Have you ever known silence?
Where even the mind stops to listen,
No pollution by intrusions
Nay saying finger-wagging doubts,
Not one person waiting in line at the bullet train
That connects from passive to aggressive
Just the still staggering quiet.

Have you ever known peace?
Where should decompress,
No longer cosplaying atlas
Holding the weight of all that burdens
While taking the cleanest breaths
Deep and revitalizing oxygen satiating the blood,
While the face feels pain from finally-
Letting go of squinted vision, furled brows
And forced smiles.
Where it’s just the calm settling in nerves,
It’s almost too fantastical - surely a myth
But obtainable.

Have you ever known love?
Not the placated give and take,
Not the candy-covered lust under the covers
Not even the giddy resplendence when seeing that movie
Or hearing that tune, I’m talking love.
That heart-crushing,
Would go on a crusade to defend,
Sword-wielding and Fourth of July firework love-making
That daring to dare to dare to be better
That salve to cure wounds once thought fatal
Mortally immortalized in the space of a single kiss
Have you ever known that love?

All of life’s greatest gifts,
We overlook the material,
And it kills us all, it’s rather serial
We can’t spell it out in the cereal
But it’s there if you search beyond,
And break the mold.

Isn't it allowed to

be angry, may I only --


hope for equity?

You stitched me wings
to heal my inner child
and sooth as you sing
as we fly so exotic & wild
Soar into the warmth of rays
of the sunset of  each day
Got me out of bed & living
Thanks to you I'm breathing.

Forgive the failings of the parent, the flaws of our design.
Only if we accept our nature can we enjoy what's left of our time.

The poison left in our blood, corrosion of the self,
pain accepted as a norm, obligations on no one else.
They say the mind is the strongest prison,
walls of darkness and chasms within them,
and a fear that pain came first because pain comes always,
and as we peep out into the empty hallways
we see in their endless doors
an infinite capacity for more
and why would any weary traveller
step out into such foreboding
places to explore?

At first the poison seems for life. It runs in our blood and rains from the heights.
But nothing is without cost and the lie must be maintained.
We follow the orders held with us from the day we got our name.
But the thicker the poison and the hotter it burns, the stronger the antidote and the more we can learn.

Pain becomes progress,
a diabolical fuel,
a tool heavy to swing,
but one that will bring
greater transformation
and let's turn bad memories
into useful information.

The seed in the ground is surrounded by dark –
Under the dark shadow where it’s born,
It waits in hope, every day, every hour
The flower that can only dream of what
It’s meant to be, still as a seed

And the day will come, where it’s hope
Isn’t so dark; for hope begins in the dark –
As you only value a spark when it clears out
The dark; there where life is; you can find
Hope in the most unlikely places

We bear in our eyes, struggles heavy in tears
Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years
Close to the edge of a breaking point
But once that beautiful hope finally comes out
Won’t you ask, “where have you been hiding”