Garbage lines the streets
    while vultures and thieves stand in line
    waiting to take a bite of the corporate flesh

But you....you are different.

You stand away from the massacre
  and you watch with innocent eyes
  as all that is unholy is exposed

You see everything

The blood, the fear, the regret
    they burn images into your retina
    until at night you lie awake with fear
    of what is to come.

Yet everyday you watch

You stand on the outside as they enter,
    your friends, your family, your lovers,
    the thieves, the vultures,
    all feasting on the bleeding propaganda

And you can't take it anymore

You run to the river
    and one by one you pull of the layers of your skin
    veins and bones exposed as you step in
    and you keep going

You keep going until you're clean

Who do you trust now?
Now that your teachers are longing
  to be your lovers and denying
  the looks that they've been giving
  and the words that they've been saying
  are just misunderstandings

And where do you turn?
Now that your friends are leaving
   to be with lovers who need them
   at home, and not picking up the
   phone, because the baby needs
   fed and changed

And who do you love?
Now that *** and love and lust are
    one in the same and there is no
    telling what someone wants from you,
    your body, or your mind, or just
    release from time to time

And where do you go?
Now that home has no room
    for you and family is a
    foreign concept, and all that
    you know of home are screams
    and bruises that you hide.

What is the answer?
Now how do we fix something
    that we can't admit is broken.
    Like our trust, and our friendships,
    and our love, and our homes.

The answer.... is change

My feet move against the pavement,
   though blisters form I do not feel them.
My hands brush the leaves on the trees,
   but I do not revel in their texture.
My eyes see the beauty of the place,
   but my mind does not comprehend.
For me it's bland, just shades of the same.
  
I could sip the nectar of the sweetest fruit,
  but I would not taste it's flavor.
I could hear a symphony from the heavens
  but it would  fall on deaf ears.
NowI won't feel the pain,
  and I think I like it better this way.
Now that life, and death
  and love, and hate,
  and lust, and pain,
  all look the same.