Lullaby

What does water taste like? What does it actually taste like? Few people in my culture stop to savor a glass of water, while thousands of miles away someone has never actually seen a glass of clean water, let alone a glass. If you are reading this, it means you have access to a computer, which - as I believe you should recognize - is a miracle. In all the wondrous corners of this world, you have found yourself here, right now, in this moment, reading this, and able to! What an incredible feat! I come from a society where we debate regularly where we should eat, often escalating into an argument, while children starve. The gift of choice is just that, a gift. The clothes on your back? The clothes in your closet? Garb rarely donned with considerations of survival. While we sleep (when we can) in our plush beds, others weep themselves to sleep in fear of the next day.

Many of us experience heartache, pain, and suffering. It is a requirement for a full life. Too few seem to reflect on the severity of their situation and fail to compare it to the grand scheme. For the most part, we are incredibly blessed, especially in this part of the world. We bicker over petty things and disregard the blessings that surround us. My challenge for you is remind yourself of the miracles that surround you and strive to cherish even the little experiences of our comfortable existence. Perhaps, we each may learn to empathize with strangers we have never seen.    

Lullaby

It's alright
Rest your head beside me
I know how hard it is
I know
I want you to believe
I understand
If I could give you just a little bit of me
To carry on
and off with
A little bit of the comfort you need
I would
I swear I would
If I could take away the pain
and shun it into me
I would
I wish I could free you from it
From the hollowness in your heart
Those feelings that seem to catch you
when you're lying alone in bed at night
and you realize that you're utterly alone
I'm there
I'm there to hold you
To hold all the unheld children of the world
If I could only save you
I want to save you all
I have to
This tear that wants to well is for you
A monument to you
To all of you
I hear your cries
The questions that echo, "Why?"
And for all the ones that didn't make it
I exist for you
This isn't pity
This is just a boy who feels the wealth of longing behind your eyes
Who hears the begging beyond the hushed cries
Who realized
I want to lull you
To hold you in my arms
Listen to the heart that beats beneath that tender chest
To rock you
Until I seep between your skin
And take all of the pain away

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Man

Mankind and war seem inseparable. For centuries, the wisest among us have spoken of the futility of war. Yet, it still wages. In the history of mankind, there has never been a time where, across the entire globe, no wars waged. Perhaps it is an inherent quality written into the DNA of every human. Maybe a herd mentality is inevitable - one man casts a stone and a nation hurls a mountain. If someone has what we ain't got, we want it, and we'll take it! Power begets power: Those who want it will do anything to get it and those who have it will do anything to keep it. Fear is war's love and blood its sustenance.

One man kills another man and its murder. The act ceases the operation of every cell in his body, thus death. War kills an entire nation - cell by cell. But war is cannibalistic, as it consumes what it claims.      

Men

Made to live and die, unknown
To rise (like suns) and set as well
By Father onto Holy Ghost
Drinking from a river's well

Born of blood and bread
Always hot upon the head
Striving into battle as soft as a lover's hand
Hearts of fire; heads of lead
All rejoicing for their victory stand

Man to man will kill another
For the feeble sake of others
To prove a point that all the while
Is murder of their brothers

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Ink

The gift of imagination is an incredible one. To think, in all of creation, we are the only species that can construct within our mind's-eye a world so vivid, we ourselves begin to believe it exists, even though we are aware that we are the ones who constructed it. Like little God's that have fallen in love with their creations. The beauty of imagination is that it is not grounded in reality; its nature is nonsensical. How can we display images made from nothing on an immaterial surface that only we can see, and not with our eyes? The beauty of words is that we can use them to share with others this nonexistent world so that they too can fall in love with it, though maybe not completely the same world. Imagination provides a sanctity inside us - Where we can go to escape, to recover, to make new, and to make right. It is something no one can steal; something that comes built in, and it will always be there to comfort you. A place where you can find and be one with yourself.

An... "inside corner".    


Ink

Would you kill a photograph 

in that black place beside your inside corner? 

A bullet in the coffin

and a tear inside a jar.

With flowers on the fire,

you untied the noose and set the vampires free:

"Blood, blood everywhere, but not a drop to drink."

You thought for a moment, 

'Should I forget?'

but then you forgot
and all you could do was remember. 

With a tombstone strapped to your back

and a letter tucked in your pocket, 

you found a hole 

for you to die in.

We had a funeral on your wedding day. 

We read a eulogy and then ate cake.

We sipped blood and snorted ink,

and built the walls around your longing.

We caged in all your unhappiness and unveiled a museum to your heartache. 

We laughed!

Oh, we laughed and cried,

at the thought of how hard you tried, 

in the blank spaces of your inside corner 

where you killed your photograph.

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Hard Hardhearted Heart (Hardy Har Har)

How many times in life do we fall in love? Some would argue only once and that we don't always spend the rest of our lives with them. Others would say there are many kinds of love and every time we "fall in love" it is different. What is for certain is that whomever we do fall for remain locked in our memories forever. 

Can you recall your first crush? 

Every new attraction is accompanied by certain experiences or features that seem everlastingly connected to them: A color, a scent, a piece of music, a geographic location, even food. These attributes are so specific and so intrinsically connected to the person that whenever we experience them again, we are immediately reminded of their connection in our memories. It is sudden, jarring, and vivid.

Every one has a unique signature; a unique trigger. Does every pair of lips have a unique taste? 

      

Hard Hardhearted Heart (Hardy Har Har)

Do I detect the perfume from a former devotee in the air?
Have you come to invoke memories from farce forgotten lips?
So overwhelmed!
You've stopped me in my tracks,
Now, do tell,
What is it you wish to commemorate?
This indictment.
This transient decline.
Fleeting, upon a gander,
A sight I've long since transmitted to behold:
A corroded path,
Carved in hence;
Prefix swallowed;
Lexicon rehearsed,
Carried off and found again inside a buckskin curse.
I walked into a cloud
Swollen stiff - like a drink -
Lunged into the past to find the chemicals I swore I tossed over the brink,
But no...
They linger in the back of my mind,
The posterior of a Joker's card.
Laughing to myself in reflex to a rediscovered sneak,
Slipping past myself that which I all along believed.
Suck it up!
Wallow in its flavor.
Savor every sour nook.
Fight to bight back at it
As you rediscover her captivating look.
Shook from your tiding -
Lethal dust dogged off -
A crooked crook
Resurfaces to return the stolen property.
The properties of love are fickle,
Fragile,
Flimsy,
Fortified!
Would it be too much of a burden to be plucked from my fallow field?
Would it be best if I protected you with a cracked and porous shield?
The one you took for a souvenir in that joust for our independence,
Our freedom from each other?
From our predestined pretense?
Ah!
It digs in like a bloodworm,
In a most soothing of ways,
With the scent of an antique store
And the voice of a grave.
Waft it!
Learn it!
Cherish now
Spiteful gestures I cannot flee.
A heart that has run through a few
Still drips with the fresh dew of lips
Within me.