A mug of coffee and the flick of a bright orange lighter, igniting what would be my fourth cigarette of the morning, as I sit in front of the computer breathing the devils smoke I try to sort the ideas in my head that I have learned, witnessed, and birthed from my own conscience. I have seen many things in my short existence here on this marvelous sphere and have had many experiences that have contributed to who I am today. As a child I learned about God and what it was to lose someone to death. I learned love, compassion, racism, hatred, and what it was to be an alcoholic. The end is near my mother would say as she desperately attempted to bring me close to God so that I might have a chance to survive Armageddon and see my resurrected brother. Although I had three siblings I was an only child from my father and perhaps the black sheep of the family. Lonely and longing to belong and feel special I often fantasized of many things including who I would be in the future. My mind was filled with many dreams and hopes but consumed with emotions and conflicting role models as I tried to figure out who I was. After seeing my brother’s death on T.V. all week-long starting December 27th 1985 I believe something changed in me. This was my first true experience of overwhelming pain and sadness, and how a loss of life could destroy the very fabric of a home. I was only seven years old but the experience resonated within me and I have carried it always. As a matter of fact I built an empire of anger that would prove to take control of my future and have a great effect on my relationships. My father was a hard worker and always has been, but he also was an alcoholic. My mother has battled severe depression all her life and has been hospitalized many times. Even my father was hospitalized once and then at twelve years old the system somehow managed to put me in a mental hospital.
Although I was wrongfully admitted I still witnessed and experienced horrible things in that Psychiatric Institute. At this point I lost every last drop of trust and to this day do not trust any living thing walking on this planet. Like a well-scripted movie I smoked my first joint that year and moved my sites from becoming something great to becoming feared. I eventually joined gangs and became a nuisance to public schools and authorities. I became a drug dealer and escaped death many times and begun to feel invincible. By the age of eighteen I had lost touch with reality and was facing over forty years in prison. I had a rap sheet as thick as a bible and no high school diploma. It’s amazing how quick your thoughts can change when locked in a tiny box with no chance of freedom. This is the moment when you fall to your knees and beg the God you had forsaken. After receiving only three and a half years for the multiple crimes I was charged with I knew God saw something in me that I hadn’t. I survived the riots, the politics, a few razor cuts, and was released February 2002 a new man. Today I sit and write because although God and I see something good in me the world does not. I am what they call a violent offender and thus unemployable. It has been 17 years since I had made those poor judgments but will be judged for eternity. It is 2015 now and the world has completely changed. It has become a scary place filled with great violence, immorality, hatred, and governments with false agendas. As I sit and watch the news daily I begin to think about the book of Revelations and all that it prophesied. I am not religious and by no means a preacher but I do have an accumulated wisdom and a knack for spotting the obvious. I don’t need to explain the disgust of school shootings, warfare, infant rape, and the many other things our wonderful news stations bring in to our homes, as I know you have heard it or seen it with your own ears and eyes. As I accept my eternal judgement from this cruel world, I merely wish to express that today is the day I realized the end is near. I pray for all of us that we may find peace and love before we rest.