Zambia's Song

These children are beautiful, but they're dying by the dozen.

Pick up a box of eggs on your way out, but make sure to drop them on our doorstep.

How we make such a fuss of worthless objects that we worship like our God.

but young daughter, its not your fault that you were born without the means.

I mean life gave you lemons, but you lack the water needed to make that succulent lemonade.

We watch you walk miles but the television plays it as dull

so we change the channel hoping for something like an earthquake or another dead soldier

and let the importance and gravity of the situation roll off like water on a freshly waxed car.

But "carry on my wayward son/there'll be peace when you are done/lay your weary head to rest/don't you cry no more"

because by the time you get this message I'll be way too late

and the sack cloth and ashes will be prepared for morning.

Once the mourning starts your mothers eyes won't be dry for months on end

and the rest of the world sits like Jobs friends but for years instead of days

until your sister gets a microphone and stands on the stage and preaches a word that breaks our hearts

and the cycle starts over again!

Let the timer count down. We can take wages. Will the trend last days or years?

"Oh, I'll put a 50 down that it lasts at least 267 hours, 42 minutes, and 6 seconds!"

They tell me that the poor don't even try to stay afloat in this world

What they don't know is that something like a flood flashed before their eyes and they've got so much water in their lungs

They're just trying not to die, and they don't seem to care about anything other than how to get by

yet with all of their sickness and disease because of their situation they won't be hired

and because they aren't hired they get sick with disease

and because of their disease they bring about so much dis-ease

I just wish they didn't lie when they said loving people would be this easy

Our cameras are so focused on ourselves while we study the backs of our hands

the backs of our knee caps and the weenus is getting neglected.

I hope when you hear this you feel the guilt that balances out the shame and hurt that our people feel.

There are so many cracks in this globe we're just spitting to make some mud to make it flush and hold itself on its own

For Those Too Lazy To Take Down Their Christmas Lights

Hung like Christmas lights in mid-July
I’ve got my tongue caught up in a bear trap
I’m losing sight of everything that I’ve wanted to write.
She placed a hand on mine and I wished the world away
My eyes were opened and I couldn’t see
oh the Heavens know the things I wish to say when I sit to type.
These fingers stretch out like branches of barren trees
The fruit is rotten and falling while worms nibble at the roots.
Vines stretch forth and choke the earth around the trunk.
This burden is so easy and the yolk is yellowed
I want my soul to be poured out like water not held inside this bucket whilst I make a ruckus and shake a little bit of my thoughts out over the sides
I think I’ve run out of things to say that are of importance
so I will stand here and yell nonsense at the top of my lungs just to silence the crowd and feel like I’m in control of the ocean
No! Screw the ocean, man! I want to be in charge of the rotation of the earth
so If I move left fast enough I can bring everything back to perfection
I’m not even a perfectionist but I love the harmonies you sing to their swan song
and I want to be the melody but my voice only sings in the key of C and E is a distant dream to a vagabond like me
Sojourners and refugees make a home on a piece of cardboard to soak up your tears
I’M SO SICK OF THIS SHOW
Who are the Kardashians anyway?
Bring the justice and righteousness like a flood
make it flash and we will have a celebration as the whole world dies off again
Again? When was the first time?
I’m sorry your Sunday school doesn’t tell you that God killed EVERYONE when Noah sailed off high and dry.
Let’s argue this out, and you can call it a debate.
I’m still searching for something solid to write on. To place my hopes on.
I’ve lost my eyes in the light.
My name is Eli.
I’m strung out on thoughts like Christmas lights in mid-July.
Just leave me up and eventually I’ll find my season again.

Family Life.

Let's gather up the mirrors.

We can melt them down,

and pour metallic surfaces into the mold of a woman.

We can call it a relationship.

And it will be the only way mutuality will ever be reached.

YLFC

I had the opportunity to spit at Yorba Linda Friends high school service, and this is my piece. Enjoy.

I'm just a big city kid carrying small dreams like pebbles,
speaking softly and walking with a stick hoping to hit Mark McGuire home runs without the steroids
but somewhere in God’s Great Big Book it says that the weak will shame the strong
and that Bible Scholar Bullies like myself will be left wandering a desert of humility
wondering what dreams are made of
and whether or not we were wrong.
Yet it doesn't take much to have the faith of a mustard seed,
it’s maintaining that faith that takes the shade of vibrant honesty.
But the Lord has a way of dragging out the maimed and unexpected
and delivering them to a seat of power.
Isaac was an old man with a barren wife,
Moses had a speech impediment,
Jesus was a good Jewish boy,
and Rahab was a whore.
But you don't see God at the sidelines screaming,
"You aren't good enough to play on my team, little boy! You haven't fixed up your life so that its perfect"
But instead he tells us to sing
"all of you is more than enough for all of me for and every thirst and every need. You satisfy me with you love, and all I have in you is more than enough."
And the spirit of a loving God reminds us that we are his portion,
and that the things which we consider as being not good enough simply mean that we have ignored what He sees as the right stuff to participate in an active empire.
so I challenge you today to see the field of dreams and the bloodline of biblical proportions
To see the significance that your story could be leaving
and when you're done doing all of that, then see yourself differently.
"For it is one thing to be admired, another to be a guiding star that saves the anguished."

Schubert

I never knew you but I knew you. Like a son knows a father or a man knows his best friend though its been ages since they've seen each other. I watched as you walked through the dark and struggled with the weight of mutation bursting forth from inside you. A community carried you and now we find ourselves mad at God for removing sweet flowers from our weeds. We will call you rose and by every other circumstance you smell sweeter than any fabrication of truth that we make claim to know to heal our burdens. But all that we know has been uprooted and our world of dirt and decay seems to be drifting away somewhere ethereal. This is not the way that anything was supposed to be and yet here we are. I hope to whatever god you worship that this is all some sick dream of some perverts fantasy that likes to twist the knives in our backs until the hilts are like the heads of owls. Welcome to paradise. But God knows how much you've made us move and I'm so thankful I had a chance to hear you speak and I have made a destination to live and love like you and we've all made the same destination and we prayed every day that you'd be here to see us through and some trickery has been done. The rug is pulled out from under us by a faulty magician but there is magic yet in the air because you live in the hearts you've left behind and for that reason you will never die. And it's so obvious that you've left an impression in our hearts, Mr. Neil Armstrong, because this community has wept for you and prayed for you. We long to burn with you and carry the weight. But they were wrong when they said the good die young. They die when they are aged, like a fine wine, when they share enough of themselves to be a constant and you get so caught up in constantly being by them that when you subtract the constant, you're left with the variable--that's the change. So we roll with the hurricane and pick up the hurts we carried with you and move on to other things that your strength allows us to make it through. And when we forget the things we wish not to, we stop and remember you. Joel, "may angels lead you in, hear you me, my friend. On sleepless roads the sleepless go, may angels lead you in."

The Story

Tell your story. Write out the purpose for the pain. The reasons for the heartbreak and injustice, the deaths and depression, the love and the hope that you have experienced. Write it out and share it. Sing it from every rooftop you mange to climb. Dance it out in the streets. Shake it like breaded chicken until there is no more life in its veins. Stand within it in the subway tunnels and cry it out in a huddle of your closest loved ones. Suck the marrow from its bones because we are all going to die some day and right now we only have one chance at being legendary at being hopeful at revolutionizing this world but we also have one chance at being mediocre. At complacency.  This life can be everything you have ever wanted so write your story among the clouds and people will stop and stare while you do.

William Shatner

I once saw a bear capture a fish in a river. Sometimes that's how I feel. I feel like I'm working so hard to swim upstream, to help lay these eggs of future beauty, but out of nowhere this paw comes and swoops down after me. It kills me to see it coming. And I've been struggling with this problem a little more: tried to keep it bottled up so you didn't have to see. Mr. Hyde meet Dr. Jekyll, I'm sure they won't call this a gtragedy. But they did! They called it a disaster, nicknamed me Katrina and I never understood why I could never understand my thoughts without submitting to some kind of forum for depressed people. That's all this is is a depressive season. Its got nothing to do with the fact that we fuck weekly. Its got no motivation from the stresses I'm facing when I'm not in thatg bathroom masturbating. Piss and moan of time but some day we will both be clearly defined and I will trade this pale bone spine for some tired line that comes second string to love like mine. Turn that face away or get the fuck out. Don't you judge me! You've got no right to look into this window but I have let you see the monster I've become. I've lost the Road to being human and the whole time I'm trying to save souls. I can bring everyone back! And if you'd just let me Id show you the facts I've got recorded underneath my eyelids. I've got them all packed neatly away in boxes marked with sharpie like I'm moving out of town. But sadly I'm not going anywhere except maybe to Hell, but I'm pretty damn sure that I'm already there. So, let's take a look around. I'm torturing myself with temptation but claiming I'm in the process of reconciliation but really I'm just sick of failing and fading out. I just want to go home to my family where I was loved for being me and not havingto fit inside of a role that obviously wasn't written for me.

We Will Be Different

A Heart to Heart

About an hour ago a good friend took me aside to talk to me. He told me a few things that I believed to be a misunderstanding of what I represent. It is time for a heart to heart. Here goes my best effort.

I love what I do. I love playing music. I love standing on stages. I love spoken word. I love speaking with people. I love sharing stories that many would not come across in casual conversations. However, speaking on a stage can easily be interpreted as a "go fix yourself while I revel in my own ways" kind of ordeal.

This is not my intention.

Something that I have failed time and time again to emphasize is where my writings come from. I'm just a normal dude who sits up late at night and tries to write something powerful. However, most of the things that come out of my head are simply for me. The words I speak on stages and type in blogs are all for me. Let's relate this to a book many people love: The Bible. The Bible is this set of books that weren't written to the audience that reads them today, but there are truths that can be pulled from the text and still applied to a contemporary audience. In the same way, the pieces I write and the messages that I speak on stages are, in my head, being reflected and told by myself to myself.

It's an idealism.

It's the way that I want to think. When I say something like, "go love one another," it's not just me saying to the listener, "Hey, love that guy always" while I go and act like an arrogant fool. It's me reminding myself that I have something that I need to go work on at all times. The revolutions and change that I speak of are not necessarily just for my audience, but they are also things that I want internally manifested in myself.

It's my dream for a utopia.

Words are powerful, but there is no way for me to clearly define what is for me and what is for my reader/listener.

It happens with music.

It happens with books.

It's the power of stories.

I hope this helps.

I have struggles of my own, and most of my writings come from this. I want to be the change. I want to love others more. And I want you to pull out truths from my writings and apply them to your lives.

Thank you for this chance.

20/30

There was a man who felt pain

He got high

Then he felt afraid

So he drank a whole bottle of wine

It seems like there's a vice for every feeling in life

I've got six.

Welcome to the family.

Pharisaic Vision

Pharisee what's it like to finally see

That grace plays a larger role in love than you expected.

You preach from the liar's chair that law

and order are the two legs of Chuck Norris

But you don't fear a round house kick to the face.

There is blood on your hands from the "lost" that died

For they never knew that their Shepherd had his arms open.

Your speaking death into dry bones

and acting like it's the greatest cigar you've ever smoked.

It's cheap and trite like your stupid workshop

where you tell us that living in two kingdoms is a sin

Who are you to tell me that the old way of working is still the best?

This is a point of transition to a new way of thinking

No longer Sin Management Systems

but The Grace Company

and Love Incorporated.

You are so wrong in the way you speak

It's almost as if your picking out the road signs we have laid for seekers

Your false teachings will come with a consequence

You don't know where we are

Or where they have been

You have sat in your ivory tower with books and books

Relationship takes time but you stuff your face with Ramen

Unwilling to put the work in to cook the meal

You will be food for worms

7/30 & 8/30

7/30

This could be anywhere in the world but it seems to have infected my heart.
I must carry the pains in my chest until my breath ceases.
It must be the separation because I never held this hurt when I was near you.
This all seems so dark to me now as I look through glass at the creatures gazing down on me.
I wish I had the words.
David was a man after Your heart oh Lord and I
seem to have been turned around and I find my home among your waste.
Let me lament to the nations because I am just a Pharisee as long as I live among these thieves.
I was supposed to do it all for the sake of the Gospel.
become all things to save some by all means and
I have been stuck in this role
replaying my sins in my mind
as the people I have used walk past me day and night.
My God won’t you ease the pain on this heart of me
for I am afraid that it might break in time
for my brain is conflicting itself and I cant

control my motor skills and my hands will defeat me!
Wrapped tight around my throat, my closet holds no bones

8/30

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
but if I’m deaf can I still hear it?

6/30

Across the masses lies a look of terror

It has fallen asleep inside of their bones

When they crack their knuckles it awakens.

Reminds them of the death they shall taste.

Princess, Peach, and schemes.

An orphan plays his accordion like a disease.

she times her steps in twos and threes never stepping on the cracks.

The car passes by on the west end of town to distract the young officer

He sees money.

They steal the money.

A bell rings out in the open air like a bullet cut through the forehead of our leader.

Mr. President is down.

He's bleeding cotton candy clouds of ideas that will never go settled.

Dreamers dream nightmares of watching their creations burn in the fires like books in the Holocaust.

Moral equivalence, I think not.

My hands have been frozen to my side for 11 minutes now.

The Executive is still dead.

Hope. Yes we can.

5/30

Trapped in chains that vision cannot surmise

Compromised by the fabrication of a thing called time

and they wonder why I'm not good with my words.

I've got a gag in my throat and a coal on my tongue.

It's so cold in here my pectorals have testicles.

I keep repeating myself.

I've used up all of my vocabulary.

Oh lover, the Lord has left us.

Let's make the same mistakes that we used to on Sunday afternoons.

It is summer again, where is the love?

My life is for hire and they call this Stockholm Syndrome.

Diabolos, Slanderer, will you take my hand in marriage?

I've grown too dependent on a life of filth.

Take the claws in my sides and crack them.

Who needs ribs anyways?

Hearts are meant for sleeves not protective things

and I seem to have misplaced my gun.

Found it.

The force is strong with this one.

4/30

My life as an ordinary salesman

Wake, eat, sell, eat, sleep

Repeat.

Tell me that my life isn't worth living.

I've got 5 empty shells that say it is.

2/30 & 3/30

2/30

My lungs are all aflame with the water that is clogging them
Like cholesterol to the heart
They shall be filled with ominous things meant to break us down
And to kill
The home on the left once housed a famous madman
People thought he was sweet
Dutch angle of the floor to remind us of this crooked place
Adjust my heart with a leveler
There is a war going on for your mind and I am but a soldier
I won’t tell you to think but I will make you and you will hate it
What if I told you that the things you believed were false
What if I provided the evidence necessary to shake the Westboro Baptist Church
I hope your God burns on the cross so he has no body to resurrect with

3/30

Once there was a man from Nantucket
He died on a Tuesday
His wife had the arms of tree limbs in her backyard
She wore an apron
“World’s best cook”
She could only see past the kitchen counter.
Her daughter mowed the lawn
The chopped up blades would float around her like a hurricane
She turned green with money.
Envy was upon the horizon as the foreigners caught wind of our expenses.
They hurled bombs like Greek gods across an ocean of glass
our land was dented like a car in a wreck
We were wrecked.
Disaster zone.

Shrapnel flew across a forest.

6 men dug a foot each

The 7^th felt the warm sting of a viper in his back

He was from Nantucket.

They called him Joe

It was Monday.

1/30

My name is Danny and I talk too much.
I grew up playing baseball in the spring summer winter and fall, in that order.
I was always trying to be a daddy’s boy so i wouldn’t end up like Johnny,
the momma’s boy who loved dinosaurs a little too much
and dipped his Cheetos in his apple sauce
and played Pokemon like he was talking to God.
In fact I tried so hard that on my Fifth birthday,
my mom bought me a starter pack and red version
And in middle school they called me “stilts”
because I have half the blood of a Kamikaze running through me
but I’m surprised they didn’t call me stunts because id jump through hoops
with a triple back flip and a half pike jus for the red eye of Sauron to be focused on me
Oh what a wonderful life it is to chase the American dream like a mist in San Francisco
In high school I was average. That is all.
People talked to me and liked me.
And in college, life got hard.
It was like my mother’s brownies.
She always tried so hard.
I started standing on stages and preaching that life is so much more precious than we often think.
There is hope for us all and we just have to believe.
I was selling a message that I wasn’t even practicing,
Call me the Tiger Woods of morality.
Some day I’ll drink my Red punch and move on in this world. But it’s the same routine for now
Eat sleep repeat eat sleep repeat
Repeat, repeat, repent, repeat

Some day

Some day I will write something so spectacular that I will retire off of it.

I'll place my pen down, close my laptop and sleep it off.

And in my dreams I'll imagine how great this thing is.

Children will dance and cancer will be cured.

I'll make thousands of dollars a month off of royalties

because everyone will be quoting my piece.

It will be recited to death dealers and they will lay down their arms.

Some day I will fix the broken hinges on the doorways into other worlds.

No longer will Africa be over there or their oil over here.

Lovers will read my thoughts at their wedding day.

and the blown apart homes will disappear like a frost in the summer.

Some day I will write something so amazing that one person who reads it will die.

With a smile on their face they will be resurrected in some physical state.

Roses will grown in a barren wasteland,

Rain will fall from an arid sky,

I will lay my hands down and sleep it off.

Some day I write something so fantastic that I will forget that some dreams aren't worth following.

I like this a lot.

The first God I remember was a Santa Claus God,
who you only turn to around
Christmas time, who you tried to butter up,
and you got mad at if you didn't get what you wanted.

That didn't make sense.

I knew if there was a God, he could see through us,
like we were made out of cellophane, like he could stare directly into our hearts,
the way we look into an aquarium,
like he'd know what was floating around in there,
like he were the one feeding it.

Then there were those people who used god to threaten you,
saying "you'd better be careful- God's watching,"
like God was some badass hillbilly sitting on some cloud,
with some binoculars, a cotton candy beard and a shotgun.

Then there were those people who had God's name on a bumper sticker,
like he was running for president.
And sometimes those people would cut you off on the freeway and give you the finger,
which is very different than lending a hand.

Then there were people on television,
dressed in weird clothes and scary make-up,
SWEARING that they had the secret to God,
like god was a keyhole their eye was pressed to it,
and if I gave him some money they'd let me look,
and I could see God just hangin' around in his boxers,
and though I liked the idea of spying on God,
I began to wonder if the world would be a better place if the Romans had just put up
with Jesus and let him die of old age...

And then there were the football players,
kneeling down in front of everybody, thanking God,
like he was their best friend,
but then they'd jump up and spike the ball yelling, "I'm number ONE!!",
and that confused me,
for if you're number one,
then what number is God??

Then I saw politicians trotting God out on a leash,
like a racehorse they wanted to hop on and ride to the finish-line.
But if they lost, it would be GOD's fault,
and God would be the donkey they'd pin their problems on,
and that was very nice of God,
to be both a racehorse
and a donkey.

And then there were those who said,
"You'd better be good on earth, if you wanna get into heaven,"
Like heaven was the United States, and the Earth was Mexico,
and angels were the Border Patrol.
Like when you die,
you sit in a parked car on the outskirts of Heaven, the engine idling,
your soul in the back-seat in one of those kennels used to carry small dogs on an airplane,
as you listen to the radio,
hearing the voices of all the people you ever wronged testify against you.

And then there's the church which was like this cafeteria,
where they serve God to you on these very un-Godlike plates,
but I wanted my God PURE, not watered down by humans.
So I had one of those catastrophe gods- you know, the one you called in an emergency,
like God was the National Guard you call on to clean up the earthquake of your life.

So I got drunk one night,
drove home, passed out behind the wheel,
and woke up, going 60mph straight at a brick wall.
I slammed on the brakes, my heart banging like a wrecking-ball in my chest,
staring at death's face,
close enough to see that we had the same cheek-bones.

Now I have a God who's like a mechanic who can fix anything.
So, when I wanna chew somebody's head off like a salt-water taffy,
or amputate my DNA, or open my wrists like windows that have been painted shut,
I just put my soul into a box, like a busted computer, and haul it in.
And He never asks to see my paperwork,
or says that my warrenty has expired.
And I walk out feeling better.

And I don't care if He doesn't exist.

-Jeffrey McDaniel

Gravity

There was a warm crash--cold thud.

It sent a chill

up the spines of 23 viewers.

There was a car accident.

One vehicle was man and

the other cement.

We had a culprit.

His name was gravity.

He claimed that we couldn't

prove it was his fault.

Staple.

I once was lost, but then I opened my eyes.

I was blind, and I found no other way.

Sometimes love knocks you out.

Smother.

"All mistakes can be marked by borders"

Let us frolic into open territory.

We will laugh as lovely little angels choke out our dreams.

With eyes to hear and ears to see,

loneliness shall be called victory.

"Change" at CHILL

Video by JoJo Nieves

One Day I'll Be This Good

Anis Mojgani-"To Those Who Can Still Ride An Airplane For The First Time"