6 Aug. 2004

I was looking through some old stuff and this kind of took me by surprise:

The sun sets on a world that’s far from war and peace.
A society where success is measured by fame and fortune.
Two thousand and four years of evolution and this is what we have?
A sky painted green with pollution where children
Are dying on the streets because they have nothing to eat?
Clothes cling to their body as though the tears of heaven
Have opened the floodgates for their souls?
This is what we have? A society that is built and destroyed by anger and violence?
Here we are working on world relations when we can’t even save
The relationships across the streets, let alone across the hall.
The answer to all the world’s problems is a gunshot wound to the face.

The sun sets on another person’s life.
Walking by the blood soaked body you catch a glimpse of their soul
It’s a cold and dark stare that could harden the heart of the pope.
The life of a college dropout trying to survive in the world.
Waking up each morning in a suit to sweat out the climb of the corporate ladder.
Prosthetic people walking by observing death without feeling a thing.
Men on their way to the gym to achieve the perfection that lies in imperfection
And then home to their wives who can’t feel a kiss on their lips
All because she wants to be wrinkle free like the khakis he wears.
A voice calls out of the darkness,
”Another scoundrel off the streets”
And I realize that we are living on a world that’s closer
To war and peace than we thought.
The war is the fact that people are still dying because they are different
And society doesn’t have enough room for diversity.
So you stay quite and work that nine to five until one day
The sun sets on your life and you are lying there dead in the ally
With a gun in your hand and the gunshot wound to the face.
Finally…peace.