I am as a leaf in the river
flowing down tributaries
dew drops are my sweat and tears
winds billow and brush against me
while waters swirl beneath

whether I was in turbulence
or dancing wild
was my choice

I see it only now

as I traverse the waters
I meet many others
each with their own paths
own pasts
own histories
own stories

was it me who crossed their paths
or them mine?
who amongst leaves, you and I
could judge, or would say,
“that is a life well-lived”
when we are ceaselessly
ushered current upon currents

out

to the great beyond

I read letters you never wrote
folded and unfolded
hidden in the empty space
of your leaving coat
I take a drag of my last cigarette
and take a sip from our glass
of old regrets
I listen to sad songs
that mean nothing
and pray for the peace
I know should come
but nothing seems to bring
I unpack empty suitcases
filled with all the things
your leaving told I lacked
I sleep with ghosts
your monsters  
my regrets
and our memories
but what we really need
is just to let it be
I wish I could say
you could hold on
to the old promises
but the truth is simply this
this nothing
that resides
where your lies used to hide
this is all that remains
of what used to sustain

Mountains cloaked in misty fog,
Far too invested in holding up the sky,
To crumble.

Light burns the frigid frost,
As the pale moon begins to fade.
Lonely is the moss that witnesses,
These vaulted measures of pain
Through suffering.

How many pebbles,
Make a mountain strong?
Or do the people ever realize,
Their propensity?

Failure is a game,
Each person will play
And despair is the summer grass
In which we lay.

For there is no retracting,
The violent light,
As hope burns screaming
Through a lonely night.

~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin

Is anyone else in love with thunderstorms?
Does anyone else like the gentle drips before it begins,
Like finger tips softly touching your skin
Or the low rumbles before it starts
And the dark sky low and full
The rain comes, soft or hard, streams of water falling
Puddles forming, all other noises seem to disappear
It has captured your full attention
Now you see a quick flash of lightening
You count the seconds under your breath
one Mississippi  two Mississippi  three Mississippi
Crash! or maybe its a Boom!
All different noises. Never the same.
My heart races every time I hear the low rumble
Or the pitter patter of rain