(A 'thought piece' I wrote in high school)

Ok, I'm not paid to think (like the TV shouting heads), I have no real voice (vote), and certainly no credentials - but I'm as invested in America as any high-school citizen can be. I've pledged allegiance 3000 times (hhmm.. do they doubt our loyalty?) and when it comes to loving America, I'd have to say my classmates and I are at the center of the spell.

I'm afraid we're growing up in the age of hate.. the age of phony outrage where each position large or small is high noon and violence is underfoot even when policing ordinary citizens.

We won't address the multitude of old problems in this new age.. we'll just unleash a marquetry of half truths to dispute the proven until unreasoned arguments reach their paranoid fullness.

The real world is alarming enough - lets just push that away and ignore it - while we're at it lets **** shame the poor, the old, the sick, the unemployed, the hungry and the hand of mercy.

I realize America was never one moral atom bonded for better.. but those anvils that forged us appear neglected or forsaken. I'm afraid what's happening now, what we're seeing and hearing now, is a symphony of erosion - that by the time I have any say at all, the middle class will be gone - america turned slum - where even the voice of despair will be turned traitor.

We'll only be able to see our greatness in museum souvenir shops where nothing is affordable and everything is made elsewhere.

This town holds secrets
Don't you know?
Between the houses and their lawns,
Between the market square and suburbs,
Between the forest and the parks.
A mystery lingers
Like unsettling fog
Suffocating, deadly, murderous.
The longing silence
That draws exhales from townsfolk.
The rolling winter
That fills their hearts with dread.
For the creatures of the mountains
Come down to the haunted town
Drawing blood on sidewalks
To satisfy their frozen hunger.
The people tape their windows
And blind themselves with scissors
For they cannot bear to see the horrors.
Each season, a part of town shrinks away
Like termites eating entire wood slowly
Devouring the taste.
Soon, it will become a ruin
Uninhabited, lost in time, lonely.
What once was the American dream
Now an urban flower in a devastating jungle.
A leftover, remnant of something great, eaten away by greed,
destroyed by self hatred.

in my dreams
i think of something green
something 73 degrees
covered in trees;
and i see
white robes
colored skin
men and women
all different languages.

but i don't see
your flag
or your ballot;
i don't see
the words you shared
pastored over peoples
whipped into their ears
with a silver tongue
served on a silver spoon-
i don't see a wolf's wisdom bloom.

all i see
are crooked teeth
swollen eyes
cut up elbows
calloused palm lines
colored skin
men and women
all different languages.
they aren't scribes
and they aren't wise
but they are desperate
to have brand new skies
to look upon your glory
and to see your radiant mercies.

The earth calls me home
Whistles my name and claps toward the woods
Her tangy voice rings through the elms
Suppertime is swiftly approaching

The world hides me under her tongue
Raining down saliva that burns the eyes
Deeper into her cave I dive
Acid bubbling down my throat

Nature collects my body
Another trophy placed in her burrow
Burying us all further and further
She sings hymns every day above our graves

And though we pretend this song isn't sweet
Humming along
We all fall into the pit

Galaxy in hand,
I zoom in on Mount Fuji
With Nintendo thumbs.

cruse la frontera
Cruse el mar
Contra las tormentas
Todo para tu mirar
No mi pararon las balas de un güero
Por tu amor mi converti en tu Guerrero
Cruse la frontera por ti mi Mexicana
Para que vivemos juntos en nuestra
Casablanca