Dear Humanity,

Enough.

I'm standing on the ashes of millions of fallen brothers, sisters,

Speaking out for their mother, fathers, sons and daughters,

When will the oppression of ideology and fundamentalism end?

Oh, how "lucky" are we to be alive right now.

Founding fathers, rolling over in their graves,

Because the three truths we hold to be self evident,

Are all men really created equal?

We fight for that, we strive for that,

But it seems that we don't thrive on that,

Guns don't kill, people do,

But people have access to guns.

Seven shootings since last Monday,

America America,

When will it all be done?

When will I walk at night, and hear the owl sing hallelujah to freedom and prayer and salvation?

Will I ever?

A call to arms:

Dance the night away,

Burn a hole in the pavement and reach the middle of the earth,

Cause maybe it's hot enough in there to burn away our sins of yesterday.

Will we ever truly be free?

Or is history going to repeat itself in a cycle of death-

Spinning endlessly through eternity.

Mary Tyler Moore once said, “sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you’re strangers”.

We’re all united by our secrets, by our past.

Whether we know it or not,

We are all one in the same.

The first customer I ever served was a twenty-something blonde with a kind smile and bright eyes.

A beautiful stranger.

I filled the Oxycodone order without question; she smiled and said, “for the pain”.

I never quite knew what she meant until she began picking up her meds with a scarf where her hair had once been, and the sparkle in her eyes began to dim.

Soon, an older male lookalike began coming in her place, sharing a last name and the same dimness.

Upon inquiring about her wellbeing (which I later learned was slightly unprofessional) I heard that she was fighting a losing battle, about to become another victim to the eternal Cancer War.

I went home and cried that day.

My first lesson learned: detach or the prospect human suffering will kill you.

There’s one man I remember in particular: a bumbling, yet pleasant father of two.

I began by filling the usual family prescriptions: some amoxicillin here, a little bit of Tamiflu in the winter,

But within a few years I noticed a change in pattern.  

First, I filled the Prozac, but I guess that didn’t work because they moved on to Celexa, then Zoloft, Lexapro, Cymbalta, Tofranil and finally Norpramin.

The Norpramin worked for a while because that’s the way it continued on for months.

He came in with his usual smile, bashfully picking up his prescription.

Until one day we received a call not to fill his prescriptions any longer.

I guess the Norpramin stopped working too.

The ones who suffer the most often hide it behind a happy face.

Then there was the man who never quite left the war.

The Paxil kept his mind at bay but the fight never left his eyes,

War waging in his mind,

Every day was a struggle,

Only this time it was his sanity he was fighting for.

He trembled as he walked, as he spoke, as he paid.

His entire body was alert, rigid, ready to fight.

Always dressed in army green, sometimes in his dress blues.

Always thanked me with a ma’am and a curt bow,

Standing at constant attention.

Never at ease, like the Paxil promised.

She started seeing me as a young woman in her twenties,

Always stopping to wistfully stare at the baby items.

I handed her estrogen to validate her right to be a woman,

And him testosterone,

A his and her package of determination and modern medicine.

For years she came by, picking up syringes and pills,

Persevering, forever barren.

She hadn’t stopped by for a while so I figured they’d given up,

Until a prescription came in from the local pediatrician.

The new baby needed vitamins.  

Sometimes, good things happen to good people.

They’re all classic stories of human suffering and perseverance,

Victory and loss,

All compiled into a book called LIFE,

And to ensure our survival we must be the binding to each other’s pages,

And hold tight.

In memory of all those who have fallen for what they believe in.

Eighteen.

You were eighteen when you finally touched the sun and danced among the stars.

Memory shining brighter than any gaseous sphere,

Eighteen and you became a martyr.

In this town, all war is holy,

Double edged Jihad fought by double edged sword,

Because when you rob a child of a chance to live,

You take away that which is sacred.

Eighteen,

Your American friends were "finding themselves" in European bars and hostels,

Driving fast cars and living faster lives,

Alternate realities coexisting in the same dimension.

Eighteen,

You found yourself in between struggle and structure,

A boy thrust into the metamorphosis of man.

Eighteen and you became a butterfly,

Still dangling from your premature cocoon,

Eighteen.

They say those that shine brightest burn out the fastest.

They say,

They say.

Eighteen and the only women you had time to love were your mama and your Motherland.

You,

You learned about true sacrifice,

A far cry from those that cry over spilled milk and FOMO,

You've looked Death in the eye and given Her the middle finger.

She took you in return.

Forever eighteen.

Peel off your layers, 

Eleanor Rigby, 

The face you keep in a jar by the door, 

When life's lights dim, 

To whom have you shown your face?

Shown the rainbow colored scars and iridescent tears, 

Invisible at first sight but always written on your face, 

Written like your beloved words, 

Etched into your wrist like a sacred prayer.

Hallelujah,

Hallelujah.  

Solitude wraps around you dark and twisty, 

Like the Snake, 

But you've never had an Adam to tempt, 

A God to answer to, 

You are alone. 

Alone with your thoughts,

Your prayers to Gravity, 

The only thing keeping you grounded, 

Stopping you from escaping to Cloud Nine.

Try and click your heels three times and change your name to Dorothy, 

But you'll always be the Tinman, 

Shiny on the outside, 

Empty within, 

Begging for a heart, 

Being told to dig deeper. 

And deeper, 

Until you dig a hole to the China of your soul, 

And still come up empty.