Poem: War

People are very good
At destroying
Everything that was built
Before them
For them
By them.
There is no remorse
There is just a passion
Of destruction
That rules their minds
That rules the world.
Lives don’t matter
People don’t matter
Nothing matters
As much as destruction
Of it all
Slowly
Passionately
Deliberately
Preaching the choir
Shaking hands with the devil
Following orders
Like sheep
Following idiots
Who said something
To help ruin
Everything
In the name of war
Promoting the peace
Promoting a better life.
For who?

My old man

I haven’t seen my old man in so many years. Looking back, it comes to me that we didn’t see each other more than we did. He was gone for work when I was thirteen, and since that time, we only occasionally talked on the phone. He would visit us about once a year, but he felt like a guest at our house. He was a stranger now since being out for so long does change a person. Back then, I was just a teenager, and not many things mattered to me. I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything to say; whatever parents decided to do was the law, and I could not question or not follow it. We separated for good for seventeen years with no visits, no photos, and just some rare phone calls. It became a new norm, a new life for all of us. Questions about where your father was, were not asked by others because everybody got used to my father being somewhere far away and he’ll never be here with us, so it doesn’t matter anymore.

My old man wasn’t always this old. I remember him as a younger man, full of energy, power, and life lessons. He wasn’t well-educated, but he was street smart. There was so much wisdom in his words that I would learn as time went by. He was right on so many levels, but the lessons he taught me were a bit pre-mature for my foolish, childish brain, and they didn’t register right away. He kept on preaching and teaching me things, and I continued to ignore them. Time has caught up with me, though. As a young man, my old man was always angry, and he never liked other people. Other people were always dangerous, mean, harmful, bad-spirited, and for some reason, they always wanted to take advantage of us. The only safe place in the world was our old house which was our home, which was the only place we could feel safe and relaxed.

I remember when I was fifteen, and he taught me how to drive a car. His lesson didn’t last too long. After the first day, I left the car crying, drowning in tears, because the old man had no patience with me, and I didn’t know when to focus on the road or his screams. The next day my mother signed me up for driving school, and some other man was teaching me the driving skills. 

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Poem: One great precious moment

Hope is what we need
In all the hopeless places.
Love is what we miss
When we need to be loved.
We reminisce about summer
During long and cold winter days
And in the summer we want to
Cool it off.
There is a balance in life
That works, and it might not
Be working for all,
But it makes life interesting.

We’ve been apart too far
From one another, maybe too long?
Cannot even remember our last conversation
Or the last phone call we had.
Life’s moving fast,
We are growing old faster.
One minute you were a child
The next you’re an old man.
One minute you think that there is
Still so much to live
And so much to life
And the next minute,
You’re at the end of it wondering
Where did the time go?

There is nothing to take back.
There are so many
Precious moments in life and
There are only so many sunsets and
Sunrises. We sure miss a few
But we cannot afford to ignore
The wonders of nature and
How beautiful it is, trying
To make us feel better,
To give us hope,
And love, and life,
and so many precious moments.