StoriesThatTheDeadCanTell.

One day…
We will lie six feet beneath the earth
And wonder where all the time went.
When our skeletons waltz with earthquakes
And bathe in nothing but raindrops
That tap dance across our ribs like xylophones.
And the clothes we were buried in
Have rotted away with our designer flesh.
Stripped to bare bones
No longer able to hide
Behind the tags on our shirts,
The confidence in our walk,
Or the thickness of our skin.
We are vulnerable.

The hollows of our eyes
Lie empty so we can no longer see the sun set
Or feel skin beneath our fingertips
Or smell the grass cut because we rest beneath them.
Day and night bear no differences
As we lie in our tombs
With nothing but shadows for company.

So I ask them why they put the dead in coffins
When we hated being boxed in our whole lives.
And the weight of the world
Presses down on our bones
With all the burdens of a guilty conscience.
Cracking bare knuckles and creaking joints
Knocking on the lids of our caskets
Until we’re only left with our spines
Being used as rulers to see if we measured up
To who we could have been.

And we can only pray that enough people cried
When they lowered us into our graves
To make us feel valuable.
And wonder if the dead can feel
The caress of fingertips on their tombstones,
The moisture of a teardrop
Watering the soil above them,
Or the weight of a wreath of flowers.

And wonder if those we left behind
Will forgive us for leaving.

The heart we prided ourselves on following
No longer beats between our ribs.
Nor can we stomach what we’re left with.
And the hands of time
Are the only digits we can still hold on to
As we count down eternity.

While the sand spills
From the gaps in between our bones,
We will remember our fear of death and laugh.
The chattering of our skulls
Creating the background music
For all the stories that we still have to tell.
While our flesh gives life to those who feed on it.
And life grows from death
As roots creep from our veins
And our blood waters their seeds.

I will lie there…
Past thunderclouds and clear skies.
I will remind you that, after you die
We will all laugh and trade jokes
About how afraid we were of dying.
But then we will know better.

IKeepMyHandsInMyPockets

Some people ask why I keep my hands in my pockets…
That’s what you do with change.

I store my good intentions in them like piggy banks
Until I hear them jingle when I walk
And state them with every step.
Afraid to spend an extra moment
Letting time slip through my fingers
Like liquid salvation slowly dripping in an IV.

I hold change.
Treating it the same as a pocketful of sunshine
When they can’t see it for themselves.
So I would offer you some…
But I’m scared you might not see it the same way I do.
Because we’re already blind to the truth
And only real eyes can realize that their eyes can be lied to.

So I keep my hands to myself
So I couldn’t hold a grudge

Clenched into strained fists
So I wouldn’t be able to hold something against you
When these bare knuckles are already brawling
With the monsters inside of me so I could find peace.

See, I’ve done enough with these hands that I’d come to regret.
So I handcuffed myself with thread
Hoping to weave a story with a happy ending.
But my scissor-hands keep cutting
At the fabric of my existence
Until I discover loopholes to find happiness in.
The way smiles collect at the bottom of wishing wells
And laughter in the air
Dancing with the offspring of naked dandelions
Stripped by the breaths of daydreamers.

See my fingers tend to have minds of their own
And they open up the way petals do
So you can see my palms looking up at the sky
Turning your change into change…
From coins into actions
Holding wholes like a case of stigmata
Just to show you that you are worthy of a sacrifice.

So I keep my hands in my pockets
And when I finally take them out
I’ll be able to offer you a better tomorrow.

TheRevolutionWillNotBeTelevised

The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no infomercial for salvation, available with the scan of a MasterCard. And you can’t cheat your way to the top, hiding tricks up your sleeves if you’ve mastered cards. Poker face set, hiding behind the facade of a mask. Hiding emotions through molded features because behind that second skin…you’re worried.

Because the revolution will not be televised.
No starter gun for the rage, and no signal for the riots. No redemption up for auction on programs programmed to give you the best bang for your buck as you bid on bullshit they force-feed you and shovel into your face like farmhands.

The revolution will not be televised.
All the media does is tell us lies that ride over broadbands and wireless networks. SOS’s surfing over airwaves like angels with no sense of direction just looking for emancipation, dodging kamikaze radio signals packed with propaganda. And there’s nothing we can do but wait.

Because the revolution will not be televised.

Here'sALetterToSociety,ISeeYouPassingMe

A few bad decisions and here I am.

Dropping out of school.
That fall out with my family.
Losing my job.
Those few extra drinks a week.
Or that one time curiosity got the best of me and soon it wasn’t a one-time thing anymore. I was addicted. Disposing of dollars like I had a surplus.
Trying to pull my way out of my own regrets, but just digging myself deeper. And deeper.

All because I wanted to forget.
Drowning my troubles at the bottom of alcohol bottles and medical syringes, but my problems are licensed scuba divers swimming in the wreckage of my Titanic dreams. So I did.
And I forgot. Everything.
And I lost…everything.

But the nights on the cold pavement can’t compare to your cold shoulders, but that’s the only form of contact I’m familiar with these days so I’ll take it. And the voices of my friends, my family…or even strangers; I miss you. Because the only sound I can rely on hearing now is my stomach growling like there were monsters in my ribcage.

Society…you’ve done more to keep me here than I ever could on my own. Because I can’t learn from my mistakes if you won’t let me learn to begin with.
Now my hope for change lies in the change at the bottom of empty coffee cups as my hands shake. Numb from wind that attacks my skin and veins like the contempt you exude when you walk by. I can feel it.
I’m used to the silence so you don’t have to say anything. But when you do…

You tell me “Get a job!”
But it doesn’t work like that.
Now ask yourself this…would you hire me?
Would you look past the filthy clothes a kind stranger gave to me. Or the dirt I can’t help but collect like pity from your eyes when you pass by me. Or the grandeur of the home I make in cardboard boxes, because you’ve already boxed me in…so it only seems fitting that I stay there. Or the sign in my hands…when you know I’d rather have food there instead because you can finance wars but you can’t spare a dollar for me.
So I ask you again…would you hire me?
Would you do anything? Or would you just ignore me?
Like you always do.

Salvation'sInTheCollectionBasket

I was born and raised a Catholic.
Brought up by an open-minded mom and a dad who displayed pious devotion to his faith, I thought I had the path to heaven paved for me.
But I’ve since learned that things hardly turn out the way they’re supposed to.
Because long gone are the days where I treated life as a game and the bible as the manual, trying to use its passages as passages to reach the kingdom. Trying to escape but I’m tired of it…I’m sick and tired of fools using Jesus as excuses for their ignorance.

So I wrote this poem, ballpoint to the point of breaking making indents on the cursed snake’s skin. With a pen I carved from the rib of Adam filled with the mistakes and regrets of the first lady…so I buried the forbidden fruit in the compost heap.

The religion’s latest dropout, but I’m finding my own way to get back in his good graces. But constantly I’m fighting the urge to fight with angels holding fiery swords and kick down the gates into paradise. But I can’t believe in it anymore..

Because if earth is hell, and hell is worse…
then everybody escaped to heaven and heaven was gentrified first.
So what if heaven had a ghetto?
Pearly gated communities with saints as security
So they trade their halos for wedding rings and offspring too naïve to listen to their parents when they tell them not to look down on the less fortunate that they donate their faith to every Sunday
While the rest live in thunderclouds
Drifting in public transit as they ride rays of light from state to state with tokens
And using condensation as train stations, commuting from rain drops to snowflakes
Taking express routes in the lightning.
Noses deep in hymn books, wearing frames that hold their vision like stained glass scenes in chapels praying that their prayers make the long journey across the street.
But as soon as they leave, they’re lining up down the block at the corner store holding food stamps for salvation but sincerity is long sold out.
Living off welfare, but they still don’t fare well, so they bid their farewells because love don’t live here.
Walking to perpetual Sunday school to witness devils doing drivebys and guardian angels duck and their wings shrivel in fear like they saw a deep fryer and they’re in lineups, trying to point out the kingpin but Satan’s in the shadows, smirk on his face laughing at how naïve we are..

Because we expect freedom and happiness, and clouds made of marshmallows and roads paved with gold, but what if nothing changes? What if the change we refuse to put in the donation basket that we keep telling ourselves we need is worth just as much as a prayer and a good deed, just tax deductible.
What if heaven had a ghetto and their system’s just as messed up as it is here and there’s nothing we can do about it? No programs, no donations, no change.
But even if that was the case…I’m leaving change and my own version of salvation in the collection basket..hoping you do the same.

ConcreteJungle

As I step from hardwood floors to concrete pavement, I enter a jungle that is just as wild as the Amazon and even more dangerous, if not for my body, then for my soul and my sanity. I’ve been captured and placed inside a vessel that keeps me chained to the physical. I keep trying to break free…
But I’m bound behind these bars…like cages. So I turn metal into words and turn these bars into bars to release me from this box I’m trapped in.

An endless cycle of consequences born of Pandora’s box when humanity becomes masochistic in it’s predictability. Because life is nothing but a box and I’m tired of being boxed in, trying to think outside the box but all that happens is I get put inside a box six feet under for trying to break the cycle. I’ve spent countless hours in front of a box…TV, watching shows that taught me life lessons so I wouldn’t be square connected, to my Xbox 360, which lies beside a shoebox filled with memories of past relationships I call my ex-box. And I’ve spent hours watching a box on Youtube inside of another box I see as my monitor inside of a box I recognize as my bedroom, but these boxes are almost never the same when it gets twisted around like Rubik’s cubes. I step outside the box I call my house and walk down the street on a sidewalk composed of boxes made of concrete watching metal boxes whiz past me. As soon as I get to school I’m stuck doing work and listening to lectures in a box…classroom, in hopes that I can graduate to an institution of higher learning to learn in a bigger box known as lectures halls. All with the goal of getting a diploma that I can frame inside a glass windowed box, so I can work behind a desk in a way smaller box…office. But in the end, we all end up in the same box to decompose.

My hope of changing the direction my life is headed, is just like a game of checkers, because as I stand inside this 4 sided square staring at the finish line, I can never head straight for it. Instead I must hop over obstacles to travel faster taking advantage of others, in constant fear of losing everything as I become a stepping stone for the opposition.
I’m being pressed in from six directions and my bones are beginning to become brittle from the pressure of the earth on my shoulders. I’ve gone through life hoping to become a predator in this concrete jungle, but in the end I’ve become the prey, praying for better days as I struggle to be more than just another link in the food chain.

Caged inside my own helplessness, I fight for survival, dreading the act of standing still, so my pen…never leaves these lined pages. The ink is the spring I run to for nourishment, the pure waterfall that refreshes it – my own awareness of reality. Using poetry, I free myself of invisible bonds as I step outside of the invisible metal box I have mimed around my consciousness. And with the wings I have grown from my temples, I head towards infinite skies of possibility in a future that is free of sides, and no intersections to be cornered into. So I managed to escape…

WorldLocked

See an open door, I decide to walk through it

Then fall into the world just the way that I knew it

Heard the door shut, then the turn of the lock

Pitch-black and silent but the pulse of a clock

Looking for an escape, in the form of a spaceship

But let's face it, pain and disappointment are basic

Angels are weak, and the devil is persuasive

In a world that's abrasive, yet in complete stasis

At a complete standstill, but my mind's racing

I refuse to move on, but my mind becomes ancient

I'm the farthest thing from patient

Patience, yet nobody alive is truly complacent

This or that, the paradox seems ageless

Everything remains trapped in a certain vagueness

Covered by a mist of what we decide to believe

Condensed water vapour that's enough to deceive

Blocking from view what we refuse to accept

Philosophical views by a conceited adept

Leaving no room for reasonable doubt

See you later. The doorman's finally letting me out..