one dollar an hour

The 10 year old boy smashes a TV as hard as he can.
Shattering plastic
Shattering glass
Shrapnel barely missing eyes
sometime cutting bare skin

Proud of the destruction
The TV's guts split wide open
He feels accomplished

I the onlooker thinks, such a waste,
he should be able to do something better with his time than risk losing his sight for a moment of pleasurable destruction.

He digs through the rubble of the split open TV and sees there is more work to do,
and he lifts his skateboard high over his head to smash some more..

His tool for the destruction was his skateboard?

His skateboard.?

the wood now crushed.
the wheels now bent and useless

useless wheels make the skateboard useless.

Except of course for smashing up TV's

TV's found just laying there, almost like they want to be destroyed.

If only he had a hammer, he would not have needed to use his skateboard.

but the 10 year old boy does not have a hammer

you see that  12 year old boy over there to your right,..

the one there smashing that computer monitor,..

notice he is using a hammer,

the 12 yr old stole the hammer from the 10 year old.

Its Okay by the 10 year old,
there isn't much he can do about it anyway
he is busy working on his own destruction

And truth be told

The 10 yr old boy stole the hammer from some random 8 year old boy.

This is just life,
It is a normal day in Africa or China or some other third world country

Where the civilized nations dump their trash

Where toxic waste shortens lives,
and cuts
and blinds
and destroys hope
and forbids childhood

Where kids need to work 10 hours a day

just to make less than
less than

one dollar an hour.

good people

The conversation was light and casual.

conversation of adult men who were strangers just 30 minutes ago,

topics include adventures of our past, politics, and of course women

then the conversation turned to cities we had visited and people we met there

and one man said "they treated me pretty good, those were good people"

as soon as he said the phrase "good people" the mood changed from light and casual to heavy and quiet.

we all knew what he meant.

those few words spoke volumes of frustration

frustration of being just a man.

a hard working man

a truck driver moving the nations goods

a man with a loving wife

a man that wants his kids to be happy and successful

a man who has close friends

a man that enjoys watching football


The words " those were good people",
screamed out how many bad people he had endured
people that wouldn't let him sit where he wanted to.
people that looked down on him
people that thought less of him

"those good people" were men that understood, he only wants what other men want

conversations with others

love of friends and family

courtesy and respect,
to be looked at in the eyes when you speak to him.

he is just a man.

he does not want to be spit on

he does not want to be paid less than

he does not want to be feared

and most of all he does not want to be called "nigger".

strokes of art

Art is many different things to many different people.

in art,

everyone sees something different
some see the colors
some see the splotches
some see the emotions
some see the lines
to me and my canvass
all i see are the strokes
the individual strokes and how best to fill the canvas with them.

Like with many artist,

what you see is only the surface,   there is a deeper meaning,

Let me share with you for a moment,...

you see this, this gentle stroke means love
the slight wave in this stroke here is fear
and these strokes, the ones that seem so to stand above the rest,

they mean loneliness

and the two long strokes
the same shape and
the same color with
the same depth on both left and right,

they mean that I have control.

There is a Chinese Hanzi, the concept means,.. kind of,  .. lost love, a deep love that hurts,

The canvas over here shows that character;
these two long lines here
these 5 medium lines and
the 3 short,
I hid them by spacing them out too far,
but, if you took all of them,
and centered them around this spot here, that looks like a cigarette burn you could see it.

as I said  what you see is only the surface, there is a deeper meaning.

Well that is enough sharing with you,
my canvas is calling to me,
there are still some blank spaces that must be filled with strokes and  I need to get the shame and guilt out.

you see my parents asked me
asked me not to cut.
not to cut my wrists
not to cut my legs
not to cut my feet

they only see the slice-that-deforms and the scarring and the blood,

but they don't understand,..

that to me my skin is not skin

it is my canvas that must be filled in.