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 Jan 2014 Sieve
Emanuel Martinez
Being human can be incredibly painful
But to be human...to truly feel like a realized human being
is to feel powerful...is to feel an out-of-body experience
because we realize that we are beautiful, brilliant...
and deserve to feel what it means to
TO BE FULLY HUMAN and nothing less.

That our dreams, our aspirations, and our capabilities
cannot be restricted by artificially constructed restrictions.
And because of that we cannot allow under any circumstance
for the humanity of anyone to be negated.

That every inhale we take without helping legitimize the humanity of one more,
Is further securing the chaos which threatens our own.

That to love another human being,
no matter how strange or familiar, difficult or easy
Is to really understand the profoundness of our own humanity...
Is to love ourselves.
And because of that we cannot fathom a world
Where anyone is negated the ability to love.

Whereby the consciousness of our fullest potential
Understands no artificial restrictions
Knows no terror, war,or attack that can silence the eternal soul of its truth
And can only conceive of a world where everyone's humanity is legitimized
August 19, 2013
 Sep 2013 Sieve
Kate Richter
Which way's up
which way's down
what to do with this new Love I've found-
but not that pound-pound heart kind of love
it's just gotta be that sense of
it's gonna be alright
the sun's ashining and I think I just might...

spread these lips into an undeniable grin
radiating the sincerity within
true, we've long been stretched thin
but we're young, we're risky
and the happiest we've ever been
 Mar 2013 Sieve
Emanuel Martinez
Young people can you feel the suffering?

roca wear, gucci, apple, facebook, mcdonalds, apple bee's,
honda, lamborghini, harvard, Community College
american express, pnc bank, walmart

Wage Slaves, ceos, owners, lenders, renters, indebtedness
Structural dehumanization, systematic mechanization
Exploited labor feeding blood to your hungering consumerism

Young people you are embracing MISANTHROPY!

Embracing the hate of your own humanity! Why the hypocrisy?
Wealthy children, poor children
Trying for enlightenment through education

Parents garnering wealth through the oppression of their victims
Parents garnering debt through the oppression from economic inequality
Still you invest and promote the only legitimization of your being: CAPITALIST UTILITY

Capitalism engineering unrelenting misanthropy
Vicious economic system discarding humanity
Perfecting the concentration and accumulation of wealth
With the expansion of human alienation and murderous competition

Prostituting your body to labor exploitation and consumerism
Where does your wealth end up?
multinational companies? financial corporations? military arms contractors?
Loyalty lies in their pockets, backstabbing everyday tactics
Killing you through the exploitation of your body
Because they know the birth of another proletariat or bourgeoisie can replace you  

Entities, not human, how much have they bought you for so that you cannot see!!!
Beware of these misanthropic missionaries granting your body power and agency
When your body can no longer be plundered for profit you will taste tears and blood

Young people will you deliver your forefathers and fathers
From worshiping capitalist misanthropy?
March 8, 2013
 Mar 2013 Sieve
MasikaniCrocodile
Oh Jesus time by the pink and purple sunset
Thinking of a traveling guitar boy,
of chai sleep broken by dying beggars
all trying to tell me something.
If the ocean lights don't call us home
we could backpack to the crocodile places
eat thirteen camels with the people
smoke tea and rainy day cigarettes.
Heartache sits like snow on the roof
of the hollow hut Connecticut.
The kids tried too many times for nothing.
Mom dream better for me
Wear your peace face
I'm trying to change

You're talking France nostalgia while upstairs
the weaver makes seven-dollar laments
for international slum chickens.
We can't do better than the break-bone average
reading scorched Chalbi newspapers
hacking coughs and statii soup for company.
Bukowski's in Mumbai eating cheddar
My siblings are in cages down in Egypt
The Spanish Communist cowboys
spill Turkana survivors on the floor of the Greyhound bus

Is there a hood idealist, ghetto healer?
My Sacramento roommate's drinking skeleton coffee
in the bathtub, she's got the Arab fever, so have I,
and not much else but these crazy plague jackets
this hungry smoking December
and Rumi's kids in cold-bread streets with protest signs.
We're easier taught the panic than the magic or the save,
There's too much strange and midnight waste.
You didn't know I needed you but you came through.
You're shimmering in clothes of saxaphone
one for the drifters.  took a bunch of words from my HP word bank and tried to make a poem out of them.
 Feb 2013 Sieve
Kate Richter
my hair is smoked with diner eggs and bacon
because I was lucky enough to eat this morning
using the change I found in my pocket.

I have plenty of change on me
some of which I used to purchase
beautifying products
to conceal my blemishes-
imperfections that seem so trivial now

I am ashamed
passing by the Cherry Street Coin Begger
eyes casted in different directions, sitting upon a thrifted walker

it seems my compassion is faltering,
maybe it is these salt stained streets or self diagnoses or
layers of grime surfacing under melted snow

but her and I are no different,
trying to avoid the same soot puddles
like land mines hidden
under sidewalks of putty
Bar tender, pour me another drink
For within this dank pity I wallow
Fill the whiskey full to the brink
So I can drown away my sorrow

Once, I was a man able to keep my cool
Never one for the rage to over take me
But bad times came and made me a fool
I allowed anger to always leave me empty

Come, I want you to fill my glass once again
I will be the one who decide when enough is enough
I want to swallow up when times were good, back then
Because now this life has become much too tough

Then fury visits me and his glass I hurl and smash
Unsteady on my feet I find my way out the door
People try to keep away, as at them I will lash
So now going home, I find myself crawling on the floor

Once inside, I will open another bottle to begin anew
They try to say I have a problem, and they are wrong
I can stop drinking, I can give up this Demon's brew
Because this man is able to stand and be strong

But in reality, I can not sleep for my spirit is weak
I say I need no one, because I fear my own shame
I want to stay drunk, because then I need not speak
I scream at the world when I know that I am to blame



copyright Chris Smith 1998

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