A Poem by Kendra To Be Published by ATI In Three Parts. Here's Part I. (very long) When you open your eyes To the people who sleep And sell you their life As if we can keep going on... Leading our lives divided There’s comfort in silence I know Who says you can’t be alone With everyone who’s ever known How full of hollow it’s grown When we’ve risen up Rose above What is hate and what is love They are the same So is everything And find the peace That’s underneath Tangled with chaos And all the grief we feel When we live our lives Outside of life The slumber that is my bride Because our thoughts intertwined Is not what you think is right What is life? What is life If you don’t even try But trying brings nothing in time All along on the ride Will you learn or be blind Both may rip you away from divine Crawling through life You may never find what is yours If you close up or take it all in Who can ever win Cut your losses and grin And live while there’s life to live Carve your path Leave life intact I want to be blind But those reasons are mine I don’t want to see outside And lose the light that resides In the words we often hide Cause we have to prove And have pride And strive to be alive Atop all others Is when We fall into death again Strangers you are my friends We just haven’t talked yet We just cancelled debts That we all know we owe Our mother said so They gave us life But not our free will Something alive That never stays still And who says you’re here forever? Chasing the youth We’re born to lose This "god" is in you And what’s evil is too Chasing the laughter that fades When what’s inside you stays Till you fall away What will you think when you lay Seconds away from change And relearn what you’ve been played And interpret in your own way Why you’re here What you’ll leave For those to receive Will you have nothing to give but A house full of junk You didn’t even need But you worked But not merely feed But to feed your greed And left a monumental funeral plot A testament to how you bought Everything that mattered to you To show others what you could do With those paper devils That became all of you Working for the sake of working Making money so you can spend Then make it all over again Everything that seems flawed But the beauty gets lost Don’t love Assume that you have won Consume Be near to But don’t be close Inhale like a ghost Anything beyond your nose Is something you’ll never know No No Let it glow The snakes chasing it’s tail And he’s swallowed it whole break the cycle and save your tale others might tell pass it on down procreation well it’s a step on the ladder... like the sex or the baby look what you’re doing it for is it so you can tell them when they see they cannot change the world and you see yourself in them... or you see what you lost sight of your child your beacon of love to the world not just another who’ll live in this hole nurture them let them cut away that is the path they will take if your life turns out to be fake and the see through the cracks in all things Do you Don’t you Reel in the coil How is your filter? Has it been soiled You’ve been spoiled But not right rotten You write down "stop it" but it’s always the same topic do be/don’t be too myopic is there too broad when it’s all connected There’s light in generations That can’t be stomped out Because it’s passed on to people who know When into place falls All we’ve fallen from Bring truth to your days And thought to all the deeds And angry optimism Paves the path to inner needs That are shared in all these souls Of people ready to go But stay while they can So others can know Anything that is worth anything But what do we really need That hasn’t been had I am so glad That I’m being had In this world that’s a sham Ride on wave while you can This reality Failing project as such I only don’t care Because I care too much They say remain industrious As the days solidify and fluster us Who remains oblivious? The ones who shut themselves up No words in their shell without doors Eyes aren’t even for feeling anymore Just something we cast to the floor When we’re ashamed. Their lives without trust There’s a cure for your sickness It’s shutting up And giving in When generations before you Tell you what you should do Do they have more answers then you It’s hard to admit But they fell away too Losing their youth It’s not about greys It’s about turning life Into black and white Look into eyes When they pass you by They’re calling out But who is home Inside your brain You just look away You don’t want to admit pain You can sugar coat it again Instead of bringing sweetness and comfort To say you’re not alone And this is growing up Some never do They really get stuck In what society says is the path to good life Educate, impregnate, purchase and die And teach your children well That they need to keep buying So all will be well There’ll be jobs for all But no real sustenance Just pennies saved to be re-spent And feed the economy And help turn out sludge In the form of waste In the form of hate Of words that fall from our mouths, As toxic as the space On which we run this race Nature knows its place And has found ways How? I can’t say How she survives The passing of time And pours through the cracks Of our concrete gold mine- We all want to say what we know You’re growing up tall But what has life shown You and all your dreams Sewing the seams To let others be This is what all music brings Rhetoric To cleanse and then- How can you trust them Is you can’t trust yourself The circular cycles That never find rest Go and be What you are best Yourself It’s underneath what you’ve been taught They just want to show you’re there all along Unless of course, they strung you along To help you sing Their very own song But it’s in you Because you’re a man Just find it while you can Slap the hand Hold the hand Whatever you think is real May not be but there are no deals To be made afterwards After all Unless of course there is But there’s heaven on earth if you live Death is your final way out Of struggle and all the doubt But live for the beauty and feed >From the knowledge that gave us our greed You want to breed You feel you should plant your seed Plant your life on the life of another Plan your life for mistakes and error And throw away the plans You land where you land When you fall away from the hand And raise your fist and start again Don’t be sorry for change If you want to be living Things can’t stay the same Because they never do But they always do I would not say it if it wasn’t true But words are just what we’ve been taught Do you see cycles that rot But rot brings life When on carcasses and ignorance You find life Welcome the sickness in you And do what you have to do And live without regret Expand you mind All will be fine In it’s inability to be fine You find what you find It’s not yours Share yourself use your will See others wills Break down your walls We tumble and fall Because winter in our souls Makes us realize the light We all want our way So that makes us fight Never find peace while we might And if we didn’t crack How could we put together The pieces of our lives Forever whatever Live within your means See your mean...and your dreams Elevate yourself And get put down - Living in the stars With your feet on the ground All I ask is what was found When you looked inside yourself If you felt you could drown Because you ignored it And thought all was sound While In the salty seas That are you and me Vessels that give in And take out What we’re capable of The animals shoved off the shore That’s for sure They knew what we were in for When the floods came There’s a lesson within Do you sink or swim Will you fall from your own self again You’re thrashing in the sea When you don’t see And if you go under You’ll see our mother Is angry at father time Because we’ve been here on relatively finite line And millions of years of light We’ve cancelled because we’re in the right Insects carry on life We’re so much bigger But useless in the chain of life We take and we take and we Give only if we’ll receive And mosquitoes They make us bleed And the mosquitoes feed The forests That were once full of trees As nature tries to breathe Life into all we’ve killed The animal scat brings logic in fact They ate what they needed Gave a little back To start the cycle again We take it in Maybe get fat Flush away nutrients And we can’t get them back And we don’t care We used our free will To kill And expanding your mass But in life so temporary What really lasts Except our notions and thoughts Processes and faults Trials and doubts Beauty without Remorse for what others will think Nuclear war Is the rapture for sure As men fight for power At the cost of what’s pure It’s happened in history before To make the empires crumble And bring the people back to the land Cause people forgot they were only a man Amongst other men All are great Try the upperhand And seal our fate What makes you want to be great Or greater than the great I should say Those who say what they say And don’t try to throw it all away The tower of babel Is another tale of man’s need to be in the sky When all the air is in his mind Build it up And rub it out We’re high in the sky With our temples of stone Pillars for profit Smokestacks that smother And I wish I could speak the tongues of others Just to know what they think of our purpose We were made for tribal existence Like animals Like packs of wolves Travelling around And having just what we need Life We think it’s defined by what we can Hold We get sucked into mark downs But we’ve been sold Whoever denied that life wasn’t all frowns A smile is just a frown upside down Upset the cycles And turn it around I heard what goes around comes around What do you perpetuate? How you feel others are wrong? What is your song? You know the words But can we hum along Cause at the root of it all We know the tune But we add our own beats to create something new To bring our own point of view I how do we change the world When we only care about ourselves Absorbed by the suction Admit it Spit it all out Taste life again Your mouth Admit you worry for others because how you would feel If something happened Then you are real Admit things that show your place See your ugliness Before you find grace All is the same Maybe we’re just buying Into something that’s new In it’s antiquity Just be re-spewn If it didn’t matter Words would not have fit So easily together When will we all be A separate piece of one another You are my brothers but you live your own life I can’t control you I can if you can’t control yourself That is the danger of not being sound Others around Will try to pound Themselves into you The contradictions contained In the world we’ve barely sustained I could fight for this all day I see this in the insane The "sane" have become the lame They are the meek who’ll inherit the earth They’ll be left with their buildings And jerks And without all the small people Who kept the earth running Farming the land You’ll have your paper trails And your profits for what A life with no purpose Or is it’s purpose to stop This bullshit that is Having people work in mines To be given the shaft by all those fine Uppercrust people who are sad And sick And it’s a not even a sickness worth revelling in Keep raping the earth to run all your cars As you travel on four wheels to nowhere that’s far Know where you’ll be it’s not far Crawling on all fours Begging the forgiveness of this earth you have ruined You are so arrogant you have assumed There is no life outside of you Are there other planets so capable of our productivity Possibly just incapable of such stupidity I only say it to see if you’ll look within When did life lose it’s resonance When will you lose and take hold of the innocence Sink or swim?