#6 Los Angeles

Cardboard shadow puppets with ambient desk lamp lighting. Thanks to my mom for sending me this cool rice paper used in this effect. 

Ignorance burns my eyes like sulfur rain

causing tears to scorch my skin

as every muscle twists into agonizing knots 

tremors and shakes overtake my arms

as i look at those laying under the tree of life

and sowing the seeds of hate that

choke its roots and wilt 

its mighty bow. While I stand helplessly shaking

like its leaves in the 

passing breeze, as soft as a last breath and as barely audible.

Did you know that this day and this age still

contains enough hate and misunderstanding

to force us back

and submerge us beneath the cascading waves 

of a history book, its pages burying us alive and delivering us to

a place i thought we'd

walked triumphantly hand in hand

Person to Person

there was a dream that we'd have reached a better place.

There was a hope of change. 

But the bubble burst and 

tears flood freely from my eyes.

A fist of iron wrenches between my ribs

driving all air from the pouches that sound should 

blaze from, words that should scream down the wall of 

injustice, hate, and disrespect

until i'm hoarse and sore, liberated and enlightened

free from the bondage of the twine 

that ignorance has wound around the hearts of so many, the words

 stick in my throat and 

choke me.

Tradition doesn't mean right, i gasp in a whisper to the wind

a ripple into the pond

disturbing the calm and causing a wrinkle and a second thought.

The whisper carries by the old gnarled tree and a leaf picks up

the message and turns to the golden one to its left

and whispers again

then the tree lifts its head and stretches a limb.

One step at a time, and one day at a time 

we struggle to educate. and hope through the sick feeling 

rolling our stomachs and tumbling our minds 

that one day, a hope against hope but what else is left,

one more will understand.