Predator or prey

when danger comes knocking on your door what will you say?

will you welcome him in, embrace like an old friend, catch up over earl grey?

do you slam the door in his face, run to your room get under the covers and hide in that dark place?

This is a civilization of apathy, non-confrontation and conformity, virility is not a valuable quality in the perfect male citizen. Jocks are mocked and the alpha is replaced by the yes man, the junkie, and the sensitive types. Where providing for your family is more important than defending them, it's easy to see how we've falled by the wayside, short of the strength of our ancestors in so many ways, if you pit the men of today against them what would they say? Would they laugh at our reliance on technology, how few of us would stand a chance hand to hand with a

average man from centuries past? Is it a possibility that in this world of eco-sustainability that that edging out of testosterone as a value in our society will inevitably be the death of us?

How can you have a slam poem without a social conscience? so what's my cause, black people behind bars, or political hypocrisy, or religious division, or sexual confusion, or oppression, or sanity, or blindness, or truth? Here's one. How about the people without a cause? Plain white kids growing up from the woods to the 'burbs, without cause for anguish aside from the ever-present nuclear family chaos. What happens when an aimless generation grows up and finds no enemy to rile against, no draft to dodge and no protests to march in, kids like me who listen to music from the 60s and smoke that subterfuge grow up, and learn that everything they were told was a lie. They can't touch they sky, and they won't be president, and nobody told you your focus in life becomes paying rent, and voices that said aim high now say aim lower, and nod and shrug your shoulders, they wonder why we appear apathetic? We were born to stand up and fight aggression, overthrow oppression, but we're sinking backwards into regression and gaining momentum, but don't take my word for it. Look into the ranks of the unemployed and find the disillusioned youth, or even better the under-employed, flipping burgers to support drug or gaming addictions, these are my brothers and sisters, with lack of sunlight afflictions because socializiation comes through a keyboard, listen mister, don't talk to me about entitlement. The only thing our parents gave us was everything we didn't need, and our country doesn't need us so we sit at home as a generation, bleeding creativity and potential into the streets. Yeah, laugh at us and call us lazy. Becaus we're laughing at you and calling you crazy for mangling your horns against the wall, knee deep in the grind trying to get ahead and we're comfortably lagging behind. We're a generation of cynics, and sarcasm is our first language and without the ability to speak emotion it's impossible to make a connection and each one of us is an island. As time ticks onward will we forget how to stand, or merely become so cynical that we lose the will to try? The fire of a generation slowly dies, and with it, so do we.

Words I know I can't take back, inspired by an empty bottle of Jack Daniels black and the soft glow of the computer screen is a harsh judge. I'm serving consecutive life sentences, with only myself to blame, and while the stink of booze mixes with misery and shame I hang my head and worry my hands on the dusty keyboard, worn with use on many lonely nights like tonight. Insomnia back with a vengeance, I'm backed up against the wall with a freight train six inches from my face, and the grenade is in my chest, the pin is slipping, my only options now are live hard or die from lack of trying. Tonight is the breaking point, mania or depression, sink low or ride the crest, choose, there is no middle ground and if there was fuck the middle ground, if my only options are live dangerously, live in depression, or live in mediocrity bring on the adrenaline or kill me. Kill me for god's sake kill me and end this mind-numbing rollercoaster of torment.

as i roll up my sleeves and tuck back my dreams observe and take notes, the method to achieving greatness is tucked into the careworn wrinkles and callouses of curiosity and determination, strides through weariness like an upstream jog

I am the oak tree that won't bow before the wind, Branches sway but never bend.

I am the blades of grass, many but we move as one mind, unbreakable.

I am the sheathed blade, potential hidden behind panes of folded steel.

I am the second-to-last, patiently waiting my turn but not despaired.

I am the final straw, calculated for the finishing blow.

I am passion rekindled.

I am lost lovers.

I am the hammer and the chisel.

I am the undefinable, I am the here and there.

Love me with your fingertips, keep me on the edge of my seat waiting and anxiously anticipating but don't tease me, appease me. Love me with lips like raspberries, soft and juicy but use me, please me; need me but don't abuse me. Love me with legs so long; the pleasure given so good it has to be wrong, Love me with a fire in your heart burning for me and burning me burn me light me ablaze with intensity destroy me blow me apart with sheer love density then rebuild me, better and stronger and bulletproof and ten feet tall and all the things I know I am when you are near.

This is for lovers of the written word, who can use word like pretentious and absurd without sounding pretentious or absurd in a world where spoken word is slurred and stumbled over by blasphemers and I mean no disrespect but show some respect because language is all we have, it separates us from animals and if it was up to me everyone would be a poet but it is up to me and we are all poets, time is the rhyme giving meaning to our midnight opines and need more money whines, and last but not least internet spread why can't I hold all these limes, in the age of instant communication isn't it amazing how little is being said, but more importantly how little is being listened to, forgive me if i sound melodramatic but chances are in our lives no one will care what we say or do and you can try to disprove what I've said but think about the last thing you heard or read by someone you know even if they're dead that lasted long enough with you that you can repeat it word for word, because odds are thats the only time what that person said was taken to heart and carried as a part of someone else, it's something so rare and precious what can we do but try every day to say and do the things that will echo and boil and brew in the minds of the people around us, so please nation, amaze and astound us with the prowess I know is hidden deep within you and please lead us into an age of literacy and art, but not self-pretentious, self-aware, take art for what it is and leave out what it isn't. Be lions in your writing, brave and valiant and bold like the great kings and warriors of old whose stories and passed along and retold, and maybe your stories will be passed along and retold, but don't be conceited, receive it with humble hearts and quiet minds straining at the bounds constraining them itching and crawling and shivering in the rain again dying to be let in and let me in and take me with you, let these words not hit you but soothe you and move you and tattoo them upon you on the inside of your skin and take them one by one like Ritalin; consider this a prescription from me to you, take it in daily and in large doses, slip it into your coffee breaks and write while you light up a five minute cigarette don't forget, do this often in remembrance of these words. Amen.

Heres to the middle-of-the-stair-climbing monkeys, the concrete hardened adrenaline junkies,

Third floor men with minds like boys and teeth like daggers and tongues like swords,

Who realize that friends don't make secrets nor do secrets make friends but friends making out makes us want to make you get out,

Out in the street where we roam like demons,

Heads hot and ears steaming,

Streaming down garages and streets like we don't know better but we do know better and don't think for a minute that you're no better than the people we pass whizzing by on boards and blades and polyurethane wheels,

We see life and a bit do we steal more and more with each night with every close call oh shit moment of fright we are alive and alive we are glorious

I want to kiss you like lovers do

the fire burns passion anew

Crazy

I'm going a little crazy, can't you tell
I'm going a little crazy, in this mediocre hell
I built these walls, I paved the floors
I pace the cage, ignore the doors
I scrutinize, I harry and stress
I wander, never tarry never rest
Left to my own devices for too long
I go a little crazy
Turn alone on its head, skew it
I can be alone surrounded by family
I can be alone in a room full of people
I can be alone with an old friend
I can be alone by myself
I grasp at lifesavers
People without whom I could not exist
They are few, but dear
I love them very much
I am only sane when they are near
If I can in fact be sane
They say if you open your mind too far
You might not be able to find your way home
I worry instead that I burned home down
Crowing gleefully at my cleverness
It is when I struggle to grasp sanity tighter
That madness creeps in
Peeks under the crack of the door
Shut tightly against its advance
Poking through, billowing at the entrance
Suddenly, the door is broken
A deluge before me
Thoughts spilling across the floor
Seeping through cupped palms
Staining the carpet
Like the red wine she drinks
On the veranda, watching waves crash

Rhythmic beating, the sound of passion

A long way from my my prison

A prison of thought and will

Of distance and bonds