Trapped and confined but you scoff that it could be so, for you. Everyone in their abstract and obtuse musings on how the world works. A laugh released from the shallows of your imprisoned lungs on the basis of the thought from a mind held captive by bone, in a body that has lassoed to it : a soul. Does this intimidate you or perhaps shock the ego you live on through the days ? Because this is only an unfortunate beginning, the beauty is how you break these down.

The reality is that you'll live and die, the idealistic thing here is that you'll make some impact, legacy, inspiration to the masses, or a change no one knew to make. To explain: reality isn't cruel, cold, harsh, favorable, disgusting, or any other adjective that your mind can construct for your tongue to dispense. No, reality is just ; reality isn't rooting for any of you, it is one of the components of time. Now the idealistic attachment to life is any and all adjectives as the direction the life can go is infinite by many regards.

Can reality be idealistic? Surely, in the ways that many devote their being to certain faiths, in the way that individuals dedicate their lives to causes, and in the way that some will sacrifice their quality of life to increase the quality of those around them. Does this make religion the only means of creating an ideal reality? Absolutely not.

Many individuals make humongous impacts in the realm in which they work and allow the overflow of their bounties aid the upbringing of others, without tagging a particular religion to it. You see, religion can help you define what your love is or what it should be dedicated to, unfortunately it also aids in defining what your love shouldn't be or geared to. That's not ideal. It's not ideal to say hating anyone for anything, especially when the idea behind it is : the views of other men should tell you how you are and should be.

The reality is : you will assign yourself to many realities that are defining, beautiful , and ultimately rewarding. The reality is : you will assign yourself to many other realities that are disappointing, disgusting, and will make you feel rock-bottom. Is either ideal? Fortunately as the devil's advocate (I don't know Lucifer personally, but we all know this is a phrase) you can find purpose in both of those paths. It's ideal to be what you want to be, but it's also ideal to not completely starve from failing when you can succeed in another facet.

Religion might make your life more redeeming, it might give you a huge sense of purpose, and it might give you guidelines for continuing a life of the good and safe. I would propose that perhaps finding spirituality is more redeeming. Your heart singing is irreplaceable and a body of politics formed around other's interaction with the spirit of holiness is definitely not going to just instantly make that happen. Religion has it's purpose, but an ideal life is absolutely not dependent on it.

Your shell lives during this state taking the damage and putting in the work, but your soul embraces both this and the flip-side of eternity. Find that which gives you cause, even if sometimes it means you hold your halo up with horns.

In monuments constructed eons ago are the stories of forever wars and the splendors of the victors; speeches carved hardest into both marble and granite, stones that cannot die within this life or the next, or so the crowned would believe. Stories of fields fertilized with rotting corpse and hydrated in oceans of scarlet, her name more forgiving than the waves she crashed upon the Earth. Yes, we still have these monuments in our contemporary society, though we attribute these to entities strictly involved in financial gain, and no greater, and so much is true as far as our eyes are concerned.

The horror that is just as hidden in those rustic structures is just as cloaked nowadays. We would believe that companies wouldn't profit off of the mistakes of the unknowing, the over-trusting, and the extreme believer. Their sense of loyalty converted from a non-material area over to the almighty currency, of wherever they so choose to inhabit. They pledge their creed to these tyrants and in return they are given but a cloth or shred of "security" in items that are "discounted" such as insurance, 401K, pension, retirement plans, and so the web continues it's weaving. Their alliance is dependent on how they're able to net others into their sales or constructs, and so they become wolves to a different kind of shepherd. Professionally speaking, a sale is a sale, and one shouldn't go through without adequate examination and education in regards to what is sold, but...ethically..The print is not prose, the words are not of triumphs and woes of a catalyst, but rather so in such guarded and fenced text that you must be excelled in decodation to have any semblance of what they might mean, and to further drive nail into foot and hand, a nation would rule some of these to be mandatory or penalized without.

Did this happen in the days of kingdoms past? Taxation occurred without doubt and in many cases, some folks where given farmland under the pretext that portion of their crop would be yielded to the owner or lord. So perhaps the times don't change...? Someone of my age, or really any, would struggle to really come to make the conclusion that this is a necessary practice and that the monuments we build are exactly, what's called for. Yet they promise employment and therein, lays the web of security once more. They say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, that it's not work, it's your passion, YOUR CALLING! Huzzah abound! Yet, it also poses the awkward nature of : Zero securities. It becomes the "World of What You Make It", and many people will frown, lift face and scoff, and ensure ample amounts of "Why don't you get a normal J...O...B?" Ensnare yourselves to the shackles of the things you despise, to ensure you can stay alive to do so. Beautiful, no?

I had begun believing I would start this piece with the notion, that we all place loyalties in something, someone, or someones, which I will definitely visit and perhaps close with, but my mind explores the knocking of the fantasy construct "To be formed in the fire : mind,body and soul." I'm constantly plagued with the feeling so much more beneath the surface that I'm willing to conceal because it causes the hyenas to pounce and take advantage with their laughing, menacing, foul visages. It is in this year that I'm most excited to bring growth to every facet I've actually enjoyed myself in and sharing it with the world, because perhaps it will do more for them than myself and perhaps it'll help me capture the pursuit of passion than just over broke (acronym).

So I will return to the question of loyalty and use items that are brought to popular culture and try to make some sense of it. Before we assign ourselves to corpse, we pledge our loyalty : A life partner perhaps, a country to defend, a religion to believe and keep us sane, a regimen to keep us healthy and full of blood, and maybe to friends and family that make us alive and not just passing by. Some will pledge their allegiance as if Spartans, from birth to a cause that they didn't necessarily choose but are given the best tools to be formidable, some of us will become Myrmidon and choose to be led by someone we may believe is truly a spawn of a god and more-so, they'll choose them , and some may pledge nothing to anything and resign themselves to be a timeline. Not that any one is more optimistic than the other, not that one is worse for wear, because it's really based on interpretation, but I'd rather have the choice and believe that the team wins for the right cause, other than I'm told what it is and that is all.

The wars will wage on until someone can establish a legitimate peace or there are no resources to gather, and the statues or churches of those at war will continue to be built and fall.

With world in your hand, what will you do? What CAN you do?

Tryna say that you don’t mix business with home life

Maybe you should take that to confessional

Better make sure it ain’t mic’ed

Otherwise they’ll be happy to turn ya ass into a sound bite

All you seem to do is provide a disservice

Swore an oath to the people, and all ya do is hurt us

Able to cover some crimes and even pardon murders

When did you become a god to save some and burn others??

A wolf in sheeps clothing, come to fleece the heard

Ain’t it absurd?

Put your speeches on High definition TVS

Yet the image portrayed is blinding and blurred

Everyone with an opinion to weigh in with

Putting it on side or the other of the “scale of justice”

But nobody wants it to be equal or contribute to the fulcrum

A life a peace devoid of war, shit that’s an idea that fell out of focus

You believe those that are making money on endorsements care about you

Maybe if you’re paying into the company that they get paid through

Trust me, your agendas do not align

Unless you’re looking for causes that metastasize leaving you useless and contrived

So beat me to it, tell me how I’m misinfluenced

Tell me you’re the red and white and I’ll just feel the bluest

You gotta open your eyes, even the one that opens your mind

You can’t let them drown you in the propaganda , making you castrated and ostracized.

Wake up in the morning and the talking heads are blaring

Wish I meant the music, but it’s the cross-fire of lies catching us in the flaring

Of puppets and bought souls trying to tell you exactly what’s best for them if you’ll only do it

Because they bank on you taking the scraps they feed you and get the big picture misconstrued

Noxious words from abominations with shells like a human

But without any sense of moral compass, speaking a language of lies fluent

I do not ask that you pluck from you the senses that offend you , because all of them should be appalled

That we as a people okayed this process and thought not at one point in time to give it a stall?

Don’t worry that gnawing away at your conscience isn’t toxic,

It’s a wake-up call to the abandoned obvious

You don’t have to be anonymous in your pursuit to rectify the wrongs

You don’t have to leak classified facts to become a hero in song

But you have to question everything.

Nothing can come across your eyes and be accepted at face value.

You have to determine, what is freedom

And what is an illusion in which you are merely a passenger.

So you think what I did was nice

But you could do it better?

Like you said I work hard

but you're a real go-getter?

Garbage and trash

take that nonsense back

if you're gonna hit me with the positive

then any kinda negative, you can have that

A fool by nature, blinded in eyes and heart

you think that by breaking the world down

you're the only one the coach can start?

and to failure you're bound

Hey man , slick rhyme, I like how it rolled off the tongue

too bad I got 1,000 verses that take that one in like a sponge.

Hey man, wow, sick sense of style

damn shame it doesn't pop-off with that smile.

Anything to keep you alpha, at least in speaking

but last time I checked it was my achievements you were redeeming

A shame you think your judgment comes in and makes verdict

Damn shame the jury's out, sentence fell on deaf ears, you shoulda heard it

You make me an incredulous being to anything positive

that it should always come laced with that sweet sting

If it's not this but that and laced with intensive negatives

then how could I possibly be in the winning?

Damn shame that I'm about to win at your game

Real gem of a backhanded compliment

mundane, though, they all sound the same

like you gotta couple pebbles, and mine are diamond encrusted

Finesse, you gettin' this?

make a play with pure skill

no need for muscle, all chill

sorry I knew it flew above your head : I erupted your interest

The day took place in my youth, before my collegiate "education" began. I had a couple of good friends and was in a heavily committed relationship. We had been for...A year or better, but time and memory is happily cleansed of this. I was a full participant in my church's youth establishment and had recently managed to get my friend and cousin involved in this body of work. He never proclaimed a church and many of my community at school did not. I was elated that I could have the influence to get my friends to go, if even under the guise that we were going to do something outside of the church. He had come and partaken in a few things and it appeared as though the interest of my heart was attempting to push ministering or witness to him. Which further made me happy as this could be a building block of familiarity and family! Tremendous is hardly an apt adjective to adequately relay the bigness of the idea, yet it is one I'll stick with.

The night pressed on and it became hard to interrupt them to get them to discuss with me their communications and thoughts, but I figured "What of it? They'll talk to me when they're done. The clock struck done o'clock and it was time to leave and be on our paths back to our natural habitats, etc. I was having a particularly lazy day, and it doesn't take much to bore me, so I assume I was aching for anything to do. A phone rings and his name appears on the ID. He wants me to come see him and talk to him. About what? Heavens know, Hells call. I arrive at his house in a day in which the rain seems to be as frequent as breaths taken and returned. We spoke awkwardly and broken with minimal eye contact. And so I had to get to it, "Why did you want to talk to me?" His response was that he had an interest, in my interest. The world always stops when I'm in these moments and I always know, I knew well in advance but banked on the other person having a sense of morality, personality, loyalty. But the only thing I can take from those words is the -Y, as in why would I have ever believed that?

More awkward lines and a "You can punch me in the face I know it's wrong"..an offer I've refused a few times in this life and sometimes the -Y revives itself. I told him no, but that there was nothing he could do about it as we were together and happy, or so I thought. I left , but I didn't drive as if I was happy. I know a man rarely grows these seeds and nurtures them if there wasn't first someone planting them with ample fertilizer (or bullshit if you need technical English). Yet I drove...thinking "How is this happening, I would be so kind and his idea would be to stab me if even in the front?" So I continued my pace, trying to get wherever I was going...maybe church? I don't know. And as my mind continued to hit the same wall, or crashing if you will, my car became loose at the reigns, with wheel turned but body on a straight course, I don't know how I managed to slow at all. My car became connect with smaller trees to catch it from a further, more hilly fall into certain abyss. I missed the memory marker of a school mate that had met their end at this same stretch some time before.

I crashed on emotion long ago and nearly had the rest of what I am absorbed with it. My fists crash fine with bag and flesh, my body can toss others into their crash with Earth, but my romantic heart is truly hard to revive from the crashes it's been involved in, for what it's worth.

1. I played soccer for a junior college (affectionately : juco)

2. I like Spanish and was offered to do tutoring for it at my first college.

3. I can play music on various instruments.

4. I love jumping off of bluffs and then going swimming.

take your pick, y'all.

When the sun peaks beyond the crest of mountain tops to cast out shadows and envelop the world in brighter vision, when the untamed beasts begin their routines making movement from one area to another, and the plant light blooms and blossoms there will be a growing concern that births itself in the smallest and the largest of "civilized" minds : Will I be pursued to my death by flesh and blood of another?

The texts of any culture will find revelation that although we are the same species and not much varies us other than our thoughts and appearance (we all are composed of the same things, segregated unless removed surgically, destroyed by disease, or removed by force) and yet we always find a reason to fight one another , usually for resource not as just a means to fight...usually. Sometimes it would be written in epic proportion of battles lasting lifetimes, sometimes in a matter of seconds a complete city would be leveled, and sometimes (even in the present) it would take years to decades to millenniums to eventually extinct flora, fauna, and it could very well be of their own kind.

The humankind was and is despicably the opposite of anything kind. There were so many promises made that we would be giving, kind, forgiving, loyal, loving and instead we find reasons to exemplify ourselves and live in the idea that we are gods versus being just as we should be in humanity. We have brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, family and friends and those that are outside of that realm are typically seen as possible evils, intruders, and couldn't possibly want to help the world, especially ours. I fear that we are coming to the edge of cliff, not that we've ever been far from it but that soon bigger choices will need to be made, evolutions taken on in a matter of hours instead of the lifetime. I think we're coming to an eclipse.

I weep for those that have had to deal with the wars, battles, and skirmishes that have scarred them more than physically. I moan for those that have made it their reality to stay blind to these things happening and the reasoning for it. I chose to write this both to remember that there are truly beautiful things in life and exceptional people, and because I always know that there is an evil lingering here forever and it makes me petrified. Perhaps it won't be the nova I feel, perhaps it will be softer than I know. I hope your bright minds paint pictures and wield words to help others find truth and peace instead of them finding their lives dependent on flawed intelligence and distractions.