The cave
Has been "the cave"
Ever since my first year
...
How would it feel
To not have a name?

One day, I took a vacation
Tired of the suffering
Stress
And hysteria
So, I traveled across the world
To a country, filled with hopes
Upon arriving, I saw:
Suffering
Stress
And hysteria...
...
I no longer take vacations
For the view was good
But the atmosphere, a façade.

Carving a path
Pushing forward
My head is down
Blind to all the sorrow
As a drill, I can't stop now
I'm digging further
With a 2-inch shovel
By the time I change the world
It will become yours
Broken, battered
I'll ignore the signs
As long as you can be with me

Sometimes                                                                     Authority
                   Life                                                        Back
                          Goes                                      Take
                                   Down               Finally
                                                Till we

Don't want to move forward
Where else can I go?

None around
To me, that's fine
Don't need to know everything
Born unknowing
Directionless boy
Entwined in the concrete jungle
Swinging on a high
That'll never end

Can't find peace
Doesn't exist
In the second level
All we know is desire
God I wish
It would be tired
No longer brings pleasure
Longing not for a *****
For...
For a ladder out of here.

Resistant to the cure
Vulnerable to the infection
Poisoned chalice for the emperor
Drugged for peace
Suppressed for the least
Turned into who?
No one knows where I came from
Floating in space
Irreality, my new reality
Crazy and confused
It must be reality

The hurt hurt the hurt
Breaking their chains
Only to see their cage
Blaming others with a blank face
Another blank space, another disgrace
Throwing spears from their boat
While others drown down there
Claiming that the world is
Just and fine
There is a will, there is a voice
Deep in the ground
Yelling, shouting, exclaiming
Now the world is full of
Dust and swine

Accepting a truth
Apathy and awareness
Are all that remain

Radiant, cool eyes
Freezing surfaces
With a single glance
Petrification, at an instant
The desire to bond, constant
Not possible, mutant

Birth of revolutions
Develops internally
Used to start with steel
Now, it starts with discourse

From our origin
To alpha and omega
Peace remains stranded

Intense enjoyment
Blocks out reality
After years of such
Here we are now.

Separation
Often cares for the object
Of pain and nostalgia

Lying, denying
To keep on surviving
Cognition has no supervision
When the pain falls through
Unexpected messanger
Bringing a clue
Here, just for you:
Your guilt is festering
You deserve your reckoning
All the virtues can't erase the vice
To rewrite history is to rewind life
Accept the treason, above all reasons
Accept, fight, take your life, don't regress
But I digress
Life is choices, free of behest

Always moving
Nothing is fixed
Everything is a risk
Is this why nothing feels like home?
Roaming or trapped in domes
Feeling alienated, call it a syndrome
Caring about chrome more than the biome
Hollow, made of styrofoam
Never improving
Always moving

Poisoning the well
Questions are flung, words that stung
As our flask withdraws

"Keep up the good fight"
"Push on through"
Easy to say
When your body has no hiccups
Flaws dormant within me
Much more than skin deep
"Normal" has lost its effect on me
Never bow down to a standard
That fluctuates on the preacher
---------------------------------------------------
I'm lost in the rain
With no umbrella for the pain
Drives me insane, was I ever sane?
Maintained my domain, packed with uncertainty
My name is the only truth I can ascertain
When it rains, it pours
I feel it within my pores
Please, give me some rapport
---------------------------------------------------
Will it always be like this?
Waking up to a sun which I've grown numb to?
How long have I been like this?
Am I really me?
Does anyone know who I am?
Sending up a flare, no sign of a liferaft
Tripping over baggage I never knew I had
Listen to this S.O.S, I am in distress
---------------------------------------------------
Befo­re my name is spoken by P.I's
I wish I could regress, decompress
No one to impress, pure life enjoyment
Fighting for a reason to justify our existence, why?
What is this?
Is it my fault?
I wish I could've prevented this gestalt.

Doomsday predictions
All the possibilities are fiction
Yet I fear for the day
When one rings true

So you'd like to leave?
Just sign here
It's a formality
To reduce abnormality
The difference is easy to facilitate
When bound by words on a page
Wait, you want to stop?
Just sign here
You can't avoid the paper
Just sign here
For this will be your life
Deep inside you know
This to be the rhythm of modern life
You'd like to prevent it from taking over?
Well, guess what...
You can!
All you need to do...
...is just sign here.

Dime a dozen, homicide
Comprehend such a crime
Unlikely for me
But it's my job
The purpose I've built up
Which can be thrown to the wind
In an instant.
But those thoughts are crippling
How shall I start?
Where do the footprints end?
Will they turn inward?
Travel onto rooftops
Muck occupies the ceiling
Trail runs cold
Colder than the touch of angel wings
Judgmental
Cold
Morally sound
Why did they do it?
//Yeah...//
//Why did you do it?//

Leaders of the past
Led the people
Now we have vernacular
Sharing stereotypes
Discrimination on different stereo types
Old like a commandment
Commanding like a caesar
Shaking like a seizure
Ruling in leisure

Show it off for all to see
Yet only scattered few
Care enough to view
Tragic evidence
Of algorithmic downfall

The internet, what a glorious invention
Used in part, to do:
Research
Science
Playful activities
Engage in social discourse
Send threats
Wish hateful things
Generate chaos
Conduct illicit business
Anonymous discrimination
Videos of disintegration
All, in the comfort of home
It has come this far
Perhaps, it has come too far

I had a dream
Birds spoke to each other
I talked to them
Yet they didn’t speak my language
Never understood
The message I sang
Sat down on a dock
Gazing into water
Black as space
My head spun like a top
Dropped into the galactic water
I could see the stars
Feel the touch of the galaxy’s embrace
Spheres
As far as I could see
In the center of the stars
Resided a babe
Small in size
Recently placed
I grasped the child
Looking for a parent
Until I woke up
Stuck not in space
But in the duties of adulthood

Many nights
Come to pass
With minimal slumber
Over imaginary
Visions
Starts the same:
Wake in a house
Suspended by nature  
A rope of vines
Impressive
But no one can make such
Only in dreams
Then in comes:
The running man
A shadow
Devoid of recognizable features
Merely a silhouette of the night
Try to catch him
Yet I never do
Instead I awake
Trapped in vines
Another dream?
I wish it was so
Time goes on
Now I’ve seen things
Lived a life
Worth talking about
Laying on a cloud
Grounded down
I see it:
The house bursting with nature
The shadowy silhouette
Kneeling down
Inches away from my breath
The darkness melts from it
Underneath
My eyes go wide
Mouth agape
Extravagant…
My son is here!
Then I awoke
He left years ago
But-
Just one quick look…
…was all I asked for.

I remember a dream
Late in the night
The eve of lucid thought
Cleaning a park
Black and red
Sketched in like a middle school doodle
My body was paper
Flimsy yet malleable
In the edge of the park
Parked on granite steps
Third from the bottom
Was an old man
I approached with careful steps
Gazing at my legs
Slowly raising his head toward the sky
A moment of brilliant silence
The man began to laugh
Unrelenting
Never stopping to breathe
Pointing at me
My essence
I hit him
But my bones connected
Into nothing
I awoke
To red
All-around
The kitchen floor
Is it my turn
To clean?

I pray your day
Goes as planned
Planning is something
I never had much mind for…
Mind…
Oh yes! My dream
Walking patiently forward
Toward a blanket of twilight
All I could sense
Cold touch of faint wind
Over time I finally spoke
A garbled sentence
Greeted with an echo
First it was mine
Then a reverberation
Of voices I didn’t recognize
At least not yet
Touched my ears
Earmuffs?
I don’t own a pair…
I could hear?
Such an odd experience
The intensity increased
Till the force of the symphony
Pushed me backwards
Landed headfirst onto a rock
Rough and uninviting
Then I awoke
Unable to hear my breath
Like always
The status quo remains the same
Will it change?
Boy, I hope so
Truth is that…
I fear I’ll never know
Even if I said yes
Who will believe a man
With no way to hear it?

Awake and dreaming
Dreaming while awake
Awake while dreaming
But reality keeps me dreaming
Of a better place where we have meaning
Now all that remains are illusions
Justifying ourselves
By removing feeling
While the successful look down
To feel something
So cruel and smug
To fill years of disharmony

Down the streets
Rain pours in sheets
Lights die with a screech
Now, here comes the street freaks
Observation, estimation
Surface level approximation
I stand on the side
Yet I walk the same street

Drive me down to Mars
The future of my kin
Worry breaks
Out on my skin
Such is the era
Full of it evermore
Feed the masses with the possibility
Of futures
Long-term
Not short and sweet
Drive me down to Mars
Show off the concept
Of
Hope

No time for sympathy
Chasing ecstasy
Yet the trails we blaze
Leave generations in a haze
Maze with no sign, rewind
Turn back the clock before the hammer gets cocked
Blocked without a shot, here come the cops
Bang, click, vroom
Here comes the bloom
Trying to groom doom with a broom
All I consume brings the greatest of gloom
Consumed but no tomb, no womb
Womb-to-tomb, continuing slow
No energy left to further our growth
Foster the pace, laced with disgrace

Please, reveal to me
Lake of contemplation, my
Twisted visage

Lesson for today:
"Think for yourself kids" is both
A truth and warning

Grasping for power
Trampling flowers
Holding on to all
Giving it all to one
Shuffling our lives
Creating hermits
Changing fools
Combating devils
Redefining the wheel of fortune
All to reassure
Their exit strategy
All for one, the only one who won
Those who sought to be greater
Born from cold parents
Inflicting inflammation to spite them
Now our world is controlled by tempered justice
Just for us to observe
Our incompletion

Of the life we lost
The dead, the dying, the diseased
Forgotten by us
Just to make ourselves come home
Trying to reconcile
When our hands still shake
When our walls stand firm
Tell me, will we ever be connected?
Even beyond this world
How much have we catered to ourselves?
Twisting and crashing into life
Only for one day
It breaks or creates a future
But right now
I am too blind to see
A future made from disconnection

Torn apart
Poison digested ages ago
Comes back with a vengeance
Firm conditions  
While I've been in this...
Meadow of permanent darkness
The stars shine bright
As a means to taunt me
Freedom
You hold the secret
***** of light
That die like all things
But once the pain is inflicted
Onto my vessel
Vestal in dreams
Defiled in reality
White tinted beam
Free me from this degree
Rebuild my spark
With rock and a shock.

A young boy
Naive and unaware
Of the enemies that lie
Across the ocean's edge
Ignorant
Of what he'll do to them
Once he grows up.

You need to be careful
With your relation
To the subconscious
Or your true self
May soon live elsewhere

Sounds less like bragging
Looking for approval ratings?
Screaming about your cars, guitars
Yelling to the world
"I am someone! Look at my accomplishments!"
You've never been admonished
Truly astonished
Not by your fame, but your lack of a conscience
Survival of the strongest doesn't apply to fame
The more you obtain, the less you have to gain
More pain, more strain
Those who look from below wish they could be near you
Those who look from above think of ways to misuse you
Me, I sit, watching you race
So tell me, tell me why
Why do you keep up this pace
When all it does is contort your face?

Nothing stays the same
Even when it’s made to last
But, it's part of life
So it will be okay.

Life is born but never lingers
Out like a light with a flicker
We have all we need, but here's the kicker
Our sparkle goes out quicker
Our hearts are sicker
All we do is bicker
Suffering shows turned into competitions
Fission is our mission
Omitting our permissions
Until we are left with suspicion
Grounded into submission
By emission and ambition

Closure of a terror campaign
Which first opened
To those behind bars
For they lost all things
And are cursed
To enter a world with nothing

The den of secrecy
Locked with no key
For even the warden
Misplaced it long ago
Always wondering, where it has gone
Only to move forward
As they forget to look backwards
Memories are a splatter
Mosaic with no pattern
Thrown and tattered
Picking up the pieces long forgotten
Where does this piece fit?
When did this arrive?
Why is this here?
Whose mind is this?
Why can't the lock be broken?
A spiral, a cycle
But, the chains have yielded
Is now the right time...?

Staring into the moonlight
Head up for guidance
Head down for rejection
On a night like this, I ask myself this:
Why do my relationships fail?
Friendship, partnership
Captain of a sinking ship
Sinking to the trench
Alongside expectations
We comprise the whole nation
Yet all I feel is isolation
Is this my destiny, to receive no amity?
I've extended my hand
Look now, I have thorns
Embedded in my skin
A reminder of what trying will bring
On my path through life
I feel like a drone
Hollow to the bone
I was never like this
Until I was grown.

A theme park that entertains
Cure all of the negativity
Finally
Mirage no longer
Real
Abandon doubt
Throw out fear
For now...
We'll be entertained
For now...?
Not forever?
Right...
Sensing a theme
The park has a half-life
Like you and I

Passing along knowledge
No questions asked
Myth or fact?
It is a legend, why not let it pass?
Well, legends can turn from famous
To infamous
Comedy to tragedy
Sunny to cloudy
Spreading envisions of life
With no clue of what life is
No one truly knows what they have
Until it disappears
Yet no one can speak in death
So to be wise
Must we figuratively die?
Hitting the bottom of the well
With no direction but forward
If only life was a hypothetical
Then it would be simpler
None of it is similar
After all
Being immersed in fiction
Leads to thinking in fantasy

Winner's remorse, chase
Compromise wins the war, me?
The battle, a piece

Seeking authenticity
But now the counterfeit
Becomes our best fit
Outlasting all the victims
Of false love, false futures
Deterrents do discourage
Blocking barricades
Hindering the growth
We thought was right
Until we were wrong
Powerful communication
Top tyranny, bottom bureaucracy
The substitute remains the same
But no one will ever know