--> All the world is a petting zoo
and Death alone is our gatekeeper.
We walk around in countless circles
struggling in thought and idea
and say nothing
but mutter sentences to the moon,
the few vowels of our hearts.
You are the one holding onto the steel bars tonight
in a little cage of the petting zoo
where death alone walks outside, its hood raised
like the head of a raven, its finger swinging
your key in circles.
You wait for the moon to appear
softly over the mountains of the clouds,
like a metaphor of a godfather whom
you can substitute all your worries into who
you believe will come traveling all day and night
through the heavy snow just to stop
and find you broken down and useless.
Yet days go on without answers
from the various questions we bark into the night.
As the world around does nothing but speak whispers
to the holy stars that will never move again, not ever.
And we, we grow insane without answers,
without logic or reason, and we lose our patience
trying to figure out who we really are
and why we shout at anything
that comforts us to love each other as if somehow
we’ve grown mad from exhaustion and dreary
head full with anxiety as we beg for Death alone
to toss us a bone so we can suck on the marrow
of some definitive life, some absolute meaning.
And the stars and the moon and the clouds
all frown upon us in wonder
of what would God think of us now
if he were to ever find us tonight —lost in madness,
barking like animals in cages like the
things you never knew you were capable of being.
But this is our life, and that’s Death
turning around the corner of the hollow trees
ready to strike against our steel bars tonight
so it can see just how long we will rage again
against each other in
some very present, very certain reality.
...
David Brooks Villanueva is an American Poet and a student residing in Fullerton California. At age twenty, he is the author of seven collections of poetry including his most recent 2013 book,Distance in Snow. Born April 16, 1993 as David Villanueva, he grew up in the small city of Santa Ana, Southern California—a place well known locally for its middle and lower class economic struggles.Growing up, David faced many life distractions including gang violence, multi-cultural differences, racial discrimination, and financial depressions. Often mentioned in his earlier works, much ofDavid’s social and childhood experiences have been written bluntly as “one confusing and unfitting incident after another.” Regardless, David has gone on to say “[people] are also different and beautiful in their own way”.
