knowledge awaits is the ticket
they sell you as you pass through
the pearly gates of higher learning
with textbook in hand you pray
that the dream you have isn't as much of
a work of fiction as the history they teach
with your college bound girl
her vanity lay in her turtle frame glasses
she hides behind the foggy lenses of her
casual drugs and meaningful ****** episodes
she grasps the back of your letterman jacket
hoping that you are as surefooted as your propaganda speaks
as you follow the blinding path
of confusions principal and you think to yourself repeatedly
that the truth in the simplest explanation is the actually the most complex
because you make it that with
realizations and rationalizations
through the day to day whittling away
of what you really are
through lying to yourself that
if you stick it out with this false life
one more day it will all be better
that the relationship you are trapped in
will work with you
instead of making every day
an uphill battle to be heard
and loved without tears
sometimes look into her eyes and
see the endless road of escaping her past
and i think that i just want to stop running away
settle down
and be
just simply be
a father, a husband, a lover
happy

Ashes on the ground
what was lost would never be found.
Thick, dark smoke
swam in and out of our guts,
the searing pain at the sight of it ingrained in our hearts.
The buildings were razed to the ground.

Early hours of yester years
christmas period, he recalled
at the stroke of mid-night exactly
the disturbing sounds came.
Voices and chatter was at its loudest,
sirens blared
he curiously stepped out of his apartment.
His sight was greeted with smoke,
his nose awoke fully the rest of his half-asleep senses.
Fire, he saw.
Walking people on fire
He froze,
stood still and stared
unable to run forward and help.

His ears vibrated at the sounds of the approaching foot-steps.
He could see people pouring buckets after another
on people and the buildings.
Soon, the police
and the fire men came.

The fires vexed.
The screams we heard from those inside the buildings ceased, those who worked late into the night.
Hose after hose
Ladder after ladder
till the second hour
when it flamed out.
It grew higher and higher,
darker and thicker
till the third hour
when the white smoke prevailed.

Yellow stripes made by the police contained the curious crowd.
Ambulances struggled to revive the fainting people.
Some where in the crowd the man stood.
He kept his head down
a tear trickled down his face.
He had seen fires kissing flesh
and properties transforming to ash.
He witnessed live death
and fires blazing bright.
He saw what he saw.
The National Business Center would be greatly missed.