Collective Pain

Is the world beautiful or disfigured?

This depends on the color of your skin

What does your environment look like?

It is contingent on the location your in

Of your body and the name of your country

What are your options, what are your possibilities?

Moreover, the socio-economic class that you fill?

1200 billionaires and 20 million millionaires

Own most of the world, most of the land and water

For how long can we play the role of victim?

In the theatre of suffering and inequality

Our consent sewn into our brows by coercion

Corporations prop up politicians, which just come and go

The state does not need shadows to do its dirt

The wicked are applauded for their violence  

Reading the capitalists explain, why the system is dysfunctional

They speak of spending exhaustion, talking about wealthiest

Who are tired of buying and purchasing what they never need

How can they tell us that the trickle down works?

When so many suffer from inequality and poverty

Contradictions built into the foundation

Every time we flush the toilet, filled with drinking water

We think of the people who walk for miles to dirty wells

What connects us, other then our collective suffering

This pressure on us, is not the kind that makes pearls

But the type, that crushes our minds and bodies to a pulp

Who will pull the sled filled with revolutionary dreams?

Whose back is strong from turning the wheel of pain?

Fast Food Mystics

Clenching spiral talismans in an rutted staggered gait

Our mantras disregard the third eyes as somehow deficient

Whereas spreading the scent of smoking sage into the wind

Whilst nudity resembles naught to eunuchs and mystics

What transiting modish hollowness requires rediscovering?

Crumpled within the greasy fast food wrappers of absurdity

Discarded alongside the audacity of someday and someway

Grasping Chickens

What is it that you long to ruminate on?

Along the littered shantytowns of swaying occasions

Somewhere between the sea’s glass and forest’s grass
Walk the downtrodden, with slow and patient footsteps

Which erode the soil with rebellion and revolution

How many chickens are you attempting to grasp?

In your outstretched arms, dangling with rusty shackles?

It was my father, who showed me how to enthrall and

Fascinate chickens, with a slowly drawn straight line in the ground
Drawing a line in the dirt, does more then hypnotize chickens

So many of us, can’t acknowledge the disorientation

All these meritocracies and choices flash under dim bulbs

Where do you imagine smelling honeyed blossoms?

When the rest of us, dry heave from the stench of despair
Why do you not hear the teeming billions who scream for life? 

These isolated slanted silhouettes cast a shattered shadow

On the backlit walls of fixated, however yearning, ignorance

Our puppeteers speak always of untangling strings
The best they offer, is a nostalgic return to the beginning  

While the puppets themselves, dream of new freedoms

Hole

We are warped and twisted like cheap plastics

Alien, to much more then our labor, as predicted

We are not sure whom, or where we are anymore

Lost, except to the putrid taste of the beast’s entrails

Enwrapping us in hypnotic, sticky strangulation

Even time, is, indebted, to someone

We are increasingly tangled in the psychosis of perplexity

All the work and time, we spend learning to lie and fly

While we have always been, able to soar, honestly

Even with the variations of these, deformed wings of poverty

So many years spent, fueling ourselves with

The wrath and fury of injustice

The grind of daily oppression and inequality

Our duty supersedes the future we tread lightly on

Our hearts begins to feel, as a crumbling hole

We are not from the past, but somewhere else

While we attempt to grapple with the mundane existence

Of existing in a delusional reality occupied with artifices

Of which, as hard as we try, we feel ourselves dissolving into

No one walks the deer’s path, but the mislaid and forlorn

While the marked trail is laden

With moral and religious righteousness

Distorted Selves

Cannibal's Web

Who is to say, we would know your face anymore anyway

If we passed each other on the smoking streets,

Which continually burn as Nigerian oil wells do

Or that you would be fare for the famished

Stares of those cannibals on the roadside

Who eat their own, who consume, like lunatics

In the tangled bushes with wild eyes under the moon

Awash with the graceful silken strands

Of the spider’s web and struggling next meal

Self-portrait

The Lacrimation of Pigeons

The pigeons who flutter every

Morning on the fire escape

Act as if they know nothing

About sculpture and form

Pretend to be interested in

Only preening and pecking

Yet, they coo the secrets

To finding your way home

Which is never straight as the

Crow flies, or the wobbly linear

Descent of drops of wasted lacrimation 

The Tiger and the Hare

We all exist, as we are cornered

Chained together in a tiny room

With no windows or doors

Facing off, antagonistically

As we don't have any control

Over whom we associate with

Acting if our relationships

Are battles to the death

Instead of connections of vivacity

Everybody thinks you have to

Gird your loins against all

Let no one into your citadel

Tearing apart anyone who

Knows your secret places

The coiling paths, the vague corridors

The creaking and shuddering

Inner doors, so embarrassingly

Opened, in acts of vulnerability

The violence of our fangs

And the spattered blood of others

Covering the walls of our limitations

We are diluted, by the wretchedness

Of our delusions and mistakes

Every choice we make, is real

The ripple of the skipping stone

Echoes beyond the moments

We convince ourselves we steal

Our hearts are not prisons

Our loves are not wardens

Our friendships are not battles

Our bonds are not fetters

We will not fight for

The amusements of the elite

If you want to see us rip 

Each other to shreds

Do what you may

We outstretch our necks

Together, but we will not 

Kill each other for you

Emerge

Despite my urgency

The smell of everything

Is in our nostrils

We always
Regardless of time

Miss the moments of joy

Amid puzzling over our plight

Always, we are powerless, except

To watch the pyre of flame

Lick everything away

As we watch it all
Turn into ashes
With patience, we
Wait for the phoenix
And you to emerge

The Arms of Strangers

Everywhere and everytime

My limbs grasp for you

So full of tenderness and desire

Are my lithe and lean arms

In proud recognition of who

You always have been and

Always will be someday

Maybe you can make me understand

Finally know, myself, as a man

Hide away quietly your gloom

However, I know of many things

The strong traces of your body

The flushed tinge of your loving

The blurred edges of your vision

The delicate width of your optimism

Let us burden together please?

Hey woman, beautiful woman

Have I ever told you that

I believe in forever, always?

Even though my mouth

Is rented, and indebted

My arms are always free
To search for you

Even when I dream

Stroll with me, through the blocks

Filled with dust, anxiety and plastic

And at least, we will never be

Enemies, when we speak

Together, wordlessly 

Who says I must lose before 

I find, but your arms?
Who says we need all the
Arms of strangers?

Somewhere River

When we are in the midst of the river,

I gather the flowers near my chest.

Which is naked and drips with cool waters.

But the moon makes them bloom like the lotus.

I give you my lilies

because they are beautiful,

And you always hold my hand.

In the middle of the rushing stream.

In the brook, time moves in every direction.

The universe expanding above our heads.

Feel the current between our toes.

Every river, holds my love somewhere.

A Million Poems

I wish I could write a poem

That made everyone want

To create something

A poem so easy to remember 

That you never forgot it

That would offer comfort to

Those who grieve from loss

That would heal the heartbreak

Moreover, take away the tears and ache

A poem that made you like poetry

Burn inside, to write your own poem

I wish I had the words to describe

The possible futures, instead of the past

A poem that would last, not simply disappear

A poem, which would communicate all

The terrible suffering of poor peoples

I wish I could write a poem

That would make the whole world weep

Shudder with wracks of sadness and

Hug each other in long eloquent hugs

That could capture and seize

All the wounds we carry forward

Urging us to heal and move onward

I wish I had more courage to write

For all of you, and not always me

To see past the trees into the forest

I wish I had the strength to write

To overcome, all of our shame, to

Enunciate our self-humiliation

That which paralyzes rebels

I wish I could write a poem

To apologize to mother Earth

Also, share her agony with us

A poem that finds you in your desolation

Finds you in addiction, during self-mutilation

Finds you when you give up on everything

I wish I could find the essence

Of our humanity so we could see it

In ourselves, and in everyone else

I wish I could write about

The optimism of all us, even in

The reality of life’s shit and piss

I wish I could write a poem

That aroused your brain and 

Made the whole world orgasm

That found someone somewhere

Needing human touch, needing a kiss

Craving contact, this poem would

Rub the shoulders of your back

I wish I could write a poem

Filled with joy and celebration

That could make the world smile

A poem worth billions of dollars

So, that I could fund the movements

A poem that took away all the debts

I wish I could put words together in a way

That would call out your name

In the moment of despondency and terror

or simply when you missed someone

I wish I could write a poem

That repaired all the bridges we burned

Telling us to hold each other closer

A poem that made the rich quake

Speaking to power, confronting authority

A poem that raised goose bumps on

The arms of the working multitudes

That could explain freedom and alienation

Utopias and permanent revolution

A poem that would raise class-consciousness

That was not too dogmatic and condescending

I wish I could write a poem that was

So beautiful people would love themselves

A poem so generous and sympathetic

That we stopped being greedy and selfish

So horrifying, we saw war for what is was

A poem that told of the violence

Towards women, children, and Queer folks

I wish I had the words to tell you I loved you

To tell you that we can make it all better

I wish I could write a poem

That meant something to someone

Forgiving someone of something

This poem would have the power

To destroy everything and to create everything

I wish I could write a poem that would

Crush everything and let go of everything

A poem that described to each other the

Lives of bacteria, viruses, and the smallest life

A poem that the whales and dolphins liked

Something that the coral reefs did not hate

A poem that made the rains ponder falling up

Or the volcano to implode, the tornado not to spin

I wish I could write a poem that showed

That the emperor was naked

A poem that grew the trees tall and wide again

About the past, future, and present at the same time

A poem that made the

Ants and bees stop their toil for a moment

That awoke the cicadas and locusts all at once

I wish I could write a poem that

Exposed and put the army of shadows to rest

A poem that illuminated the shadow armies of death

That taught the map of the world

And the names of us all to each other 

Every town, every city, every person

A poem that made no statement 

That came after, end with a question mark?

I wish I could write a poem

That touched you somewhere, someplace

Enough to give it to someone else

What is a poem that cannot do of one these things?

If one poem cannot do all these things

I must write a million poems

Leopard Again

Peering into scents

Gossamer wisps 

Snapping in the wind

Encircling each other

Pirouetting in the flicker

These contaminants

Made me too wolfish

I will always catch you

When you are weak

I will always howl

At the moon’s light

Even when 

I become a 

Leopard again

Walking Sticks

Our subconscious bristles of sabotage, ankles deep in the tar pits

This media detritus smothering us terribly, as this humidity does

Cultural hypnosis, everywhere we look, on the loci, we lose focus

Never touch the subway pole, cause its covered in mania and regret

Hand sanitizer; don’t ever, take the crazy off our hands, so stop smearing it

All these, drugged eyes, peering past us, into a faraway-faux-land-in-the-background

Been to every crevice in our minds, every new advance, a new way to waste time

Satisfied, with a lick of the affluence, at least we can smell the cornucopia

The road seldom traveled, is filled with hitchhikers, with walking sticks

Food prices skyrocketing, trying to water our optimism with drool

Why build the passages, traveled by only the mute fools of conceit

Clasped in the Paw of a Future Rat

I remember that I have

always been good at finding these

Large crowds, which march

with banner and hands aloft

I always find life in the chants

Defiance was my first toy

Lately, everything is poison,

which I find leaves little to desire

Everything tastes

like this 

quiet and silent death

My pillow is a ventriloquist

for almost dead people

Or at least an evil fuck

What about the living things,

which can’t find me

within this concrete and steel?

I stand, as usual,

on the other side of the valley,

just out of earshot of my totem

Where I am one of the

self-appointed rangers

of the urban sprawl

Lean on the illusionary walls

My tool belt is,

well worn and faded

With dry spatter

of everyone's blood

While feeling this weariness

of assisting in the erection 

of these complex conduits

Among the diligence

of maintenance of the foundation

I found our future

clasped in the paws of

the city rats

Which, when I unrolled,

each said, nothing memorable

Only a time capsuled narcissism

of egotistical nostalgia

Each had a detailed picture

drawn of a 

empty face

With the underlined word

"ME"

scrawled in pencil underneath

When driving pillars

for the next corridor

I met a future rat

Who had a encrypted note

in his paw that I 

can't read, but at least

I know in the future

There are still rats

who use the channels

We built by our hands