I think we ruin children by telling them
Crying is bad
When crying is being vulnerable
An expression of pain so natural
So they grow up to be ashamed of emotions

I think we ruin children by telling them
They have to become someone
When being themselves is already being someone
So they grow up wanting to be someone they are not

I think we ruin children by telling them
Disobeying the rules is inexcusable
When sometimes breaking the rules,
Is freeing one’s self from the expectations of others
So they grow up to feel insecure in the face of uncertainty

I think we ruin children by telling them
Monsters are supernatural creatures
When monsters can also take form in humans
Who exploit, manipulate and trample on others
So they grow up unable to confront even their own monsters
For how could something so unimaginable take form in themselves?

I think we ruin children by telling them
Punishment is discipline
Spanking, verbal fear to shut them up good and easy
When there is a thing called gentle discipline
One that requires less pain and more understanding
So they grow up to become aggressors
Believing they are heroes who save others from disorder

I think we ruin children by telling them
School is the best way to getting around life
Drowning in grades, homeworks and activities just to get by
When experience teaches far more important lessons
School can only teach in words
So they grow up to believing the good life is a tried
And tested pattern and there are no other ways to live

I think we ruin children by telling them
To avoid fears instead of confronting them
When the dark, cockroaches, dogs, can be overcome
So they treat fear as an enemy
Instead of being a friend, a lesson
One that teaches them to be braver, to be stronger

I think we ruin children by telling them
What you wear is what you are
Frills and laces for girls, ties and pants for boys
When anyone can wear just what the **** they want
Clothing is a choice in as much as who they want to be
So they grow up confined by what the crowd is wearing
Fearing any diversion would make them odd

I think we ruin children
By making them believe that success
Comes in fancy clothes, cars, a truckload of money
When happiness is the real mark of a well lived life

I think we ruin children
By telling them being alone is a shameful thing
When the key to understanding one’s self
Is through the painful yet productive solitude
That people so likely shame
So they grow up believing their happiness
Is in other people’s hands

I think we ruin children
By telling them outer strength is the real strength
When there are children who
Cannot lift their own chairs
But have the strongest, bravest hearts
Fighting their way into sad days
Like the heroes that they are

I think we ruin children mostly and importantly
By believing
That they are wrong
That they are too young to understand
When all the while
We could have been wrong
Age makes us not wiser
Just older
And so children lose their capacity to see things brightly
And the biggest chunk of the world’s dreamers are then silenced
By adults who never really believed in the magic of the world
As much as the kids do

So how do we ruin children, really?
By telling them being themselves
Is the least they could ever want
By telling children
That being who they are will never be right

Marmalade skies making love to a ball of fiery mass
parting, spontaneous, eager from his maiden’s *****
fertile with brown-green vigor of nature

Buoyant as  air in the sea,
the sparrows poured forth the blue stretch
familiar in their parade, uncertain in their path

Clinging to infant evergreens
the morning’s dews slid past the satin beds
and into the ground so steep and primordial

Last night’s rain
hung limply in the nipping air
and is here to stay

Soldier bees on their daily march
buzzing here and there
as if the queen dispatched them on a war within themselves

I stand in the midst of all the intricacies
overwhelmed, dazed
nature’s ease has caught me in an awestruck spell

Beholding the spectacle in my finite eyes
the horizons echoed my sunken soliloquies
In all this exuberance
there must be something inconceivably greater than itself
In all this enigma
I was quite absolute that I
am just a split second in an everlasting expanse
of space and time

Dim streetlights, wet pavements ahead of you
I know how lonely it can get but it's the only way
Pick yourself from the edge and carry on
No one is waiting but it's worth every chance

Painful goodbyes are all yesterday
Fix back the dream you let fall apart
It might be a long drive to a dead end
But you'll live through, somehow, someday

Come back home,
You've gone too far
In that little corner of your heart is a better tomorrow

Come back home,
There is a shred of hope from where you left
It's never too late, don't run away from yourself anymore
Come home, come home

Be the water
hushing the all-consuming fire
in every single living hell you've gone

The sea calmed itself
as I often do  
all those waves crashed
but I have tamed them

An open book
An open mind
You'll go places