Love with out passion is kindness.

Love with out kindness is passive.

Love with out actions is nothing

but laziness, and when this happens

Love looks for another one who is

also kind who’s heart beats full of passion

Love feels for another who is full of life

Love craves that exuberance that joy

Instead of being taken for granted that

Love is always there.

Love with out passion?

We hold these truths to be self evident...

Such inspiring words

Our freedoms come from our creator

Whatever or whoever that may be

That was the intent, that was the meaning

But we as a people have forgotten those words

We don’t open our eyes to see

Freedom of speech, the grandest of all

Say what you wish

Speak your mind

Stand up and be heard

Have no fears from the powers that be

But don’t say something offensive or contrary

For that upsets the herd

Freedom of speech applies to all of us

Not merely those that share thoughts

Differing ideas drive us forward with caution

Identical ideas throw it to the wind

Freedom of religion, intended to stop persecution, from even the mightiest of kings

Worship who you want

Your god is your own

I hope your god is benevolent

And I hope mine is too

There must be something greater than man

But technology and celebrity replace the good book

Our disdain of different thought

Doesn’t matter anyway

Most of us worship at the alter of Amazon

Freedom from want, such a noble idea

All things provided

Opportunity abounds

But freedom isn’t free

Money drives the world we’ve made

And someone needs to be paid

Be wary of gifts from the shiny elected

The “Haves” and the “Have nots”

That’s what they say

They can make you a “Have” too

But then you’ll be their slaves

Freedom from fear, the hardest to grant

To fear is human

Nothing is a sure thing

Uncertainty rules the day

The very freedoms we all share are our biggest foe

Speak your mind and offend, be banned or get assaulted

If you say what I don’t like, don’t you dare speak at all

Worship who you want, and be attacked by a believer of another

The heavens aren’t big enough for our gods to share space

Want leads to aspiration, accomplishment and prosperity

Make your own way in this world

Giving can not be guaranteed

We hold these truths to be self evident...

Such forgotten words

Our creator has been removed from the notion

Now people make the rules

Those that don’t want us to question what they say

Fear the ones who grant our freedoms

For they can always take them away

Glory in her gloominess, the ghastly grim girl grieves on the grave

Greeting the one in the grips of Gaia, she grimaces at this heaven’s gain

Gritty gapes gnawing her guts, glints of grieve gush on the granite

And glory in her gloominess, the ghastly grim girl grieves on that grave.

Gimmicks in her garland, the grave is gravid of grumpy glows

Gritting in its gutted gain, it gawks at the girl’s gibe and juxtapose

Gratifying from her gambit, the grim girl gilds the grave in her gaiety

But there were gimmicks in her garland, that made the grave gravid of grumpy glows.

Gyps in the name of justice, the grim girl girdles the guests around her guise

With her jittery grieving gibbers, the grim girl gains their gullibility- and they galvanize

The gossip of the grave greatly grows from her gift of gab

And gyps in the name of justice, the grim girl girdles the globe around her guise.

Gallant in her grudges, the grim girl was indignant and aggrieved

Gabbling grifts on the grave’s garden in her golden guilty greave

If you wonder on what grounds the grim girl garbled the grave’s gospel

Then remember her gallant in her grudges, and that she was indignant and aggrieved.

Guilty in her glamour, the ghastly grim girl gears a glaive in her gown

Guarding the guileful guise gives way to a grave’s tale of renown

Gulling with her garish games glories the grim girl’s gleeful gamble

And guilty in her glamour, she gears the glaive in her gown.

A gruesome grisly groove, from the glaive the gullet had been glid

Gone the ghastly grim girl, now gazed at the gore and grinned

The graceful giddy ghoul had gamboled in a gust

From a gruesome grisly groove, in which a gullet had been glid.

A gazette that gourmandises green, guarantees the grim girl to be guileless

Gauging her grieve and gauche gait, they guarantee the grave a greedy guess

They may have gainsaid genuine justice, but the grim girl garnered no grafts at all!

It’s just that the gazette gourmandized some green, and gained her to be guileless.

Glory in her gloominess, the ghastly grim girl now grieves on the grave

Greeting the one in the grips of Gaia, she giggles at this heaven’s gain

Generously glitzing her guileless grieve, she glows in galore

And glory in her gloominess, the ghastly grim girl grows a grin on the grave.

crystal raindrops on windowpanes

sweet spring breezes perfumed honeysuckle and rose

new moon skies sprinkled silver with starlight

maple leaves of amber floating on an east autumn wind

book pages tacked onto yellow walls

pinky promises laced with elementary secrets

frost like angel wings veiling muddied gardens

rose petals pressed between softcover stanzas

and you,

made in the image of

the magnificent Maker of rain

the wondrous Whisperer of winds

the star-breathing, moon-molding Artist

the Shifter of seasons

the awe-inspiring Author behind every story

the perfect Keeper of Promises

the divine Decorator of this desert land

the patient Caretaker of creation

He who exhaled the universe into existence

and still desires your heart;

Yahweh.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

I would choose to be a follower than God Himself because knowing myself pretty well I’d say I wouldn’t be able to handle the power and the burden of responsibility it comes with. I wouldn’t be able to bear the sorrows of other people and the injustice being done to them. I would like to do something about it there and then rather than prolong it and give them the fruit of their patience later but thats not how it works in my opinion. I think we need to suffer in our own ways to realize the importance and value of certain things in life and to build character and personality but I don’t think I could ever watch anybody suffer it just breaks my heart. So I’d rather be a follower. I’d rather be the follower of a loving God who protects me and gives me countless blessings and hardships that test my limits and teach me to be wiser and stronger and glow brighter. Just like a star.

(Disclaimer: I’m not sure how this will read since it’s meant to be performed, but I figured I’d risk posting anyway. Also, before you read, I think it should be noted that I’m an American citizen, and I think questioning, critiquing and holding your government accountable is patriotic. I encourage you to reserve judgment until the end. Thanks, all!)

~

I hate America; therefore, I hate myself.

For willingly eating a steady diet of propaganda through the years, for gobbling it up unquestioning, licking my lips and wishing for more. I once was a member of a high school club called “The Patriotic Youth Council.” If it wasn’t so sad, I could laugh about it.

I hate America; therefore, I hate its citizens.

Stupid, willfully ignorant pieces of shit scared of a woman with an opinion. Scared of a black man with a comb. Scared of a Muslim with a headscarf. Scared of a Mexican with an accent.

I hate America; therefore, I hate myself.

For believing lies about a city upon a hill. For believing lies about the beauty of its institutions. For believing that change could come from elections and hearings and the so called court “of law.”

I hate America; therefore, I hate its citizens.

Brainwashed, hateful, arrogant men in uniform and women in invisible chains held tightly in place by the insidious hands of the father, the patriarchy that is ingrained in every stitch of every fabric from which this country is sewn.

I hate America; therefore, I hate myself.

For being blissfully white in so many ways, living an un-interrogated life for too long, secretly wanting to touch black folks’ hair and questioning why they’d burn their own neighborhoods.

I hate America; therefore, I know that I am learning. That my eyes are being slowly uncovered, and though the light is painful, it is illuminating. It shows me so much more of the horizon than I could ever see before.

I hate America; therefore I know that I must reach out to my fellow citizens so that they too may learn to hate the soil from which their ideals were grown, so that they may question what is just and righteous, so that they may encounter every authority with skepticism and maintain at all costs the autonomy of not only their own bodies and minds, but of all the bodies and minds that crowd city streets and drive trucks to work. The bodies that plow fields and punch computer keys, that have children and have only dogs, the bodies that need to change to match their souls and that love the bodies that match their own.

I hate America because I love it.

I love it so much that if you cracked open my skull I’m convinced the Declaration of Independence would be etched into the holes around my eye sockets. That you’d find the Gettysburg Address carved into each of my ribs. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech written in Braille inside the ventricles of my heart so that you could really feel it. Hillary Clinton’s declaration that women’s rights are human rights nestled safely within the walls of my uterus. Obama’s message of hope keeping my white blood cell count high.

I hate America because it has disappointed me more than any friend or teacher or parent ever could.

It had the power to lift me up to heights unimaginable, but instead has buried me beneath the bones of slaves and suffragettes and Black Panthers and indigenous peoples and gay men and transgender women and HIV victims and unarmed black boys and unarmed black girls and caged children.

I cannot breathe beneath the weight of America’s sins. I will suffocate unless I rise up from under them and scream, filling my lungs with the fire of my anger so that I can burn its institutions down, so that we might start again.

Join me and let's be cleansed together in the ash.

“We need to talk.”

It was that heart-racing age where I had to confront my eleven-year-old daughter about her genitals and tell her I’m not raising any grandkids. I knew she knew what was about to happen by the wide-eyed silence I was met with. My face was already flushed with shame. I looked at her comforter then looked back at her. She was staring at us in her mirror across the room.

“I know you don’t-- well, you haven’t started to, ya know, bleed.” I was looking at her carpet and lamenting the color. We should’ve picked baby blue over this hideous pink that aged terribly. Her scratching her knee brought me back to the conversation at hand.

“You will bleed someday,” I assured her. “But it’s fine. It’s supposed to happen.”

It was like I could hear her heartbeat in the ensuing awkward pause, but I couldn’t just leave on that note.

“Do you understand what I mean?”

She nodded. Liar. I couldn’t call her out on it though. Knowing her, she’d say a word like vagina and I’d know her innocence was lost forever and have to walk around in shame in my own house. It wasn’t happening.

“Do you have any questions so far?”

She was picking her nails, not looking at me. “Why will I bleed?”

I wondered why I always insist on saving the trees in the summer and refuse to turn on the A/C. It was really hot. I looked at my daughter to keep Nelly from singing the rest of the chorus for “Hot in Here”. I cleared my throat and looked back at my toes.

“Well, it means you’re a woman.”

“Why?”

Jesus, this kid and her inquiries. This was the same child who would question me relentlessly when she first learned to talk. I had gotten lucky that my second kid annoyed her into submission, but that inquisitiveness had kicked back in at the worst time imaginable.

“Well, because, God.” God. My moral trump card has come out at the best time.

“Oh.”

God helped me get my footing to get this spiraling conversation to a plateau where I could leave her to get the rest of her knowledge from a high school gym teacher that wears shorts that are three sizes too small. “Now because you’re a woman, you have to be careful about boys.” I paused. We were progressing as a people. Everyone was after that one thing now. “And some girls. They only want one thing.”

“What is it?” We made eye contact for the first time in this conversation.

Her big, innocent brown eyes were glazed in doubt and fear, and I was about to drop the rock of pain on her as my mother did me. For a split second, I started not to. I started to pull her into my arms, stroke her hair like I did when she had a nightmare, and tell her that this was all a prank, and nothing was bad. But, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t assuage her fears any more than I could answer her question without thinking of some pimple-faced jock or quiet cheerleader all over my baby. I sat there in stunned silence while she stared at me.

“Well... uh... you know...” Her eyes assured me that she didn’t know, so I couldn’t drop that rock of puzzling vagueness on her. I took a deep breath, focused on the troll doll on the shelf behind her, and spouted, “Your hormones are like a magnet. It’s like people begin to get easier to stare at and think about. You just want to... hug... them and be around them and talk to them all the time.”

“Like you and Daddy?” She sounded so innocent, and yet my mind went back to the sweaty fourth date we spent humping in a Taco Bell that led to the conception of a quickly aborted baby.

“Kinda, yeah. You like being around them, and you want to make mashed potatoes together.” That sounded like a euphemism for something. My ears were hot. “And it’s fine to feel that way. And other people will feel that way about you. It’s a really confusing time.”

My daughter paused and looked at the poster of JoJo Siwa on her wall. I could see the gears turning in her mind. She was piecing together all the fucked up things she’d learned throughout the years, and quickly coming to a conclusion. Finally, she turned to me with a pensive look on her face.

“Is it like when teachers say boys hit you because they like you?”

I was stunned for a second. I had heard that crock of shit too as a kid. Eddy Gravinsky was pulling my hair because he liked me. Daniel Smith kept pinching me because they liked me. It wasn’t until my sister got a bruise from her first boyfriend in college that I realized teaching kids that stuff in school is harmful.

“No,” I said quickly, shaking away my thoughts. “If someone likes you, they will never hurt you. Ever. And if everyone ever tries that shit, you hit them back.”

She made a face. I guess I had thwarted that learned notion. I mentally patted myself on the back. I’m a good mom. After about a minute though, the awkward silence had reached a fever pitch and I began to worry. What was she thinking of? Was some prepubescent punk smacking my kid around and teaching her that it’s love? Was she going to confide in me that one of her friends gets hit a lot? Was she going to call bullshit and argue with me about what this is really about? The suspense for what she would ask me was killing me. I had to get out of there.

“Well,” I said, trying not to sound too excited to escape, “do you understand now?”

My daughter smiled weakly and nodded.

“Good. I’ve got to go make us something to eat. You know you can always talk to me about these things, right?”

She nodded again. I kissed her head, said a little prayer that she stays innocent forever, and walked out of the room. I was greeted by my boyfriend, who was watching one of those countdowns of the best highlights ESPN has saved up to play during summer. He moved his leg a little so I could cozy up next to him and wrapped his arm around me as soon as I was in place.

“So did you talk to her,” he asked once it went to commercial.

“Yep.” I felt so unsure of that answer though it came out so confidently.

“What did you say?”

“Well, I told her that she’ll get a period and not to let boys hit her and that we’re always here if she needs to talk.”

It was so much when I was in her room talking to her, but now it seemed like so little. Part of me wanted to go back upstairs, kick her door down, and give her a whole Wikipedia page of information so I knew she’d be okay when she was out there with all those little sex demons, but I had no desire to go back into that warzone and see my baby growing up before my eyes. To reassure me and my boyfriend, I added, “I think it’s enough.”

My boyfriend nodded slowly. “That’s basically what I told Junior. We don’t have any grandkids yet, so I think we’re doing pretty good with this whole sex talk thing.”

He had a point, though my son wouldn’t even be on the list if we were betting on which of our kids were getting laid in the next decade. It was enough reassurance to make me smirk, though something was making me worry. I couldn’t tell him that. He always said I was too paranoid. She would be okay. We’d never let anything hurt her. I looked back at my boyfriend who smiled at me. He wasn’t worried, so I forced myself to calm down enough to reply.

“Yep. Two down, one more to go.”

They say be a leader, not a follower, but followers are the ones that get everything done. I know that goes against everything that most of us have been taught but think about it. For one, most leaders get assassinated, and while I'm all for dying to prove a point, that may hurt and I don't like pain. Also, you have to know what to say. Look at these morons running the country. As soon as COVID became trending on Twitter, they ran out there with their comb-overs and fresh-pressed tuxedos and proclaimed that everything was under control and everything was okay. How is it okay when it just got posted 7 seconds ago?

Granted, I'm not a BLIND follower, and I never will be. It perplexes me how someone can put a cloth over their eyes and just follow some of these people we've given a platform and that we expect to "lead" us. I mean, politics are one thing, a large thing actually that I'm tired of focusing on, but celebrities are a better representation. We follow people just because they're famous. It boggles me. I'm not saying I don't follow people just because they're rich or because they're the leader of a platform I've been told I fit in, but I can admit that and recognize who they are and what they did. Plus, all of those arbitrary people that I follow still have personalities, unlike some of the people I hear are famous nowadays.

For example, I don't know how you get famous from TikTok. It's just a video of you being weird. Why are we praising this? Granted, I'm lowkey jealous that I'm not famous (for monetary reasons mainly), but seriously, how does that make you famous? I know the two sisters on TikTok (their names escape me right now) have come under fire for being "ungrateful" for their platform, but they also woke up famous. How can you be grateful for something that fell in your lap? That's like finding out you won the lottery that your third cousin on your mom's side entered you in. It's nice and it helps you out in various ways, but you don't get the joy of working for it. You just got it on your first try and now everyone's looking at you.

I think that can be seen with some bigger celebrities like the Kardashians and Beyonce. There have been like eight seasons of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, but apparently, Kim Kardashian (the most famous) is like a Barbie doll that can talk sometimes that is married to the most annoying Ken doll ever. When people try to play her in Snatch Game, they always fall flat because there's not much she does. Same with Beyonce. Aside from her memorable Destiny's Child interview in the Netherlands(?) when she was high, the most humanity I've seen from Beyonce is when she's zoned out at a basketball game imagining that she's somewhere else. I'm not doubting her singing ability (though I am doubting her acting ability because she was overshadowed in every movie she was in) but she seems like she's just one note as a person.

That's why I don't want to be a leader. I like being in the background. I enjoy helping make shit happen from behind the curtain. The leader can't have a good performance if there's no one there to turn on the lights, set up the stage, and call people to show up. Looking back at Beyonce and the Kardashians, their parents were amazing managers. Beyonce's father is the sole reason we know who she is. Not only did he start Destiny's Child and manage it, but he did all the shady behind-the-scenes work that made sure that when that girl group inevitably became the Hunger Games, his daughter would be Katniss. Similarly, Kris Jenner apparently decided that her daughter releasing a sex tape would further their careers, not crumble them. After one sex tape, all of the kids got famous, started businesses, launched fashion lines, showed their asses on several E! and Bravo shows, and have become synonymous with elegance and beauty.

While my goal is not to become a shady person, I admire them. In fact, they taught me more than a leader ever could. Leaders are made by followers. If there's no one to follow, you can't lead. We see it all the time in those group challenge cooking shows where everyone wants to decide the menu, and they get caught up arguing and there's no one left to cook until one person rises above the others and becomes the leader. But, if there are no followers, the leader isn't a leader. They're just someone with the charisma of a leader and a plan of some sort trying to convince people to follow them. I'm not into wasting my talent and time trying to find an audience when I have the tools to be a follower. All that means is I know I can be useful to someone, and I know I want stuff to change. Having a hand in that change is creating change, especially since one person can't make a change. Find deposed/lone leader and see how that's working out for them.

The thing is, you can't be a dumb follower. I don't want to be a dumb follower. The way I see it, herd animals are different just like followers are different. Most people are sheep. Sheep are rather defenseless, need someone to help them, and travel in very large groups. I want to be an alpaca. Alpacas get stressed in large groups, but they still are herd animals. Their herds are just small. They take care of themselves, are quite intelligent, and can beat the fuck out of many canids just because they naturally don't like them. I want to be an alpaca because I don't have to stand on my own to have those qualities. Around the right group, my qualities would be used to create change, and I wouldn't have to worry about someone getting caught up in my looks.

All that to say, I wanted to challenge myself to see why people would choose to be a follower. It's strange to choose that path though since most people just unhappily settle into it, but it shouldn't be a bad thing. I think actively trying to do something, even if it is just helping someone else, shouldn't be bad. Even if you aren't the one on the podium, you being a part of that platform can help move it forward. I just wish that definition of a "follower" wasn't lumped in with the type of following where if a leader jumps off a cliff, everyone else does too. That sort of following should stop.

I want to be dead. (Or more correctly, undead)

My dream is to be a ghost, to roam some house, or wood through eternal night, brandishing my distressed soul to any who might wander too close.

I have lived my whole life with the sole purpose of being the best dead person I can be.

I have studied Crowley, and read Poe. I have listened to Ozzy, and admired Van Gogh. Like Johnny Cash, I only wear black. I have visited cemeteries, slept in empty caskets, and attended the funerals of people I never even knew. I took “Mortuary Sciences 101” in college, for criminy’s sake!

If there is anyone more ready to be dead than I am, I hope the son-of-gun chokes. He probably deserves it!