We all bleed the same.

I wonder if everyone on Babble bled the same before and after intervention.

I wonder if everyone knows we bleed the same.

I wonder if anyone ever stopped:

Any soldier dragging the corpse of an enemy,

Any murdered disposing of a body,

Any slave owner hanging up the whip,

And wondered if the blood staining their shirt was their own,

And had to feel their skin beneath, in terror, to make sure,

And wiped the sweat from their forehead in relief.

I wonder if that ever scared them, the congruity of our blood.

Ah, alas, the temptation to share the darkest secrets that I own.

The prodding to unveil the truths so hidden in misery and madness that they now only wear a semblance of reality.

And there is my bubbling desire; a desire tumid with twisted and alien truths. Truths that more closely resemble fantasy that reality. Truths that look more like monsters than animals. Truths that look more like demons than man.

And weighing those alien truths in my mind, I realize that the animals they once were are gone. They have left, in fiery stampede, slowly but rapidly.

And now I am left with the demons. The dark secrets that wander the deep regions of my mind. Now I am left without wonder or reality. Now I am left unable to conjure those secrets for their seekers.

I can only conjure demons, monsters, misery, and madness. I can only conjure secrets, agony, and anguish. I can only conjure sorrow and sadness.

So we’ll let the demons stay in darkness and the monsters in my mind. Maybe I’ll try and conjure the secrets some other time.

And while we wait, we’ll let the demons transform into the monsters of demons. The darkness into the shadow of the dark. I see no other option.

Let us wait.

Light, like no light you’ve ever seen,

Echoing like sound through the caverns of the village.

Light refracting and bounding down the walls,

Down night’s deepest halls,

We can’t escape it.

And that light is scary,

That light’s a monster,

That light is horrible because we can’t outrun it,

Hide from it, turn it off and wallow in darkness.

That light becomes the dark you can’t escape.

That light becomes the night that sees no day.

That light becomes our horror, our deepest, most animated terror.

And what a funny thing, light becoming terror.

And if light can scare us, the light that pervades all darkness,

What courage do we have?

What courage do these creatures possess, who hide from an ever-finding light?

We crave the darkness. We seek the night.

So much so, that we are troubled by the light.

I live with ghosts.

They flash into the corner

And then vanish.

They keep me up at night,

Pounding like hail upon the roof,

Upon the floor.

They scream at me

As one would scream at themself,

With tired lungs, through froth,

Within a lonely, dusty desolation they had brought.

They hide from me,

Those times when I go looking for the ghosts.

And then they surprise me,

Popping out, with blazing eyes, from in the dark,

With twisted, horrible faces,

Looking like crooked souls;

Nothing like the ghosts I’d known before.

But still,

They drag me on,

The ghosts that haunt me,

Through my dusty desolation,

Through the dark.

Still, they keep me smiling, in the deep hazes of my mind.

And still, I cannot help but look into the dark

When I hear my ghosts come screaming,

Their faces indescribable, harrowing, gleaming.

But always, I wake up and understand that I was dreaming,

Sadly, dreaming.

And I call out vainly to the ghosts who are no more.

They will come back in a different form, I am sure.

The ghosts, they are my dreams. 

So many walls. It’s tiring just thinking of the walls. And new walls go up every day. From youth, the walls begin to form and to grow. Childhood is no escape from the walls. And into adulthood they grow still, looming, dooming.

They are not pretty. Beauty eludes the walls. They are not draped in vines, adorned in flowers, vibrant in color. Their surfaces are not a medium for expression or inspiration. They are gray. Long gray walls. And the worst kind of walls. The walls that we pretend are for our own protection, but are really for our isolation.

And the walls have ears.

They are the worst kind of ears. We cannot help but hear what the ears hear. We cannot help but to listen intently to that which reaches the ears. They are the ears of judgment; the ears of affirmation; the ears of negation; the ears of self-destruction. They are selective ears, and they often only hear that which comments on the cowering creature that sits shaking and shivering inside the walls.

The ears quickly begin to shape us. But they do not shape us into our best selves. They do not shape us into a powerful and pleased us. They shape us into the us that reflects that which the ears hear. The ears hear affirmation, and we affirm it. The ears hear comment, and we reflect it. The ears hear hate, and we deny it, or believe it. The ears hear derision, and we dwell on it.

We are hopelessly and helplessly shaped and made by the walls’ ears.

But the ears are a strange, strange thing.

Though the walls were built up supposedly for our protection, arduously constructed to shield these sad and lonely creatures from the wild and violent world, they do it poorly. And while they shape the creatures within them into wild and violent and sorrowful creatures, they do shield them from those who need the shield the most.

The destitute and abject cries that shrilly carry to the walls from out in the waste do not register to the ears. They are not heard, or the ears ignore them. ‘Can they, those sorry and crying creatures in the waste, not see that I too am a creature most to be pitied,’ the walled-up creatures say. Or they say nothing at all. They have not heard them, the denizen of the dark and terrible waste. They have not heard them: the sick, the maimed, the orphaned, the widowed, the refugee, the malnourished, the maltreated, the enslaved, the trafficked, the abused, the neglected, the different, the dying. They have not heard them.

They have only heard the words which the ears hear.

They have only heard the words that shape them. The words that shape them into creatures most to be pitied. The words that drag them remorselessly and relentlessly out into a walled-up waste.

How strange it would be if the walls came down. How strange it would be if the ears drowned out the noises that comment on the one-time creature holed up within one-time walls. How strange it would be if the ears, no longer surrounded by hapless, gray stone, heard noises they had never heard before. How strange it would be if those set free from their walls, and their walls' ears, reached out with empathy and love and pulled others out from behind their walls and helped still others out of the dark and terrible waste.

Hello Aliens, you who may or may not know English.

Hello people listening, hoping and hanging on these words, who may or may not know English.

Hello world, green and blue dot of space, perfect place for these people, perfect stop for these Aliens, who may or may not know English perfectly.

I speak boldly, if not also with respect, before you, before you all, about one thing: Independence. Aliens, I do not know how familiar you are with this word. I do not know how much meaning this simple, twelve letter word has for you, who come from far away, and know little of our simple existence. But standing before you, trembling, I hope to explain it, and in so doing, explain us, in a way.

Some say independence is a right; a right to be most cherished. The natural right of those who call themselves members of us, humankind. Some say independence is a blessing. Some say independence is the medium through which the loving, creative endeavors of us all can flourish.

But many, in the vast and tiny history of this planet, have hidden independence. They have balled it up, locked it away, thrown in down the deep well of darkness that knows nothing of tomorrow. They have taken it often from the poor, from the destitute, from the ill, from the different. And in taking independence they have become oppressors. Oppressing us from us. For if independence is the medium of love and creativity, and it is taken away, we are left with a less expressed self. A self that at first may desire that expression, that explosion of the self that makes us, us. But after it is long hidden, long made damp in the deep darkness of the well of oppression, we may even start to forget about it. To forget about the self that we could be. And we become cold, once-eager embers left to freeze in the winter wind. And all the while the oppressors smile, made rich with the oppressive exploitation of the us that we could be, but are not.

And in that vast and tiny history of us, some have arisen from the cold and ashen embers of the self to proclaim, ‘No more! We will have our independence! We will have our freedom! We will have ourselves!’ And surely this struggle was never easy. And surely many died trying to free themselves from the dust and the cold. But just as surely, many times, they rose up out of the frozen muck declaring themselves free.

And now, you Aliens, stand poised to take away our planet, our freedom, our independence, our selves. You stand poised with the power of the oppressor, ready to annihilate that which has long been fought for and not yet fully won. And surely you think, ‘Why should we spare these people, so long fighting for independence who have never found it? Why should we spare these people who bend so easily to the will of the oppressor? Why should we spare these people who like animals, but without a whimper, bow to those who lord their expression over them, turning them into objects, minions, and reflections of their very oppressors?’ And in asking that, with confusion and anger, you would be asking valid questions. But here I stand, still trembling, to tell you this. To say, with confidence, that if you spare us this world, this life, these selves that we hope to inhabit, we will keep fighting. We will keep pushing back upon those who throw the us that we could be down into the darkness of the pit. We will keep living. And we will find, all of us with time and more time, that independence I ask of you now. We will dig as deep as we must into those wells of oppression and find ourselves, dirty and damp, and be as we should be. And through that independence, through that freedom in this world, in the vast and tiny history we have left, we will be loving and we will be creative. And we will be us. The us that we are to be.