eventually lost and broken and smashed

I hate you like a sheet on the clothesline in the middle of a hurricane.
Being ripped from my line and drifting off away from you while you’re safe and sound.

I love you like a heroine addict loves his dealer.
Enough said.

I love you like a tree loves the rain.
Soaking up every drop of you that’s given.

I love you like a book worth reading over and over again.
Wanting to memorize your every feature like I could never see you again.

I hate you like a broken down car on the highway.
Stalled out, I was replaced before I had a chance to be fixed.

I love you like a sunset in the summer.
Indescribable, speechless except for the word “gorgeous”

I love you like star gazing.
Watching to find something and call it my own.
But I haven’t discovered anything yet.

I love you like pancakes on a sunday morning.

I love you like chocolate

I love you like nature.

I love you.