Everything has strings attached.
We're all waiting for it to start,
for our lives to finally,
******* FINALLY,
kick into gear.
But we can hear it calling.
Oblivion.
From a house, or a street
just a little further down.
And it chills to the quick,
to the bone,
one and all.
It calls us, friend, by name.
By our name.
How can we argue that?

I say we bleed out on filthy
tile floors in truck stop bathrooms.
The wound we walk through life with,
the one inside our hearts.
Let it bleed away.
Because, we are so ******* tired
of twin self destructive
thoughts chasing each other
through our minds.
Endless searching and finding,
for our trouble,
more trouble.

I will burn my heart out in the looking.
I will.
I will **** myself.
Shame myself.
I will lie to, twist up and hate myself
if it gets me where I need it to.
I am without hope or principle,
but I have a dog in this fight, friend.
You'd better believe it.

So shout it out.
Echo it down like mountain top hollering.
Make sure we all know.
We all hear it.
Make sure the whole world knows.
Remembers us.
We were here, future.
You don't scare us.
We were ******* here.

Be brave in the small hours.
We have it in us.
And time is tall, right now,
but as we move it grows so short.
We would **** and dishonor for tall time,
in only the space of a piece of lifetime.
We know it, and we know it well.

We get *******, though.
We move from place to place,
and from person to person.
We move, as best we can.
But the strings,
they bind us to earth and we sink.
Unable to drown, we breath in water.
And in the distance,
calling us by name:
Oblivion.

...
.......
C:\Q&A;>

Question: Is this love?

Tearing pieces away so
the world can examine them.
Ripping apart the whole,
the soul,
for scrutiny.
Hoping with each lost,
shredded piece that value is
traded.
That redemption is given.
Ultimately, though, it is
degraded.
Devalued and purposeless.
Still, the work must be finished.
Still, it must be given,
the words and the feelings
that are foreign,
to you.

Answer: This is incomplete.

...
....
C:\

I'm going to hold my darkness over your head.
I'm going to make you feel small and stupid.
My history will become the mountain you must climb.
I don't wonder about it anymore:
I'm the worst.

Always you want two things; it's never enough.
Two things which can't be had at once.
Always.
Of course I'll ask you how.
Of course I will.
Two things. Always.

I've been ******* hunger desperate and shelter poor.
I've been a hard luck, street wise,
charity case with no coin freely given.
A mean little ****, tempered in tragedy and shame.
Most my time was spent in various
states
of decay.
In urban squalor and late night tattoo parlors.
Picking my monster up off the sticky barroom floors.
Returning to nothing and knowing,
all the knowing,
neglect measured in pounds of
what am I to do about food this week?
All that knowing and twice that knowledge of abuse.

You don't care.
This is about your precious ******* feelings.
This has little to do with plans.
Nothing to do with me.
Feelings.
Let them be your unremarkable guide.
Let them.
Always.

I'll hang my history over your head.
Every ******* time, I'll do it.
I know it's wrong.
How could you argue a point
that could possibly quell my fear?
Because I am afraid, you know, I am so afraid.
I am one bad week, one bad decision away.

I am within reach of returning.
Always.

Don't argue with me, love.
Please.
I don't wonder anymore:
I'm the worst.

I believe that I am capable of anything.
I believe I am great.
I know that greatness is a part of me.
Liar.
I'm a ******* liar, is what I am.
Nearly thirty years I've done nothing
with all I've been given.
I'm overweight, I'm lost, I'm a giant of misplaced ego.
I am so ******* tired of being so ******* poor.
I am sick of living in a rut
and knowing--
In my ******* bones, knowing--
that I'm the only person who can pull me out.

I remember being young, sitting cross-legged
in your living room as you watched scary movies,
through your fingers as always.
I remember being brave and strong.
I cannot reconcile the me, sitting beside you,
trying to lend you my courage,
with me, balding and fat and constantly afraid of failure.

I recall my--
Pathetic!--
schoolboy flirtations with greatness.
I remember the adulation from my peers.
Liar, I remember the adulation from the peers
I picked.
The ones I decided to be around.

I am poor, and tired. I am beat down by the
riots and the killings
and the people running my country into the ground,
with my knowing--
in my bones, knowing--
consent.

I don't want to be great anymore.
I'd settle for good.
I could be good, I think.
Liar.
I hope.
They aren't mutually exclusive,
like I thought they were,
sitting cross-legged in your living room.

I whisper a truth to myself, now,
across years, across my lifetime,
"You would trade good, you liar.
You would trade good for remembered.
You would trade good for Great. And you know it."

And ******* my lying eyes, I do know it.
In my ******* bones, I know it.

Tired and beaten.
Clothes ragged and moth eaten.
Trudging the last few sad and broken miles
crushing the disappointment of our lifetime of trials.
And a whole world for a bit of rest!
Bunched up sheets and pillows our nest.
Age may serve to wash away our rage...
But it's still a tear soaked journey to the grave.

She stands on mountain tops and old lofts
and buildings that reach steel toward the sky.
From here there is perspective,
if you want to call it that,
A certain willingness to fear.
And she soars on scary because
the butterflies feel like dying
and nothing has ever made her feel
more alive.

She packed a hundred regrets
into the lifetime of one.
And they ran from her then,
because they were new and grown.
She called after them as they flew.
She tried to run them down. But the clouds kept them.
And she was without.

She would trade the ******* world to fly.
And who wouldn't?

Where has the wonder gone? Where now is our youth?
She tried to trap it and keep it and learned the only truth.
She couldn't hold it any longer.
If only she were stronger.
But darkness doesn't need to blink.
All we do is wait and worry and think.

She tried, for a time, to sleep forever.
In dreams seeing things that awake she had missed.
She spun the clock hands backward
a hundred thousand times.
It never came back though.
She'd missed it and she cried.

She'd trade her ******* soul to make it right.
But she can't....


....Try as she might.

Baltimore holds its breath.
It's the morning after.
It's Day One.
We are brought curfews,
we are told that they wished to destroy us.
There are soldiers standing on our streets.
We are not sure if we're safe.
We're not sure if we'll ever live it down.

Baltimore: (Noun) 1. A city in Maryland.
                                 2. Slang for Riot.

We're anxious.
Because it's over(?)
We are proud.
Because it's all we have left.

We cannot let this be a sad chapter!
We have to make something good come from this!
We have to get up,
dust ourselves off
and stand up.
We have to finally embrace the conversation
that we refuse to have.

They burned us!
******* it! They burned us All!
The implications reach beyond
the city boundaries.
This can't end on Pratt or on Gay Street.
This can't end with barricaded Police stations
and tanks on our streets.

We need to discuss this.
People burned down their own home.
This is worth discussing.

Our lungs ache with effort.
Our minds race with possibility.
Our hearts long for hope.
Baltimore holds its breath.

My City is on Fire.
What do I do?
It did not creep.
It did not descend.
It Erupted.
Exploded.

My City is on Fire.
Intersections are blocked and streets are closed.
Barricades of men and women behind shields
occupy my home.
City hall is silence as the panic spreads.
Spreads with the fire and the noise.
Because once the sun goes down...
******* it all! Once that sun goes down!

My City is on Fire!
Protest turned to looting,
looting, in turn, to riot.
RIOT!
Of course they riot. Of course.
We are disenfranchised, obfuscated, beaten down.
Ignored.
God, if only we were ignored...

My City is on Fire.
It is a war zone of forgotten intentions and over reactions.
Like calls to like.
And we are so ******* human
we know only to answer violence with more.
More and more and more.
And what does it solve?
Nothing! They shout.
Their limbs lick with flame and mouths full of blood,
of hate.
And they know, in that moment, Nothing.
My city is on fire
and they would have it be for nothing.
Mean nothing.

Listen!  A struggle is proud, noble.
A struggle is worth it
A struggle is NOT a fight.
Disown that idea. Throw it from you.
Do not join the fight.
Do not join the riot.
STOP!!

My City is on Fire.
But my words are a whisper
against the shouting.
They are nothing against the violence.
Nothing.
What do I do?
Turn your pleas for help on the world.
Shout for change as messages
carried as updates
Through Trending Hashtags,
and Status Updates.
What else can we do?

@Baltimore: Help is on the way! #Baltimoreburning

My City is on Fire.
Get the word out.
People should know.
Need to know.
The world needs to see it
if they're going to join us.
If they're going to help us fix it.
My city is Burning, world.
We can't let it be for Nothing.