I could only speak metaphorically
I could only see what was given to me
People expect the worst, they want me violent
They want me banging on my chest causing riots

Riptides that cause the earth to shake
The only reason I’ll ever play it safe
Life is the only woman I’ll ever chase
But I’ll go first before my father’s time pass

He got regret to live with,
He ain't finish his current sentence…

Things I forget to mention when I’m questioned,
“what if I did this, would you act this way?
What if I changed the way I speak?
Would we still have a shift?”

It’s the hunger that I crave
It’s the reason I don’t shave
The reason I keep old shirts with tomato stains

To remind me where I come from
To remind the business that I stand on.

“There's a war’s goin' on outside, no man is safe from”
Blinded by the lives we see on tiny screens
Children having children,
Then cycles repeat…

It’s the growing up with voodoo being practiced
The dangers of Santeria,
Its what that red wine’ll do to you
The dangers of sangria,

I’ll speak in tongues the shepherd wouldn’t understand
I’ll speak in rhythm while they’re off beat
I’ll speak in loyalty while they try and cheat

It’s the hunger that I crave
It’s the reason I’m not safe

If I could understand the hate you give,
We’d be the chosen few to gain inner peace
The handful that would say please

I never understood sin
How am I supposed to teach my kin?
Teach him to love himself, and don’t depend
Teach the reason man gave half his rib

It’s the hunger.

I know he screams
I know he lies
He's practically the devil
Right there in disguise

But if that's the case
Then why is he here
Why have you loved him
For all of these years

Charmful and witty
You weren't prepared
So why'd you marry
Just to live your life scared?

All our lives we’ve been told to keep it low
Keep our dreams out of sight and on hold, and our thoughts dressed up in clothes…

Our hopes were like golden blue bows slipping from our frozen poses...
Our hopes for any kind of rightness peering out
from under our beds of excitement turned to functional poison…

And who are we now? The ones that look dead in a beautiful way… we never got to know us but say we’re okay…

And there’s so many actual dead, but we feel like we’ve lost a million realities before us…
So we say how it’s absurd and grotesque,
Shake our heads, and try to expect less…

And when the bullet finally flies towards us in slow motion; we question its beauty… the cold silver glow of a car window with the hope a teetering feeling is imbuing…

The weakness of the officer…
His barricade frame looming soullessly over the victim as the other officer decided she was too sick to come in…
The sadness of the old man arrested for holding a placard containing truths we all should believe in…
The weakness of your will to go along with everything now that it’s nothing…

But what’s nothing?
Is nothing breathing? Is nothing hearing? Is nothing seeing?

You can’t be at peace with dissonance…
And in order to achieve peace you must wake up to the hell that persists…
Don’t think you can avoid it…
Prepare to ask yourself the question;
Would you rather live in a cell where they don’t let the sun in,
Or be beaten to death for believing in something?

I wonder why people cannot forgive, for even the things I try to hold slip away
I wonder why people cannot forget, for it seems far too easy for me
the things I try to do just fall apart and what I've built
is far too weak
I wonder why people can't cry, for my tears become a river
then it becomes a raging drought that I cannot help become alive
I wonder why people get angry, for my heart it cannot hold
when I come up in defense, I promise anger is not my sword
though sometimes I carry pointy daggers and pointy arrows
I promise that they're made of foam and of my own sorrows
what's outside is not in, and what I hold is not a sin
is it? is what I will question, but I cannot make it so
I wonder why people cannot see the world as it is
a snake in a garden, like the garden of Eden
We have become a parasite, one seeking to destroy
to live and protect a world we say is ours
I wonder why we cannot heal, and how we shy away from the sun
why I love the rain when they love the snow
and I the thunder and them flowers, they'd only know
I wonder a lot of things, and for those it'll never be
answered because this world is a strange place
that will not be here much longer
I hope that they'll know the destruction and the pain
while I search for something
to make this world even a little worth it

Some say that the world will end in fire, and some say it’ll end in ice
Some say that the world will end in explosion, the cause of the despise
Some say that we’ll move to a world we’ll learn to love, to miss our home
That we destroyed, So we’ll fly away again into the stars but still we are alone
Some say that the world will end in darkness, when our beloved light goes out
Or the god that is said to rule us, will tire and we’ll never know what the story was about
Some say that the world will end in nothing, for we’ll not comprehend it when it comes
We’ll be angry or upset, in our last moments, or perhaps holding the ones we love
I don’t know how the world would end, but maybe it’ll end when we do
The earth will grow back into the place that it deserved to
Or maybe it will end when the world breaks apart, unable to hold itself any more
Or maybe it will be when we are the ones to tear apart, ****** and full of gore
Or maybe it will never end, and though we will stop life will continue on
In a universe without us, in a universe where we are all gone
Silence of the world, slowly rocking itself asleep
Our cries were no more, nothing else to believe
Perhaps we were not meant to be in the start, for this world is out to ****
And battling nature, we’ve begun to feast at each other, our own blood what spills
There are a million ways that the world will end, and for us it seems important
But we continue to ignore that we are the cause of almost all of them
Maybe the end doesn’t matter, because at the last page of a book we cannot write more
We do not write the story, the path of fate, we know not what’s in store
So maybe if we work to make it better than it was, and maybe make it last
And not be stuck in our heads about who to love, when the world’s ending so fast
Perhaps we don’t need a war, and maybe we need unity
But there must be some sort of end, even in eternity
We can just live today as if it doesn’t exist, smile some more instead of smiling so less
The people that will come will go, and it’s okay to make a mess
Remember to clean up, for someday this will all end, best to make a home out of nothing left
Let’s leave something so the ink doesn’t dry up too soon, write our own story
While fate writes ours too

Last time,
with lost grief,
I kept thinking of something,
that never found an answer.

The day I asked the universe:
Why? Why do you never let the world drive by itself—
without your rules, without its taste?
But silence whispered, unexplainably,
Or maybe.. I just didn’t hear.

I see people moaning,
“Oh God! Please call me to yourself!”
But you never call them.

I see people crying,
“Oh God! Please forgive my mistakes, spare my life!”
But I guess... they are your favourites.

From here, from there,
I wonder...
Why do they both ends the same way?
Both cries, only perspectives apart :
one wants to stay, while other wishes to leave.

I asked the universe again:
Why? Why do those who wish to live, eventually leaves...
while those who wish to leave, eventually stays?

Guess what? These questions covered up in the silence again..

It’s been months, unanswered...
Or maybe it’s just unexplainable.

Maybe the universe breathes in paradox.
And that itself is the answer.

—Parisha