Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mind most of our colors are amazingly the same.

As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish, what more civilized way for people to alleviate the same than by giving themselves to one another as brothers and sisters in deed as well as in word? A society of people hoping to become politically superior needed first to become spiritually valid.

The birth of a true poet is neither an insignificant event nor an easy delivery. Complications generally begin long before the fated soul carries its dubious light into whatever womb has been kind enough to volunteer the intricate machinery of its blood and prayers and muscles for a gestation period much longer than nine months or even nine years.

Like a Passover Poet gliding from house to house and from trembling soul to trembling soul the wind scribbled sonnets of first time love and weeping haikus of last hours on earth.

The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.

Death wins nothing here, gnawing wings that amputate–– then spread, lift up, fly.

Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new.