Hands upon skin, taking you in,
The flutter of fingertips lightly,
A songbird plays a gentle song
To soothe deep within.
Memories replayed of past days
The good and bad commingled.
Woman, the master of manipulation,
So subtle, she makes it an art.
Written – 1/25/2023
I know I have been stunted
Growing in this place
So far away from all that is bright
A darkness without light
A belt of wheat and God
Growing in this place
My life remained unclaimed
I only ever felt ashamed
written – July 15, 2018
I’ve always hated the phrase
Where do you see yourself
In a year, in five, in ten years?
To the people asking the question,
I don’t know is never acceptable.
The truth is never a correct response.
Because the truth is that
I cannot see myself today
Let alone tomorrow, or even a year from now.
To the people asking the question,
Only the appearance of an answer matters.
After the question is asked and answered,
They get to go on about their day, oblivious.
While I am still left with the question.
Written – 03/10/2017
Someone once said
Religion is the opium of the masses,
and maybe that was true
once upon a time
long before the vastly, interconnected world
we live in today.
Before the widespread reveal of abuses,
both of money and innocence.
Today, the Church has lost its power.
We have a new opium,
a more refined drug
that doesn’t subdue us
with fear of action.
No.
This new drug,
this heroin of ours
That makes us two dollar
Hookers on the corner street
in order to get our fix
is more insidious
than the opium of the past.
In every home in the world,
from the billion-dollar McMansions
to the shacks in the ghetto,
everyone has access.
See the part where our old opium failed
is that it banked on us being too afraid
to do something
whereas our new heroin
gives us everything we ever wanted
lulling us into doing nothing.
In the brief moments of silence,
somewhere
in the back of our head
we realize this.
Our Response?
Quick!
Change the Channel.
Written – 10/30/2015
Updated – 3/28/2024
Someone once said that to hide part of yourself,
you also shut down All of yourself.
I never heard truer words spoken.
All the clichéd moments of epiphany
ever seen in movies made sense
as I experienced my own cliché.
written – 05/03/2016
Lock yourself away in a room
For a day, a week, or even two.
Would you exit just the same you came,
Or find yourself someone new?
written – 7/28/2017
Eyes of smoke and stars,
The Magician stands atop the world
Casually cruel, only time will tell
If it’s to be kind or no?
Dazzling the world with a show,
The Assistant trapped in a box
Waiting for the chop, chop, chop.
A trick to please the audience,
But the Magician underestimates,
Miscalculates the audience’s intelligence.
The mistake of one so disconnected
From the truth of reality so
Long have they stood upon the stage
Together and forgotten what it’s like
To sit and watch from the cheap seats.
written – 2/07/2023
It is said that the purpose of a family photograph is to preserve memory, but it creates images that take the place of memory, conceal it, and are a kind of respectable history, unnuanced and interchangeable, passed from one family to the next with the vague hope of leaving a trace for future generations. Not a literary history, but a superficial history.
– Hervé Guibert
akervand 