passion is my reason
passion is my excuse
passion is my triumph
passion is my downfall
because when you see ME with it
when you see ‘US’ with it
you call it something different
Advice
advice on love
don’t!
advice on feel
touch
advice on hearing
shhh
advice on seeing
look
advice on living
laugh
advice on dying
live
advice on fear
face
advice on tolerance
mirror
advice on creativity
imagine
advice on faith
leap
advice on passion
revel
advice on pain
embrace
advice on pleasure
moderation
advice on vices
subtract
advice on mind
change
advice on love
Do!
If you searching for signs to see that God is just like you
if you wanna see God smile
visit California
if you don’t think God cries too
go to Portland
if you wanna see God blow out candles
travel to Oklahoma
if you wanna know when God feels blase
head to Montana
if you question if there’s any more to life
leave north Dakota
if you don’t believe God holds grudges
become friends with an Alaskans
and if you don’t believe God can be indecisive
live in Nebraska
and after you do all this, you may just go to a mirror and see,
God in you
or even more audaciously,
god is You
because You are in God’s image
You and God are one
though logic separates you
the spirit joins you
although you can’t see the spirit
you feel its effect
just like God
but I say, you can see God
stop searching, and Look
but maybe this is why self-reflection is so hard a thing to do, and grasp
because you’ve been taught that you can’t look God in the eyes
and if you were finally able,
who would you admit this discovery to?
so like they say, God is all around you
and if you so happen to find God
keep what you find to yourself
history reflects that lesson
Hamster Wheel
he walks up and down stairs
they walk round and round the track
he paces back and forth
they sweat their bodies to the limits, working out their sanity
he sits still, staring at nothing out into the distance
the seasons change
the sun comes and goes
the herds come and go
and every day it looks just like this
like a hamster running in place
trying to stay active
because if he stops
if he stops…
well he can’t think about that
and neither can they
neither can we
neither can I
although I’m aware that all they are doing
all we are doing
all I am doing
is running in circles
until my cage door opens
I may not die in this cage
I hope not
but others will
making their very bed
is a fateful metaphor
the wheel will stop
the wheel is their battery
but for now
the hamster wheel must move
because to stop…
Foster Child
If all you do is punish me
how can you ever see
as anything other
than a child
I never asked to live here
you sent for me
making every condition I lived in untenable
so I had no choice but to abide
you waited for me with open arms
until all other eyes turned away
and the first chance you got
I was reminded that this wasn’t my home
although you clothed and fed me
with just enough to differentiate from pet
never forgetting to remind me of the nuisance my being was
and you being the sole compassionate parent willing to take me in
you didn’t care that I stuck out like a sore thumb
as long as that check came
and I was held to standards unreasonable per my circumstance
being reminded that anything less than perfect made me less than person
but I was worth the stress, as long as that check came
and with every talent I had, and skill I crafted
you stole and claimed for yourself, enriching your life off my back
and still, you got your check and held me in check
as I write this, reminded of my life as a foster child
and also the history of my people in America
I kind of lost track of which I was referring to
both sound so eerily similar…
how can my upbringing
mirror my ancestors’ enslavement
but times have changed,
so be happy?
but all I’ve inherited is a modern struggle
that mirrors the pain of faces names and religions that mean nothing to me
because I can’t place them
although without them, there is no me
split from their parents
split from mine
taken from their kids
taken from mine
and the cycle repeats…
how can I be pressured with the responsibility of breaking it!?!
what kind of family is this
yet you wonder why my home is broken
I either came from a broken home
or America, you broke!
The 13th Illusion
Emancipation is just etiquette,
it armed the hatred
swarmed more harm for the hated
outdoing the atrocities since the first slave ships
all in the making of a new way of legal slaves-
by mass incarceration
Proclamation is just rhetoric,
a political occupation
assented with documentation
ink being the sole band-aid used by a conglomeration
hiding the ever-existing wound bearing elephants and skeletons,
in the propelling of “Thee” Dominant Nation