I was a new-born when you promised
You would carry me anywhere I wanted
And at any time I wanted,
You promised me safety
You promised me freedom.

Dedicated and deceptive
You had teased me growing up
But I never would have predicted
How malicious you could be
You fooled everyone, even me.

Parts of you were destroyed
But you always found other ways
To stick out, ugly and obscene
You screamed at me, you harassed me
And everyone else recoiled.

You were ruthless, relentless,
I needed your permission to leave
On the worst days I could do nothing
But lie there and seethe.

You were always there waiting,
Until I was distracted, to capture me
Trapping me in a time loop dimension
Loop after loop after loop;
Like an elaborate knot.

My tongue no longer tasted
My humanity began to rust
Like a corpse and its restless ghost
I was dormant but deprived of sleep
How could I rest under your glare?

Like a deranged anaesthetist
You forced me to the very edge
I hung over that abyss, wondering
If you would let my hand go, or pull me up
Until boredom struck again

Amidst the beeping and droning machines
Serpentine, you still twisted around me
Pungent disinfectant; the white-room scent
And the pointed metal tips
Their shrieking tongues turned to monotone.

Well, organs and cells,
I had long outgrown you and
Your demented, slothful ways
What did we have in common
Anymore aside from me?

But we are bound like conjoined twins
As fused together as can be
I’d die without you, you’d die without me
I aim to live in harmony with you
And help you gain a much sunnier hue.

I, no I mean WE will not be defeated.
Now, hope might seem depleted
But I promise that at the end of the tunnel there is a light,
It might be small and barley in sight,
But it is there and it beckons for us to hold on,

Hold on to each other: our friends, our sisters, our brothers,
Because in a world full of hateful slurs,
Where name calling and bullying still occurs,
We need to see each other as more than just negative labels,
It is up to us to look into the eyes of hate and turn the tables,
You might look at that person different than you and call them names,
But all you do is lose sight of, that despite you trying to give them a new one, their name is James.

And James is a fricking genius. No he really is. He is solving high school math problems in the 3rd grade,
And that little James plays Behtoveen on the piano like it has never been played,
But you missed out on all his amazing talents and the best hug you will ever get,
Because you were too busy trying to impress your friends, not worried who you’d upset.  

It is time to learn there are a thousand better words than ******* or gay,
And most of y’all who use them don’t even know what they mean anyway,
So I will fight on to spread the word to end the word,
And no matter how many times they try and break us down,
I will never be deterred,
Because for the one’s I’ve known who are affected by this kind of speech,
For the kids I see every day, the students I teach,
I want them to live in the kind of place,
Where we give up hate and learn to embrace
So if you are with me, make the change today,
Buy a dictionary, find a better word to say.

I have been invisible before.
My thoughts and justifications were transparent.
All anyone could see were my actions;
the way I failed and stumbled,
and ran head first into doors that lead me down path after path of distraction.
At least they seemed like distractions,  
oh, but they become my destruction. 


I spent my time quietly imploding,
only to change my mind last minute,
and suddenly explode.
I changed my mind,
but my body stayed stock still.
I stood in front of the judges
and while my tongue was granite,
the urge to run from the podium had never been greater.

I wished to be invisible.
I wished to go to a dark corner of the room and finish my implosion.
Out of sight,
where I could hide and self destruct without a sound.

And then if,
or when,
I picked up the shrapnel,
I could re-join everyone on stage at graduation.

I could hold my head high
and with a smile,
pretend no one saw me crumble.

i give them my executables and
ask them to reverse engineer me
to look into my code for reasons
reasons that i'm not just broken
not just slow
not just bad

if these letters
on this line
mean
that i am programmed to worry
then it is not my fault
not my fault that
i have wasted years
years of my life in fear

it's just a bug
looping too many times
using too many clock cycles

my code may be broken, but
if it is broken
then i am not

maybe, just maybe
i am a good processor
given bad code.

not my fault.
no one could blame me.

it would mean
i do what i am told to
perfectly
quickly
efficiently.

but
what i am told to do is
buggy
unoptimized
inefficient

my programmers are lazy -
not me.

when i find
a function in my code
that never works
and they say
"that code is fine"
then why?
why does it never run?

something must be wrong with me after all
me, myself, the processor
i don't do what i am told

but no, no, no
i don't want that
i can't be broken, overheating, dusty
segfaulting
bluescreening
panicking

no!

the code must be wrong
it must be

so i look again and again and again
i lose myself in my code
i click and click and click
2x more and 2x more and 2x more
COMT and DRD4 and ANKK1
rs53576 and rs7794745 and rs1858830
lower risk and normal risk and higher risk
of the same thing
in me at once
conflicting
overwriting each other

there is no code to add risk objects
and no one knows
whether
they make a group or a ring or a field
or just
something
useless.

like dividing by zero.
you can...
but it's useless in the real world.
just like me.

i look for more code
for more functions
for more comments
more more more
give me more
take my rights
make me open source
as long as i can see me too.

602,000 lines are not enough
not when i run millions

stick your wires in my veins
take the code from my blood
decompile it
untangle it
i need to see it all

i need to know
that i am a good little processor
even if i am doomed to
forever
run BASIC and
a million GOTO statements
and ugly ugly spaghetti code
i am still good.

With the promise of being friends forever they parted.
40 years later the will to meet each other started.
All dressed up for the reunion, the tears rolled down.
As the health did not cooperate with the mind.
Then they remembered the party was uptown.
With the moan, they started to breakdown.
Then a flashback appeared.
The laughs, the pranks and the sensations.
One puts on a brave face and break fear.
From the wheelchair he gets up and calls the dear.
Says doesn't matter the disability, the friends will never out wear.
Get up o get up dear.
The one with low eyesight, calls for the car.
Says doesn't matter if I have to go far.
One by one all leave the fright and go with sparkle in their eyes.
40 years later, again under one roof.
The faces have changed but not the emotions.
Everybody remembers the good old days and promises that never failed.
The clown of the class again makes a joke.
The Romeo and Juliet of the class are still poked.
With funny thing in mind, they make a pact again.
This time to not meet but to get buried together as a team.

Don’t see only our disabilit-ease,
Don’t deny us basic facilit-ease,
Don’t ignore our many abilit-ease,
Don’t compound our varied difficult-ease,
Deal head-on with the harsh realit-ease.

You never know what life has in store,
You may fall one day and rise no more,
You may join our ranks, afraid, unsure,
You may write words to plead; implore.

We are not an alien race,
We have a voice, we have a face,
We have our part to play; a place.

Let us join life’s lively dance,
Let us have an equal chance.

Pl-ease.

ni Reagan A. Latumbo

Hindi man ako biniyayaan ng karangyaan,
O nakakain ng masasarap na pagkain sa hapag-kainan,
O nakabili at nakasuot ng magagarang kasuotan,
Kuntento naman ako sa lahat noong panahon ng aking kabataan.

Mahirap man ang buhay na aking pinagdaanan,
Milya man ang nilalakad ko noon marating lang ang paaralan,
Ipinagpatuloy ko pa rin ang pag-abot ng aking pangarap kahit na nasaktan,
Tiniis ko ang lahat dahil Siya ay nariyan.

Kahit na pandinig ko ay unti-unti na ngayong nawawala sa akin,
Nariyan pa rin si Ama at ako ay hindi Niya pinababayaan.
Kaya kahit ako man ay may kapansanan,
Naibabahagi ko pa rin ang aking talento at kaalaman.

Sa mundong aking pinapasukan,
Sa trabahong aking iniingatan,
Kahit bingi man ay marami pa rin akong natutulungan.
Mga baguhang empleyado ay aking tinuturuan.

May kapansanan ka man o wala,
Ang pagtulong ay hindi dinadaan sa usap-usapan.
Ito ay kusang ginagawa at pinaninindigan,
Maraming tao ang lubos na masisiyahan kung tulong mo ay hindi ipinagkakait sa kanilang harapan.

Bingi ka man o bulag o kulang ka man ng kamay o paa,
May sakit ka man sa puso o namanang karamdaman o wala,
Kapag tulong ang hinihingi, 'wag kang mag-aatubiling ipagkait ito sa iba,
Dahil sa bandang huli, ang iyong kabutihan ay masusuklian Niya.