Sometimes when driving through towns
Past little homes and apartment complexes
I can't help but to wonder
What unspeakable horrors hide behind
Those walls
That conceal
And muffle

Am I deranged? To imagine such things
To worry about the deeds
That may or may not be happening
In hidden rooms and behind closed doors?
Is it my anxiety? Is it a psychic connection?

And so.
I created my own idea of a perfect world
A system.
Where people are safe, from the horrors of another's sense of justice
Enter Aethisia
A world built entirely by the host.
A world free of others.
And only in his own solitude,
Do I believe man will truly Flourish.

Feckless and without warmth
We have grown to pretend to care
As a new species of man grows
From the septic pools of lies and deceit

Outwardly, we have grown not grotesque
But perfect.
Flawless and divine
Yet no light shines through our eyes anymore
Nothing more than hollow perfect creatures

We have perfected the art of deception
The art of pseudo compassion
Like the light of an angler
We draw in those
We only wish to consume

Surely, we have evolved
From bandits, highwaymen, and thieves
We have become licensed bandits
Licensed highwaymen
And licensed thieves

"All for the greater good"
We whisper to ourselves
Every night before we sleep
Hoping our dreams stop the pain
Hoping our dreams pause the fragility
Of our brittle compassion

We boast as love.

When I was young and simple
I never understood why and when
Adults lost their color

When and how did growing up
Into an autonomous being
Become the wasting away of eccentricity?

Until that is
I grew up
And saw first hand how it happens

Gradually, you begin to dull
Until you look around the world
And realize the color has all but vanished

Every step along the way
To "growing up"
Means at every stop, you must sell another piece

At every station along your life
You have to shave off another slab
Another offering, to get you "back on track"

Until you finally made it!
As retirement nears
You begin to remember that basket

Full of all the childlike wonders
You cut off to get you where you are now
And it pains you

Retirement finally comes
And you are handed back that basket
With all the once glowing ideas

But it feels heavy
And foreign
And what was once the inspiration of your entire existence

Is now dull and grey
And so are you
Who sold all the imaginations and innocence

To grow up.

At the end, what do we all ask for?
What do we desire in the final moments of life?
Why is it that we call out to those whom we love?
Why do we reach out to those who give us warmth?
Is it because we know at the very end,
That nothing else matters,
But love?

There once was a story of a little bird
Who lived in a cage by the window
And everyday, the little bird would look outside
To see the sky sprawled as far as its little eyes could see

The little bird knew not was out in the skies above
But he knew,
And it burned within him
That someday,
Someday, he would make it into the open world

For many years, as it watched
It saw rain, and sunlight
Storms and tranquil nights
Always in love with it
Always yearning for that world

Finally, the day came when the bird made it outside
Finally on the other side of the window
Without bars or cages to stifle his flight
The Bird had the every and all direction
To fly into the endless horizon

But.
The Bird went nowhere
Despite the absence of the cage
Because now that he had his moment
He realized he was far too afraid
To decide for himself his own journey

So he waited
And waited
Until many years later
The Bird decided what he wanted most
But time had left him older and slow

And the Bird never left
Despite the open world around him
Because he feared
That his decisions
Could be wrong.

The longer I live and from atop the privileged pedestal
Life has fortuitously handed me
I realize just how easily it is
To use such exquisite balconies of wealth and opportunity
To rob the ones below you under the guise of necessary evils

Corruption takes the form of whatever benefits the bearer
A slurry of desires and wants, that taste like needs
But only for a bitter taste to be left in the end
An elixir of lies, mixed with truth,
Designed to acquire more, through meticulous maneuvering

All the while, those fed such a potion
Taste the notes they desire, the notes they need
And such fears to lose those tastes
Were calculated to spurn just that,
Fabricated addiction.

Evil no longer wears the face of armies and war
Corruption no longer is a fat man in a small suit
With money bags surrounding his dinner table.
No.
Humanity's greatest enemies no longer openly walk the streets
But rather fester in the privacies our minds

We all have a single moment
In the infinity of time
To let our light shine across the stars

A lifetime is but a moment
Years are to time
As grains of sand are to a desert vast

But in our fleeting seconds of existence
We shine brightly to show the world
Who we are

And yes, of course we are afraid
But we are eager
To frame our seconds, our days, our years

As beautifully as we can.