I've confined the greatest hits of Marx
to a playlist
and periodically map over them with dull,
grasping eyes, when desperate for talking points
or anti-capitalism ideation

The works of Bukowski, Poe, Emerson,
tethered to my fingertips where I can stave
them off enough to hold concept
but unearth no meaning

I can pull and manipulate quotes
like nobody's business

I googled Sigmund Freud once
because I forgot how to spell his name

If photos could become life
and give justice to experience and wealth,
I would be Frank Lloyd Wright

If John Muir had an iPhone,
he would be as distracted and rooted
Somehow he died surrounded by angels
at the advent of advertising and public relations;

Emily Dickinson would have been
an Instagram model and romanticized
mental illness

I gasp in admiration and nostalgia
at Rockwell, but that world never existed
beyond his oil, canvas and scope

If the people that wrote the history books
had to read them, they would be
as insatiable as me.

All we are is illusions of aesthetics
to one another
Trapped in the vaguely perfect candor
of rehearsed moments

Tripped up and mired in perspective
because we aren't as lost as they
Only lost to ourselves

The library of my mind relies
on binary communication,
programmed in arbitration

And inside, there's a small child
whose heart still desires to play
But he's overwhelmed and crying for help

In the corner, a yearning spirit
is steadfast and pacified
Forming a benchmark of baseline bullet points
Wrought with cynicism

I am not smart
I am not profound
I am not layered
I am not organic
I am not the next great American anything

Walk the nature trail when it's dark outside and the children are fast asleep, tucked under blankets stitched by their immigrant grandfathers. Let your shoes soak in the muddy ground, collecting dirt and crushed leaves, as you walk deeper into the forest. The birds weep as their lullabies get lost and twisted in the shadows. A deer or is it a gazelle hurries across the dirt-trodden trail, leaping into the a patch of ancient shrubs. Somewhere, miles away from civilization, is a city running on the labor of your Vietnamese father, his hands caked in red brick dust and pollen. Currently, all that matters is that the tab of acid you've taken has settled in your belly, as you cross the corroded wooden bridge to the other side of the trail, where the young adults are playing the ukulele and drinking Heineken.

I am empty like the pill bottle on my brother’s nightstand.

Clouded days,
Snow in sight .
Darkest night,
The moon's a light.
Quiet frost like crystal- glows,
Burning fire makes warmth flow.
As branches feel the weight,
we learn this winters fate.
Do we let our hearts freeze along?
or learn to sing winters song?
We can only sing together-
to make warm this cold wicked weather,
and I wish for this good to come true
And find warmth in others, in You.

Clean and white canvas anew.
Is it easier to leave it or create in hues?
Winters ice freezing many of them all,
and we hope their cold Hearts might come around next fall.

You were the most important poem I ever read.
I didn't have to pretend to understand you
like Emerson
But I memorized you all the same,
like Frost.

Writing poems about poetry
Is problematic, you see.

Poetry is subjective
Changes with every person

Poetry doesn't always stick with you
but sometimes you can't get it out of your head.

Sometimes you want nothing more than for the poem to end
to have never read it

Others you read and re-read and wish you could read it once more
for the first time.

You were the hardest poem I ever read.
I didn't pretend to like all of you
like Whitman
But I loved you all the same
like Dickinson.

You were my favorite poem I ever read.

K.A.

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, — present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

Urbanization by Dakota Pizzi
Theres a house of Fallen Timber,
Not far from me or you,
That flourished once in the summer When the sky was Golden hues.
Its been trampled down by the people of hardened stone,
Who are cold to nature's many unknowns.
So they chop away and burn it down As gray clouds fill the sky,
And what's left of her majesty the forest,
Is nothing but my lonely sigh.

Winter's Song:
  Wind whipping through my hair,
White fluff swirling without care.
Icy flakes, descending snow
bustling people saying "lets go!".
  I  feel the freedom, all it brings.
The silence of snow, how nature sings!
And I will sing along,
For sure we all know this song.
The symphony of peace on white canvas
To which life choreographs all its dances.
And in that easy light of winter snow,
I sat by the candles, feeling their warm- amber glow.