Failure
Illuminates
And plagues
Our accomplishments

"The first bullet
To **** by your head
Is the scariest,"
The general said.

"All the rest
Are just like
Old girlfriends
You might catch sight of
At the bar."

When we take our own life
Into our own hands and
Rely on the sincerity of others,

We are playing a game
More dangerous
Than Russian Roulette.

I take for granted
What I have

I dare not to see my
Many blessings

For fear of feeling
Unworthy

The walls here
Do not leak and
There are no cockroaches
Scurrying underneath
My one sheeted bed

The air I breath
Is not nuclear and
There is no
Secret Police
Pounding on my door

I am alone
To do
What I please

When I please

The only rapping
That echoes around me
Are from the hand's of
An unknown creativity

Who put
This desire
In me?

Who cursed me
To never be
Satisfied or
Free?

How long have the shackles -
Rusted and red orange in the sun -
Been strapped to my wrists and
Gripped around the bases of my ankles?

But
To abandon my irons
Would be to abandon
Myself

Leave myself
In the desert sun -
The soul begging for
Water, for food, for
Shelter from the beating flares of sunlight

Where there are questions
There are answers

Where there are answers
There is rest for some

For others
They dutifully
Choose not
To recognize

Outside my windows the
Street workers with their hammers
And their sledgehammers pound away
To the mad rhythm of this hustling city.
History has not forgotten them,
But it wants to.

History wants to forget us all.
History wants to re-write itself.
We want to write ourself to be
The divinely chosen Men of the World.

We will never be,
We will forever be human.
To reach the heavens
Would mean death.

And death
Lasts longer
Than a lifetime