We are such a sad and hopeless people.  Such a lost people.  There are some of us, it is true, who have money and property.  There are some who have found a way of life that provides.  But most of us have nothing but empty hearts and bad memories.  Our pride in ourselves was stripped away a long time ago, and we were left hollow.  It is a sad thing to see.  Sadder to live.

Do you know what’s wrong with us?  We are homeless.  It is a bad way to be in the world, but that is how we are.  We are adrift, tiny boats in a large ocean.  Even those of us who have land and houses and friends and neighbors and some sort of life.  It is a condition indigenous to our people.  We bear a legacy of loss passed down to us by our ancestors.  We bear the memory of what we had and what was taken.  It haunts us.

You can be homeless in different ways.  You can be homeless like those people living on the streets, surviving on handouts, marking time between seasons.  But you can be homeless in your heart, too.  You can be empty inside yourself because you have no spiritual center.  You can wander through life without any real sense of whom you are or where you belong.  You can exist without purpose or cause.

We are homeless in the streets and we are homeless in our hearts as well.  We have no purpose in the world.  We have no center.  Our way of life was changed long ago, and it will never return.  Our new life is someone else’s life imposed on us; it is a false life.  We struggle to find our home, our center, but it is as faded as distant memories.

A building is a home if the people who inhabit it have memories and love and a place in the world.  Otherwise, it is just a building, a shelter against the elements, and it can never be anything more.

There are others who know this.  Others that have been uprooted and displaced, who have been banished to the road and a life of wandering, who have lost any sense of who they are.  Some of them have had their way of life taken from them.  Some of them are looking for a way back home again.

Maybe you know one.  Maybe you are one.

*grabs mic and steps on soapbox*

No, I can’t just walk away, I have more to say.

Our ‘war’ continues, the ‘war’ we fight with one another, the ‘war’ we wage against ourselves.  Our place in this ‘war’ is often defined for us.  It is defined for many because they are powerless to choose. 

They are destitute or suffering.  They are a minority of sex or race or religion.  They are poor or disenfranchised.  They are abused or disabled, physically or mentally, and they have forgotten or never learned how to stand up for themselves.

But…there are a few that are different.  They have advantages of knowledge and insight.  They know the ways men destroy themselves and of the reasons they do so.  They know the enemy who threatens us all.  Because they know these truths, they are empowered and can choose the ground they would defend.  They have an obligation and a responsibility to decide where they will stand.

Who are these people?  Where are they?  I count myself amongst this group.  Where am I?  Where I have chosen to be.  I chose my ground a long time ago.  I did so because I was no longer afraid.  I did so because even though I am not the last, I was made strong by the fire that tested me, and I was given a purpose.

Yeah…what he said.

*drops mic and steps off soapbox*

*grabs mic, steps on soapbox*

Do you think this country has changed much since our youth, or our parent’s youth, or our grandparent’s youth?

This is a hard question to answer, but the truth it masks needs uncovering.  As a country, as a people, have we changed?

On the surface we might appear to have done so, but underneath I think we are still the same.  Our change is measurable, but not significant.  We remain bent on destroying ourselves.  We still kill one another with alarming frequency and for foolish reasons, and we begin killing at a younger age.  We have much to celebrate, but we live in fear and doubt.  We are pessimistic about our own lives and the lives of our children.  We trust almost no one.

We are a people under siege, walled away from each other and the world, trying to find a safe path through the debris of hate and rage that collects around us.  We drive our cars like weapons.  We use our children and our friends as if their love and trust were expendable and meaningless.  We think of ourselves first and others second. 

We lie and cheat and steal in little ways, thinking it unimportant, justifying it by telling ourselves that others do it, so it doesn’t matter if we do it, too.  We have no patience with the mistakes of others.  We have no empathy for their despair.  We have no compassion for their misery. 

Those who roam the streets are not our concern; they are examples of failure and an embarrassment to us.  It is best to ignore them.  If they are homeless, it is their own fault.  They give us nothing but trouble.  If they die, at least they will provide us with more space to breathe.

I’m talking, but…it seems as if no one is listening.

*drops mic and steps off soapbox*

Past.  Yes, but what does that mean?  The seeds of…whisper no more to me.  So complacent with the vacancy and the common renders we uncommonly close.  Like brothers though you are not one.  I am born of flesh – you of thought.  Personified, not…inanimate animals objectified via personalized metaphors.  Analogous, comparative to completion – raw and broken I scream. 

It’s not that I don’t know you – I just have no song for my tears.  We flew to the moon in a rocketship of dreams – fading in the waning moments of sleep.   Clearly unfocused – gluttonous in our desires – stripped of suited reasons.  We could change, but the song remains the same…come dance with me.  A lonely road crowded with strangers, strangely seems serene to blistered nerves – reverberating with echoes of a song once sung.

Intentions of pain were never aimed in your direction, you cover the horizon…even my zenith points in your favor.   Proverbial, provincial, provocative – bordering neurotic invocations of projected purpose; erotic in existence – I died for your life.  Through this – you carry me, packed on backs like mules.  Lustfully caravanning over sand dunes, waiting on the reappearance of mirages – geared to illicit false hopes. 

I heard you, I just didn’t respond.  You spoke to me, in your way, and I listened to you – in my way.  As you spoke, I thought.  When you fell silent, I knew that you could no longer hear me.  My thoughts were lost in the cavernous wells of our mutual desire.  You crave what I am – I crave you.  There can be no middle ground…we occupy the same space.

I never knew your pain...

Within me, I desired to be, all things created unequally.  Forgive me not.  I whispered sweet lullabies that deprived you of arrogant sanity.  Saintly seeking resplendent justifications, arching accusations, and faint amounts of appreciation.  I rejected your validation because...I reject you.

Your pain I never knew...

Had I cared to look, perhaps I would have seen.  Unlikely as I see you clearly, faithfully, and true.  Invertible obscenities obscure the vicinity, bringing me to my knees through a failure of energy...synergy, that's the buzz word...likens you to them.  

Your pain you never knew...

Do you know what you're talking about?  Moronic arguments back and forth sound like God and Satan falling out.  I step back to let you handle you, but alas, you found yourself facing reflective glass.  Now that you see your true enemy, can this you move past?

Your pain never knew me...

Close-minded, I broach this topic to open your optics...look at me!  Often what we see is the projection of thought that we want others to be...not likely, when you're facing the mirror, the picture is less clear...no fear.  I hold your hand like a child, not for long...my grip starts to weaken.  I realize it was the left my right was seeking.  What's the reason? 

Picturing mortuaries full of life; pulling caskets out in an attempt to gentrify their contents.  Surely I must be confused; you can’t die if you never existed.  Perhaps my paradox has me twisted.  I scream in a whispered voice, hushing silence to hear deafness.  Light like illumination, I shouldn’t have to repeat myself, and this poetic masturbation brings about mental ejaculation.  I’m in my prime, transforming like Optimus – with a word I remove your identity and leave you anonymous…

And I’m daydreaming my superlatives, and this is half of my potential.  I spoke ideas into being years ago, and I’m still feeling the aftershocks.  It’s preposterous to think that I’m anything but right, but it’s ok, I fit all stereotypes.  It could be that I’m obnoxious enough to think that my words carry worth, but to equate you to me is three steps past absurd.  My taxi doesn’t run a meter, standard measurements only, I run a quick mile…

Everybody wants to be a flower, so I raise a garden of weeds.  That’s the shape of things to come, there’s a battle to be fought and all the warriors are dumb.  Blindly hacking and slashing their way to idiot supremacy.  Rashly ruling retards rapidly removing rationality.  Chopping off rights so they’re all that’s left – stance is prohibited, cognition limited.  Where is the revolution?  The Idiots are coming!  The idiots are coming!  One if by land, two if by sea – you remain blind so the lights cannot warn me.  Knees dug deep in the pavement and it’s hard.  Nobody cheers the sky; they’re too busy cheering the stars…

"Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow."  I ask you to walk with me.

'Walk with me' is not a catchphrase - it is my motto, my "Donner un coup de pouce au destin."  With three words, I present to you a culmination of thought resulting from my pursuit of the idea of me.   

Walk with me is not an invitation to know me; it is an invitation to know you.  Knowledge is not owned, as I learn, I share.  I do not share often, as knowledge must be earned to be appreciated.

For many years, I desired to be understood.  I have since learned the folly of such a thought.  I now desire to understand.

 

Walk with me…

It may be a mark in a time and a space
It may leave markings so strange, so undeserving, and displaced
It need not be too deep to be thought of severely
Yet It can be of stitches that binds us dearly
 
Indelibly left but gone by instant cemeteries
Indelibly gone but left by distant memories

It will be that pill given unbearable to our swallows.
It will be that knife wielded by a hand undone by shadows.
It will be that tear left to commemorate eyes widely shut to fellows.
It will be that wince shuttered by the chest of hollows.
It will be that moment that it begins to govern us to sorrows

It may be that horrid; we easily make it negligible
It may be that minuscule; we dare not define it admirable

For the sun can enliven our skin to warmth…to flake
For the rain can dampen our bones to nurse…to ache
For the gambit of life is but emotions ravenous by fumes
For a beast left to fester will ultimately drain and consume
A day, a night, a life is at summer’s end and winter’s close
Will we only live by one day, by one night, a life - only to leave them exposed?

For we have bodies that house a morphing beast of glow
For it is beyond an embodiment, an ember or a flow
For it can be mangled by ambition and dictum
For it can be strived beyond our motions and victims
For it is but yours and mines that are gapes and closures that we neatly sew
For that beast of wounds is only as deep and as wide as we will let it forever go

Low lights flicker, surrounding the darkness.  Fighting to achieve dominance and determination finds me struggling with pristine whiteness.  But this is not a snowfall; this is a blank notepad where my thoughts fall.  Recklessly skiing down this slope, dodging trees, rocks, and hidden pitfalls.  Fingers are a blur across the keys, synaptic bursts firing nerves to collect the overflow.  Words are composed and my heart is exposed.  I was on fire when I drowned.  Wondering why you worship on high, but you put your face in the ground.  The best of the worst blessed the airwaves, spoke their piece and died before you understood.  And I'm still trying.

The only other thing that faces me is I and I've long since left me behind.  The mirror is shattered.  Can't you see?  The last thing you want is for me to peer into my soul, and extract the thoughts of you.  Deal with what you know and allow the rest to fall fallow.  Salt the land; remain barren like a womb with no eggs.  Tossed into the river of my mind, struggling for the shore, reaching for the phone dialing 9 for an outside line.  Sorry, all circuits are busy!  You take your last breath, but death won't come - you're forced to face you and you can't run.  The eyes never lie so I choose to not see, and I told you I am a fighter disguised as a writer, confused with a poet, for those that didn't know it.  I shine like a dead flashlight at night...

You should have seen me in my prime, sleek rugged, and quick with the tongue.  Then I realized that wine is aged over time.  The value increases, the potency triples, so I slowed the flooding to a trickle.  Now my thoughts are so refined, what was once hazy has now been cleared.  I wouldn't be surprised if I was German engineered.  The way I move from track to track like a new veteran from way back...No longer spiritual, I transcended to the meta-physical.  Hemispherical, I am global.  Cooling the warming, but this is only a warning.  The best is the worst to come.  The fires in my eyes and the flames need fanning.  When asked how old, I explain that we're living in the same age.  You must be history because you keep repeating yourself.  Break the cycle with knowledge of self and determination; infinite like the figure 8.

And I'm just doing what I gotta do.  Not planning a revolution, but I am forming a new alliance opposed to the commonality of normality aka society.  I don't expect to receive Congressional medals or public acceptance.  It's ironic that the lifeless lives reflect the plight of those fighting.  Melancholy I am though I've learned to love it here, though I hate it here, I've staked a claim and I made it here.  When I retire, I don't want the complimentary watch.  No serum can cure the pain I've endured.  They've clipped my wings, so listen to this caged bird sing.  Sweet melodies whispered straight into your ear.  I've provided the ingredients, cooked the food, set the place...sit down and eat.  I's going for my freedom tonight, and I'm not heading north.  Go west young man!  So I packed up, but I didn't move to Beverly.  The hillbilly in the city looking kinda silly until I open my mouth, and now you can't hear me.  My keys open doors and I don't have a pitch - knowledge sells itself.

*Strolling...*

“In no fashion have I lost my passion for the pen - it’s just lately life has been a lot less inspiring…”

And it’s not that I require inspiration to speak with you, I require aspiration.  In this genetic mix of depravity, degradation, and destitution, I find release.  I am only a fighter in the guise of a writer and I remain focused, slightly passed gifted, ranging along the extraordinarily ordinary.  I granted you the words, and you still fail to define my existence.

Like Neo in the Matrix, I swallowed the blue pill, and instead of waking up, I fell asleep and created a world in which I created you.  If Unicorns did not exist, why is it that we all know what a Unicorn looks like?  I know you do not exist; you are not real.  I clearly picture your form, the sheen of your wings, and the symmetry of your lithe body.  The whisper of breeze that follows each flutter of your wings – I remain the one, like five divided by four…

I was naïve, then the pill wore off, and I awake refreshed, resplendent; graced in blessings not of my making.  How is it that the visage of you upon the periphery of my mind generates a nervous tick of the brow, and dampening of the palms?  What did I do to deserve the pain of this return?  I return full circle to the end – a sad beginning.  I fight this current, gasping for air…forever dying, disallowed to awaken from this nightmare.

I did not create you, of that I am sure – though you owe your existence to me; to my efforts.  I can’t stop my suffering, my loss of control.  I’ve found in me, you…we, and us.  Together, forever shall we remain apart.  As I said, only in the paradox do we solidify true existence. 

I often wonder how you deal with my insanities.