Megan Lane: brilliant poet, gifted musician, on what it's like to be gay.

The gay community around the world is constantly faced with disapproving eyes of the ignorant. It's viewed as a "choice" and unnatural. So, many take it upon themselves to make sure the gay community knows just how bad they are by backing them into corners, away from being able to turn not only the children of the ignorant into "gays", but the ignorant themselves.
It seems the most vocal, the most outspoken against the gay community are the most needing of a good long look in the mirror. Let's face it, these people are likely gay themselves. For them it is a choice, but it's not about being gay, it's about being straight. So many of these people are living a lie, acting out on their natural urges in secret at night, while during the day screaming about hellfire.
Remember Larry Craig? http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2007/08/larry_craig_still_not_gay.html

Anyway, listen to Megan. She's just got a way of puttin' it.

Revolutions just aren't the same through the TV.

It's easy to watch these things on the television, to allow the talking heads to tell us what it's about, what the word on the street is, but these places are real. They're full of real people with actual eyes who are truly watching and feeling what is going on. To us it seems unreal, but then again it's more real than anything. It doesn't matter what it's about, people coming together, revolutionizing, and changing things his how humanity marks time. It's what makes time relevant at all. Isn't it?

Edgar Allen Poe was not a happy man. Lucky us!

Edgar Allen Poe, an American icon and powerful descriptor of the darker side of human nature, and the heart, writes in his poem "Dreamland" about the forces of nature, their beauty, their danger, and the fact that we humans are doomed to give in to their fury. Yet we will never understand it until it's too late. Once we're dead, the true meaning of his writings might become a little more clear.
There are no shortage of "ghouls" and "ill angels" in Poe's writing, but he seems to have had his reasons. He was, again, not a happy man, but he seems to have believed that he had some sort of special connection to the afterlife. History has portrayed him as a lunatic, but as many lunatics are, he was a true genius. Any other interpretations of Dreamland are, of course, welcome.

Amir Sulaiman takes the truth and injects it into your heart.

The poem starts out slowly, gradually building power in sync with your heart's pounding.
Many of us are lucky to live in such sheltered environments, in places where we think we know what pain is, but really don't. Yet we are unlucky to believe we can actually empathize with those who struggle when we have no clue.