Spring 2020 

Knock on the door

The rents been paid 

You told me it will all be okay

Sit me aside

Place me all alone

Silence is my reward

Paint the canvas black

But I wanted white

Someday you’ll see, that I was right 

Follow through 

Follow through 

But time is up

You pulled

And I pushed 

My mind began to pulse

Placed my hand out

For you to give me the stars

But I only tasted the hard dirt

I breathed

and

I breathed 

With warm blood

My legs pulsed, 

Will it ever be enough?

Your place was secured

The status claimed

I was merely a stepping stone

You’ve made up my mind

The auroras grew dim 

Ash began to rain down upon me

Off I ran 

Escape from the bank 

At least my canvas was finally blank

Where do I go from here?

My time is almost over

The final stretch is in sight

And yet—I’m not ready

I cannot let go

The child inside is terrified

Our world is dying

It is a dangerous, dreadful place

My fear has controlled me

I’m afraid

I don’t know what’s ahead

I don’t want to know

I’m in denial

But that’s the first step, right?

Acknowledging your faults?

After that it’s just one step at a time

I have to move forward

I have to keep going

No matter how chilling it is

The future moves closer

Whether we like it or not

No matter how much we wish for it

There’s no going back

Where do I go from here?

I don’t know

But I think, just maybe

I’m willing to try

And find out

The syncopation

death in realization

No restraint

No hesitation

No need for caution

Hello this is my friend

AR-15

This friend will cause your cremation

This friend is protecting the nation

Easier than starvation

Helpful in thinning the population

My friend AR-15

This friend has rhythm

This friend has a purpose

It’s easy to access and kills the oppressed

This friend is a friend to the mentally ill and the depressed

frenemies to those it kills

It has no discrimination; only out for damnation

Its kills the blessed

It kills those who had success

It doesn't care if you were the best dressed

It doesn't matter where you are

South, East, North, or West

Just be prepared for your death

AR-15

This is my friend

I hope, before your death, you were authentic

Before your life came to an end.

Were you happy?

I hope someone cried for you

When my friend AR-15 took you

Who were you?

Did you look inward?

My friend, AR-15 took you

before you had the opportunity to look

and see what your purpose was to be

AR-15, a friend against humanity

A friend that takes those before they can realize what it means to be free

It takes the loved one who never got to the sea

It takes the friend who never got to see the redwood trees

It steals the keeper of the bees

It cremates the mother of three

AR-15,

My friend,

Will you also kill me?

Dark are the streets

Of this city, not governed by mortal laws.

Vapor rises, creating intense heat;

The mist veiling the metropolis like gauze.

The cracks run through the concrete

Illustrating the civilization’s many flaws.

In its very foundation lie its flaws.

From cracked stone to beaten street.

No amount of healing, no amount of gauze

Can sate and disperse the heavy heat.

Crooked spires comparable to the laws

Keep this urban sight anything but concrete.

The veins lie buried beneath concrete.

Shut down, shut out, they try to hide their flaws.

But beneath the street

Seen through gauze

Is the smoldering heat

Of bygone laws.

Rules used as guidelines instead of laws

This city was not built on concrete.

The basis full of flaws

Every building, every street

Sealed and wrapped with gauze

So the populace cannot sense the heat.

Steadily it bubbles, the impending heat!

With every broken law

With every suffering street.

It rises with each flaw

Bursting through, shattering concrete.

This metropolitan menace will need more than gauze.

So it streams forth, through the gauze

boiling heat

forgotten laws.

It ruptures the concrete

Displaying all the flaws

Of the structures, shops, and streets.

The ruined street, now crumbled and gashed, no longer a gauze

Parades the fragmented laws through its terrible heat

Presenting the pitted concrete and illuminating its flaws.

The scene, like a present, was wrapped in tape

with mirror pools from the April rain. Lights

of red and blue danced across the body

lounging in the shiny red surface of blood.

At the edge of the light stood the detective,

black rubber gloves adorning each hand.

Dread filled the man staring at the crime at hand.

He took in the full scene, the taught tape,

the copper taste that drifted towards the detective,

the brazen beams of the caustic lights

that bathed the scene in colors of bruises and blood.

The cumulated purples washing over the blue body.

Brutalized, broken, milled, the body

reposed on the tar-black ground, marks on each hand.

Signs of the switch, the opened scars filled of blood,

the wrists displaying pocks where there once was tape,

the harmed skin, like flaying wax, glowed in the lights.

The vision before the detective

tipped and tumbled the detective,

sending earthquakes rumbling through his body.

It wasn’t the first time he had stood in the lights,

his heart a tribal drum, his quavering hand

a tremolo, his mouth sealed as with tape,

the dread icing his intestines and his blood.

He cleaned the viscera, the blackened blood

off, after the investigation. The detective

kept seeing the scene, his head a rewinding tape

of the murders before, the buildup of each body

piling in his sickened brain. His twitching hand

spread a crescendo through him in the dim lights.

Flies buzzed, circling the bathroom lights

as the man stood with curdling blood,

shakily clutching a Glock in his hand.

Ghastly visions plagued the detective.

Memories surfaced, bloody scene, blue body,

damp smells, smoky streets, strips of yellow tape.

Overhead lights shone on the detective,

sleepily oozing blood from his body.

The killing gun rest in his hand. The scene was dressed in tape.

Pixels or atoms, which do I prefer

Screens or dreams, which do I prefer

Freedom or laws, which do I prefer

Skins or skin, which do I prefer

To live lives, or live one life

To change reality, or let reality change me

To create anything, or exist with what is created

To die deaths and remember, or perish once and forget

Living through time and existing everywhere

That is my virtual world

I had been waiting for my father to die for years. 

When he drew near to the end – 

The final end, 

The worst of the decline – 

We’d been waiting for so long 

We grew comfortable in the waiting, 

Built a routine around it; 

A whole life. 

The waiting took over our lives. 

Wars raged and they meant nothing to me anymore.

No news is good news unless you’re waiting for bad news and then the waiting is worse. 

And now that’s it’s finished –  

What do we do now? 

Who do we become? 

This is the climax, 

The conclusion of the major conflict of 

Book One: Innocence I Never Claimed. 

There’s no question of happiness now that the waiting is over. 

It’s the one gift the waiting hid behind it’s cursed nature. 

We’re so accustomed to grief and pain that it is relieving,  

Horribly, 

Horribly relieving to end the routine, 

To be free of it at last – 

I am past guilt. 

It’s not my fault. 

It never was! 

It never will be again!

But I’m trapped in a Penrose illusion – 

Up, up, up, and just when I’m confident the stairs will be there, 

That I’m okay,

I stop looking

My foot gives out from under me 

Again

I know you're out there somewhere

My beauty, my queen, my fair one

Though I know not your face or name

Far will I go to seek you

I know you are the fairest maiden to behold in my sight

Your heart is golden, filled with love's fire

Your words are music to my ears

Your embrace is the comfort found before a hearth

Love will bring me to you, for love comes to those who give

Your love will come to ease my heart's great longing

I shall sleep each night content

For you will be best of my dreams

When I find you someday, I'll never be lonely again

But until that day comes, I shall bide

And I shall dream of that dawn when I shall rise

To behold you, my treasure, my wish, my love

Sitting at the roadside tea stall, sipping up tea, making fun of people and laughing out loud has 

been my routine. 

And every time the topic of my talk is the shape of the girl passing by. 

I stare at her breasts, her waist and her thighs. 

And I really don’t care about her comfortability. 

After all she is a girl. 

Whenever I travel in a tight vehicle, I don’t let go any of my chances to feel her body. 

I press her breasts, caress her hands and thighs. 

I don’t worry about my image because I am a guy. 

And I really don’t care about her image. 

After all, she is a girl. 

I have a maid in my house who does my household chores and sometimes work for my own 

personal wishes. 

I make use of her body and settle my sexual urge. 

I don’t worry about my dignity because I have money and power. 

And I really don’t care about her dignity. 

After all, she is a girl. 

Mostly I return home late getting drunk and abuse my own wife physically and mentally. 

I beat her and tried to kill her because she didn’t give me a son. 

I don’t worry about my status because she can do nothing against me. 

And I really don’t care about her pain. 

After all, she is a girl. 

I can burn her alive. I can pay her less than men. I can do whatever I wish. 

But deep down I know, like a tree she will stand tall and strong. 

She will be the hope for people in injustice. 

She will be the voice of the voiceless. 

After all, she is a girl. 

They fear you.

They run, they try to escape and they hide.

They struggle, they get wound and they fight.

They treat you as the end.

They don’t get that you actually end.

Their pain, their sorrows and their plight.

They seek beyond.

Beyond you, beyond your existence.

Beyond your tribute, beyond your consistency.

I adore you.

You are the epitome of beauty.

The only sign exemplifying eternity.

I thank you.

Thank you for sending struggles to exile.

Thank you for making living interesting and life worthwhile.

There were times when I was in despair 

When I could smell only disappointment 

And failures in the air. 

Trapped in my own dreams, I felt helpless 

Hoping for a hand to lead out of this wilderness 

And there you were all ready to pull me up 

All prepared again to take me to the top. 

That is why today I want to tell you 

Thank you for helping me to make my dreams come true. 

Thank you for being the reason for my motivation. 

Thank you for pushing me with tons of dedication. 

For teaching me to do things on my own 

And believing in me when I try 

I could never have been, where I am today 

Without you, at my side.  

holding on for one more second.

breathe you in, just one more time.

loving you is like knowing the last few good seconds. 

knowing the last good night.

the last good laugh. 

it’s enjoying the last minute again and again. 

loving you is like knowing i can’t hold you forever but just one more minute will do the trick. 

knowing that one more time is never enough.

so one more drag. one more lie. just give me one more until i can’t breathe anything but your life. 

just one more until my life is consumed with you. 

our programs arranged in perfect time. 

like Romeo and Juliet but somehow worse.

it’s writing love letters to you but sending it myself so you never know the truth. 

i can convince myself that this is the last helpless day and wallowing in self pity is all over. 

until the night hits and your name creeps in my mind until everything is you, again. 

like an ambulance screaming through an intersection. a siren you don’t want to hear but you can’t silence. 

my heart races. it hurts. not even this can fix the pain in my chest. it’s for you. 

The smell of you.

The only thing that has stayed the same.

I cling to the scent of bar soap and cherry perfume.

The perfect combination of clean and comfort.

The only thing I can’t live without.

A constant in the wake of so much indifference.

The smell reminds me of who you once were.

You were full, pretending to be empty.

You weren’t always there, yet always present when it mattered.

The smell makes me want to forget what you are now.

You are empty with the illusion of fulfillment.

You are always there, yet in a forever state of absence.

Your smell is all I have to hold on to.

It brings me joy and devastation.

It reassures me that you are still here.

But it is a reminder that you are fading.

One day your smell will only exist in old t-shirts and your sheets.

The smell will only exist in my imagination.

How do I exist without it?

An addict without a hit.

That is me without your smell.

My smell is who I am with and without you.

The same, but different.

A box

A small space dedicated for placing objects in

Everyone has one

To store thoughts or precious memories

To express ideas that define themselves

A place for solace

Plain and colorless

A non-expressive void

Locked with no key

I don’t have one

I see the world in color

A smile stretched across my face

The light hitting my freckled skin

I feel free,

My thoughts flying

Music fills my voice

A piano playing out my emotions,

A symphony of color that shines bright in the dark

But why does everyone keep silencing my song?

My colors flee from the stress of life

They want me to grow monochromatic like the rest of the world,

Yet people keep saying to be myself,

How can I if others judge me for it?

I sit in a room where voices speak, 

Yet my own is deemed a nuisance.

The man sitting at the directors stand yells at me for speaking, 

but he still says nothing to those who constantly speak over him.

I can hear their whispers of hate for my optimism,

My ways of teaching aren’t good enough for their stuck-up ways,

But still, 

The world wants everyone to be creative…

Why do I feel like I always need to fix myself for another person’s approval?

My body has changed numerous times,

For someone who never cared about me

Questions blur my head

Why do I need to be classified in a stereotype?

Why does my archetype need to be defined?

Why do I always see the look of disappointment in my mother's eyes,

When I speak out for something I believe in?

Is my song that dishonorable?

My emotions slowly dwindle,

As I learn that feeling something shows weakness

My eyes fill with a fire of tears that drip down my face,

Of the stars of my own flaws.

I try not to choke on my own feelings

My smile turns into a stone mask

My heart is on the sleeve of my sweater,

Sewed on with the strings of my emotions.

My shoes covered in the mud of lost ideas

Am I not good enough for society?

Or is society not ready for me?

Is the joy of creation a lie…?

Maybe that’s why everyone is hiding in their box,

Just like how society wants me to be

Trapped in a box