I’m stopped here,
and this car’s parked terribly.
I see lights up the road.
Are they coming to get me?

And who would’ve thunk it?
Castle walls on the side of a freeway.
A mystical forest full of wonder.

Oft do bees play on my windshield,
And oft do boys play soccer on abandoned parking lots.

The leaves fly by tonight
and this is a dangerous time.
There’s a real world outside this city of peace.
Some are lucky to see it.
We feel it occasionally.
A car crashes.
A home catches fire.
We are awaken for a second for we can’t sleep through the noise,
But how we love it.
Music is terrible. Noise rings.
Shower in it.
Not in the peace, but the destruction.
Today they leveled the hills so you could see the city,
But they raised them again when you finally looked up.
The rivulet full of dangerous silt flows throughout our bodies and out through our eyes.

Fighting kids with a disbelief in each other.
Bored out of their minds.
I’ve got a disbelief in them.
Tired towns that lay still along the coasts and valleys.
An imaginary line splits our souls into peace and prosperity,
But we live in peace.
You must prosper.
The wrong 3 letter acronyms.
A hatred for the luckier.
The lucky are too happy to notice.
3 letter acronyms helped with that.
Where can we take you?
Somewhere that would make you happy.
Some place where the skies open up and the sun shines through.
A place where scripture is read off the back of rusted bumpers.

Up and around the castle walls we go.
Up and around the castle.
The mortar and pestle art forms that are spread around this continent.
Natural Museums.
Stone walls and checkered marble floors.
Beautiful scenery inspired by the treasures of the long departed moats and drawbridges.
Then to a peek of the peeling paint and the saints that roamed these halls.
A quick glimpse of the freedom found in smoking in the bathrooms
Or the science buildings built on top of bomb shelters and history.
Canteens and warmer wooden cafeterias.
Libraries that smelled like the browning pages of the printed paper sandwiched inbetween hard covers.
Libraries that seemed to hide gold in their books.
You would just have to find them hidden among the others.
A time when all you did was what you wanted.
When rules were meant to be broken.
They didn’t have to look out for you then.
They don’t have to look out for you now.

But they do.

And until they stop, the buildings will be torn down for new.
The paint will be fresh, the halls less legendary,
The desks comfortable, and the lockers removed.
The back of the school: Buildings painted beige with rusted water stains dripping from the roofs like waterfalls frozen in motion.
The nights seemed to last for years.
This is where we stand.
A January, February time and I’m losing the vision.
Can you hear it in the melody?

We were once special.
We ruled what we liked.
We were once special.
We had it all.

It’s October.
The 2nd hottest in 100 years.
Surely the sky can’t be falling!

Baby, the sky is falling,

Here, on a town where Autumn only comes in fairytales
Or is fabricated inside of soundstages.
I hope the water has truly arrived.
Here in this town a secret’s shelflife lasts mere seconds.
We’re so unphased by the life around us.
But to wake up to drops showering art onto our roof tops
It has given us a real surprise.

And from 1491 it must have always been instilled
In the minds of the afraid, the no answered, the unchanged.
So let’s shut down the culture!
It’s as easy as I say.
Let’s demand the books they read
But never turn the page.
I don’t even know what day it is.
Weekend doesn’t carry much meaning within.
Structure is overrated. Formalities are ugly.
How dare me talk back to you.
So write some rules that banish us to our bedrooms.
And have us salute to each other because somehow a wave just won’t do.
Let’s tell them everything you’re afraid of is sin.
Because what you don’t know should never be happening, be explored.
Questions about where we go when we die.

.?.?.?.

Does it really matter where you go when you die?
…If you lived here 80 some odd years and did nothing in life?
But did you ever really live?
You know, walked out of your front door onto the edge of a cliff?
…That was covered in the grass from your front lawn?
…The grass that you just couldn’t dare step on?
Pass some laws.
That’ll make you feel better.
But who’s gonna stop me?
From joining the rebellion?
We’ll sneak through our windows to find truth, to bloom.
Ignore these words of fine teaching and liberation
And set them on fire in some sort of celebration for ending the disease.
Set them on fire so that no one in their right mind could ever aspire to be more than what you wanted them to be.
Hell, more than you could ever think of.
Take these ideas and say, “That’ll be the day.”
That’ll be the day.
And never admit that it’s you with the problem.
Blame all the others for not being one of yours.
But you have no color.
You bleed in black and white.
But there is one thing you have right.
I am not one of yours.
And I never will be.
For red is what I bleed.
I can breathe.
I am free.

You see, there is nothing wrong with the way it was.
There’s something wrong for stopping the way it may be.
Take a bite of this apple and open your mind.
And proclaim that beauty is never found in black and white.

Explore.Communicate.Question.Observe.Create.Love.Color.Beauty

Once upon a time, in a land far away from here, lived a giant on top a of a hill.
He oversaw the villages and the cities and all that stood still.
He was bigger than everyone. He yelled louder than all of them.
The giant was in charge of clouds, the rains, and the wind.
He laughed at whoever was below him, people who thought they could dethrone him.
And though he sounds mean, he was all anyone wanted to be.
He stood 10 feet tall.
Ate whatever was in sight.
He was sure he would never fall.
Not without a fight.
It would take something, a movement larger than him to take him down.
There was nothing of his size in this remote, little town.
Well you see, the giant had ruled for what seemed like ages.
Year after year he stood atop that hill.
He always had one message, no matter how cruel he ruled, the citizen’s would not be happy without him. They wouldn’t be guided without him. OO
Well, after a while he began to get lazy.
He stopped looking for details.
And that’s when the chaos started brewing.
People began doing what they wanted.
Rules didn’t apply anymore.
He only took his eyes off them for a second, but the town had created the most beautiful plan ever created.
Take him down they would, take him down they would.
They surrounded the hills around him.
They camped out on his edges for what seemed like months.
And he knew they were there. But he never did anything about them.
Well, you see, the plan was to kill him. Take him down with all their might.
“Anything goes.”
So, all the townies attacked. The giant awoke to a view of an empty city and a mountain full of townies running towards him.
He didn’t fright, but neither would he fight.
And the first person to reach him, he grabbed.
He held him in his hand and threw his fist in the air and the townies freaked.
They were scared of what he would do to their loved one or all of them.
He put him back down and walked away.
He just didn’t care anymore.
You see, the giant knew the whole time what was cooking up around him.
And he knew that he could not be on top forever.
And the man he grabbed asked him one question?
“Why didn’t you kill me? or eat me? or any of us?”
And the giant didn’t respond.
He let the townies live the way they wanted. He set them free.
And he walked away beyond the horizon.
He was looking for something new.
You see, he had noticed all the details and the potential uprising, he just didn’t care to do anything about it.
As for the townies, they visited other cities and valleys and villages.
They mingle with the others who have been oppressed by the giant or other giants.
But they weren’t as happy without the giant atop his hill.
“I told you so,” the giant said.

If I could take this excess life and harness it then you wouldn’t sleep thirsty tonight.
Where I live there is such a thing as too much good.
You can find it on the ground or in the wrong colored trash bin.
I’d take this infernal machine and blow it up with its own blood so you could sleep sound.
I’d tear down all that touches the sky and all who wish to at the expense of you.
Cities would be flattened. The villages would rise.