Is your heart big enough
To love something new?

Big enough to love
Without judgement?

Are we capable of such love anymore?
Capable to be open?

Why do we guard our hearts with such ironclad ideals?
Are we so afraid that we will be betrayed?

I fear we have invented a new type of love
A selective love

A love we revel in
Simply because there is an iota of it

Perhaps I'm wrong
And disconnected from the world

But the more I see the world act
I feel that a shift has taken place

And the old children stories
Of love and acceptance

Are bygones of a forgotten age

We all have within us
A room we dare not go

A memory
A belief
A once noble idea

Whatever the place
We are terrified to face it head on

I ask why?

Why do we shy away from such confrontation?
Let alone,
Confrontation with ourselves?

Why are some of us more inclined
To confront another
Rather than ourselves first?

Is it pride?
Embarrassment?
Fear of what such a confrontation would reveal?

We all have an abyss that strangely sits
At the edge of our minds.

A dark cavernous space

And many of us ignore it
Despise it
And would rather distract ourselves

From the unknown
That lives within our minds.

But I tell you this,
as one who once ignored the abyss in me.

It stays with you,
No matter how far you run
No matter how sad or happy you feel
No matter how distracted you are

The abyss within is not a force of good or evil

It is a pocket reality
A space only you can inhabit

A space
When left alone
Will slowly colonize your reality

Until you no longer can ignore it.
Until you must confront it
For what it is,
Alone.

Sometimes when driving through towns
Past little homes and apartment complexes
I can't help but to wonder
What unspeakable horrors hide behind
Those walls
That conceal
And muffle

Am I deranged? To imagine such things
To worry about the deeds
That may or may not be happening
In hidden rooms and behind closed doors?
Is it my anxiety? Is it a psychic connection?

And so.
I created my own idea of a perfect world
A system.
Where people are safe, from the horrors of another's sense of justice
Enter Aethisia
A world built entirely by the host.
A world free of others.
And only in his own solitude,
Do I believe man will truly Flourish.

Feckless and without warmth
We have grown to pretend to care
As a new species of man grows
From the septic pools of lies and deceit

Outwardly, we have grown not grotesque
But perfect.
Flawless and divine
Yet no light shines through our eyes anymore
Nothing more than hollow perfect creatures

We have perfected the art of deception
The art of pseudo compassion
Like the light of an angler
We draw in those
We only wish to consume

Surely, we have evolved
From bandits, highwaymen, and thieves
We have become licensed bandits
Licensed highwaymen
And licensed thieves

"All for the greater good"
We whisper to ourselves
Every night before we sleep
Hoping our dreams stop the pain
Hoping our dreams pause the fragility
Of our brittle compassion

We boast as love.

When I was young and simple
I never understood why and when
Adults lost their color

When and how did growing up
Into an autonomous being
Become the wasting away of eccentricity?

Until that is
I grew up
And saw first hand how it happens

Gradually, you begin to dull
Until you look around the world
And realize the color has all but vanished

Every step along the way
To "growing up"
Means at every stop, you must sell another piece

At every station along your life
You have to shave off another slab
Another offering, to get you "back on track"

Until you finally made it!
As retirement nears
You begin to remember that basket

Full of all the childlike wonders
You cut off to get you where you are now
And it pains you

Retirement finally comes
And you are handed back that basket
With all the once glowing ideas

But it feels heavy
And foreign
And what was once the inspiration of your entire existence

Is now dull and grey
And so are you
Who sold all the imaginations and innocence

To grow up.

At the end, what do we all ask for?
What do we desire in the final moments of life?
Why is it that we call out to those whom we love?
Why do we reach out to those who give us warmth?
Is it because we know at the very end,
That nothing else matters,
But love?

There once was a story of a little bird
Who lived in a cage by the window
And everyday, the little bird would look outside
To see the sky sprawled as far as its little eyes could see

The little bird knew not was out in the skies above
But he knew,
And it burned within him
That someday,
Someday, he would make it into the open world

For many years, as it watched
It saw rain, and sunlight
Storms and tranquil nights
Always in love with it
Always yearning for that world

Finally, the day came when the bird made it outside
Finally on the other side of the window
Without bars or cages to stifle his flight
The Bird had the every and all direction
To fly into the endless horizon

But.
The Bird went nowhere
Despite the absence of the cage
Because now that he had his moment
He realized he was far too afraid
To decide for himself his own journey

So he waited
And waited
Until many years later
The Bird decided what he wanted most
But time had left him older and slow

And the Bird never left
Despite the open world around him
Because he feared
That his decisions
Could be wrong.