Fall

As the green drips from the leaves the weight of fall approaches 

The sun sets still, as if comforted by the completion of summers work. 

The crimson brown undergrowth struggles through the dull green leaves sagging towards the forest floor they’re soon to nourish. 

Glimpses of dust colored grasses peek through the bristling pins needles revealing the green growth glistening along the ground. 

As I travel along the winding asphalt roads framed by sagging branches and fading greenery my mind is drawn from the road. Summer memories hang loosely ahead of the twisting and turning yellow lines. Sunlight and shade chase each other through the forest casting wild imaginations. The outstretched sky silently turning to shorter days and crisp evenings. 

For moments my sadness over seasons weighs heavier than for lost souls, then I dream they’re one in the same. In the hopes that when I take my place amongst the underbrush I’ll be able to enjoy the expressions of seasons, even when the winter branches clatter in the icy winds like bones scattered amongst the debris of fall. 

I hope to become more of a part of nature. Experiencing the rebirth of a springs dew, the busy nature of summer abundance, then rest in a cool fall breeze looking forward to the dormant dimness of winter. These are seasons and emotions that make us circular creatures wandering in the concentric nature of life. 

Dust and the win

If I could write a smile into the heart of the world, it would be in a dimly lit attic room with a window slightly ajar. The dust from my pencil would swirl on the breeze, floating out into the world spreading my anguish to the four winds. 

What remains on the paper is a shimmering script that illuminates the room creating a warm glow in my soul and a bright smile on my face.  

My fingers and my brain have purpose beyond my naive ambitions. They move like an orchestra stirring thunder and striking bolts of lightening behind a dry wind. My words are the rain that nourish the hearts mending spirits with broken souls. 

Dreams aren’t limited to sleep, nor words to paper. Resting souls breathe life into words illuminating spirits. Each stroke of the pencil is a thought illuminating a word that returns as a feeling. This circle is best felt within a smile. 

Broken pieces of a Tense Life

Broken Pieces

I walk through life with the broken pieces of yesterday. Wrapped in tomorrow’s apprehension masking today

Heavy laden memories weigh my shoulders down. My mind denies the struggle as I wander around

There is safety in today as a memory or fear. It never comes round , so I’m never here

Always there or dreaming of when it’ll appear. But only a glimpse reflected in the shattering of a tear

I look around and it’s travelers I see wandering. Never knowing today or the life they’re squandering

It’s a death, reminiscing of what was, and mourning what could be. Twisted existence of what was or can be

My life is tense and today is a weigh point in the distance . Between yesterday and tomorrow is veiled existence

I don’t remember when today became folk lore. But I’m searching through the pieces of me for more

Today was always with me I just couldn’t see. The load I’ve been carrying has always been me

Gently I lay the pieces of me in a pasture of green. Separating memories from apprehensions I’ve suddenly seen

Today is a constant, the origin of all we are, have been, or will be. So it’s here I’ll live broken and free.  

The listener

 Voices in my head mask the listener who sits silently amused. 

As she took a deep breath, I realized it was mine as my heart stopped

All I could see was the future as she whisked by me in a haze

Blind a breathless I felt numb, until her touch ignited my soul to rise 

I’m speechless for the first time, realizing I’ve never been more honest

This was the rest of my life, and I couldn’t see nothing but you

I love this space we share, no words, no touch, just our souls dancing in a gaze

And then the world rushes in reminding us what’s worth protecting, and what to ignore

Equal Rights

Equal rights

Be you, do you, fuck them you don’t need approval. You don’t need a path, you blaze a trail and don’t drag the world with you. They gotta get theirs.

Don’t give me that history lesson as an excuse for your fear. Fuck you, you can’t be Mike’s mom back in the 60’s and 70’s with 4 boys and a dad who walked out. You can’t recreate a world with no daycare or relatives in a steel city gone soft. You can’t be forced to pack your belongings in a car full of noise and drive 700 miles off a cliff. Working like a dog taking vacations for a couple days at a beach in the woods with plastic table clothes and prayers to civilize your offspring. She had no shelter, no housing, no visibility in a city of families parading around during the day only to slink around at night. You ain’t got those kinda shoulders!

You don’t want equal rights if you’re looking for exceptions to who you are. It ain’t equal if you use your privilege, color, or family status to lift yourself above someone else. You can’t claim your ancestors pain as a check to support your fear of failure. You can’t ever be that person who labored under the sun their entire life finding little joys in a large field of oppression. Stop it, you won’t ever have that constitution. Let go of our heroes and quit strangling their legacy like the chains. You just want to keep them in your bonds for a come up.

Don’t confuse poverty with the working poor. We ain’t the same. You don’t know the shame of working till your bones hurt and your body goes on because your mind remembers that family at home that needs to eat. You don’t know about being raised by a father who sleeps at your house till it’s time to go back to a job that he can’t distinguish from prison just so you can have washing powder to clean your hand me downs. You ain’t got those stones.

Sittin around creating stories of pains like a young boy playing Superman. Pretending like a little girl playing dress up with a wire rim tiara made from aluminum foil. That check got you carving yourself up giving away pieces of your soul. You clog a system that could work with your thoughts of pain and fear you might have to go to work. Then roll around in public like some stunted zombie wrapped in bacon establishing your place in a system that resembles a dog chasing its tail.

But your fine now. I hear ya, You just smoke a little weed. It don’t hurt nobody, and it cures all those quasi psych medical problems in the PDR and the Diagnostic and statistical manual for Mental Illness. It’s all good, You ain’t hurtin no one. Until that bitch you buy weed from pissed of one of his other customers who’s graduated then someone lies dead in a yard littered with broke down vehicles and trash from association. Yeah, ain’t your fault, you were just gettin yours. Fuck you!

I see you posing up there in your jacked up truck pulling into your circled driveway with the manicured lawn. Gettin home so late you don’t know what that poseur bastard your raising from a distance has been doing. I see through that facade you’ve built to carry around. I smell them dollars your stacking wrinkled and wet from the pockets of folks with holes in their pants. You need that money.

You’ll need those dollars to keep that bastard out of court or put that heifer in rehab. They’ll come out and hide in church where their story won’t mention the collateral damage their lives has perpetrated. It’ll be a denominational re-entry into the next warped circle of life you created. Poor folks can’t afford the buyout of the dependence you came up off of, they just work it out and and see you for who you really are.

All these characters don’t want equality. They want a leg up on someone else for doing nothing. You gotta give it up to them folks who are stand up. They make no excuses for who they are and take what’s coming to them as a reminder life ain’t fair or easy. Living off ghosts or some symptomatic existence is just a hustle. You don’t want equality. You want what someone else worked for so you can sit back and stir shit up so no one sees your hustle. Fuck you.

I’m not poor

I’m not poor
I’m not poor. I value the struggle that reveals life and all it’s gloriously humble moments. I love that hunger makes any food taste good. I love the blissful moments created by pain. I bathe in the luxury of small things that suffering provides. Most of all, I see the weakness within power that chokes men on their own vomit.

Maybe the blinding nature of opulence isn’t so appealing. I would much rather see progress than greed, or shake a reassuring hand than a potential fist. You can’t hold wealth, it holds you. Sure, you may have fists full of dollars, but what do you really have, just paper with someone else’s name on it. I hold dirt, but it’s mine.

Power is the real satan. Power swallows intentions, good or bad, and twists it into greed. It takes over and suddenly your trying to control everyone as a metaphor for personalities frayed and the consumption of all, but in the end it’s always an allusion. Eventually you shrivel into other folks perception and your lying naked and exposed in a desert with no where to hide.

Within is a space to be cultivated silently. Void of the torrents surrounding your physical being. Protected from the timeless tyrants tearing at your souls like fanged apparitions. The danger is becoming a victim or a mirror image; protection from within lies just behind the blind eye.

Seeing these demons frees your self to live. Riches or poverty are two sides of the same coin that blind the soul. You’re free to exist and cultivate the space within. This is where the riches of life sparkle and the power of you emanates as a shield against you and your enemies. Here, poverty is a blessing.

Us

The True American

To the world
I’m not an evil empire or imperial wizard. I’m not oppressing you, or your rhetoric. I’m the last small voice of freedom screaming into the wind. I achieved freedom along a long slippery line of patriots. I am not a government, I’m an American.

I don’t want your land or resources outside of a fair barter. I have plenty. My land and my resources are also under fire, but it’s safer here than anywhere else in the world. Government in America is creeping closer to what you’ve seen or accepted, but I fight back. I fight within the confines of a shared dream hundreds of years old, but still valiant.

Your monetary system is yours. I don’t need your wealth. I’ve extended my heart to your efforts and it’s been bitten and grasped. That’s how life taught me to look past a dollar, or a euro. You can keep your banks and greased hands along with mine. I’m not a banker. Freedom is my currency.

My blood and dollars have been soaked into the earth around the world. Mixed with yours. Our souls look down with tears at the folly of men with fat pockets and thick waistlines. I am not a mercenary or warrior. I am a defender, a worker, and family man like you. I fight for freedom, regardless of other men’s intent. I’ve bled for you.

I don’t want anything I don’t work for or fairly barter. I have pride in what I create and the freedom I have to do that. I am not threatened by your monarchies, your theocracies, or your oligarchs. That’s your decision, but that isn’t welcomed here. We stand alone each and everyone of us together to protect freedom. We come together to celebrate, participate, or defend this choice.

We don’t want your Gods. We are free to define God for ourselves. Each and everyone of us has a belief that is a guiding principle. Some more than others. Our God is not our ruler. No one rules a free man. And that’s how it was intended. We pray for the world, maybe out of selfishness, but freedom needs a soul as well as a weapon.

You cannot just trample our borders seeking to redefine everything we’ve built and cry about the influence we’ve created in your land. We aren’t hypocrites. You’re welcomed here in the pursuit of freedoms you may be missing, but the American isn’t looking for your way of life. Leave your politics behind and bring a tradition to be shared. Come humbly and you’ll be celebrated, come with intent and you’ll be ostracized. It’s simple. When you go to someone’s house you knock, you bring food or joy, and you respect the table that is serving you.

Our government is dysfunctional, but Americans are resolute. Now might not be a time to join us, we have lots of work to do to clean our house. One thing I promise you. Every American will die a free man fighting enemies foreign or domestic, even if it’s our own government. The colors of our flag and it’s meanings are ingrained in our souls and run through our veins.

Don’t make the mistake of equating us to our government, we tolerate government for a greater good. They have boundaries and we’ll push back when they infringe on our right to be free men. We need you if you truly want to be free and can accept the responsibilities that come with that, many of your countryman have tasted that fruit. We are not accepting revolutionaries or politicians. Only free men need apply.

The True American

Thoughtful

Words hang in the balance
Sometimes awkwardly
Sometimes stolid

But what to do
When actions aren’t possible
Or words echo into nowhere

When all you can do is think
Because distance seems silent
When all you hear are thoughts

But think we must
It’s a portal to words
With endless possibilities

Staying true to your thoughts
So when the opportunity to speak
Arises truth sets you free

Keeping your word
It’s more than staying true
It’s speaking truth

The voices in your head
Must be yours
Void of thoughts about if

Peace be with you
Is not s tactile exercise
To be handled

Peace comes with understanding
Understanding humanity resides in you
And therefore there is a larger one

I am humanity, just as we are
And our thoughts create words
As mine create who I am

It’s not about right of wrong,
This is just a balance
Created for a higher truth

Our thoughts belong to the universe
Regardless of their color or tone
This is how words form rainbows

Each word is an hue
within an infinite spectrum of thought
Guiding humanity into the undiscovered

Here we’re not alone
Never lonely in the comfort of thought
But set in the knowledge we share

So I’m never lost after all
Not alone, nor lonely
If I just reach out to the universe

The vast nature of us
That is one or one billion
Always the same

In this world we are always
We are constant
We are one in al the samep

So here I’ll hold you in thoughts
Till words create actions
That allow us to speak

Then the circle can grow
Through kind words
And defining smiles

Traveler

Its not sadness, it’s foreboding
The darkness never blinds
It opens the mind to possibility
And memories in kind

It’s not fear, it’s freedom
Shining on a hill
You’ll never climb
That keeps you still

It’s not dread, it’s hope
That sits on a shelf
Awaiting your return
To move yourself

Past the pain and the fear
Beyond the shame
To take that first step
Towards you again

Mired in the world
Where each tangled moment
Is held with contempt
Or pulled with regret

You struggle within a though
Like a passenger
Gazing out the windshield
Haunted by the rear view mirror

All the while traveling
Towards a crossroad
Where the three of you
Come together as one

Once again it’s you
Along an empty horizon
No longer searching
Or remembering when

Free to roam the possibilities
Without tomorrow
Or yesterday
And all it’s sorrow