We all want to be told stories, and we listen to them in the same way we did when we were young. We imagine the real story inside the words, and to do this we substitute ourselves for the person in the story, pretending that we can understand him because we understand ourselves. This is a deception. We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at time we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and

In a dusty, sunlight room, there is a shelf of dolls and toys. One is an over-sized golden retriever and another a small, chubby boy. Yet another is a thin, stylish school girl--complete with hair done, uniformed outfit and matching shoes/purse. A pair of hands--a child's--reach for a one-starred ball in the center of the room. A golden dog trots up to nose the ball, and the hands take the boy and play it with the dog. Young, innocent play. Endearing.
Until the schoolgirl w

In an unbiased world
We Stand
Proud
Together
Tall, short; right, wrong

In Peace
We Smile
Because We Know
And We Understand
That Everyone Else is
Just like everyone else.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In the world as we know it
We Trudge
Under
The Weight
Of all the crimes we've commit
In horror of ourselves

We Keep Searching
For an Answer
To Why
We hardly ever do
The Right

A shiny red apple, polished and perfect,
held before your imploring eyes,
inviting you to bite into its soft, white flesh.

A shiny red apple, grown with stolen genes,
shipped countless distance from home,
marketed to be part of your innocuous consumption.

What goes on beneath the skin?