you cover me with your despair.

Oh, note of sorrow,

it is with you that I am home.

What recourse can there be?

I have failed,

Once more I am short.

Nothing works,

No joy is found,

No thing brings me up.

And yet, you were there first.

You’re eyes laid upon me,

With a pounding heart

You held me.

You held me.

Thoughts of life,

Thoughts of hope,

Thoughts of me.

And now, where have they gone?

I am frustration,

I am pain,

I am disappointment.

There are none like me.

It is I,

The black eye you can never hide.

And so I sit.

I rest in turmoil and sadness,

Hoping one day

You hold me with a pounding heart.

Well, I have no photo editing software and most of these pictures were taken on the floor of my apartment. So with that disclaimer, I hope you enjoy.

All images are copyright Josiah Daniels 2010.

Well, hell, this is how my day has been.

Anyway, I find myself in a particularly difficult position. Life should be simple. Life should not be about what house you live in, or your Tv or what the Kardashians are doing… Life should just be simple. I mean, there is just so much that clouds reality from us. We are swarmed by irrelevant information. Our lives are a mess of numbers, accounts, friend requests, and school requirements. Even as I type I can say that this is another avenue of distraction…

What I am trying to get to is this: who are we and what in the world are we doing? What is so important to us? These countries and companies and institutions that we love so much will all die someday. All of the things that encapsulate American culture (and even the “America” in American culture) will die someday. I think that it will be a culture remembered for its wealth of useless information, a culture where the rich still conquer the poor, a lame empire. I do not know. I do know, however, that I do not want to be a part of that. I want something more. I want something that makes people matter. I do not want retirement, or the health of the company, or the security of the nation to matter. I want humans to matter, plain and simple. Just humans, that is all, nothing more, nothing less.

A gentle trickle of water on my ear.

A sweet song at my face,

It’s a harmony to your voice.

Summer rains gentle on my heart …

Your dress hangs freely on your legs,

You ar Life,

You are Beauty,

You are Love,

And You are my Love,

The Pulse my soul,

my most sweet delight.

Your back the slightest green hills,

your neck the most glorious touch,

Your legs are the masterwork of the Artist

And your breasts the blossom of spring.

Your stomach a gentle slope to termination,

It’s a painting of the finest kind.

For to regard your body is to see true light

Regarder a toi est regarder a les etoiles.

You are Beauty,

You are Perfect,

You are Love,

You are my Love.

We live in a nation that is undoubtedly the strongest in the world. We can blow up who we want, we can control who we want, if something becomes of particular interest to us, we can disobey whatever voluntary organizations we choose to be a part of and invade little Middle Eastern states. In the not so distant past, our government forced a group of native to walk across the nation to a plot of  land where they could be contained and not interfere with the better, more white people. In the not so distant past, hundreds of thousands of lives were vaporized in an instant, their lives eclipsed by the white flash of a big boy and his fat adult companion. In the not so distant past more than of 100,00 civilians died under the cold moniker “collateral damage”.

You see our presidents represent something. They are not just men and not just political leaders. Intermingled with their blood is the blood of more than 300 million other people. In the footsteps treads a nation of black, white, red, yellow, brown. This vast melting pot of a place is represented by this one man…

The feet of billions walk with the burdens of disease, hunger, poverty, violence. Their eyes, their souls, look to the dawning sun behind the rippling standard colored by red. white. blue. But to find what? To find that when they finally make it here they are deported to their old hovels. They find that their very presence is illegal. There is no sun, there is no standard.

Ink travels down a slender tube and coats a little ball as it rolls across a page. The speedy scrawling bears the weight of a name that is almost a religious figure. But is not just his hand writing, it is my hand, it is your hand, it is our hands. And with the final dot on the last “i” or the last curl on the last “a”, the bombs fall, the soldiers march, the buildings fall, the people cry. And I see it. I see their fear; I hear their pleas. My heart breaks, but I signed the page. I ask myself, ‘What has my American dream cost them?” “Was it ever a dream, or was it always a nightmare?”

I am often labeled as a liberal, and usually pejoratively so. I will agree, I do not think Republicans should rule the world. I do not think we should spend the majority of our budget on “defense” (assault). I do not think “trickle-down” economics works. But my liberal “family members” have gotten something wrong, as well. You see, in the wake of the push to have Reagan on a piece of money, I have read more hatred about one man than i have in a long time. I think we all miss the point. We fight fire with fire. After 100,000 years, we still have not learned that killing the ones of us we do not like does not work. But I want to go a step further. There was a radical Jewish teacher a long time ago that said that if you even hate a man you have killed him. I think he noticed something that we do not like to see. he noticed that murder is only a symptom of a deeper problem in this species. He saw that the lack of love was what would undo us. We have a terrible freedom. We can choose to do whatever we wish and we exercise that power. But I want to ask you, what if we did things a different way? What if we answered violence with nonviolence? What if you answered hate with love? What if? Sure, we might look like pansies, but just what if?

A man sits in a cell with a stomach full of chicken in red sauce.

He stares at the wall.

As I type this, a jailer is walking with an entourage in leather boots made abroad, a uniform made at home and an order from a judge for the life of a man. He will be shackled and led out of his cell to a well lit room with a singular bed that was manufactured in Thailand and flown to the a wholesaler in North America then shipped to Jarratt, Virginia.

He will lie down and an ECG will be attached to him. The nodes and parts that were soldered together by a combination of machinery and human hands will tell a doctor in a room looking at a screen how alive the man is.

The jailer will read the judges order for the man’s death. The paper was pressed in a factory by a woman in China and a watermark was later applied down the road. A judge’s hand pressed against it as the judge signed the order.

John Allen will speak his last words to a group of people in an adjacent room that he cannot see.

A cocktail of chemicals will begin to enter his body through an IV drip. He will  fall asleep, then his breathing will stop, then his heart will stop. John Allen Muhammad will die.

He will die having been connected to countless people throughout the world. He will die as a man. He will die as a man that was judged guilty in a court of law of participating in the the murder of 10 people in the early 2000′s.

These things make me ask… why? All of us, every single one of us are humans. We evolved not so long ago. We are contingent on the world around us… it birthed us. And yet, we fight and kill and “exact justice” against those who kill. Things are a lot more muddy than they seem.

I want to go with you.

A place where “beware” is the way of life,

The phantoms and ghosts terrify daily,

The dead walk aside the living,

Gore decorates the walls instead of pictures.

Because when fears rule your life,

Life stops being scary.