Everything is bullshit, I am surrounded by bullshit. The right people aren’t the leaders and those that should be in power don’t even realize their own potential. People are starving across the globe, massacres of entire villages, the raping of women, the slaughter of children, and here I sit surrounded by people concerned with sneakers, video games, money, money, money, consumerism, cars, rims, making money, gold, shopping, buying the quintessential suburban home which is the fake American dream. I have always said, gold, silver, and diamonds and pearls only have value because humans have given them importance. In the natural world, a diamond is no more valuable then a ball of clay or a pebble in a stream. Man has given so much importance to such artificial things that really have no more value then anything else, only in the artificial system that man has indoctrinated every other man to live under. And we don’t question it. We don’t question it. Do we have a choice? So what do we live for? What do we work for?

So many public enemies. Entertainment. The purpose of entertainment is no longer simply to entertain people. It is created to control people and to control how they behave and how they spend their currency. Entertainment is created to shape the way we think. And most are blind to this. So many are blind to this. Take a group of men and women, strip them of all their clothe and jewelry, and stand them in line next to each other. What is the common theme? What are the people left with? What is the essence of being human? What is left when all the tangible bullshit is stripped off of the persona? The mind ! The human spirit ! The human heart !. Everything that we consume ourselves with has absolutely nothing to do with what is essential to being human. But the mind has been poisoned. The spirit has poisoned. The heart has been poisoned. I sometimes feel like finding the highest place on mother Earth and screaming at the top of my lungs, “STOP ! ! ! STOP !!! Listen to yourself ! Stop listening to what you are being told ! Think for yourself ! Understand yourself, understand your fellow man, take time out to feel what it really feels like to be human. Not the artificial human that society has constructed. Love is important. Concern for the suffering of all living things is important. Define yourself by yourself, not by what your currency has bought you. . . . . . “ I love volunteers, I love the peace corps, I love people who care, who cares, because I care.

The voices never stop trying to tell us how to live and how to think. The only way we can find ourselves is in silence and in conversation with each other. Real conversation. Turn off the TV, turn off FM radio, Turn off entertainment for a few hours a day. Understand its influence in your life.

Rethink what you have learned. Nothing that you learned has been a random occurrence. Everything you have learned was decided by a group of men. Do you understand how many things around you have been brought to you by a bunch of men in suites sitting around a table behind a locked door, powerpoint presentations, graphs and charts. The music you hear. Rap was the voice of the people ! Rap was the expression of the common man, it was the spoken word of an oppressed people looking for answers, questioning the system, trying to understand their situation an outlet for everyday themes, and creativity. What rap your ears hear now is decided by a group of men sitting around a glass table in a NYC sky rise. Jay-Z riding around in a Lamborghini, down south rappers driving around on 20 inch rims, diamond studded earrings, and chains. This is not the people I see in my hood. I see a people clawing at a better life. I see mothers and fathers working hard for their children. I see teenagers, some caring and some not giving a fuck. I see grandmothers and grandfathers reminiscing about how it used to be. How many of our people in the hood are driving around on 20 inch rims, how many of our people are wearing diamond studded chains? Walking around my hood, I don’t see what I see in rap videos. I don’t see girls shaking their asses in my face wearing next to nothing. I see girls pushing baby carriages, I see young girls going to school. I see Mexican and Guatemalan men racing their bicycles to make a fast food delivery only to race back to the restaurant, pick up another order and be in the apartment down the hall from the previous delivery. The time of the low-wage worker is not important. But if my boss has to look twice through a powerpoint presentation to find a reference, then someone will pay. His time is not being used efficiently. He is wasting his time and this matters. The time of the low-wage worker does not matter. His time is not as important as my bosses. How is this possible when the time we are afforded each day and night is exactly equal. My Monday was not longer or shorter then yours. We both had exactly 24 hours. I am sick of it. Rap is no longer the voice of the people. Who will bring it back?

Why are we superior? Because we can give value to some rock over another rock, then oppress, enslave, and kill our brothers and sisters for this rock. Why are we superior? Because I can write this and a monkey cannot? Because we can do these things to each other and a monkey cannot? When this writing will change nothing and is as insignificant as a malnourished African baby to the western world ? You will forget this and I will be forgotten like your own ancestors. Who were they ? What did they stand for? I am surrounded by bullshit.

It is okay to love ourselves and one another. Kids its okay to give a fuck. Its okay to want to do good in school, to excel and appear smart. Its okay to read as much as possible. Its okay to be play an instrument, to listen to jazz and classical music, to write about love, to write about grief. Its okay to study. You are intelligent. Its okay to care for each other. Men, its okay to cry ! Its okay to turn off the TV, its okay to turn off FM radio. You will not melt or disappear. You will grow and we will grow.

They build more and more prisons when we are not all born with the same opportunities and love. Rehab. Rehabilitate prisoners. No, you will not change everyone, but those that you do change and redirect are steps to changing and correcting the way things are. $36 million to renovate the WW2 battleship Intrepid, that is currently stuck in the NYC harbor. $9 million to release it from the mud its stuck in. Its FREE to volunteer and have a great positive influence in a young man or young woman’s life. Imagine what the mighty dollar could do for these people if spent in the right way. But truthfully, I hate money. I hate money. I hate how enslaved I am to it. I hate how C.ash R.ules E.verything A.round M.e, get the money, dollar dollar bill ya’ll . . . .

as a little boy he would lay down in the grass just as the sun was setting in the horizon and the stars would begin to appear. he would desperately try to count them as they appeared but would soon lose track of the ones he had counted and any new ones that kept appearing.
his big soft brown eyes and soft pitch black hair complimented very well the stillness, the gentleness, the darkness that encompasses something as drastic as day turning to night. something as drastic as a little boy laying in the grass watching the day turn to night.
ants would climb over his wool sweater and get entangled within the twists and turns of the wool fibers, just like his thoughts amongst the stars, his dreams broken sometimes by a shooting star, to only regroup and begin anew as the passing star would slowly fade and reach other parts of the nightsky. compatriots of the ants that were stuck struggled mightily to free their comrades. his eyes would swell with tears, sometimes they would fall and sometimes his eyelashes were long enough to hold them in. all too often a single tear would spiral down his cheek and into the grass next to him. this tear cried as it fell and released other tears that also cried that a passer-by in the morning mistook for morning dew. but this dew was different, it was full of hopes and dreams, this dew was the little boys. he laid in amazement that night, neverminding the darkness and cold that the night brought, he became the stillness and closed his eyes. he created his own night sky when he closed his eyes, his thoughts and ideas the stars, life's happenings were the shooting stars that broke his dreams apart. nevertheless he laid in the grass every night as the sun descended, he did this because he knew he could recreate what he would see when the stars would come out to greet him, if he just closed his eyes.
sooner or later his mother would call out to him from the backdoor. the familiar voice of his mother, his heart leapt with joy. he jumped high in the air almost touching the stars with excitement, his sweater and pants, the back of his head moist from the grass, the grass moist from his hopes and dreams. he laid under the covers and his mother would kiss his forehead goodnight and whisper in the tenderness that is the love of a mother for her child that everything would be okay and that she loved him dearly. with that he would close his eyes again and descend into an even deeper slumber. he knew everything would be okay. . . .
when he awoke the next morning he felt different. pain in his joints, his lips felt dry and partched, his muscles felt stiff. his skin loose and battered. wanting to run into the kitchen and hug his mother and jump into the arms of his father, he tried but couldn't. he felt slow and aged. getting up very slowly and carefully he made his way to a simple mirror that was set against the off-white colored wall. gazing into the mirror he was startled and looked away to only look again in disbelief. in astonishment. in front of this mirror stood an old man, hair as white and pure as winters first snowfall, winkles like dried up stream and river beds. his eyes still a soft brown but much dimmer now. where had the time gone ? where had he gone ? he called out to this mother and father and no reply was heard. he tried again to no avail, turning to make his way to the hallway, he saw a picture of them on his nightstand. a picture of his parents holding each other with the joyous of smiles with a caption that read, "together in life, together in death, together forever".
that evening, as in so many before then, as the sun made its way past the dried up elms and oak trees that canvassed the horizon, he made his way to the backyard. He remembered how easy it was to get there before, the trip now involved the pain of rickety bones and used-up joints.
as he laid down in the grass he was perplexed at how wet the grass was, as if the morning dew had come a bit too early, or as if a little boy had recently cried amongst the sharp blades of grass.
Nevertheless, he watched as the day turned to night and the stars came out to greet him.
he once again attached his hopes and dreams to the stars to only have them broken by a shooting star. he grinned for an instance as a tear trickled ever so slowly and he closed his eyes. Recreating the nightsky he had just seen. and he smiled and he smiled.
the next morning a passer-by noticed this old man laying motionless in the grass, strangely right next to two tombstones that read, "together in life, together in death, together forever".
he was buried there alongside those two tombstones in the backyard of that old weathered house that creeked and moaned whenever the wind picked up. a very small and short funeral was held under a grey cloudy sky, a slight drizzle tickeled the noses of all those that attended. most were complete strangers but had kind hearts, exchanged a few words and were soon gone.
if you ever walk in the grass barefoot in the morning and feel the wetness that we call morning dew, be careful, for that morning dew might actually be the hopes and dreams cried out by a little boy, an old man that had laid down the night before to recreate the nightsky.