truth

The things I do and the things that are done
Do they make a difference?
People laughing at everything,
They look, but they don’t see,
See what they want to see; druggies, rebels, punks, jocks, scum.
Or they see nothing at all.
And it doesn’t make a difference anyhow.

We don’t laugh,
When we’re on the floor, inside the walls,
Everybody laughing their asses off.
Laughing, they push us down, and never see us cry.
We just sit; throw beers, throwing empty whiskey bottles, spill vodka.
Just boys, trying something new.
New drugs, taking us down new roads,
Roads not taken by old men.
Roads paved with the music of Bob Marley,
Roads paved with the words of Malcolm X,
Roads paved by rebellious visionaries fighting for peace.
Roads created by students claiming what was once just out of reach.

We are not old men, warriors, Indians, or European Boys with money.
We spin in circles, crash,
Dancing, naked
We come too close
To empty fields
Filled with cigarettes, drinks, new drugs, and confusion.
Nothing but ash, wasted nights, wasted lives, lives built on memories.
Lives supported by smashed skulls and ratty old dreams.

Our lives fly around us, and we change.
Lungs heal,
Muscles stretch, expand.
Once children, killed, shake the earth.
We tremble; the earth thinks too much and fades.
But we know nothing.
Dark, Infected, Sick, Chasing ash.
Chasing time, trying to trap it in a wooden box and never let go.

My eyes, are blinded,
They have not yet seen a mirror,
And my eyes, have not yet looked at me,
I see birds, flying away,
Dreams, staying behind
Trying to catch up to me.
I see a man, going back home.
And I have yet to see myself.
To find my cowboy hat, my Dodgers cap, my dirty blue robe.
I have yet to find myself.
I merely agree,
My only choice is to agree.
Agree to getting knocked out of my bed
Agree to being tossed into a prison,
A prison of darkness, cold, and empty loneliness.
Prisons of blue jeans, white shirts, new hats.
Prisons of isolation and lives based on stories.

Lives without meaning
Not a life, but a story
A story, in the first person,
A story of a warrior on a horse,
A story of a boy, trying to escape a lonely prison,
By finding the princess, trying to become the warrior.
Disappointed once I, once we, once all of us become
Become the old man, farting and belching all the way down the road.
Working the graveyard shift in the 7-11.

We know enough.
Boycotts, drugs, fights, death, disappointment, blood, dust, sap, sun.
We know what has been decided.
And we know that we die before we can start to open our mouths,
We die before we reach the top of the tree,
We die before we can float to the ground,
We die before we reach the end,
And we die before we arrive at the start.