Farrel

Let the poorest of the beggars

receive the least gold,

but the best Karma.

May their palms stay hard and creased,

while their hearts know altruism and compassion.

Bleed through your votes,

so you can say you gave something to the future.

Shout your morals through media,

never fearing to stand alone.

Debate method and reason

with activism and awareness,

because the sinister feed on your silence.

Represent yourself as a member of humanity.

Do not settle for an unequal voice

compared the clandestine.

Embrace knowledge as your weapon

and perseverance as your deity, and

strike down the manipulators of freedom.

Sew my palms together 

so I’m always praying.

Never doubt the sincerity.

Tattoo my sins

on the outside of my hands,

that way everyone will know why I pray.

More importantly,

tattoo my pain on my face.

When you judge my sins

you can balance them against my anguish.

Paint pictures of people’s trespasses on my back

where betrayal belongs, but so that it will wash away 

in the sweat of tribulations.

Cut my shaft

for every heart I break,

let the number of cuts measure

the integrity of manhood.

In contrast, bless my soul

for every fissure in my heart.

When I die, my body

will tell my life’s story.

I pray for an honorable story.

Sometimes,

I think of quitting school

and running off to new place.

Somewhere

I can hide from love.

A place where happiness 

is never interrupted,

sadness always goes away,

and hearts never break.

I want to find that place.

Wisdom and Misery

are written on two sides

of the same leaf, from the oldest tree.

.

Sew my roots into the soil

of inadequacy. Listless hope

fills my veins. Breathing

with desire has become arduous.

.

Take it all away

on jaded wings. Bring lifeless

contempt to my days.

.

Satisfaction is the death of desire,

but satisfaction is a drop of water

compared to the tsunami that is happiness.

I would hold your hand

on the middle of a stone bridge,

over a frozen river,

while the snow falls

at the pace of a baby’s crawl.

.

The side walls are caramelized in ice,

like frosted candy bars. Snow delicately

covers everything in sight.

.

We would gaze into the winter twilight,

completely in love with the breath taking scene,

as well as each other.

.

Your smile couldn’t be measured,

and your joy wouldn’t fit in my arms,

but I wrap them around you anyway.

.

Just one kiss would keep me warm.

I could stand on that bridge until

we froze together into a living sculpture

of true love.

.

Eventually,

we would skip away through the snow.

The world would be our adventure to have, together.

.

Well, in another life of course.

In a hail of gun fire,

on a pristine, marble, checkered field of war.

He died for his country, his deity, and

his fellow play pieces. 

With the push of a finger 

the round faceless head

of his cheap plastic body

cracked on the unforgiving marble board.

He stood, an unknowing sacrifice, 

for strategy, position, and fuel for conflict.

Another proud pawn takes his place,

Marching toward an identical enemy. 

All fodder in a conflict that never ends.

The game is simply reset

by ever manipulating hands. 

What happens when you realize

your government can’t be trusted?

When everything you are told is a lie,

when in fact they’ve stop lying…

because you’ll make up your own lies,

because you’re too afraid to face the truth.

What do you do when you realize

that everything you believe is happening

is only a thin veil over reality

too terrifying to speak of?

Something ten times more perverse than

church officials molesting little boys.

Something more unbelievable than school shootings.

What do you do when your enemies

are the people who feed you, who protect you, who monitor you?

What will you do when you realize the technology used by authorities

is steadily building fortress around you?

A fortress, that is not meant to keep others out, but to keep you in.

A 24 hour surveillance, not of your criminal activity,

but of your understanding of the environment around you.

What will you do when the only jobs

are service jobs? When education

becomes an unaffordable luxury.

When buying a home becomes an impossible dream.

When taxes become so heavy you can’t breath,

but only a small percentage collected goes toward civil needs.

When all of our funds are strengthening our military

despite the fact we’re not under attack.

What will you do when you become aware

that thousands of American lives have sacrificed,

not for our safety, but to create a perpetual state

of financial profit for an elite group?

What will you do when you realize

you’re being legally enslaved?

What will happen

when it becomes clear that

nothing I’m suggesting is hypothetical?

War.

It was first bought in 1847, by Ardal Shean. For he and his wife Erin, it was their coffee table, dinner table, desk, and dresser. Great Grand Dad kept it the center piece of his well furnished country home until he died. The drab, beaten leather box, which he grew up with, stored the memory of his father’s hardship. Grandma Phipher used the worn old box as a toy bin. It held all the favorite toys; the wooden horse, the yoyo, the Raggedy Ann Doll, and the hand made race car. After Grandma Phipher’s kids had grown, the chest spent fifteen years in the ground holding Hexx, the families beloved and lucky dog. Aunt Shirley decided to dig it up one year; “too much history to let it rot in the ground”. Couldn’t say whether it was history or the family heirlooms said to be inside. Only Aunt Shirley knows that. It broke in my room when I was a little girl, two straps finally snapped. The chest never closed right after. It used to hold all my dollies, now it sits in the attic. All the family history I could scrap up sits inside. But I don’t think the papers, pictures, and jewelry are half as important as what their in. The kids see it when we look at pictures from time to time. One day they will be bound by it’s leather as well, it has a way of sticking around.

Military marching creates

black lines in motion.

Collecting, cradling, and delivering.

Perfect order and precision

is carried out with communal intention.

Never questioning how nature could taste so sweet.

One bead of salty water at a time

is carried away from the puddle between my feet.

There’s no question that the

only thing on my mind 

more than you

is my rifle.

1. They exist.

2. Jail is to imprison your body.

3. Uniforms equal comradery.

4. Justice is a job.

5. Protection is for everyone.

6. Fear and Anger are expressed differently

7. Myths are really Myths

How many times

can you look at death

before you fall in love?

You never had to see me cry.

You never had to watch my soul leave my body

as I unraveled into an into an incoherent wailing shell of a man.

.

I think…

If I was as tangible as he was,

and you had to witness the betrayal in my face,

.

maybe you would have remembered how much you loved me.