LUMES is a semi-autobiographical poetry manuscript that deals with the implications of growing up in a military family in the landscape of the Southwest United States. These poems directly and indirectly address the idea of globalized military-industrial complex and how we as citizens are implicated in the actions of war, even when we are not active participants. The poetry in this manuscript moves from spaces of childhood and the home, to places of torture and destruction with a figure called "the man." This figure represents, among many things, the seemingly "invisible" violence of war which looms in the lives of U.S. citizens in various ways -- whether that be through our own comfort, the films we watch, or the way we play as children. Ultimately, LUMES combines autobiography and situations of surreal violence in order to reveal truths about our ways of life as U.S. Citizens.