This is the narrative:
I live a comparative nightmare
disparate psyches battle for clarity,
within one body,
the cycle's insanity,
but humanity is the parody of a benevolent charity.

I lead the *** of an army
and lay waste on the enemy
so heavy that the donkey
is appointed head of the EPA:
it's on the trump card.

I don't understand the garbage I spew;
so much waste that there's nothing new.
It all conforms into a deep black goo
that I must dump in the rivers, my pride, too.

There are chains on my soul,
and they are sewn into my flesh
so that I am caged in my body.
When something rots,
there's no room to breathe.
When there is pain, it is amplified.
When I wish to love, I am destroyed,
and this happens with every glance,
for I love at first sight, but I am destroyed
yet, the chains remain, gnawing,
choking, hanging me, please...
Let me free.

Under the weight of this elephantine sea,
of smiling faces hiding madness behind bitter glee,
I try to find myself subliminally,
while tucked behind the ear of chemistry.

I could save true love for a rainy day,
but I have to take things slow
light myself on fire
to smoke the pain away.
I've become a drug to every woman I've known,
the ones who kicked the habit
threw away the bones.

I used to sleep in empty coffins
but I'm trying to live again
trying to love again
but it seems
I only end up "friends".
I write the poetry
to climb the tree
to find the me
that you want to see,
but I'm left with the question...

"Am I not enough?"

Attention is a bluff,
it's the mating call of emptiness.
I want to fill me with you,
but you're a fiction in the blue.
It's the idea of filling that fills,
it's the false love that kills,
the ha-hah, he-hee,
to hide that you don't love me.

So I'm saying goodbye,
I won't write to you anymore.
No more love letters,
I won't be your *****.
I tried to impress you,
but you loved what I hated
and hated what I loved:
you waited above,
but I found you below.

I found that there's nothing,
nothing left to show,
the crush of elephantine sea
crushes more than flesh and bone,
it grinds more than my heart,
no, it crushes the soul.

It's not the crush I'm afraid of,
it's who I won't be after it;
I would no longer be myself,
I'd be the ghost of somebody else.

So I slip out of the sea
and into my life,
because if I don't land,
I'll drift off into nothing.

His footsteps lead to lost places
only he knew the journey;
for all else it was treacherous
they had no light like his burning.

When he drew near,
the horizons were lit as quiet embers that
rise, singing majesty to the heavens
as he rounds the Earth.

His laughter set babes to slumber and
their mothers would shake with desire,
yet none of this would stir him,
no warmth for lord of fire.

'Pon still surface of captivating sea,
a ripple racked the endless reaches
from it rose an alluring beauty,
such that sun seemed weary.

Lord of fire felt his power dim
from somewhere on Earth's rim
and sought out this source
of unyielding force.

There she was,
and how she tamed even
the dance of fickle flames
the lord she did astound.

"What have I found?"

Quick as a blink
the beauty did sink
and silence her visage
leaving lord disparaged.

He searched the sea,
unable to find beauty
no sea could sate this thirst
and erase what was seen.

There wasn't a sign
a glimmer sublime
of beauty to delight
our lord from fright.

His father chastised him
his brothers derided him
yet not fact nor fancy,
could quench him.

His fires grew fierce
they scorched friend and foe
"Where'd you last see her?"
I don't know... I don't know!

A quaking delirium
no sanctum or serum
could quench lord
and fight the flames.

The fires began to
do something tricky
they began to burn him
like a candle's wick.

His shouts pierce the aether
The heavens did respond
they put lord to sleep
mighty flames abscond.

In his dreams,
she was there,
he touched her hand,
he smelt her hair.

She was real,
how could he know
that he was asleep
an endless show,
but his thirst
was quenched
no fray, no throes
he knew what it was
to be drenched.

One brother crept by
and siphoned lord's fire
to become the object
of the living's hungry desire.

But an ember remained
in lord entombed
He's somewhere in sky
we call him Moon.

Cast off your secrets
light the lamp
shake off the veils of slumber
indulge in the essence of life.

She calls
She calls to you and me
the Mother.
She speaks in the tongue of your soul
she is never a stranger
and when you listen
memories of love and bliss enchant you
though they were void not moments ago.

There is a chord still connecting us.
It is strummed when we love one another.
It is strummed when we share in selfless joy.
We are the instruments of this innocent music.
It coaxes the beast, our delusions, into its den.
We lock the gate and frolic in the fields,
safe from the weapons of our own chaotic powers.

The Mother invites us to her table.
Before us, the meal of life has been prepared.
It is whole in the giving.
She warns us to keep it whole.
If we give it back as one, there is a door she promises.
Who knows what lies beyond,
but,
I want to go there...

Do you?

Like cadavers are so many lovers.
Drunk on a table for two,
laid out and cut open
examined, weighed and cataloged,
yes,
cupid has your number.

He sharpens his arrows.
"Oh, how cute! He's like a baby!"
Shut it!
He's a monster.

It was nothing serious.
Angela and I were noncommittal,
then,
it just...
Happened!
I kissed her and she lost her footing.
Her legs slackened like climber's loose rope.
Angela fell, hard.
I pulled out the arrow. (I only wish I had disinfectant.)
She was breathing funny. I wasn't sure what bit her,
but when her eyes flickered open,
I felt the shame she would never know.
I looked up in time to see a fluttering of white.
A dove? I was too naive.
Angela started to get clingy. That's when I got stingy.
Soon, I began to ignore messages selectively.
Eventually, she was a fading memory.

Monica. Jessica. Lisa. Monique.
The story kept repeating itself.
"Get a grip, love was chasing you! Some should be so lucky..."
If that grip is cupid's neck, give me two handfuls, please.
I nearly stopped ******* around altogether,
haunted by feather after feather,
but I really just learned to play it safe.
Cut them off after a couple of weeks.
I'll never forgive Cupid, that rotten ****.

Her name was Felicia.

It was day thirteen.
I had my copied and pasted, "Sorry," SMS ready to go.
We were engaged in pillow talk,
it was nothing serious.
Sarcasm turned into playfulness.
We rolled over,
she had me pinned,
she nibbled on my earlobe,
and with artful tongue stroked
years of pain
from my soul.
She reared back.
Our eyes locked in mutual reverence.
We smiled and embraced letting our slick bodies revel in the moist residue of our tender frolicking.
It was then that I felt the itch in my shoulder blade.
Color and warmth fled my chest.
It was with a numbness that I let her go,
and reach back,
and felt the long spine of the arrow,
like the stem of a scythe.

The weeks that followed were a heaven
that I had always hoped not to enjoy
and felt ever more guilty in knowing my unfettered happiness.
Simple pleasures I once knew were then mountains of joy.
My passions magnified were as the flames of the sun.
I even feared I could turn her away with mentions of my love,
but this was not an unrequited venture.
We shared in admissions of our deepest affections.
There was not a moment passed in yearning of our old lives.
Even shedding light on our past imperfections was a delight
incapable of breaking the spell.
Truly, this is the purpose of youth; this love; this roaring of souls entwined.

Is justice blind?

I certainly felt this token of nature cast its judgment upon me.
No sooner than I had finally accepted my new reality, did I watch this sheltering bubble burst.
We weren't as open as I had imagined, of course, I shouldn't be so naive to think so.
She disappeared. I was distraught for what seemed like weeks, but.
I got a phone call.
The phone call led to a hospital. Within the hospital, a room.
Within that room, she lay on a bed, head shaved, smiling weakly.
I sat hesitantly by her side.
She grinned as she pinned me with a pink ribbon.
"You'll fight with me, right?" She said, as her eyes searched my soul,
quivering, yet there was a fierce strength behind the weariness.
"If I don't fight, I'll lose more than losing you."
She lay her head in my chest. A chest that could lend its power.
Looking out of the window into the horizon, I wished for things I never considered to be signs of hope. Yes, I'll fight...

In that moment of my life, it was as if I weren't alive.
Perhaps my body was waiting for me to return: sitting there, breathless.

Are brave words the measure of fate?
Oh, I wish this were so, yet some battles only time can win.

I didn't go to the funeral. I simply asked that I may scatter the ashes.
It was a moment for two. I stood on a cliff by the sea, a place she and I loved. I spoke to her, in ways I knew she deserved. I scattered the ashes, and I knew she had returned to the promise of life, a place beyond time and pain.

And so, time passes for me.

In time, I am ready to love another.
A familiar itch in the shoulder blade.
I know the arrow is there.
I look up and there is cupid, smiling.
No need to hide from a gracious soul.
I gaze and I whisper:

"Please, Cupid. This time, don't leave me breathless."

My passions, like a flood of magma, pool at my feet; caking, cooling, cementing... and I wonder why I am rooted in my beliefs.

Tiny necklace locket
resting on a rock
it
gleams in the sun
next to necks that met a gun.

I wonder why they left
they
left my soul bereft
of the dreams I wish to hold
oh, the story's growing cold.

They were dreams!
My dreams!
Whose do you think they were?
I was the one with all the youth.
You put your hopes on my shoulders,
didn't you?
So why did you leave me?!
It's not my fault I forgot the
dreams...

The colors run from my face
and twist and turn
down
down
the drain
leaving stains that
I wish
were the mark that I'd be
satisfied with leaving on the world,
but
no one appreciates a colorful drain.

Even when the end of your life
is a paradise
does that justify the hell you've been through!
Don't you wake up
in the heat of summer
sweating
and wish the nightmares would just pour out, too!
Why is it that the biggest fish,
in the nets of our minds
are the angler fish and the puffer fish?
Terrifying and poisonous.
Rancid and unappetizing, because we leave them
out in the sun
afraid to touch our own dysfunction!

What justice is this?
My father wasn't father enough!
Why did he sleep all day?
When he died, didn't I already know he was dead?
Did I experience a déjà vu no more feeling than it was a jagged knife?
Am I dead too?
Is that why I think this is hell?
Is that why I wondered if there are souls? The confusion borne by still being flesh and blood, yet being so ghostly that I couldn't scratch the itch of my bleeding soul.

Justice? If you cry inside, does anyone hear you scream?
Can you?
Only when it's too late.
The last drop of the blood of your soul spent.
Mortgages! Taxes! Insurance! Loans! Employment!
Yes, please, they're all a merciless enjoyment!
A ceaseless tickling of agonizing fun.

What choice do we have?
The choice to tell those who tell you, to tell those to tell that person,  and on and on that it's enough!
We're tired of being told money is life-blood.
Why should my ability to live be based on how much dead tree you've been siphoning from the life of the planet I am worth? Am I a resource?
I'm sure that's in your audit, isn't it?

Citizen #11899382280 is complaining again, send him back for conditioning. Advertise some more bacon and send him to the hospital again so he's distracted, this will distract his whole family. We'll advertise a specific hospital he should go to to them so they feel compelled. When he's at that specific hospital, we'll shorten his life as our insurance. His family will think he's graying because of the stress of the heart attack, but it's really the drugs, which always look the same, yet are increasingly more destructive. We'll send Lawyer #448322783 in to talk about his retirement and will. The family has requested him, but Lawyer #448322783 works for us. Lawyer #448322783 will edit the will to suit our intentions. Once the will is arranged, we will increase the life-shortening medication, which will, in and of itself cause complications. We will introduce a catalyst to forego the critical time we have to avoid his otherwise impending and damaging insubordination. When Citizen #11899382280 is dead, we will retrieve the damaging and insubordinate files from his HelloPoetry.com account and erase his existence. Were he alive, he would find this poem ironic that his emotions, being a matter of the heart, led to a death that was a matter of the heart.

From the heart,
Your loving government & your ****** life