I remember being a child, going to the circus,
With my little sister and my mother
We rode a yellow taxi into Manhattan
My mother tried to get me to walk up to the elephant
But I adamantly refused, which I later regretted

I was spellbound by the tigers
And told my mother that I was going to train tigers and lions in the circus to jump through hoops when I grow up,
Just one of the many careers I considered in my early life

And what a surprise,
To grow up and incur so many wounds
I never saw my family's dysfunction when I was younger,
I was probably one of the happiest kids ever,
But aren't most kids blissful? Because they don't know
They don't yet fully comprehend the perverse world they have been born into

What a surprise to have my dreams ripped so stealthily from me
To see this jubilant child transformed into a gasping fish on the floor,
Gasping for it's life,
To no avail,
As passerby become bystanders
Looking indifferently at the suffering,
Not being able to feel
Refusing to help

I remember being in my hometown,
Third grade,
Standing at the bus stop with my mother and my younger sister
The sun was setting, dusk
A tattered, leathery old man
Who was extremely drunk,
Tried desperately to get across a wide and busy street
I anxiously looked up to my mother
And begged her to help him, or let me help him
She refused, a scowl on her face,
She excused herself just like everyone else around her,
Like all the people in cars that almost hit him
As he was helplessly on his knees
Fists deep in hot rubble
A drunken daze of anguish on his face,
Paralyzed in this position
And I cried
Letting out little screams
Everytime this poor man
Fell on the ground in front of a car
And I thought I was going to witness the end
Of this helpless man

Another time
I was in Las Vegas
With my pregnant mother, and my sister and my grandparents and my mother's soon to be husband
We took a plane to Las Vegas, I was eight
Because my mother was going to marry my stepfather there, a shot gun wedding,
But something went wrong, and they didn't get married in Las Vegas, but ended up getting married back at home
One night in Las Vegas,
Me and my family were sitting outside in the evening, at a strip mall
I think we were waiting for someone to pick us up,
The only other person there was an overweight man sitting on a bench by himself a few yards away from where my family was sitting
I was walking around, exploring my surroundings,
When I noticed this man sitting by himself
I thought that he looked lonely,
So I sat next to him and started talking to him, asking him how he was,
My mom saw me and yelled at me,
Pulling me away and reprimanding me for talking to strangers
I didn't understand why she couldn't see that I was just trying to be kind to a man that appeared to be lonely

I remember another time,
In 12th grade, I went to a concert with my boyfriend back then,
I was high on a hallucinogenic
It was a Nero concert in Manhattan
I went to the bathroom, waited on a long line,
When I finally got in I saw that there was a side room in the bathroom with plether couches covered in endless puke
A woman who looked a lot older than the majority of people at the concert,
Probably in her 30s
Fell on the floor and hit her skull so hard I heard it hit the ground
While the girls in front of me, white girls who were probably sorority girls, pointed their fingers at her, laughing to themselves
Took out a digital camera and started to record her
I got off the line to the bathroom to help her up,
Of course, right when I did this, those girls came to their senses and got in touch with their rarely used empathy
I took her to the room with puke covered couches to tend to this tall, sad woman
I asked her what she was on,
Shrooms
And probably tons of liquor
I asked her if she was okay, how did she feel?
I walked out of the bathroom with her,
Where my boyfriend was waiting for me
Next to him was this blonde ****
She walked to him
I asked him who the hell he was
He was so smug it made me sick
He looked way too young to be with her,
But this woman reassured me that she was with him
My boyfriend discouraged me from starting a fight with this smug loser
I just wanted to punch all of the haughtiness out of him
But all I could do was I look sadly on
As I saw this strange tall woman,
Too inebriated to stand
Walked away with this evil hearted man

The whole world is a circus
We're told to spend all our money on college,
That that will make us good humans
We judge people by so much criteria that isn't even important
We waste all our money on college degrees and then end up working minimum wage jobs anyway
We overlook the poor and suffering,
Because it doesn't advance us in our self progression in any way
We are such a ******* self centered nation,
It makes me ******* sick,
We're so disrespectful, unempathetic, uncaring, unloving, cruel
We don't have God
We rely only on ourselves
God is love
But who are we, without God?
Savage, cruel, hungry souls
Ready to devour any helpless soul that appears to be weaker than us
So we can pummel them
And destroy them,
In an attempt to steal the little life they have left in them to revive our hearts of coal
This is the world I live in,
I'm not going to try to pretend cruelty isn't real and prevalent
I am in this world, but not from it
And oneday I will go home,
To Love, to God,
Away from all this craziness of the world that brings pulls at my heart and brings tears to my eyes.