It's all I'll ever be;
The hairs I missed and the blood I drew,
It's the truth I wish I couldn't see.
It's pain to be replaced with pain anew,
An endless cycle, a nightmare,
Living as this creature, this mutt,
Consistently choking on rancid air,
Throttled in hemp I can't cut;
This hell will never end.

If I could choose to rewind time
I wouldn't fix a mistake or crime.
I'd spin one day around and know,
I need ne'er again fear tomorrow

Oh, tim'rous beastie
This wind is too much for me
Do not fly away

The mirror reflects a life eternal,
A thousand scars entirely internal,
Mortal instants of existence persist
In entrapping souls that cannot resist
The pull of the desecrated altar
Upon which the faithful can only falter
And fail to live a life that has an end.
And so they pretend.
They pretend and play at mortality
As if they were more than an abnormality
Of an unending perception of time,
Trapped in a moment, or a rhyme,
They continue to temper their voice,
As if speaking it was ever their choice.

Perhaps I could solve all this,
These problems we're drowning under.
People around me are faking bliss,
As if their worries don't tear them asunder.
But it has to weigh on them too.
I'm not the only one gasping for air.
They've strength to put on a brave face, and do
Everything they can to survive a life unfair,
Maybe I could too, had I that drive,
The flame within to see my hopes flowered
Into something that makes me proud to be alive,
Or maybe, I could finally be a coward.

I had a poem ready, a light-hearted ode
To identities I'd rather have,
And lives I'd like to live.
But in hindsight seems insensitive,
Simple references to machines of war,
Turn from what was implied.
Because the inference is the key
And right now such things are taboo,
Not from some self-important sense of justice,
but because of the nightmares we're about to live through.
I can only pray;
Wishing this isn't what we are.

An infestation
Roaches defy purity
Yet it continues