Cal-i-fornia (verb) the state of being golden.
                                                                                                                                                    
Can you see the way the sand sparkles on the shore?
Golden shards of glass, or broken dreams.
Who possesses the Midas touch now?
The crushed gates of Atlantis on our shores.
Aphroditic bronze goddess of the sea,
Hair blown by the breeze.
Sea air & salty &
more than anyone could need, or was used to.
                                                                                                                                         Giant sequoias stand
                                                                                                                     As mighty and proud protectors
                                                                                                                             Behemoths of lifetimes past.
                                                                                                                                 Explosion of seeds inside
                                                                                                                           Fireworks waiting to explode
                                                                                                                      Pinecones, little grenades of life.
Ghost towns reminiscent of the Wild West
Mining camps from the Gold rush days.
Tumbleweeds & reptiles & powder fine dust.
Some say the earth is red from the natives’ blood spilt, and sunk in,
Reality – Oxidation turns iron in the dirt to rust.
So that’s why Mars is red.
                                                                                                                          After a bad storm in San Diego
                                                                                                    Dollars lie broken & shattered on the shore
                                                                                                               A bankruptcy of marine proportions!
                                                                                                                                       Just go see for yourself,
                                                                                                                              The sand dollar apocalypse.
                                                                                                                              We were echinoderms too.
Life gone dormant, and violent beginnings.
As if Calliope’s harp needed to be retuned,
Sun god, Apollo & Helios with his chariot in the sky
When did we become so heliocentric?                                            
                                                                                                                         Solitary white cross on the hill.
                                                                           Never did anything to harm anyone, yet they fear you so
                                                                                          Enough to try to remove you from our presence.
                                                                                              Mount Soledad, or their SOLEs-are-DeAD.    
- You know San Onofre is a power plant right?
- Radiation, is that a problem?
- Only if you want to have kids or stay cancer free.                        
- 25 foot sea wall -- To keep the waves out, or the kraken in?
- 4,000 tons of nuclear waste, who’s gonna get rid of that?
Ghostly tendrils of death
Blown fifty miles down the coast.
They call it SONGS, how quaint.
A symphony of catastrophe.
The greatest arias of death and destruction.

Roses aren’t always red,
People just like to tell us they are
The grass isn’t always greener,
But we hope to ourselves that it is.
Preconceived notions
Stuck in our heads
Leave us confused at the end of the day.
Romantic ideals leave us unsatisfied
When things don’t turn out the way we thought.

Pain can be beautiful too, a more tangible emotion
Everyone knows pain and has felt it for themselves
Not everyone has felt true love, or even common sense
Some paint a picture of grandiose and harmony,
When the world only seeks chaos and dissonance.

Worst of all we lie to ourselves
Make believe that things are all right
When all we need is a reality check
And someone to stay through the night

We need to take the world for what it is
And nothing less or more
To see all the emotions, the good and the bad
And drink till you can’t feel no more.

People only want to feel the good, without the bad
But without one there can’t be the other.
Bad feeds off the Good,
Ravishing her and stealing some of her glory.
Good waits patiently for her time to shine.
Good triumphs and she smirks
As she twists Bad’s arm behind his back,
Pushing him up roughly against the wall.
Until he begs for her to best him
Compliant, she grants his request
It seems that this time Good has this game, set, match.
Until next time when it all begins again.

Waiting, time seems to stand still in this place
The endless white walls and white floors,
One can never really tell where one ends and the other begins
Like a maze with hallways, paths, and dead-ends.            

Feeling lost and alone in this sterile hell
The smell of iodine thickens the air
Disturbing silence in halls so pristine
Carts and gurneys and tools that gleam.

There are loved ones, and some that were lost
They were never really accounted for
Perhaps we are all just a tag to be placed on a toe
But until we all die I guess we won’t know.

We all lose something when we walk through those doors
Either a piece of ourselves or something more
Generic rooms filled with half living people
Sanity is slipping away, perhaps it was never there to begin with.

The small children remind us of the life we no longer have
But we reach, and we grasp; we hold fast to false hope
But life is so short, fragile, and fleeting
Death comes unexpected, you have been warned.

If life were a game it would be easy to win
All you would have to do is take a roll or a spin
Games can be cheated and short cuts taken
This is why life, for a game can’t be mistaken

Life isn’t easy or half the time any fun
There aren’t any winners or any number ones
There’s no prize for doing your best
No “good job pal”, nor “you deserve some rest”

As children we love to play the game
Laughing and joking it’s all the same
But we grow up, and feign responsibility

We see the true game of life, and it’s many twists and turns
Take three steps back, and never stop and learn
That if life is a game and we are its pieces
We just have to sit back and let the game unfold.

Spinning, startled, I fall
Falling, Bleeding, Dying

How did this happen?
I was fine seconds before
Eating, Listening, Breathing
A simple minded doe,
Just living in the woods
A target on my back

The moment I left the clearing
I knew something was wrong
I felt as if I was being watched, and slowly took a step
It was too late.

Now I see the hunter coming for my dying carcass
I am lying in the same dirt, on which I was first born
As I take my final breaths

I see the hunger in his eyes, and the malice in his heart
He looks down at me, laughs, and pulls the trigger.

As I sit here staring, out across the open land,
I see my comrades standing hand in hand.
Grenades are going off, as they always had,
As I think of fallen soldiers, I now become quite sad.
Thoughts are going through my head, circling all around,
I look at the scattered bodies littering up the ground.

The stench of rotting flesh is filling up the air,
The once dreams of men, have now turned to despair.
The poison gas now fills the air, as I fumble for my mask,
Escaping machine-gun fire is not such an easy task.
We were told when we first entered this war, that it would not take so long,
But as the war went on, we found out this statement was quite wrong.

Sitting in the trenches, with mud upon my face,
Fighting for my country, I will never be a disgrace.
Sitting here going insane, I can’t stand this another minute,
I am only here so that I can help my country win it.
Looking all around me, I see enormous tanks,
And for this reinforcement, I give my many thanks.

There are so many faces that I have missed for so long,
Sometimes I get the feeling that enlisting may have been wrong.
This deep feeling of regret that wells inside of me,
Shows me the person that I have come to be.
If you have something that you would like to know, just ask me and I’ll say,
The burden of protecting others carries us through the day.

These cancerous drugs,
Have given me great pains
Like needles dripping heavy lead
Into my weakened veins
Like drunken lullabies,
slurred from sloppy lips
And promises spoken,
With hands upon the hips
Hypocrites can talk their words,
Yet poisonous lies flow forth
Talking over and again
of what has greater worth

The poet in me seeks the lost soul in you
My pen never ceases,
Your glances never ending
The look upon your face, it tortures me
Crestfallen, brow furrowed, mouth turned down at the edges
I feel your pain,
It radiates off in waves
If you would just let some of those rays sink into me instead.

To lessen your burden would ease my mind
Even if for a moment or two
To see you smile if only for an instant,
Would make it all worth the while.

I never said loving me would be easy,
I never said time would be kind
I never said any of the things that I should have
And now we both pay the price.