Your Voice Did Not Offer Ambiance

Your conversations
flowed loudly,
seemingly oblivious 
to the beauty
of the lone guitar
and stunning voice
behind it

Your unrequested
noise sent waves 
that crashed
into my eardrums,
conflicting with the
music that was
so much better 
than anything
you had to say

29 Feb 2020

The Death Cries of Dairy

“Alternative milks

are killing our

dairy farms”

The headline

an ironic cry

for mercy

from an industry

whose cows 

receive none

A cashew

is not impregnated

when we want 

milk to flow

Almond mothers 

never bellow

when their babies

are dragged away

Baby coconuts

are never deprived

of iron and mobility

to tenderize their flesh

We don’t cover

our children’s eyes

when soybeans meet

the sharpened blades

The slaughterhouse

isn’t lined with

the bodies of oats

whose milk 

had slowed

Your dairy farms 

are dying because

we realized the cows 

don’t need to

Watch it performed with friends

"Alternative Milks Are Killing Our Dairy Farms" (BBC)

21 Feb 2020

Green Paper, Black Skin

She was born with black skin

He, a paler shade

She was a child of slavery

He, a slave owner

She was beaten by masters

While he held a whip

She could own nothing

He could legally own her 

She fought for freedom

He fought abolition 

She covertly crossed land

He simply stole it

She viewed humanity

He saw only savages

She guided towards freedom

through the Underground Railroad

His relocation efforts

brought the Trail of Tears

He fought for the chains

she sought to break

His face marks the twenty

Hers scheduled to replace it

Not so fast

said the new administration

Racial progress 

was never on their agenda

New Yorker article

11 Feb 2020

Seven Billion Voices

There are seven billion voices 

Only one of them is mine 

Their voices seemed louder, 

and there were so many 

It was overpowering 

My voice seemed small, 

insignificant in comparison 

It can seem like 

no one is listening, 

no one cares 

What good could come 

from my lone voice? 

Perhaps I should be quiet, 

even fall silent, 

and let others 

control the discussion 

But if I listen closely, 

the narrative is not as consistent 

as they would like me to believe 

I hear other voices 

that sound more like mine 

They only seemed faint 

because they were further away, 

drowned out by the crowd’s 

boisterous chants of 

“it has to be this way” 

With my ears tuned 

to this frequency, 

these divergent voices 

have strength and volume, 

they are far from quiet 

A collection of voices 

can only be created 

one by one

The narrative can change 

The chorus is singing 

from a book of blank pages 

Pages that only together, 

over time, will we fill 

My heart is not weak 

My brain, fully functioning 

My voice, no less important 

There are seven billion voices 

​

And one of them 

is mine 

2 Dec 2019

Racism Is a Parasite

Racism isn’t 

caught like a cold

Nor can it be 

easily dropped

like a baseball bat 

after a homerun swing

It isn’t always proudly 

held high with a tiki torch,

a lit message, unmistakable 

for the world to see

Racism also hides,

like a parasite,

an unwanted pest

inserted intentionally 

by ancestors who

gladly profited 

from other’s pain

It nibbles away at us 

from the inside

It cannot be conquered 

by being ignored,

by pretending 

it does not exist,

by self-congratulatory 

boasts of how 

that can’t be inside me

No, in this battle,

our eyes must be open, 

scanning the crevices

for the endless traps 

that were left to ensnare

because they are 

everywhere

30 Jan 2020

Swimming Upstream

Struggling against 

the current of society’s 

seeming indifference 

Flashing neon signs 

point downstream, 

trying to obscure the 

pain and suffering 

of the well-traveled path 

Trying to harden 

our minds and our hearts, 

so we ignore the plight of others 

and concern ourselves with 

only our own comfort 

Trying to convince us 

the stream only goes one way 

and it is useless to fight 

But the path upstream 

is filled with love 

and that is the 

destination we seek 

30 Oct 2019

written as a collaboration with Zach's song "Volunteer"

A Hint of Humanity Was Asked, But You Denied Even That

Your mouth 

can muster the names

Muhammad Ali

and Bob Dylan

and not insist upon

Cassius Clay and 

Robert Zimmerman

You can oblige 

the change from 

Prince Rogers Nelson

to a singular moniker 

or even, for a time,
(insert image here)

Reginald Dwight

mourning the loss

of Norma Jean Mortenson

is not the way you 

would have described

“Candle in the Wind”

You don’t insist

that the butler in 

The Dark Knight

was played by

Maurice Micklewhite

You can call Robert Diggs 

by the name RZA

and Alecia Moore

by the name of a color

So why do you balk

when asked by a 

transgender individual

to accept their chosen name?

As if someone else

needed to ask 

your permission

in order to define

their own existence

2 Feb 2020

Watch it performed

Between Mountains and Skies

(For Zach and Gretchen)

Sitting between two 

majestic mountains, 

their sounds perfectly 

mixing in my ear, 

echoing, inspiring me 

I add my voice to 

their beauty 

and, though it lacks 

the melody whistling 

through the leaves, 

my voice has never 

sounded better 

than when it drifted among 

the mountains and meadows 

beneath the broader skies 

9 Dec 2019

Making God in Our Image

The Bible claims God created mankind in his image. Regardless of your belief, what seems extremely evident is that we have created him in ours. We have molded him into who we see in ourselves and who we want him to be. Through depictions of God as an old white man to depictions of his son as the only Middle Eastern white man of his day. I have heard people viewing a depiction of a God of color laugh or condescendingly remark “of course they would want to think of him as they are,” without a hint of recognition of history, geography, or self-awareness.

We want God to bless our country, as though somehow we rank at the top of God’s top ten list of favorite countries. We want God to help us pass a math test, or guide a favorite sports team to victory. We celebrate someone surviving a dangerous accident, claiming the hands of God reached out to save them, while neglecting to examine the reality that were this true, God evidently deemed many others unworthy of his saving grace. We even want God to support our hatred and we’ve convinced ourselves that he actually does.

I am not Christian, nor any other faith, but I grew up Christian and I can speak to my own understandingand interpretation of Christianity. Jesus was all about love--loving our neighbor, loving our enemy. Love, even when it was hard. Even when it was uncomfortable. Love. Jesus was a rebel who stood up against corruption, who spoke up for those whom society looked down upon. Who cared about the less fortunate, the poor, the sick, the needy, the stranger. His love had no geographical or societal bounds. No exclusion for skin color. No minimum salary. 

Fear, hatred, and xenophobia were not the marks of the Jesus I learned about. But those things rear their ugly heads all too often, under the proclaimed safety net of Christian beliefs. Over and over, too many Christians neglect or mock or attack the immigrant, the Muslim, the person of color, the homosexual, the transsexual, even doing so while specifically citing their religious belief as a basis for their verbal, or even physical, attacks. 

They have molded their faith to fit their hatred. 

The reason so many Christians speak out against homosexuality is not Biblical and it is not complicated. It is because they don’t like homosexuality. Many use religion as a justification for their hatred and disgust. If these words and actions were because they believed every word of the Bible, and every infraction they saw in the Bible, equally without bias, without contemplation, then there would be lots of “Jesus hates people who eat shellfish” protests outside Red Lobster. Christians would be protesting Kohl’s for their inclusion of clothing from more than one fabric. They would demand women were silent in church, and certainly not allowed to become pastors. But these, rightly so, are not their demands. Their "righteous wrath" does not land here.

People who covet their neighbor’s wife, tell lies, steal, are greedy, or work on the Sabbath aren’t equally ostracized from the church, even though those all made the big ten. In fact, Christians – to an alarmingly large degree – support a president who has broken and continues to break all five of those commandments, in addition to shredding all boundaries of human kindness, compassion, and decency.

No, the focus on homosexuality is not because of a perceived Biblical basis, it is precisely because these people don’t like homosexuality. It creeps them out. It disgusts them. It seems weird and wrong to them so they justify their disgust, their hate, their attacks on personal freedom and rights. The protests against homosexuality are not from a place of love, but from a much darker place. 

I’m not here to tell anyone what to believe. If someone builds their faith around love, if love for their neighbor doesn’t end with just the neighbors who look like them, pray like them, and love like them, then we will likely get along just fine. If, however, they have molded their religion to justify hating others, taking away someone’s rights or freedoms, or separating them from their parents as they seek asylum, then that isn’t their religion talking. It is just bigotry behind a mask.

23 Jan 2020

It Wasn't Me

Someone else 

It wasn’t me 

It’s not my responsibility 

The animal is already dead 

I didn’t put the price on its head 

They killed it before 

I sat down for lunch 

So what’s the harm 

in continuing to munch? 

My hand wasn’t on the trigger 

I didn’t slice into their liver 

I couldn’t watch 

I couldn’t do 

I only pay for someone else to 

29 Nov 2019

A Spoonful of Dogfighting Helps the Racism Go Round

We can’t just talk about racism when we have impeccable examples of character. You didn’t need the exemplary reputation of Jackie Robinson to deserve to play baseball. You didn’t need the innocence of a six-year-old to deserve to walk into a goddamn school. We can’t only talk about racism when you have glaring victims like the Central Park Five. You are allowed to sell cigarettes without a license and not expect to be killed. You can even cause harm, horrible harm, and it is still not the right time to be silent. Regardless of the crime, racism is not a just punishment. 

We can’t concern ourselves with racism only when the victims are clearly innocent. We need to look at racism towards the guilty as well. We need to examine cases where laws are broken and ethical boundaries are crossed. We need to look at who gets beaten for a traffic violation and who gets to grab a burger after a mass killing. We need to consider who sits in cages at our borders as our government steals their children. We need to look at the inequality in how laws are made and how they are enforced. And then, yes, we need to look at ourselves. At how we react. At what we say. At what we think. 

Because of how vile Michael Vick’s actions were, and how universally we abhor violence towards the particular animals in question, it offers us a chance to examine how hatred can intensify and magnify. How, as a nation, our unwillingness to forgive black men is a problem. It gives us a chance to examine both a court system and a system of public opinion that is unjust in how it hands out punishments, and whether even after those punishments are served, we ever allow a chance for redemption. 

I shared the Medium.com article, “It’s Time We Talk About America’s Inability to Forgive Black Men,” and the overwhelming commenter response was, “No, it isn’t!” 

Never the Right Time to be Silent

We were protesting violence 

when violence met us 

Gun in hand, firing 

We were standing up 

for people losing their lives 

when our lives were lost 

We were demanding 

our voices be heard 

when they were 

forever silenced 

We would not accept 

being treated 

as less than human 

when they made us 

less than alive 

We fell at Kent State, 

at Jallianwala Bagh 

Our blood spilled 

onto the streets 

of Orangeburg, 

South Carolina, 

Soweto, 

Tiananmen Square 

We are the casualties 

of nonconformity 

The system wanted 

us to remain dutifully 

quiet and complacent 

But it was never 

the right time 

to be silent 

10 Dec 2019

Watch the performance, featuring Zach on guitar

Never Perfect, Never Enough

Our voices can be

painfully loud

even without 

breaking the 

perfect stillness 

of our lips

Our disdain has words,

but it has silence too

Our tongues fly

sharply, bitterly;

daggers into the ears

of our victims

But the silence 

of a turned back

has broken the 

eager soul of 

more than we 

could ever count 

Sticks and stones

have broken bones,

but words and silence 

are why they’re thrown 

For how many 

are we willing 

to send the message:

You’re not like me,

you don’t fit in,

you’re not enough

Skins of the wrong shade,

love of the wrong kind,

prayers to the wrong God

Geographical boundaries 

that were crossed

somehow lessened 

their worth in our 

exclusionary eyes

Their disabilities 

give us discomfort

Their obesity 

fails to balance 

within the

acceptable range

of our delicate scales

They are never perfect,

never enough

We avert our gaze

Even if our lips are sealed,

our voice is clear:

they should hide 

In a closet, 

in a kitchen,

in the country 

in which we think 

they should reside

So we don’t 

shatter the illusion

that we are perfect

in our own eyes

28 Jan 2020