This is the first writing of my storybook
Trying to find this man’s soul
So I scribble and ramble
It might get me nowhere in the Arizona desert
There is no measure for the pain
There is no pleasure as I try to keep my treasure
I don’t quiver or shiver
I just wish I can be delivered
From these hostile mirages
From where bullets penetrate garages
Nearly miss where my heart is
Almost making me cold and heartless
I walk the road of the martyrs
Living all the hardships
Where is the energy I once did harness?
I seem ripe for Death’s daily harvest
I need to go the furthest
I need to go the farthest
Build my own tools since I’m a wordsmith
There isn’t hope, is there?
I see the serpent slither
Blurred of what’s real
And what is surreal
Either side can’t grasp that this furnace kills
But there’s is a faint figure with me
I feel a presence within
And a feeling that I will conquer anything
That comes against me
As I close in to the core
I hear the knock at the door
I knew it had to be open
Because once doing so, I allow all hope in
So this path I choose
Is not chose often, but leads to truth
After reading a book for class, I pondered upon the surrealness of the Arizona desert. From the south, the one who makes his trek north, the migrant approaches a border of sanity and insanity. He crosses the line of what is real and what is not. Reality perceived is blurred. It is no longer concrete, it is no longer fathomable. The heat does this you. So does the social factors that push the migrant up north. This surrealness allows the implausible to be accepted as whatever seen with an attitude of “it is what it is.” It is the natural order. There is no way out of how things are. Why change things if they seem concrete. This way of thinking is surreal.
So when I bring up you don’t have to follow the rules of the system that constrains you or you can think otherwise from the perceived norm; I am crazy, insane, and not talking in a plausible sense. Why? There are not many, I think, that see there all viable options to get out of social structures that disallow your individualism. Within one’s individual self, he or she has freedoms, unalienable rights as they are guaranteed in the constitution. Once one has secured those freedoms, thoughts and actions are given to the betterment of a community. By gaining his or her own rights to live, one can live unselfishly for the collective success. To make it a reality, not a figment of imagination as anyone can say, is powered by love and can happen in a selfish, competitive, capitalistic context that exists in the United States. By “loving thy neighbor,” progress can be achieved and make an unselfish, giving, and even capitalistic society anywhere, including the United States.
An idea like this being proposed can be quickly dismissed as preposterous. Well, in truth, as an individual I have the freedom to believe and I do in fact exercise that freedom to the fullest. This belief of mine is extremely difficult for the unfortunate people in society. They have been entrapped by surrealness for what seems to be from the dawn of time. What is perceived and believed is that their place is inherited and set in stone, but that stone can be smashed. By showing them a door for which they can ascend and after lend a helping hand to others can change a whole societal structure that only elites are completely comfortable with. Like the migrants being engulfed by surrealness in the Arizona desert, people give up. They lose sight of society and die without knowledge of it. I have this freedom of knowledge, and living a reality, it is my duty to share it and not retain it to myself.
Furthermore, the people in the other side of the physical border cannot grasp the reality either. When in the news does one hear or read about the lives lost on United States soil? Those who died repeatedly in the same area of the United States? Are they not worth of news? Or are they not human enough to be recognize them? People north of the border are also flawed by living this surrealness. They don’t care because they cannot see them. They do not appear in their realm. Perspective is jaded in state of surrealness. They are not free to see these people, brothers and sisters in the same humanity, are dying. Again, I am free to this clearly and I recognize these fallen brothers and sisters. I will help others to change focus and see clearer how reality really is. That state of surrealness disallows one to grasp reality. The Arizona desert land is a prime example to highlight this thought, this notion, this truth. Nevertheless this border can be shattered into a spectrum of reality with love.
In my poem I express my journey through surrealness like if I were to experience the military shooting through peasant’s homes in Latin America or drive by shootings in any ghetto area of the United States. In reality, there is no reason for doing such things. I do not feel like a pioneer but I do feel like I have a duty to inspire, to teach, to serve, and to, overall, love my people. I accept my duty and will do it with compassion. These qualities I am to do and the attitude is derived from my personal relationship with God. Without him, I would be part of the surrealness. I relate the Arizona desert/“reality” as a furnace and it as an allusion to the Old Testament story of Daniel (?), and how he and some of his friends were not burnt and another figure was seen with him. In my poem the faint figure, as seen by others, is Jesus Christ who accompanies me and never fails. The presence is the Holy Spirit instilled in me when I was liberated into having a relationship with God. The following lines are there to show my relationship with Christ and allusions to the Bible (“I can do all things through Christ,” “I knock at your door, “ and “a small path leads to the gates of heaven”; found in Philippians, Revelations, and Matthew in the Bible respectively).
Again, this notion can, and will be, rejected due to be deviant from the apparent “reality” of the actually society structure. To many this is too liberal of a thought, but in all honest truth, this is an enactment of my liberation to share with you of what is reality, socially and spiritually.
*Notes*
*There have been grammar corrections from the original writing
*The book mentioned is
Dead in Their Tracks by John Annerino
*It was not Daniel, but 3 Jews in the book of Daniel in the Bible, specifically all of chapter 3
*The verses alluded too are Philippians 4:13, Revelations 3:20, and Matthew 7:13-14
*Originally written 4/27/10
