"you are so strong"

my eyes stared into nothing,
burning with the absence of tears.
i knew there would be a point
where i could not cry anymore.

what was everyone seeing?
because all i felt was weakness,
pain,
emptiness.

my exterior was bruised and beaten
but only inside could i feel the effects.
i was not strong
i was fragile,
scared,
and vulnerable.

frustrated by words of praise
i sank deeper into my delusions,
and perfected my 'brave face'.
i was not strong
i was struggling.

listening to the vital carts
wheel in and out,
my door never a separation
but a portal to demons
wielding gurneys,
needles,
charts and machines.
i was restless in my immobility.
i was not strong
i was numb.

calling for my mother at 4:00 am
she carried my weight,
she held my hand,
she washed my hair,
she changed my clothes,
she slept, barely,
at my feet.
i was not strong
my mother was.

days piled on;
hours lost in isolation
maddening my mind
and diminishing my willpower.
with every test,
measurement,
and procedure
i felt helplessness
swallow the living light in me.
still, i complied,
i waited,
i did what was asked.
i was not strong
i was a quiet fire.

looking at my damaged body,
examining my inflamed veins.
my face was swollen,
my hair matted.
i shook in my skin
disassociating my identity.
i was not my condition
i was not my self disgust.

i can not say that i feel better
just different,
which is neither positive or negative.
reflecting on 10 days as a ghost
getting acquainted with myself,
filling in the blanks.
i was not strong
i was surviving.

DESTINY IS A S0N OF A ***** 01-22-11

Destiny most certainly means death
But down here, ***** murders are allowed.
A Low profile is seen as weak, soon
slaughtered by their predators.

Truth: Oakland gangsters are serous.

They bang it for the colors,
colors of their territory
collateral damage lay dead
in the street; the rotting innocent.

This conflict, this senseless war
between three colors, blue, red and black
is why violent Oakland is now called
..... "Baby Iraq", yep you heard me: BABY IRAQ

a ****** occurs every three days
....over red, blue and black.
They say they fight over turf and colors.
I think they're the same damm thing.
Thier colors mark the poles like dogs.
The scent of the enemy is evident.

Intel from the neighborhood walls
reveals the constant dissonance
and the unwillingness to lose.

A grenade of spray paint,
criss-crossing, the others' lines
until it's time to get some respect,
Ya feel me?!?

I hear this phrase so many times
it hardly phases me anymore.
Yeah, I feel ya, dude,
now whatcha gonna do?

This one boy's eyes had me mesmerized.
As he talked softly into the distance.
He began to rock in a sad back and forth,
as his homies began to surround him

He was the wise one, the shot caller
even with  his weak form peeing in a bag
hanging from his wheel chair.

Javier was wearing black, the color from his hood
He was just a gang affiliate until color blue
( or was it red?)pulled up and shot him...
he's no longer walking, in a wheel chair instead.

He was beautiful I fell most in love
with his angelic face with an elf's chin
coffee with lot's of cream color skin
He was smooth as porcelain

He had a youthful moustache
and a memory of a war veteran
He is a gang member now,
in the middle of a warzone.

"Be Bait", "Play Chicken",
take chances, on the enemy's
turf, become victor or victim

Names of games, dangerous,
and fun provoking the violence
passed down through each generation
Some sort of genetic adrenaline.

The series of small deadly battles
leaves a smell of fresh gun powder
asphalt and blood spilled iron
three colors pouring out,
turn into the color of wine.

Hopelessness is proven out
by the swollen death count,
mounting up, the line of corpses
waiting to be thrown off gurneys
entering the morgue, then
tossed into the freezer
with the rest of them.

Baby Iraq has become
a force of its own on the street.
If they ever figured that out,
They'd be running the nation.

They are too caught up
in their fathers' hatred
History repeats, written line by line
Raw power in the clutch of stupid minds,
begins and ends with small apocalypses.

In dire situations, they eat their young,
like ******
The gobbling up of offspring is
nothing new or unsacred.

It's what they do to
postpone their own fate.

Any beneficial gain is not felt yet
but will be, in the events that
did NOT happen

They don't get it
there is no benefit.
They all just die.

Here we are again, in the deathmask of the city spinning.
The circumcised sea with its crocodiles and scars.
Never is the onrush of blood so violent the falsehoods
of the sky that drip neon on our heads
from desiccated clouds so true

This is the wild:

To the clusterfucked and cloistered swimming
in their bowls of soup and the scuttled
shells synchronous in their bass pulse beeping
to the blackhats who don’t believe
their messiah will ever come because they hear
the trump of doom every second of every day
yet they still stomp in their flatbeds for joy

and the prismatic dead who drag themselves from
their gurneys to march through the alleys
like tuskless elephants shoving their fingers
into the sun’s fumarole determined
to disintegrate into a mist of Krylon and copper

where we carry our concrete world slung
over our shoulders and the ravenous
moon in its ellipse above beached night heaving,
eyes curling in their sockets like gunsmoke smoldering
hearts humming like taut snares beheaded fish
in front of us, beheaded bodies behind us
I drag mine along by the hair.

To the children and the panhandlers who greet
the lion like hello kitty
and the skittish magnetic few in their
lightning-spaded furrows
on the ecliptic chained but leaping ever farther
and higher like the wrecking ball’s pendulum

and all the naked lost milling among the mummified
tenements, waving Geiger counters before them
as they wander  the sweaty street holding their heads
high as they grind flesh against flesh
pulverizing themselves into rubble

measuring the toll of time by destruction  
drinking in mercury and hard water and
shrapnel and gamma and fire and gold

to them I say:

turn your hourglass on its side turn
your hourglasses on their sides
then acknowledge me so I can die in peace.

How much time have I wasted?
Being sad and low
How much time have I wasted?
In hospitals, on gurneys
How much time have I wasted?
Hating instead of loving

The days go by and by
The flow effortlessly past
Such as breath from a mouth
Simple even, child's play

Days months, and years pass
No more wasting time
Time to make the best
Of this forgotten time
That we can now enjoy

Waiting, time seems to stand still in this place
The endless white walls and white floors,
One can never really tell where one ends and the other begins
Like a maze with hallways, paths, and dead-ends.            

Feeling lost and alone in this sterile hell
The smell of iodine thickens the air
Disturbing silence in halls so pristine
Carts and gurneys and tools that gleam.

There are loved ones, and some that were lost
They were never really accounted for
Perhaps we are all just a tag to be placed on a toe
But until we all die I guess we won’t know.

We all lose something when we walk through those doors
Either a piece of ourselves or something more
Generic rooms filled with half living people
Sanity is slipping away, perhaps it was never there to begin with.

The small children remind us of the life we no longer have
But we reach, and we grasp; we hold fast to false hope
But life is so short, fragile, and fleeting
Death comes unexpected, you have been warned.

I don't know destitute.
I could use the bathrooms
In McDonalds,
If I eat there.
I'm no refugee.
Neither are you.
We have computers, not canvas.
I warmed up the coffee today
And the dishwasher needs to go through
For the third time this week.
Homeless:  We have them.
Poor:   We'll always have them.
Hungry:  Look to the soup kitchens.
Sick:  The gurneys are lined in the halls.
Death:  It's all around, and increasing.
And still, in that tent or Uber taxi
A child is born to change all this.

In the waiting room,
I watched two little boys
play with shadow puppets.
They transformed their hands
into figments of imagination
under the ghostly sterile lights
as doors swung wide
and gurneys and white coats
escorted the suffering
into rooms dressed with
pleasant paintings of peaceful woods -
placed on wall that have seen
far too many flat lines;
windows that have heard
far too many last words.

I'm seated across from my stomachache.
The diner mutates into a morgue.
The tables are gurneys with checkerboard shrouds.
Is this conversation  -  or autopsy?

I explore an intriguing potential corpse
-unflinching under my lancet eyes
-numb as my curious scalpel pries
as I try to dissect what this means to me.

It might mean a great deal
(perhaps too much).

With delicate pressure cracks appear
STOP!
Questions cause fragile things to break...

Relationships all die premature deaths.
I am maladroit when I handle hearts.
Then I wait for the last breath,
"Let's keep in touch,"
and watch as my wounded friend departs,
sanguine about the mess I've made
of my latest stab at intimacy
when I dropped my guard like a flensing blade
and opened myself up  as well.
Mistake!

Thoughts of an insomniac
Time just passes u by
I don't realize things before my eyes
My addictions only thickens
My thoughts only sink deeper
In a constant abyss in my awoken conscienceness
Ignorance is bliss
Like the devils kiss
Goodbye so u find time
To be free and fly within the sky
But to be free in society
Today
There is always a fee
It's like u Gata buy ur life in reality
People think I'm goin nowhere
But to be nowhere is where I wanna be
It opens doors to other expiriences
I wanna try everything
But I don't wanna be lonely
I think music is my passion
So I'll roll with the punches
My words crunched together in my lines and stanzas
But my words only tangle me
In the night it's like I'm closer to fatality
So who do I pay to see the day
Or who do I ask for time from
Cause it feels like seconds I'll see the kingdom come
But I don't have a currency
Not even a single bill
But it kills me everytime and that's my only thrill
I kinda wanna put my life on the line
With everyday and every rhyme
Cause people hate when u tell them things they don't wanna hear
But I'm here in this world only to pressure my peers
So I got a group of friends
We are on the same level
Tangible beliefs of life I can start a religion
Maybe I can change the world through my lyrics
But these critics only stop me from reaching my full potential
And credentials u need in life
To escape this struggle and strife
Of being that kid with nothing
So I'll use these words to cut like a knife
And pierce skin to infect blood
And flood the veins of what I think is right
So we take flight on this journey
We may crash and be taken out on gurneys
But it's about how we come back
We comeback stronger tha ever
Make some funky **** and make a new kinda rhythm
See now I don't got punch lines cause I'm not funny
I use metaphors and poetic justice
To reach people when they have nothing less
Than themselves in a long list of endeavors
But we remember where we came from
Never forget that
Cause that will be ur root to become an aristocrat
See that's the target I'm tryna hit
I wanna come off as spiritual cause no one has ever tried that
My people I look up to like Malcolm x and ghandi
See they fought for peace
And unleashed both extreme though and peacefulness to up the heat
On society itself
So how bout we take that step back
Realize what we got
And figure out what we really want out of all of this
So I never wanna miss the old me
But it only made me stronger
I wanna conquer every bad habit
But the loud pack got the best of me
So I write this is my drug
I write only to inspire and create
Emotions of people to break outta that crate
You can't live in a box cause we were gifted with thought
So our past generations fought for this freedom
Stray awak from the group
Make your own pathway
This only leads to success and creativity
Maybe u can be the president or the astronaught
Like u said when u were a kid
But my English teacher told me he hated English as a kid
How ironic
So I only exhale chronic to make u people crazy
Cause my minds all hazy from this longness to be
Or just exist
And fix everything wrong with this world
If I can influence one I will influence all
I'll make this **** real one day
And create my own passion pit
Cause I don't come from much
Hard work and thought is what I was taught
My moms was my dad
She was also my mentor
Told me I could be a trash man just have a love for it
So I found music
This **** makes me unleash this imagination
So I can reflect and make people refer to revelations of different nations
But for now I'll just sit here and write
And insight my future will be bright
I see the light or shroud of something
It's nearly in my grasp
Now I fall asleep
And take my final gasp
Of air
As if nothing was every there
Nothing to fear here
Cause this is only the first tier
Of being blessed
With a talent
But what I wish for Christmas
Is to make a dent
With every note and melody
So as far as I see
This is only the start of me

hospital gowns
wedding gurneys
ashes to ashes
you are my end-all

I don’t want to live as a loner
So I become an ***** donor
Words compose my heart
I develop into art
That I impart
To those looking for blood
And those looking for love
While both push me in mud
Until my insides are no more
Through the divide I soar
To implore for the end of war
But the world keeps turning
Like the people lying on gurneys
Who’s depression has them hurt me
So I try to give them my eyes
To keep them alive
But much to my surprise
They say they want to die
When the whole point is to survive
So I offer them my legs
To help move them ahead
But they just lie in bed
Wishing they were dead
So I offer my exhausted lungs
To help them breathe
To climb the ladder’s rungs
So they’ll be set free
But they don’t want my disease
And prefer to wither in the breeze
On a time killing spree
Lamenting the life they lead
To me it’s kind of funny
If I offered drugs or money
They’d be jumping like bunnies
But instead they hunt me
For telling them what they don’t want to hear
That they’re the driver and they must steer
So I offer them my ears
That ignore their fears
But since it’s not what they want
They claim I tease and taunt
Saying I’m giving them lip
Without the quips
Just the whip
In my insensitive grip
But I’m trying to give away my brain
To block the reality show refrain
That numbs their pain
Making them empty and hollow
My shell of a body will soon follow

People on my paper
Taper
From my eraser
For I’m safer
Avoiding their paper cuts
In my lonely rut
As a homely nut
Who’s doors are shut

My notebook
Notes looks
To quote crooks
Who float hooks
To trick innocent fish
To do as they wish
Because I want bliss
I write down their list
Of how to make mist

Receipts
Of deceit
For defeat
At my feet
Are blank sheets
With no signature
Because I’m immature
And don’t admit I hurt

The world keeps turning
As textbooks are burning
So I’m incapable of learning
Why those who spurn me
Put me on gurneys

The stationery
Stated the scary
Apothecary
That makes us weary
Was the way to parry
The judges staring
At my pages tearing
From my burden bearing
Attempts at caring

But the judges became more imposing
My life they were hosing
Constantly nosing
Sympathy posing
Secretly hoping
A shotgun loading
Equaled my foreboding

Then through the papyrus
I saw your iris
Infecting virus
Distracting from the pain
Of the words on the page
Calming my rage
Like a sobering mage

But a paper ***
Playing God
Knowing odds
Said I’m flawed
Sending an origami
Tsunami
Upon me
With a piece of parchment
Showing where my heart went
How plainly evident
I wasn’t heaven sent

The text
Said ***
Was next
So I flexed
Which indexed
My intentions
As extensions
Of *** tension

My lousy excuse
Of a paper noose
That was obtuse
Cut you loose
After my poor example
Of a newspaper scandal
Making our fire burn ample
Incinerated our paper candle

I decide not to stay
Through this paper mache
Facsimile fray
Dominion grave
So a road I pave
With paper plates
For the wasteful fate
Of an empty slate

Through days I’m wading
Calendar fading
Ink degrading
The endless waiting
As my head is deflating
Because my construction paper
Always becomes obstruction vapor
So I become a substance faker
Loveless taker

Only when I finish my paper route
Will I see that my shameful doubt
Kept me out
Of record books
For I was shook
And my eraser took
The writing off the page
As I die of old age

I sit in silence as the room fills with people.
People I know and people I've never seen.
My Uncle Mael walking back and forth. As he keeps looking at the doors we came in.
My Dad whispering to others while they "wailed" as he called it. Although I'm unsure what that means.
My older brother sitting beside me as he keeps looking at me with concern.
This older boy in a white coat. With this sad look on his face as he walks this way.
This lady whose all dressed up in a fancy dress with golden shoes.
Click. Click. Goes the metal of the ladies' shoes as they clashed with the grey tile.
Bing. ****. Goes the brown clock that hangs on the pale walls.
Hum. Hum. Goes the vents that lay resting on the floor.
Mumble. Grumble. Goes a fancy-dressed dressed man as he silently stares at the fancy-dressed lady.

What's going on here? A family gathering?

I was once a very respected man.
One of great importance and respect.
But, what's happened tonight for which I can only fault myself.
I can't continue to be that here tonight.
All these people are greatly grief-stricken.
Even those completely unaware as of yet.
So that is why I shall remain forever indebted to this family.
Catering to everyone. Even the smallest of children.

What's going on here? A party?

I'm not sure what to think here honestly.
I mean. I'm numb I guess. Am I broken because of this?
Probably not. I'm just not sad per se. Just worried.
Addey seems virtually unaffected by this.
She's probably blissfully unaware of what's happened.
Even as the gurneys flood the hallways.
I'm just concerned she'll catch on.
Her remaining blissfully unaware is for the best.

What's going on here? A movie?

My dear Maddie how I hope you're not mad.
I know that this isn't right nor wrong.
It shouldn't have gone this way.
I sh sh-should've been gone first.
I can't bring you back here.
I can't pick you up and carry you past the threshold of our house like I did when we were 20.
I can't stay up until 12:30 helping you with your degree while we ate popcorn and watched The Notebook.
I can promise you though. I'll watch Addey for you.
I'll make sure someone truthful will carry her across the threshold of her house.
I'll see she has memorable moments with all of us.
I won't let her or anyone forget you.

What's going on here? Why's everyone sad?

They say grief and trauma change a person.
Shapes who they are going forward.
It was my car that caused this.
My decision to wear these heels.
My decision to tell Alec to speed up.
My decision to tell Alec to run the red.
My decision to swerve right. Everything was my decision.
Therefore, I can’t decipher between what’s real and what’s not
And I will spend years trying to save the only good part of me.
I will make up for my decisions.
And forever say sorry to Maddie Le.

What's going on here? Why are we leaving?

Riding back to the house.
Everything looks so surreal.
Like this is our life.
Maddie used to be in this life.
Maddie Le used to be a person, but now she isn't.
And nobody around me seems to be aware of that.
That just 4 hours ago
Mael Watts's twin sister got hit at just 31.
Andy Le's wife got hit with him unscathed.
Braden Le is without a mother at just 16.
Addey Le an Innocent 4-year-old lost her mother.
And two people are plagued with guilt.
And yet nobody in the world reacts.

What's going on here? Why aren't we going home?

Uncle Mael? Dad? Braden?

"Where's Mommy at?"

"Don't worry Addey she'll be back. You just go to sleep."

Addey smiled before staring out the window.
As she looked into sparkled simplicity.

Well they encourage your complete cooperation
Send you roses when they think you need to smile
I can't control myself because I don't know how,
And they love me for it honestly, I'll be here for a while
So give them blood, blood, gallons of the stuff
Give them all that they can drink and it will never be enough
So give them blood, blood, blood
Grab a glass because there's going to be a flood
A celebrated man amongst the gurneys
They can fix me proper with a bit of luck
The doctors and the nurses they adore me so,
But it's really quite alarming cause I'm such an awful **** (oh thank you)
I gave you blood, blood, gallons of the stuff,
I gave you all that you can drink and it has never been enough
I gave you blood, blood, blood,
I'm the kind of human wreckage that you love