It seems pretty terrible,
We **** full races, nations,
For one radical group and salute
To a place based on freedoms
Then try to browbeat the same religion
Into every school and political organization.
Remember the start of freedom we sought,
Pride ourselves being the melting ***
But all I see is ****** white folks a lot.

I'm tired of another year to build a wall,
How Arabic people will bomb us all,
Another African man going home
Gets shot up just because police can.
We create a stigma for anyone not like you
Then push hate for people trying to prove
That they deserve rights too.
I'd rather trust in any god that doesn't promote
Old money-made rich men,
Who make laws but don't follow them.

Get everyone fired up on a tangent, look.
While they turn around to hide their own scandal, crooks.
They would create any distraction
To allow for their own transactions,
You're at home fighting fake enemies,
They're sitting in mansions laughing.
Standing behind the views they want you to hear
Feeding people bigotry and fear
Real issues get buried and it isn't fair.

Chuck and I have been talking,
He says he's nervous to shoot,
I've got him strapped with a mean 22.
I told him the road he's going down,
There's no happy ending here
The angel was the first sign,
The waters ahead don't look clear

This is the calm, the storm is coming,
Better fix the windows while you can
Because, Chucky, the roof is about to leak
I warn you, we aren't going back to Sam.
Enjoy your peace in the moment,
Keep the liquor flowing and lit
But, we are about to sober up quick.

Those bodies aren't sitting in silence,
Quiet, you can hear their voices still
You've got a gun for quick violence,
They've got slow plans to ****

These are the things I think of when my eyes close:
I see a place where everything stands still,
A room full of thoughts that can ****,
Repeat the ding from brown noise,
Ping and clang keeping my mind going,
Words blowing through my brain
Like gusts just kicking up dust
For the sake of knowing they exist,
I need to attach life support back on my wrist
The chain strains and the clasp splits
You can't make sense of half of it
But if ever I wrote a line and you loved it
Then I guess it was worth all the rest.

What if I went back to school?
What if I barely see my family?
What if I don't really make it out ahead?
What if tomorrow I go to bed,
Then I just never wake up again?
What if I was happy with my life now
And everyone else who's got a problem
Can just turn their back and back down.
Okay, Ryan, relax it's just a suggestion.
The 502nd sheep just jumped over a fence
Then I cut off my mind from reflection.

It's okay to have bad days and feel good,
It's okay to have good days and feel bad.
You won't find all the answers
In the words written by someone else.
But in days of feeling lost they can help.
I'm a significant nothing in a grand scheme
Looking up to a sky wondering what it all means
I'm something to a few, I'm something to me
It's okay if I'm nothing to you.
I'm just a face in an ever passing crowd,
Hey it's getting late, may I sleep now?

I pulled my colors from their storage
Red, blue, yellow, purple, green, and orange
The case they sat was old,
With rust and squeaky hinges.
Painting fruit: Grapes, apples, and oranges
******* the colors up through syringes,
Precision causing anxious twinges.
Picturing perfect afterimages
But my art just makes me cringe.
I rhyme well but, shouldn't try to paint an orange,
Placing my supplies back in storage.

While I sleep, I see
Things as bright as can be
Where flaws and holes have grown,
I'm taken whole, existing.
I breath air tasting of potential
Instead of the stencil I've come to fit.
The people there support my world
Softly saying not to quit.

While I sleep,
I swear I can smell success,
Sweet like honeysuckle, smooth like cocoa
It's pulled through my airways, so close.
Still nightmares creep that I'll never know.
In the instance of dreamless insecurity
I am left breathless.

While I sleep, in the stillness I lay,
Wishing this was reality.

I miss laying in the grass
Even if it made my skin itch,
The freedom was worth the time to pass.
A sun burned face and back
Feels worth a beautiful day turning to night
In a trance where time goes off track.
How I wish I could hold those days so tight.
Gone in an instant, slipping through aged cracks.

If you sing and dance, no matter where you are.
I support you to hell and back.
If you are afraid to ever show your colors
Because people stare and laugh
I hope you take that random chance,
Someone may even start to clap.
Personally, I laugh right back.
Now the same squares are part of the act.
Keep dancing.

Whenever or wherever it rains
I can only promise one thing
I will be found dancing in the street
Even during work hours, I remove my chains
And take a break to get soaked head to feet.
I promise this is a practice I actually do
And you can feel free to do it too.
Be free. Be you.

A hundred marbles in dish,
A chance of fate to question with.
Fifty red and fifty white,
Fifty for my death and fifty for my life.
I close my eyes and extend my hand to reach,
My fingers brush the glass of each.
Afraid to look at either outcome,
If I see white, I breath for them.
If I see red, they agree with me, this is the end.

With sweat forming at my brow,
Three. Two. One. I open them now
It's red like crimson, red like birth.
Read like the paper that spoke my worth.
The rope behind was tied,
My fate was made as was mind.
It's time.

Thirty seconds I hung,
Thirty's seconds the rope did snap.
Questioning why they put me back
I guess lotteries play games like that.

They raise you up just high enough to see that gold
Until you've signed that line and you're already sold

While I'm working today,
While I'm at a desk wasting away,
I've got more and more responsibility,
People complaining, head straining.
The speed I type is making my fingers bleed.
But still that isn't enough and it's killing me.
Can I, am I, could I be worth a raise?
"Not today, sales aren't great,
I hate to say, the big heads only made
A half a mill for what you did today,
Prove your worth, this is not okay."
Okay.

So I wait, time being all I've got,
Until that final hour hits the clock,
I punch the clock, eight hours in,
Back home to eat, home to sleep.
Never sick, never really sleep.
Another pawn they keep
With just enough carrot to never really eat.
Complained about my shoes
Until the corporate world removed my feet.
And that's the land of being free.

While I'm working today,
While I'm wasting away,
I'll fix every problem you create
I'll be smiling with a hand to shake,
Someday I'll be the person
I dream to be awake.

I quit my job today
it's like gaining a beautiful freedom,
Wouldn't you say?
To wake up, In a world free from the clock in, clock out
I didn't leave a note, I just walked out
Honestly, I'm smiling with no doubts, no regrets
Even more honest, it's been five minutes,
I haven't even gotten in my car yet.
And I haven't had a chance to dissect these decisions.
I got a wife and son at home, they don't even know,
I don't even know what I was thinking,
Sit down for a minute, I'm getting blurred vision.

I'm taking some time for myself today,
Those bills can stack like dominos,
They fall, I didn't plan to pay them anyway.
I'll play these video games and become a legend,
Sodas will pay me to represent them
I'd be a sellout in a second, that isn't even a question
Just as long as I don't need to get out of bed, then I'll be fine.
It's alright, keep telling myself, it's alright.

I retired from my job today,
I gave my title away
What will I do without this purpose?
What is there, now, for me to seek?
I'm trying not to freak out
Honestly, my nerves are shot, my brain feels so tired
Even more honest, I'm driving home to try to explain to my family
That really I just got fired.

Let me tell you of a girl,
Eating a simple lunch under a tree.
Pretzel sticks, an apple, and peanut butter for dipping.
The sky was blue, the sun shown bright.
The kind of day you might describe
As indescribably perfect, unnoticed.
Walked through but not talked of.
She sat embracing it as children played
In a pool near by on this warm summer day.

Let me tell you of a boy,
Who ran to play with his friends
A boy with blue eyes who couldn't swim.
Running with squirt guns around a poolside,
The pavement slick like ice but
The child did keep caution too
Until a kid behind pushed him in.
Flailing arms and voices screamed out
As a girl ran to see what was about.

Eyes closed, water had its hold
As a girl knew CPR keeping him going
Coughing and coughing, maybe it could work
Choking but alive looking at another with worth
Only long enough to fall back out
On the wrist of  the boy was a medic alert.
"Peanut allergy treat with epinephrine"

If time stood still for a month
I'd question the minutes I misused
If given a week, where I didn't have to think
I might find a second to relax
This American dream I'm suppose to be chasing,
Just feels like I'm racing between work and my bed
Building  a mountain of stress and a mountain of debt
And then I come home, underpaid, overworked
It's hard to not let a job, define my worth.

They build us up for years, kid, follow your dreams
Then tossed to curb, kid, your worthless, it seems
They don't understand, the price to move up these days
A 50 thousand dollar loan to get a degree
In a job that still doesn't pay.
Call me unmotivated, I'll ask for an offer worth my time
Where the pay is substantial and insurance isn't robbing me blind
"Go be a doctor, a lawyer, a suit"
And spend the next 8 years eating only Ramen noodle soup?

You don't get it, I get it. "My generation wants it all for free"
Then how come I feel like I have so many chains around me?
They combat us with fear, attack our esteem and integrity
Until you're weak and question your own abilities.
These kids pop pills because their stressed out from life
Have you seen the pressures thrown at them every night?
I'm not saying we're victims, I'm saying we just need help
We're a lost generation as past ones only fend for themselves

There's nothing worse than being nothing
When you know you have potential
Instead stenciled, penciled, cookie cut
Into a rut of their something.
I'd rather be bluffing and faking
Than making myself into what they made me.
"Ryan, you ok?" Yeah, it's all gravy,
Reality, I can feel dry as a biscuit
Risking my life for this work life,
This can't be all there is, right?

"I'm a drug dealer!" And then there's shock
Not a street block but a retail shop
So we both laugh, the only joke I got.
They let their guards down, it sounds intense
But dense minds don't realize I sit behind
This keyboard and bash those buttons
Until they pop out of their sockets,
Clock it in, clock me out, I could work this knocked out.
A genius sleeping, keeping sanity from going south.

They keep saying I have such potential,
Stuck dreaming it could be with this pencil
But even this utensil is saying number two,
Afraid I'll turn blue being unheard,
Unrelatablly unrelated until my name
Sits on a stone slated.
Here lies a writer you only read
Once his words spoken out from the dead.

The wind felt really great today
You don't stop to think about it much
I guess your world grows, the world falls out of touch.
I made my choice, to release myself
Among best friends, sea salt ice cream still melts
I don't regret it, not even one or three hundred days,
This is our roof top, not a better place to fade.

It really was just the three of us,
I guess before me, it was just two
Among thirteen, who knew, I'd look just like him
And he looks just a little like you.
We can meet again someday,
In Twilight, just like now, just like then
On off hours, letting light and darkness in.

I am a nobody, you are a nobody too
Still, we make the heartless whole,
Sitting on this ledge with no souls
I can bring that boy back again.
I'm a a nobody but I'm part of something more
Remember me? I'm just some memories
Created to restore.

My father wished me a happy birthday.
My father wished me a happy birthday.
My father wished me a happy birthday,
And I wonder if we will ever speak outside of that.

There is a place where we all go,
Beyond the light and smile shown,
Through the tears of hard nights,
And within the fire burning through determined eyes.
Yes, there is a place where we all go.

My place looks so different than yours,
You wouldn't even recognize it
And I can't grasp yours.
They are all beautiful and real.

We put up so many shields to hide ourselves
Most opinions are not lucid but fabricated
By how we were raised or taught to think.
Go to your place and find you.
If you can't smile looking in the mirror,
Stop smiling to please others.

Sing like no one is watching and dance and love it
If that's the you, that you love
People may laugh, but they will appreciate you
If you open the door,
Who knows who will walk in.

I don't speak from fortune cookie advice,
I speak from  the life I've created.
Ask them about me, please,
I'm crazy, weird, original, innovative
Spending every work day singing and dancing and love it
Because that's the me that I love.

I can't enter your place you go.
Truthfully, I don't want to, it's yours.
Own it and all the rest will follow.

I'm not sure how to tell you this
While you sleep without my touch,
While you sleep not knowing my kiss,
I close my eyes and it's you I'm with.
There is no grand gesture I crave,
No exaggeration I have let my mind slip
Just the chance to part your hair from your forehead.
The thought leaves me a slave to you
With ropes I allow to be knotted through.

You once asked me to describe your soul,
Like poker, I took my cards to fold.
Words weren't created in your favor,
They put a standard to your features,
Masked beauty by insecurity to come later.
But if your soul could ever find a home,
In me, I would hold and never let go.
I could never describe it though,
The light it would show could swallow me whole.

I'm not sure if I have words that can sit
In a place next to your being
To compliment would be to criticize
The words coming out of my mouth  fleeting
Like my heart, fast-paced beating
In a moment to hold your attention,
Your gaze, your hand, your body.
I would take hold of whatever you allowed me.

Sitting in thousand year rubble,
Just yesterday felt like a home
A whole city sat here that no one knows
This is my story as a summoned ghost,
A fayth to break the sin and begin
A calm to last forever. Forever for all.
But me.
It's ok from me to you, I catch your gaze,
One green, one blue
I hold the crest and sigil of sun
But I'd burn out without my moon.

The city was massive, a sight seeing to believe,
The lights and sounds roaring from the ground.
Memories too vivid to conceive.
Telling everyone it was toxins
But I remember them watching as I played,
Cheering as I slayed and scored
The blitzball dome, each seat had shown
A fan within my reach.
But now...

It's all rubble, everyone smiles but struggles
The fans still stand and cheer
But only as a distraction from here.
As I look through the ruins at hand,
I know why we keep moving,
Through my home in Zanarkand