It’s lonely only finding truth in philosophy,
when only phenomenology can tell us
that we are just compounds of need
falling into traps of manipulation
set by the veiled hunger others

There can’t be two sides to every story
if we are just navigating altered perceptions of reality
warped by insecurity and ego
using endless disingenuous promise
as a means to an end
that we can’t see
or understand
so underhand, we take all that we can get
to sate some innate desire that devours us
never letting us see its teeth.

The villain always wants to be the hero,
but that’s always another story
told through rotting vignettes riddled with hidden discretion;
the narrative hacked with derivative prose.

If we never found deception on the timeline of human progress
they’d be as worthless as they make other people feel.

What is done is done
and what’s lost is mine to carry
I’ll embrace this vacuousness with a smile,
you taught me that baring your teeth goes a long way.
I won’t let the world see the hollowness that threatens to devour me
or that I’m already consumed, and there’s nothing left to exhume
but you’ll need to take my corpse and separate it from memory
to make me as weak as you.

You brought a pacifist to a gunfight;
someone that would never think to weaponize affection,
but I’ll stand my ground after 20 paces
with aloofness for armour
each step
an affirmation that the second smack of gunpowder is useless,
misdirected,
a ricocheting echo
barely registered.

Something told me,
never to turn and face you,
to keep on walking
to never see your face again
for a sense of finality that I finally had control over,

you imbittered my autonomy
for the sake of your ego,
what’s one more victory to you?
You’ve already taken my trust as a trophy.

testing which betrayals you’re lonely enough to forgive
sniffing out fresh wounds to salt
checking for cracks in the armour they helped to construct.
You’d stand naked if they had it their way,
each inch of skin just meat for seasoning
you're just fuel for an ego that constantly seeks naivety to plough through.

The darker my dreams get
the less I look for the light.

I can only see the duality
between my perceived reality
and the one you present.

I wake from gravity slipping
from the rot surrounding me
where everything is meaningless
unless there's someone to tell you that it isn't.

where everything is meaningless
once someone tells you that you are
and it turns out to be true
because they’ve shown you the nature of man.

There’s no scarcity of meaning
with stage lights dimmed
and hedonism cancelled,
just absence of distraction.

Chase emotion to find purpose,
scour for desire, feel the caustic scrub
tearing away the guises
you adopted to be adored
push away the inclinations implanted by
the attraction of normative function.

We’re little more than sentience in a skinsuit
pick at the fruit that leaves you more than sated,
chase feeling, on your own trajectory
don’t compete with people you never saw at the starting line,
who you’ll never see at the finish.
You’ll only prove the point
that we’ve disjointed until we’ve forgotten  
everything but passion is just decoration.