Their lives bleed into mine
What am I becoming?
As long as I'm bleeding in line
I can hear war drums drumming
I feel my purity and youth leave me
As their lack of couth feeds me
And their sweet tooth bleeds me
Until eventually I too am greedy

In this ****** atmosphere
Our ***** past is clear
Inspiring future fears
And hardened tears
Drowned by beers
And empty cheers
Through the years
Until we're here
As a ****** stranger
Head banger
Teenager
In Jesus' manger

This blight
Of life
As a simulation
Of assimilation
Into a nation
Of incineration
In a ****** mire
Lit by the fire
Positioned higher
I call my sire

I fidget in the cage
Of this pivotal maze
Called the Digital Age
I'm in need of healing
From this dark feeling
That I'm an innocent child reading
A book about a grown man bleeding
Always met with a hateful greeting
While sympathy is fleeting
Being replaced by our own jadedness
After living with those who hated us
We develop defensive thorns
Resembling demonic horns
To match public scorns

My first love
Drew first blood
And I couldn't halt the blood loss
Exacerbated by the mud toss
Of the sinister town crier
Exposing my heart's desires
So I said never again
For the bleeding to stop
When dealing with men
Is like meeting the cops
Aware that I'm defenseless
They start beating me senseless
So I become a judge myself
Part of the sludge for my health
I won't budge unless it's for wealth
Accepting the cards I was dealt

They bled into me
Now red is all I see
No way to get free
So I follow their lead
And choose to bleed
As they pray and plead
It becomes my turn
To cause the burns
That I had learned
When I was spurned
And lost my purity
Now blood cures me

Today I will write,
I will write
about the rising sun,
and the way it reflects
off the daffodils
and makes the birds chirp up.
I'll write about all the beautiful things,
all the beautiful things in the world
that the media misses.

I remember once
down in Mexico,
I kissed Lydie on top of her head
and walked into the mist
toward the morning star.
I still think about the fun
we had that short summer.
It was sensational,
better than any news story
reporting bleakness.

Those are the things to remember.
And let us not forget
how short
our time really is,
lest we succumb to cynicism,
such cold-heartedness.

No more jaded thoughts for me...
uh huh.

Searching for the truth. All I feel is this unquenchable desire to create something beautiful. I don’t care if it’s a poem, a song, a painting, I just want to create something that expresses all of this life that I’m living. But everything has been said before, has been written before, has been thought of before. And I sit here trying in vain to create, create, create from my soul, but all I can think is what will people think? Is this good enough? Is this original? I feel like an amalgamation of all the experiences, people and places I’ve come across. Like if you stripped away everything that’s ever happened to me, there would be nothing left. Do I have a soul? Where is this stream of consciousness coming from? I don’t know. And I try to be okay with not knowing, but I don’t know if I am. I don't even know if I'm okay with not knowing if I can not know.

So in the meantime, I surf the web, look at beautiful works of art, and listen to music from decades long ago.  And I think that I’m changing, that I’m developing a clearer picture of who I am and who I want to be, but then I feel just as stuck as I did four years ago. Is this growing up? Because while I do hate the ignorance, the exclusiveness, the pettiness, I need the opportunities. I like to say I could live on my own, but I’m not ready for the jadedness, the financial problems, the 2.5 kids. I hate the restrictions, the normalcy, the surges of emotion, but I need the safety net. I like to act like I’m so wise about the world and the universe and everything, but the only thing I know is that I’m just as lost as everyone else. I’m so far from knowing the answers, I don’t even know the questions.

Or maybe I know the answers, I just don’t know how to implement them. Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe, as much I hate shoes and love being late, I’m a creature of habit as much as everyone else.  Maybe I know that I should be myself and not care what others say, spend my life helping others, that money isn't worth much in the end, that clichés of peace, love and happiness are what I really yearn for. Maybe everything they tell me is wrong. It all contradicts itself, really.
Be who you are.
             but adapt to your surroundings.
Listen to your parents.
                           but search for freedom.
Learn to be assertive.
                                          focus on serving others.
Fight for what you believe.
                                                 but strive for peace.
Fit in.
    Be  d i  f   f   e     r      e       n        t.
Cherish each moment.
                                                                but make responsible decisions.
Love everyone.
                                                                                but separate yourself from negative people
they say
so many "they"s
how many "us"

To the point where I simultaneously want to scream
And be ashamed of myself for fitting into a stereotype of the rebellious teenager, good girl gone bad, thinks she could change the world one day, gets herself depressed over problems that can’t compare to those everyone else is facing, but that’s part of why she’s depressed in the first place.

So I guess it’s all about balance. Finding the right combination of the spiritual and the physical, the senses and the thought, the good times and the bad, the acceptance and the growth, the they and the us, the serenity and the passion, the connection and the rebellion, the creativity and the burning of the old rusty fences that are holding you back.

As I age, the world unseen
Comes to light,
And the way I'd been
With wonder, cease
For now I know reality;

Curious, how time does fade
Naïve questions with a wave
Of insight, yes, and somthing more,
Of jadedness, we watch the score
But not the game, the point
is not the point...

Questions fade in custom-made
Tiny starbucks coffee cups;
A tired dog won't think like pups
For they have seen the world

In this moment all I know is the breath of now, forever inhale the inspiration of her witness as a Lioness sees in me the innocent lost years ago, a Scarred Lion

She knows I'm better, one of the best yet I've been twisted in the days gone by, letting their jadedness, jade my rose-colored glass half-full...still no rest for the brave romantics, we don't promise forever, we promise the breathe of now because this moment is the limit as it approaches zero and nothing-ness & limits ceases to exist...space just might be another pair of eyes looking back at you and everything in-between

In this gaze, this rare moment we are eternity undefined
My Grace, my Queen, my Lioness, your honored servant, your king, your scarred lion

chase the dream? or does the dream chase you
will i ever clean up this spilled ink,
or this messy ******* room?
all these unknotted strands of excess
stressed by lessons in having less
and not caring when it’s left
i don't care what is left

let me undress and leave my jacket
for someone else who needs to have it
i have enough to take this test
everyone survives their own sadness
in order to progress
i can share

and it smells like you’ve
been ******* someone else
but today, i don’t really care
or think that it’s my fault
and i think you can tell
the world is too big and too small
for those thoughts to manifest themselves
to fall into the small of my back
no more carrying rocks around in my backpack
the wealth of having nothing is the unrobbable stolen eyes
the stealth of the wise, being whole with parts,
it's the holy art of being too tired for lying to self
i guess jadedness is a start
but i'm looking for something else

options options options keep making me stumble on
and today the wind said no one ever listens him out
when he speaks for too long
and today the earth said no one cares
about her body heaving through each breath of this song
and yesterday i understood them but now
something is off kilter, something is wrong

i can feel when they cease to breathe
just like us when we sit in public places
hostile when someone gets in our space and
braced for impact, so enraged by this stranger
pull away, pull yourself up
she's about to go, so much love
how could we lose it all
in the flood of manmade lakes
the depths all caked in mud
like the inside of our stomachs
did you not notice what was at stake?

but now she is demanding a toll
for our rubble, so let's clean up the blood
the sky is chaotic and exotic
let everything love everything for once
this spoiled patch of stumps
is all we have left
so let's sit in the warm sun
pull our ringed fingertips up
to touch the clouds as they run
away from us again

the wasps caught in the cusp of our lungs
squirming towards our fleshy throats
that book i never wrote
it was a ******* masterpiece
the scars i stole
hurt like a headache in my hands
and where again do i find the right spot to sit
where is safest to land
and when do i know it’s the time to leave
i will wait, i will create, abate hate with silence
until she comes to, and cries, don't you see
it's time, and have you done everything you could
and then whispers
and if you didn't, would you

would you return and rewind to where it begun
grow up learn a trade, and marry a man, and have a son
or run to the apple orchard, and dance with someone
and touch the bottom of the pond
when it is at it's stillest and then wonder
will it ever be possible without ripples
and how many of these lakes are human limits
with potential unsung
barely digging into the bedrock soil

have you learned to love everything yet
and accept what you do not know
instead of seeing each error as a small death
each progression as an excuse to grow
and grow and grow

life isn't a saying
there is no chasing involved
there is only you and gravity and resolve

The many who separately and personally christened themselves
Kings of New York
and Kings of summer
      and Queens of nothing except for England, and jadedness, and hearts.
wear crowns made of whichever substance seems most characteristic
made of paint or graffiti or blood or trap rap
made from a mix of loneliness, Kool-aid powder, and youthful idealism.
New York is allowed to be ruled by the masses,
New York is royalty to itself
I can call myself a King
when I dangle my feet and swing rhythms out of ashy windows
and demand that your pessimism shut the hell up..
But most kings get their heads cut off.
I can call myself Honorary Royalty.
Because when I leave the pigeons and the pigeon-toed
and I leave the Kingdom's bubblegum streets and romp no longer,
I stop feeling cramped by superfluous freedom and
I appreciate the bars of my bed and my self-inflicted prisons..
Inner struggle and whatnot.
I appreciate them tripping me and trapping me and ******* on my face
Because of them, New York's air tastes a lot cleaner
Especially when coming from the exhale of your exhausted but prevailing breath as it sighs one last pun about seafood into our clammy embrace.

I long to write,
But know not what to speak.
The will takes flight
But the wings of words get trapped in my cheek.

And now I strain
To force effulgent streams to drain
But only muster dull couplets which remain
Too plain.

Jadedness has invaded my brain.
Taken hostage my passion and pleasure,
Stolen my creative treasures.
Now I am traumatized. Will I ever be the same?

I have climbed many a mountain
seen vistas of desert and ocean
I have relished in all the glory
those glimpses of my devotion

few can compare however
to that view that I call my own
the view that I see from my window
on the mountain which I call my home

From the harsh desert to the south
that from here looses its harsh temper
to the forests that spread to north
blending in waves of green
That band of blue on the horizon
which signals the ever present sea
and lights and buildings that which are mans addition
to g-ds great finery

I have seen you in summer, when the sun commands
and the winter rains are visible wherever they fall in this land
I have seen the brief glimpses when while white surrounds this peak
the land below is left green

I know you in all your shades
your angers your sadness your fears
I have seen the clouds of war in the distance
and your quietude of your sleep

I have seen you cycle through the season, and again year upon year
and I have forgotten to look
forgotten to gaze
I have forgotten that I should still be amazed
at that beauty I need to hold dear

When did I first forget to fight
the jadedness I knew would come
when did this view so vast
so grand
drift into routine

Sometime I fight to remember
but only when I remember to fight

Were you not meant for this prolonged exposure
to be viewed only in memory
was I a fool to call the mountain my home
and think I could have you
from now into eternity

It is true I still see you daily
it is true my eyes sometimes see
but is it destined that by having you always
your magic is lost to me

I have been
Bent on myself for years.
Thinking deeply about my thoughts,
Thinking hardly about myself,
Thinking and thinking
About my life.

It's been a long journey,
It's been so long...
So much time has passed.
So much change I endured,
So much struggles I won.

Now I am rising up.

I am not bent
On myself anymore.
I am free.
Freedom flows into me
Like a much-desired gift
In spite of pain and jadedness.
I want to be free.
I want it.
I
Want
It.
So simple.

And if sometimes
The world seems a bit stormy,
And the waves
Of your consciousness
Wind up in your mind
Don't worry: just surf.
Surf on them, be strong
And be aware
That when the storms end
The world will seem
Beautiful again.

And you will be
Even more beautiful.