The night has come for me again
The walls are closing in
Despair is clawed in these never-ending walls that surround me as I attempt to climb out of this cistern
In the pit of this miserable existence the answer lies in
The bottle embedded to my head like a gun
When the liquid runs it warms my blood.
And opens the flood gates to my insecurities,
Masked in needles and pipes and all other types of demons waiting to be released
The disease that took so many from high floors and self-inflicted wounds
Then came for me...
And in a moment my life flashed like a movie and then fade to black and reappeared.
And I realized I was still here.
And fear became hope and the rope became a way out of this place.
To face these demons that constantly remind me of the sickness and the addictions.

A beautiful sunny afternoon in 1981
At the window I look out at a sidewalk
It looks like it goes on forever,
Circling the globe coming back
On the opposite side

The wind blows in
warm fumes
The birds fly and the sun gets in my eyes
Just for a moment and then

I see
The sign which says Flatbush and the
Other says Washington
The corner of our new home
The buildings taller than the imagination of a seven
year old

And just a few blocks away, this land of concrete and car horns,
Turns to the natural bliss of the Botanical Gardens
I went there once since coming to this city

I am absorbing the moment
It is interrupted by the corner
Of my eye which sees

A bike crossing the street
In the crosswalk
And along comes the vehicle which strikes the rider
Throwing him through the air landing on the never ending
sidewalk
To this day I wonder, if he survived the ambulance ride
Or if he died

-Manny Rivera-

The plot thickens,
As we cut through the fog to show the wickedness of what our society has become.
As one we rise up, the few left with courage who do not dilute the strength of our unification.
Our nation failed us but we will not fail our people.
"We The People" built the steeple but it will fall because it wasn't about the people at all.
The lies, the corruption, unanswered replies left in assumption,
Comply with a bunch of
People who call themselves world leaders,
But have only led us astray and at the end of the day,
The truth will convey and lay the roots needed to begin a new page.
A new start as we deter away from the labels that have delayed
Our nation who divide themselves in groups named as political parties.
We rise again because in the past we were defeated.
The plan, the ultimate feat is to land with both feet in and move forward in a land
With freedom and now cheating because of differences we see
In gender, color, race, age, status.
Alas we are humans holding hands past our borders and beyond the lines the divide us.
Connected by the human DNA that makes us all the same.
We all live, breath, laugh, cry and feel pain,
And we will rise again to take back our freedoms and paint white houses black,
unite ourselves back to back by strength in numbers.
I am one of those, are you?
Hold your head up, be strong and proud,
Aloud we say, turn away from our prejudice which bind our minds
Freedom will be the guide to move into a time where we see nothing beyond
Our skin and what ties us together,
We are all people in God's eyes.