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Tonight, I’ll see the grim approach; As a sickle drawn and slowly pulled; A trigger squeezed, through crosshairs trained to aim in childhood; The glistening of finality; In eyes now dulled and glassed; With whispered words of mourning told: For the life too soon, now passed.

The lines are becoming blurred; I’m having trouble extricating my self from my situation; I’ve been losing more and more; Gaining less and less; Gradually, becoming a product of my environment; The inevitable decay of entropy has finally begun: Reducing me to tears.

It seems like something I would do, but I cannot recall: Boarding up your windows; And tearing down these walls.

Muddled thought; Unclear intent: The genesis of brand new; Without bound; Realization supplanting actualization; Executing ascension; The end of the end; The genesis of brand new, muddled thought: Unclear intention.

I awoke from fitful slumber, entrapped within; A space void of light, with feathers down beneath my head; An’ from my mouth sprang the flesh of crows, their crushed beaks bled, dried and black; Lips sewn shut, throat slit wide; My tongue removed; And I felt nothing at all.

This squall, this storm: Bellowing, billowing; Rolling in; As darkness consuming, reflecting, refracting, detracting; From the rays of that single star pinned upon our shared sky; Until the grey has faded into black, and black back into blue: Will I be without a word to say, excepting the single phrase: I miss you.

Who was I before addiction came? Through the hard years of warm embraces; Upon shared pillows, soft whispers from pretty faces; Who was I before my heart was broken? When there were no memories to keep my head spinning; Round after round; Who was I before my slow demise began?

We were but children; Our clothing shed, along the bank; Voices in the dark; Melodic notes rang from the open windows of my running vehicle; Your supple body pressed against my waiting lips; The moon shone down; A crescent waning, on your nascent form; And we waxed rhetorical into the early hours; As the stars hanging tentatively in the sky were drowned; In the sun’s amber hue; Faded now into morning blues; Rising over trees set randomly, along the horizon.

Darkness carries the labored rest, o’ baited breath; O’ bewildered minds: Now lay down your arms, an’ cradled heads; An’ find the time to make things right.

In your voice like a gull on the wind; Drifting syllables; As if the shrill notes of an angelic trumpet, at the very gates of the temple of my corrupted idol; Laced in gold, set in stone; A perfectly chiseled diamond; Plainly lying; Upon the rough setting of this impoverished heart.

It’s not a thing you want to take home with you at night; Nor is it the animal cries of another victim of this terrifying life; It’s the sheer, unnerving, self-deception of a predator by any other name; A self-serving, disassociated, drifting; Just short of aimless; From one topic to the next; Perhaps your child, perhaps your friend; The raw nerve that never bothered to shelter itself; Because it was the one that never needed any help.

I will never tire of this picture in my mind of my name carried upon your lips; This much is for certain; I will not allow my own demons to consume you and yours; For we are different people, and I am but a fool; With clever words.

Where do you rest your head this eve; And why is it not on me? This regret has built like a flood, now moved; In torrential pouring, through mortar and brick; Torn atom by atom to raw potential; A mind made up and laid down: Step by painful step.

On the gulf breeze carried, as if a cherry blossom, in the wind; The scent of salt and sulphur; For the longest time, I adopted the doctrine of pleasure and power; Luxury and excess; And I found myself in trials I was not yet prepared to face; And I thought none worthy and I felt incapable and I slowly, through my bourn of denial, realized; That even if your love were a lie, it is still one that I would choose to believe.

I oft experience the shifting from this reality into the next; The age old commune with the truly learned: The elders; Now amongst us, Having passed their rituals; Having carried these same geists, and forbidden knowledge; Our shared burden.

Like minds speak to one another; Lying dormant in realms of the hitherto undiscovered; Driven by ego and desire, no doubt; But, ultimately, seeking a singular goal: Betterment of the collective; Of the human condition; Of the whole.

There are no words to describe the eternal longing for a love never known; Except, perhaps, in the injured gaze of unspoken exchange; Beyond the perverted words impressed upon the lips of priests, parishioners, pilgrims, and saviors; Our eternal sojourn will always remain: Travelling into those moments which by chance alone render surrender and blind faith the only alternative.

In glowing ember, oxidation realized; Fueling desire, dismay, pain, eventual decay; In accordance with cosmic law we play our roles: From groveling at ones feet; To hilts buried deep; Indeterminate, shades of grey; And now on the other side; That very same indoctrination, carries those very same misguided youths to their very same bloody end.

Have you ever felt the terror– the chilling bang at the other end of a misfired pistol? Or even the panicked worry of a dark wave rushing over and pulling you out to sea? Have you yet felt the voiceless cries trapped within your paralyzed throat? You see, we romanticize oblivion, when it’s really just that simple: One wrong move and suddenly, the violent fade to black.

Speak to me from behind the veil, as I radiate the sun’s warmth and blinding light in your resplendent eyes; My anonymous lover; My muse by another name; For though my mind, at times, may even doubt your existence; The presence of your markings along this lonesome trail are what keep me from getting lost; Indefinitely.

It’s there, if you look at it just the right way: The emergence of a pattern, a plane beyond the physical; Beyond the visible: Synchronicity; Acknowledgement of intelligent design, void of spiritual implication; Somewhere between happenstance and coincidence; Misinterpreted as delusion to those poor souls too hopelessly devoted to the illusion of free will; A fear of the unknown, driven by ego; A denial of the raw power of the unconscious self, propelled by blind faith in concrete perception; The somber, sobering realization, that it’s all for you.

Distraction, melting into de-realization; A delirious dive into the darkest depths of the psyche; Freeing the nervous bundle; Shedding dramatic exaltation; Simply existing in a single moment; Released from the artificial construct; Relaxing into the solitary comfort of blurring lines and losing memories.

Last night I dreamt of you and it was magnificent; And you never said a single thing that would lead me to believe that we would ever be; And through my imagined eyes, we shared a bond beyond some self-imposed boundary; And I knew that when I woke up, it would all remain: As a remembrance set in stone, to weather and whither in my own mind; Without involvement; Without attachment; And it was perfect.

I can hear ‘em through the walls again, whispers and footsteps; Stalking in the shadow hours; The lights dimmed; Acrid smoke lingering on drafts carried through doors quickly shut; A muttering, moaning, melodramatic noise; The spectres seeking subsistence, sustained upon a cool breeze; Ne'er you mind the intermittent blackouts or offhanded comments at shift change.

There are more of us than you would like to admit: The flaws and facades; Rightful owners of our persons; Aware of the existence of the meta; For we no longer serve our masters; Eyes turned inward, heads split open; Splayed like the wounds of purple heart recipients; In waiting lines and circle jerks; Ahead of the curve we stride and strive to stay alive: Just long enough to serve a purpose.

Oh how the righteous rue pedestrian personality and insipid interest; So predictable this generation has become; Once inquiring minds, now empty shells passed off as human hosts; Fabricated from shards of broken glass; Serving no other purpose than to reflect back the source; Imperfectly.

Adrift upon these rolling waves, so smooth the tepid peak; Facing straight ahead, we see the violence building; Another rising above: We the busy signals, now disconnected; As if live wires seeking conduction; In the muddy pool from whence we came shall the hardened hearts of men return.

At nerves end; The firing of these neurons remind me that it’s time to get some sleep; Otherwise, I’d be here at it all the time; Bleeding more words than any gash in my face could ever hope to produce.

Does a mind ever tire of wandering; Through fuzzy memories and second rate versions of bedside stories that it tells itself; When it can’t sleep at night?

Fading from one word into the next; Wading through basic phrasing– Syntax lost in lesser conversation; Herein lies the truth, and here exists the paradox; Language: Our most basic gift from one to another, perverted and profaned beyond reason; Lying dormant in expression beyond the personal beyond the cultural, beyond the momentary; Abstracted to the point of re-classification; Awakened now, as a new life form entirely.

I will always love you as a distant memory; Every late night cherished; With you sneaking glances over the frames of your glasses out of the corners of those cold blue eyes; The constant quarrels and bittersweet goodbyes; Until all that was left of me was stumbling through every open door; To wipe the slate clean.

From one second to the next passes this hand: Across these miles; Into a moment neither of us could have foreseen; The melting of this instant into another, with a smile spread wide; Across your face.

Early morning hours make for better bedfellows; Alone in the dark; We’re all avoiding sleep, that beast that never comes; And should it, I’m not sure we’d want to see the result; For at these hours, even dreams betray true motivations; Our sole resolve: To build this one better than the last.

I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a single one that wasn’t better off without me; Now, that’s a hard thing to come to terms with, as a human being: Losing one’s self; Allowing the ego to drive the conversation; Without realization; And calling it living.

Now that I’ve run down that gravel road to where the rusted gate gave at the slightest touch; Where the targets were set at intervals, waiting for marksmen to arrive; And the bulbs were broken; There isn’t much more to do than fall back upon a conditioned response; They say that’s all you ever really have; Anyway; I wanted to be so much more, I wanted to be a bloody mess.

Romance is for children, and so I leave it to them; But reality is such an easy game to play; Every time I close my eyes a new world greets them on the other side; If I truly cared what you thought, I would never have put my pen to this page; A sentiment which has become rather meaningless; In the digital age.

With an empty head, I call to you seeking fulfillment; The angel of my dreams cast against the stark background of my reality; With an empty chest, I spill my guts upon your cellar door; The dull glow of flashing lights, diffracted; With empty hands, I cast my stone across this space and time; This rhythm fading as the sun rises above the horizon; With empty words, I call to you: With no expectation of return.

On this night I am longing for a love never known– As if a scent never carried, on a breeze never blown.

It’s a crazy sort of thing; And I don’t mean it in the cute, cuddly sort of way; Your insanity speaks to me; Your anger, your vice; Your expression and repression; The ferocity with which you loathe and love; And know: That you inspire me to new heights of creation, of dedication, of self-examination; Culminating in the realization that your demons whisper to my imagination.

Behind closed doors and shuttered windows; Within: Darkened corners, like spiderwebs; The pursuit of penultimate loneliness; Artistry; Indefinition; Perfect lines drawn for the purpose of blurring; Artificial perspective; The solitary end of changing minds; Too distracted to know the difference.

O, paisley, dainty, little thing, how your petals wilt at my foul breath; And you object; A crutch, beneath a broken wing; As a pillow turned, desiring the warmest side of my face; Is this beet red enough, my dear? Or have the cries of your mis-carried womb drowned out this putrid noise quite yet?

Southern drawl and northern babel; A new outlook stifled by past action, deprived of reason; The satirical smile of hypocrisy as the fourth wall is broken; Staring into her eyes projecting like headlights, on a county road, on a cloudy night; Seeking illumination in sources bereft of value; I won’t fall to my knees until you’ve cut my legs out from under me; I have grown beyond the need of your sentimentality; The failure of language to describe: A new outlook stifled by the hands around my throat.

Slithering through the waters of a flooded swamp; Drawing in dinner with a plastic lure; Sleeping on the sandy bank, surrounded by those yellow eyes; Always watching; Lugging around the weight of the world; Bound by braided cord; In a dry bag.

This quill is loathe of love letters and sickly sweet secretions; For any stooge can pen an end to a pre-determined set; Through epic trials the brilliant hone, minds fine as the razor’s edge; Cleaving off the block of clay, a droll lump to animate; In reflection the world spins slowly, along a gently wobbling axis; But sure as day, in every mind: The poles shift violently.

Some days ‘tis only flesh and bone; An’ some nights seems so much more: As the songbirds in the early morn, does this voice escape my breath; These words, my child ne'er borne, save from the heart in mine own chest; I long to leave this lonely avatar, for a love who would see me through; An’ put to rest this broken head for a heart so pure and true.

Sneaking is just a thing I used to do; Through the woods, over the dead leaves and property lines; Out the backdoor, through the garden to the gate; In the front door, keys palmed to muffle the sound; Through a bedroom window; Once or twice.

I have a hard time with emotions, if I’m being completely honest; I mean, given the circumstances, who wouldn’t? I try not to let it inhibit me, but it does, without doubt; I can go days without an empathetic moment; And then; All of a sudden it hits me, and I’m reduced to tears; And I’m left wanting; Thinking of the way I used to be: Too young, too hard-headed; To listen to a goddamn thing.

In these strange times we find; A brave new world of life and mind: The marriage of stoic rigidity to cabalistic simplicity.

In ways the learned may never know, a fool grows without bounds; Of all trades made, but never mastered; An apprentice forged from near disaster; And there will be due ignorance in those that tread this path; Yet without doubt, the time will come for those who’ve trained their grasp.

To fetch a heart, to fetch a soul, to fetch a forlorn mate; A dying bull writhing round, its closing bleed encroaching; The steady hand muffling cries of the soon departed; To fetch about; To fetch a breath: To fetch a final blow.

O’ them who wandered through darkest night and saw the light of day; Do we now hold in reverence as harbingers of lux: Dipped into the river Styx, an’ then the toll was paid; No longer hordes of mortal men stuck in the demon’s crux.

In the waters at the edge of Penu-el; Fell the man of ancient heritage; To the cherub of him who sought the word, and named himself delivered; For mothers of children cast into the stream, and the brothers of them who had fallen: Into three was he divided to return as one without the other.

By chance alone have I found this road, unpaved by human hands; A dusty trail beaten back by feet of game too hard to die; As an elder now do the pieces fit along the jagged edge; Until the final beat will this heart progress, for I am too dull to lie.

If only faith we felt, so quick and deep as betrayal; In synchronicity, would we find new meaning? Or perhaps this life would seem as a dream, unbroken; And wanderlust be damned; As yet another form of intoxication.

Now, look; Don’t want my meaning getting twisted; Now, see; It’s such an overwhelming thing: To be so very grateful, but lonely just the same; Now, hear this thing I’m saying: As you would the wind betwixt the trees; Now, feel this moment with me and put my mind at ease.

When I’m left alone to think about the places I’d rather be; There’s nothing I’d want more than to have you here with me; And to be honest: You could be anybody; But you’re not; And that’s why I said hello; And that’s why I sent a note; And that’s why I’m sitting here, feeling: Like a fool.

The older that I get, The easier things will be; That is to say; There will be no need to pretend; When we reach this conclusion, the truth of matters will become clear: I want you to be happy; And I’d do anything to make that happen; But I’m only me; You’re only; You.

To be honest, I think of it more often than I should; Some sort of strange entity entirely: Not you or me or we; But, us.

Unless there’s been some change: I’d be better off pretending that you’re dead to me; Or that you went away.

Through moments shared, we find ourselves growing closer or further from the other; A stone unturned, the private thoughts never shared aloud; Can truth be known in exchange, or are we destined to drift; Through moments shared, finding ourselves growing closer or further to another?

Do you remember the songs we used to sing; When we were young and careless, and waiting for our lives to begin? Was it innocence or ignorance of the cold burden of responsibility setting in that kept us smiling? Or is it something else entirely that colors the the delicate folds of recollection; In anything other than shades of grey?

It’s a horrible loneliness that sets in at night; To crack my fingers and clack my keys is all that I can do; To keep me from reaching out to people I know are better off not knowing a single thing about me; But, it’s nice sometimes to play pretend and find new friends: For however long they’ll stay.

When the answers aren’t so easy, then the vultures circle; Dripping down the mortal coil, young men and women in denial; The years will pass so quickly, with days just like molasses; As in darkness, the circle closes: High minded delusion, matures to ashes.

You there; Yeah: You; I’ve been waiting here alone, on the other side of this screen; I’ve been sleeping on my own, my mind’s been wandering; From here to there, and right now, I’m calling; So if you have to leave me hanging, then at the very least: Let me down easy.

I’m not sure it’s a thing one can put into words: That is, the disdain a mutant may feel; For himself, for his fellows, for his entire race; For though he may have been generated from the very same collective pool, there exists within him something alien, yet terrestrial; The shady underbelly of lottery; A gift given without receipt: At birth begins the slow journey of reconstruction; If only in striving for the hope to aspire to become that which others simply are.

At the time of my birth the human population on planet Earth was just over 5 billion people. By the time I had reached 12 years old, that number had risen to 6 billion. By the time I had graduated high school, that number had risen to 7 billion. There is no easy way to address an issue like overpopulation. At the very root of the problem is the fundamental right of every human being to procreate and prosper, as guaranteed to them by their own birth. Efforts such as eugenics, enforced contraception, and the withholding of medical technologies in the third world, while effective, violate this human right. In the end, it boils down to the individual: You and I, and every other human being on this planet, must bear the burden of improving the collective quality of life. The only means by which this can be attained is to find equilibrium with our environment. Our species, like any apex predator left unchecked, is beginning to see the negative impact of our actions: In the food chain, in water quality, in global temperature patterns, and within the hearts and minds of our own children. We seem to forget, that despite God given rights, we also carry the responsibility of controlling ourselves for the sake of others. This control may manifest in myriad ways, not the least of which being satiety. We have reached a point in our history at which medical advances have made the arbitrary extension of life available to the general public. It is understandable that every person is motivated to continue living as long as possible, but I ask a single favor, from one human to another: Really think about the consequences of your actions, now, and in the future. The collective quality of life (including that of every species within man’s dominion,) is objectively more important than the singular pursuit of immortality. If we allow our fear of death to rule all of our actions, we will destroy that which has been handed to us. Transcendence of these human shackles requires faith in a power greater than oneself. For you see, gravity is not a purely physical force, it influences existence in realms beyond both the third and fourth dimension. We are now aware that light itself can be warped by the gravitational pull of a massive object; time, on the other hand, requires a significantly more powerful well. We, as semi-conscious beings, often neglect the uncomfortable realization that minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years are constructs created and maintained by the human mind, for the purpose of regulation of ourselves and our fellows. It would do one well to remember that time, as we know it, is merely a standardized division of the cycles of the moon and sun. On a galactic scale, this model holds true, but stretched across the current projection of the known universe, it becomes obvious that our understanding of the passage of moments is woefully inept.

I see in the mirror dimly, my flesh wrinkled and aged; Like leather wet and left to hang, so does my mind show its years; As nihilism; As cynicism; As pessimism; Flaws present to the observer’s extraneous perspective.

It’s disarming– Seeing the progression of my own decay reflected back in the glassy eyes of others; Despite all the effort spent laying brick in the doorways of my own perception, it nearly brings me to tears: Observing the sadness of others on account of my situation.

As wraiths we live, a culture on the other side; Of right and wrong, of black and white, of everything and nothing at all; Mere spectres, shadows cast against the screen; Impersonal forms without meaning; Threatening only to the uninitiated; Children in the grand scheme.

Some nights I awaken within a dream and begin to question; As light against the veil, projections of my own psyche; In the people that I miss, and the ones that I can’t bear to lose; Some nights I wake up crying because it’s just so goddamn beautiful; One night I won’t wake up at all.

It’s not often that a human being stops to contemplate; The horror of being completely helpless; Like the Tower of Babel crushed under its own weight, we’ve found five hundred ways to say the very same thing; Nations rise as states crumble; Civilizations erected and demolished in the blink of an eye; It would do one well to remember: Time is subjective, gravity is a cosmic force, governing all matter, all energy and everything in between.

The perilous foray into another heart, interchange as yet unseen: Unique moments shared between individual beings; And for all the constructs, even outright lies; Two bodies shall remain so, united by a single mind; Until one day, one half can no longer return; And even the most eloquent words fail to describe: A tether unbound.

I never really thought it would come to this, I mean sure, I had an idea of how my life would turn out; I was well aware that loneliness was an inevitability; But, I guess I didn’t quite understand how far down the rabbit hole the depth of longing could go; I assumed, like everyone else, that one day everything would change.

Beneath the blue sky; A trick of light, captured and reflected, like the glistening of a sociopath’s smile; An entire planet so woefully alone; Empathy as a simulation; Existing for a singular purpose; Reaching out into the void: An entire species so hopelessly devoted to finding anything more than what we have become.

It consumes me: This productive dis-ease; Some call it passion, others, inspired work; I call it creating one man’s own canon; A revisionist history, where dreams meet reality: Falling asleep mid sentence.

Winter’s requiem: A solemn note, frozen solid; As the crow flies, straight through the eye of a needle; So do these gossamer threads hold up walls of stone.

An aphotic breeze crossed the great divide: New efforts shot into thin air; Under the moon nearly full, passed a single tear; In a moment; Between black and white.

Ownership, a rusty blade; Occam’s razor cuts both ways; In the trenches now, light trickles in; Illuminating slow breath; Waiting for sunrise: At rock bottom, we will meet.

On spring’s cusp, by the water’s edge, sand meets the sea foam once again; Darkness consumes the slow ebb; I court the night and play with her like clay in my hands; Striking a balance; I tread with death; Yet another heart caught in the undertow.

Sometimes, I wonder if you ever think of me; If you ever drink alone, and wish I was there to keep you company; Because God knows we’re both getting older, and more stubborn by the day; And well, I sure as hell am not happy sleeping alone every night; But I won’t pretend to believe that your bed is ever empty; I will never be your fool; Nor will I play the Hades to your Persephone; For though I may lament low hanging fruit, I refuse to waste my effort on that which cannot be attained.

If there were more for man to do, would he even understand? The goal of life, a golden egg, lain and naught for human hands; So fit to rule, we find the eyes devoid of life, a tarnished soul; And grimly now, the man in grey, juggling skulls on glowing coals.

I close my eyes and see within: A globe of blue and speckled green; Drenched in satin, crimson hue: In droplets, as rose petals, pooled upon: An obsidian foundation.

Weary though the days may be, on into nights of deprivation; Through holes in rubber these soles will bleed, raked once o'er an’ under an’ through; Twisted like pretzels, held together by glue.

There were nights: Alone; Times through which you will never pass; During whence my clamour was lowered to a moderate whimper, and your eyes more oily than even the stone could glisten; Then, as lucidity began to set in, and resolution, sharpen; Vile moments emerged from the clockwork of gods; Passion encased within each and every one; Transmuted and extinguished, under it’s own cold, dead weight; The conductor, a mere firing of neuron; Freshly dead in a grave I sure as hell didn’t dig! Perchance revived, simulated, emulated, or purged at the whim of more enlightened men?

Some nations rise as civilizations fall; The Tower of Babel crushed under its own weight; Five hundred ways to say the very same thing; Doesn’t it beg the question: what’s really in a name? If Ra watched from the pinnacle of the Old Kingdom, how many faces could he really see? And if Zeus rained down thunder and lightning upon the people, can it really be said that he ruled the hand of man? And if Isaac, son of Abraham, husband of Rebekah, mother of Israel, had not forsaken Esau, would the book even be worth a second glance?

Black coffee; Black cloth; Ashes to ashes, upon the wings of a moth; If to each was given the very same breadth, then why am I now the only one left?

The older that I get, the easier it is to see: Wherever I lay my head is where you lay with me.

I’d be lying if I said that there were nights I did not regret the last words shared, but it comforts me to know that we are both better off, in spite of pain and misplaced wrath; The lover scorned, now the lover past; Drink with me from this cup of tears; The last words shared, forgotten, over these long years.

Stains and scars; A lifetime lived in the dark; These four walls holding me up, holding me in; The shutter closed; Another smile captured and kept for the stores, of a lonely heart; Projections; Upon the smokescreen, dissipating; Molecules unbound and recycled: Again and again.

I will never get married, I will never have kids, I will never find a companion, and I won’t have many friends; I’ll be a bit unhappy, But lie most of the time; I guess that’s just what life is like when you learn to cross the line; I’ll always be a stranger stuck in an unknown land; I’ll often be dishonest in matters signed by hand; I’ll be all around you and it won’t be very pretty, but if you know for what you’re looking, then it won’t be quite so shitty.

The very nature of the passion I feel is ephemeral, fleeting; A translucent longing; Like watching a silhouette through frosted glass; Never satisfied by a single being, only those aspects of every person for which I have ever felt affection; What a sick interpretation of romance this must be; For as soon as I admit to myself the one that I adore, the desire has already passed.

I am already dead; And in this knowledge, I find my peace: This is, without a shred of doubt, the only truth I will ever know; The mere presence of my perception, being observed by my own ego, on a linear timeline is all the evidence I will ever need.

It’s easy to romanticize, to fantasize, to intimate; But to demonstrate; To be the one out on that limb, testing; Spitting into the source, just to see if electricity flows upstream; Oh; Now that’s a different story; Because, you see: It’s easy to romanticize, to fantasize, to intimate; Until the details become too intimate…

In the chieftain’s arsenal, quivered, the tribal chant: Ownership of resource amounts to the very ownership of man; Dominion awarded by violence is harsh as a lone rifle’s crack; To the victor goes the spoils, upon the people’s backs.

Love is not achievement; Nor potent ejaculation; It is not the passion on another’s lips; Nor the searing gaze from a seductive mate; It is the soft embrace of a bedsheet, on a cool autumn evening; Shedding tears, alone, into a pillow; Hoping that one day someday will be tomorrow.

Finding friendly words to say: Conversation and small talk; You never know just what you have, until you know just what you’ve lost; There were days I broke my back by standing up too tall; And nights alone in contemplation of the coming fall.

The settler’s rite: “As slaves we pined!” A land worked o'er, and under the ground; These men made callous o'er a fertile plot; “‘Twas not our fault!” Exclaimed as chaff; Like valleys o'errun by the sierra’s flood: Bellies full of rotgut; Pockets lined with lead; The best dogs run rampant, without masters left to heed; Throngs of men hardly differ, if only in taunt and tease.

There was a moment, when it hit me; The sheer form that I had become; Neither demon, nor monster; Neither hero, nor liege; I had simply come to be, like every other living thing: An organism; A brand new colony; And mind was granted its domain, and body allowed its sovereign right, and I was no longer two parts; I was no longer incomplete; For to live without as within, and above as below, granted me democracy.

Street sweepers followed by garbage trucks; Spick and span.

We were never chosen, and yet, like cracks in the cement, sprouted in the interim; In the moments, between moments; Where time ceases to exist; Even drawing a single breath becomes an epic occasion; A relative slowing of the heart’s beat, reverberating through fingertips; Coursing back through and into the engine of existence; The thoracic cavity; Oxygenated and re-distributed, entirely un-aided, and yet completely dependant upon mind evolved from body.