3600 seconds, golden rich kids among bottle
scavengers, everybody hustlin', revenge?
the lights of society don't shine bright on them
collected bottles for a meal, irrelevant sunsets

the beauty of life decreased, dependency diaries
let lights loosely shine on these teenage giants
memories are opening up like red clouds, floating
in a time lapse, they will remember, in pride

honor and dignity, the one who splits the ocean
creates a shelter for the brothers and sisters
reckoner: burnings sandstorms, playful twisters
the one who smoothens a path to golem land

honey, milk and fruits, get rid of urban metal
come to us, be with us and stay with us
infinite loopholes, adults, kids and groups
the holy swoosh of a curl, your healing, stay

as you are walking through the ocean
as your brothers and sisters are with you
whiteblue words, you catch sentences like air
as you become a part of golem land

of us

O noble light, o noble lights!
The babe has learned to crawl,
and the virtues which we possess
call continually to the poor and
oppressed among us. I don't know
when this cry may ease, but
the Bugle tells us to buttress the hearts of
these oppressed folk.

We are not to stay still upon our light, rather
we are to make it burn brighter in our hearts.
This is the day to make our character known in the
hearts of the oppressed.

i never bought the whole dark academia thing.
sure, ****** and drugs and *** are torrid and dark when you're from a rich family,
when you've never woken up to the news of your childhood best friend being shot to death,
when you haven't seen your family and friends fall into the seductive cesspool of opioid addiction,
when half of your class was pregnant by the time senior year rolled around.
the academic upper class thinks what working class kids go through is sexier when the backdrop of the overdose is chandeliers and silk,
instead of a small town parking lot at 3am.
my aesthetic reality of academia is scholarships, it's leather jackets and nicotine addictions
it's having the only fifteen-year-old car in the campus parking lot and hoping to find a plug before the first week of classes.
it's not sleeping between work and class and partying. it's being the only one whose dad isn't buddies with the guy giving me an internship.
it's lonely. it's the crippling loneliness of not understanding upper class social cues,
it's reading crime and punishment in the slivers of time between work and work and class and more work
and emphasizing with raskalnikov so much it makes your teeth ache.
it's coughing up blood.
it's having health insurance for the first time in college and still not using it.
it's drowning, it's fighting, it's violent and heroic and painful and
never knowing
if you'll actually
make it.

If, I were Indian
I would be A. P. J.
AbdulKalam
descendant son
          And, to  be
          Gandhi's legatee

To marry a young
Nigerian senorita, to
give birth a pretty
And beautiful baby

To copy all I imitated
From my fore fathers
To lead Nigeria and, to
revolutionize the nation

To grow more than
Russia and to be
Like Saudi Arabia

Walking home from school, holding  my book bag as the other kids drove by

My payless shoes and eager smile weren't enough for them to wave goodbye

We walked to the grocery store, school and church
Dreaming of a day where I could look down from their smug perch

A nerdy kid so embarrassed of my life
Wanting so badly to fit in without all the pain and strife

Lonely so many times just wanting a friend
With parents so perplexing, so rigid never willing to bend

No car, no fun, no hope, no bed
No home, no money, no rest, no bread

Now I walk for fun, for exercise for peace
Ironically I walk away the sorrow-each step a release

In the rituals
of the life of struggle,
they work the blue collar jobs
of their parents-
grilled cheese, fries,
a shitbox used car,
scratch tickets duds,
so many of no frills,
so many barely getting by.