Time in becomes time out. Group anxieties become personal doubt. Expressing ourselves in dot dots and dashes. Pure cocaine and false eyelashes. Living inside worlds that seem to lie. Living inside excuses that pass us by. Living inside loneliness becomes a high. Living gets mixed up with wanting to die. A daily question of going insane while tormenting one another trying to ease the strain. Dreaming of tomorrows we’d like to know. Repressing our thoughts while trying to grow. The heart and soul are not involved. Idle chatter becomes reality while problems go unsolved. Prearranged. Prefabricated and preconditioned. We’re baptized, advertised and posthumously mentioned. Weaned and groomed for the glory of applause. Living off the mercy of unwritten laws. Shell shocked patrons making peace with God, while admiring the acrobatics of a junky’s nod. Turned into robots through the power of suggestion. We seek an answer and become the question. Afraid we might die before we live. Blessed with life but then afraid to give. We want to be amorous, glamorous and larger than life. Our cheap illusions become high priced strife. Losing ourselves in times of despair. Becoming self defeatists of unusual flair. We rush toward the beginning that might be the end. We sit in the darkness and try to pretend. Pointing fingers while our insides bleed. Committing suicide to fulfill a need. Highly intelligent in a very low way. We speak of existing but have nothing to say. We touch religion and make it seem like hell. But then we touch unholy dreams and wish them well. Faith is replaced with apathy and grief. Indifference is made acceptable and then a belief. Our left eyes all glitter while our right are blind. We submit to this madness and hope it is kind. Distraught women seeking compassion while turning tricks in high Roman fashion. Finding love at the expense of losing their cool. Looking for happiness but finding a fool. Their moments of trust become deceitful charms. One night stands in strangers’ arms. Carousing with disaster in very high places while cutting off noses to spite their faces. While the men play games of power and glory. Tattered remnants of an old war story. Outside themselves inside their heads, top secret discussions on waterbeds. Men without neither rhyme nor reason. Lost in the depths of mental treason. Abstract victims of the American dream. Victims of a disguised but well planned scheme, Victims of a subtle but dangerous game. Rugged individualism with a psychotic name. We confuse the normal and exort the extreme. We make war a reality and call peace a dream. American contradictions in Black and White. We illuminate contradiction and call in the lights. America provides you with fortune and fame. While stealing your soul for its own acclaim. With the English language at its command. It perpetuates illusion throughout the land. Running big games in tiny print, before you’ve got it, it’s already spent. Making sacrificial lambs of the Middle Class. Indulging in rhetoric with its head up it lulls you to sleep with the six o’clock news and then wakes you up and spoon feeds you the blues. But from the darkness of ourselves we can find a brighter day. Understanding and truth must show the way. To understand that every man’s color will not be his heart. To go inside yourself is where it must start. To learn to be considerate. To learn to be humane. To learn to use power and not become vain. To understand you can be strong and not crude. You can be outspoken and not be rude. To revile the tyrant. To protect the weak. To insure the innocent their right to be meek. To look on the sea and understand its motion. To understand tenderness and give it devotion. To understand courtesy and to make it a pact, to understand what love is… and make it a fact! Because we all must struggle. We all must try. Because somewhere in the future we all must die. But to leave a legacy that will long unfurl. That ours too was a struggle for a better World.