Those days leave with you, when I had faith in the hearts of men – it is only my soliloquy, my fingers, my mind that I need.  Within me I am both nothing and everything; I do what my conscience dictates.  I am no longer swayed by leaps of hope and prefabricated social utopias – even in margins, status quos grow.

So today, I affirm I have no home and every ounce of me lives to convey – to you – what my mind dictates.  Every droplet of knowledge, I consolidate within my words, my scribbles with pens and pencils, ink and dye.  And if a degree informs me even a scintilla, it influences my life’s work in leaps and bounds.

There is nothing about my past, present or future that is anything but what I say I am at this moment.  I am a culmination of everything I have experienced; I cannot weigh the value of my knowledge on the scale of a degree created by arbitrary rules, guarded by blind dogs of justiciable retribution.

So take from me what you will; I will not let you have my soul.  Give me your doubts and burdens; I will not cower under the weight.  As you were my strongest suit, you are now my last mistake; a heart will no longer beat where you will inevitably expect – there you will find a barren land of mirrors.

A few months ago, I let go of worry because I figured all it would do is make life scary.

Ironic, I was born with a golden spoon in my mouth; it took me longer than most to start talking.

And now at the turn of my third decade, all I have left are my words – in a world all about money.

My Nuna taught me that money means little; living happy comes only from seeing that joy everywhere.

She spent the last twenty-five years of her life in my service, my brother after me, my father – and me.

On my tenth birthday she took me up to the third floor of our house and handed me a gold neck-chain.

She had been saving for years, just for that day; I do not know where that chain went – I want it back.

While sex is a very personal thing, it is more often just one preference, maybe with some hidden kinks.

For imaginarians, sex runs the gamete of likings, dark and perverse desires; imagination gone psychotic.

But as he knows to keep inking inside the lines, he most often imagines; having experienced it all, in bits.  Even when this beast manifests, a writer will never express the soul of his words; that imposes, at best.

But a strange place this solitude becomes; quiet at first, but then like a man’s country on weekends.

Animalistic sounds begin to blur the lines between sacred and profane; lines become gray areas, dividing dimensions.

Then it becomes cacophonous – a deafening silence, with the world drumming down from all ends.

On this, the drummer pours her paint, her embers of fire and ice – such is a practical cunt - A Daint.

Tribute

I would have expressed something to someone – but my mind had been splintered with ball bearings and nails. Numbness then overcame me; I now keep fishing for that feeling I had twelve years ago – I want to be enraged, ready for war on culprits.  Yet something has severed that rationale.

I am beginning to realize that terror has no place in me – an initial fear is my animalistic response; but it fades, quicker and quicker with each atrocity.  What has taken its place is a brazen courage to withstand violence to a level that confounds sadists seeking heaven with a barter of innocent lives.

I would have written something more somber – but my mind only felt a short-lived pain, eclipsed by the love of strangers.  Yet, the pain three less lives can bring is limitless; as if atoms from my skin had been snatched from me without consent.  So I write just this:  no more hurting people.

In this moment, we see time stretch – if it all cycles back infinitely, a moment can be a lifetime; an atom, the universe.  I can have lived a millions lives in a moment or none at all, trapped, hidden, and closeted.  The utility of medicine or oil or food or stars, therefore, is to allow existence to be – free, unrestricted.

But to no end, with my inert inclinations – I must have no reason to copulate; but I do.  Whether I stop before I reach the end, I wonder what difference it would make.  It has all begun to bore me; sex and politics and friendships and relationships; I see them increasingly as stones, tugging at my shoestrings.

But with my every pulse, I love everything.

O.

I was self-concerned, so absorbed with things I could touch, things others would readily covet.  Judgment riddled me and I could not see the coming of the most catastrophic disasters.  But now it is clear; in the temptation of perfection lives the Devil.

I find myself beginning to understand the meaning of it all just when it slips from my grasp.  Every single time though, just for a split moment before it flies away, I see it; I feel bliss hit the lowest chord on my heartstring – of many, one.  You have to feel this camaraderie; how can you not?

A fine line divides full faith and a lie.

Betrayal of brothers, Iscariot’s tale;

Life’s that horizon amid heaven and hell.

What good is possible must always be done.

What killing’s avoidable, severely shunned.

Selfishness abandoned, your charity peaks;

Diversity emboldens communal leaps.

O.

Celebrations will not mark the beginning of next year; it will be a Christmas of reflection and grief, pain and love; it will tell volumes about the strength of this nation’s fabric.  December 14^th, 2012 has changed us again, forever.  Let this loss not be forgotten; let it sprout giants of a peaceful social paradigm.

For our children,

O.