The Right Direction

The chance to please you is there, 
Somewhere in all this mess, 
This heap of ads, fake postings, dead ends, 
Paths untaken, ripe for the choosing 
If only they'd give me a chance. 
I'm lost for words, 
Caught between two lives; 
Between a past that taught me 
I wasn't worth anything 
And a future that asks me to be more. 
A child you wanted, a child you'll get, 
But not without having a career, 
Some mindless repetition 
That locks up your brain, 
Taunts you in your sleep, fattens you up 
For the feed after its birth. 
It will consume you, defy you, 
Challenge you in every way, 
So you best be prepared 
For a life that love will twist around, 
For the love you give your family 
Can only exist by sacrificing 
The love of your freedom. 
The step is there, I will take it, 
Trust in me, believe in me, listen when I say 
That money isn't as important as love. 
Before considering your own life,  
Don't expect anyone to have both 
When it's seldom achieved. 

Pendulums of Glass

    At the circus there's a tent with an oval mirror that opens as a doorway.  You walk inside and the stale years penetrate your senses.  Down the hallway, a glimmering invites you through a cavern of reflections, a labyrinth of divergences, an ocean of possibilities.  Each step you take causes new branches to grow on the tree of your soul, which extend their tips down other hallways gilded by more reflections.  You can see them blasting away through time, in every direction, down eternal corridors of mirrors that reflect each step you've already taken, and each step you might take in the future.  Only the present is what keeps you oriented.  None of them can ever reflect it, for the light is constantly bouncing through the medium of your ever-inflating soul.  It seems like you could step through each thin plate of glass and enter all those lives you haven't lived yet, if only the glass would let you; if only those portals to higher dimensions weren't an illusion; if only those walls of time could envelope you into the strangeness of impermanence, derailed and senseless, kicking and screaming through eons of smoke, flailing out of the mold and into the primordial kiln. 

How Changing Borders Creates War

    An important lesson to be learned from the World Wars is that border shifting is far more detrimental to civilization than relocating refugees.  After World War I, many of the borders between nations were redrawn, resulting in local conflicts that often lead to civil wars (Finland, Yugoslavia, Russia).  It could even be said that borders catalyzed the rampant nationalism that led to World War II, as countries that thought territory taken away from them unfairly still ought to be theirs (Germany).  The leading nations seemed to learn their lesson after World War II, when a mass campaign to relocate refugees went underway across Europe.  If they'd just left them where they were, created new countries and changed the map like they had in 1918, then it would have probably resulted in more heated nationalist movements that may have eventually led to World War III.