Glory fading as senses
Integrate with counter,
Chair, floor
And no one remains to
Hold open the door;
The doors are closing,
Life slipping away like
The blood of a tree
In autumn.

Sharp blue
Fragments mingling
With disappointments
And despair into the flow
Of artery, vein, pain
Which is our world, slowly
Overcome with sorrow
But not sobriety.

And always through shattered eyes
And cut throats we
Can see Bliss sitting atop a
Purple hill, as a reflection
On the surface of clarity.

As we swallow the remains of our
Shattered glass and let flow our
Wails, we hear our souls
Calling to one another to
Flee and fly
And seek communion elsewhere.

As spirits like doves fall
Away, they leave untended their bodies
To stumble and drift in exile
Broken and stained
Like the windows of a cathedral.

The breath of our wounded mouths
And bloodied windpipes leaves us in
A rush of urgency, gaining tales of
Grief and darkness which it
Spreads across the atmosphere,
The same atmosphere that is polluted as
Our culture and community.

And while the final fractured shard
Settles into our stomach, we
Suffocate in the blood, ours and others’,
Which was spilled, spilled in vain.

Originally, I wrote this piece for and posted it on the Black R. But I think with the name of this new community (or soon-to-be community), this piece is rather fitting… And don’t worry. This site should not be about transcendentalism…

We the youth of America live in an interesting time. Unique among the decades of the 20th Century. A time when some ideas, so highly praised in America in the past, ring only with quaint nostalgia. Ideals such as honesty, simplicity, and self-reliance. Some may scoff. “Merely Depression-era left-behinds” quoth the cynical historians. If this is so, why is it that the same values have been praised by philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius; even our own greats have written about the aforementioned values. Emerson. Thoreau. Remnants of an earlier American identity, from before the dominance of “multiculturalism” and “political correctness”. Wherefore, shall we  disregard the ideals of the past?

When I think of these values, excitement builds in my pathos. To grow my vegetables and what meat I need. To clothe myself, if not by furnishing the raw materials, then by sewing and mending my own clothing. To build a house large enough only to shelter myself, family, food, and other necessities. If we were all to take care of our own basic necessities, we would never be forced to rely on corporate providers and government bureaucracy. Where does one not see the beauty and solidarity of supporting oneself, being free from the reign of others? Damn it, generation Y! Instead of generating oral fart-gas while complaining about how your rights are taken away from you, make yourself self-sufficient and remove the ability of others to take away your rights!

Nay, the interest of these times comes not from the musk of old thought. But rather, our peculiar place in history endows us with a unique position. The ability to identify and ally with our parents.

Consider the average baby-boomer parent. Staunch and stern. Innocent. Raised in the blissful ’50’s, threatened only by Communism and nuclear holocaust. From which Burt the Turtle would rescue them by stowing them under a desk . . . And then, their children, emerging out of the Sixties and into the ’70’s. Music and standards of living were changing. Dance and morals changed. The federal war on drugs had met it’s match with a youth generation thirsty for pleasure and hungry for the new.

And now, children of the children of baby boomers, we are coming into this world, fraught with temptation and evil as the old-timers would say. But here, we have an advantage which their children did not. Our parents have already grown up in much a similar world. Few drugs have been abandoned since the sixties and seventies, and new drugs are the same, producing only higher highs. And much lower lows. So a friend smokes. So you’ve had more than enough to drink at the party and need a ride. So your girlfriend or boyfriend just slept with someone else.

As much as it may seem ignorant, simplistic or useless to point out, our parents have generally survived the temptations of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and recklessness. And most only have our best interests in mind. Most want to help us, and they can.

In the immortal words of Cool Hand Luke, “What we got here is failure to communicate.” The only problem that stands in the way of us beginning a happy, gentle, long, and prosperous life that is not solely the individual’s problem is communication.

Why can we not open up? Just by talking deeply with our parents and sharing the things that bother us, admitting that we have problems or insecurities, our subconscious mind will recognize those issues. Less than 10% of human intelligence resides in the conscious thoughts. The true intelligence which enables survival is the automatic, reflexive behavior and broad perception and interpretation abilities of our subconscious.

Sometimes, people will wake up from a dream and have an epiphany. Aha! they say. Finally, their subconscious mind has solved the problem; finally, their subconscious mind was able to find a gap in the daily bluster of thoughts and actions that make up our waking hours.

When we are finally able to acknowledge the reality of the evils before us, we can begin to fight against them, fight for positive change. Whether fighting the vices of our selves, or our communities, or our nation, the first evil which must be overcome is denial.

To willingly refuse to believe the reality of a tragedy, regardless of the magnitude, is to directly and gleefully accept responsibility for the debts it causes. Those debts could be monetary; could be property; could be the lives of the people you hold dear.

Will you accept the blood of those killed in a school-shooting massacre? Will you assist drunk drivers in the death and destruction of people, property, and insurance prices? Will you follow your president to war for a cause you don’t believe in? Inaction is sin against the spirit of humanity. Will you stand up and fight for the silent majority? Will you be Emersonian?