There’s a selflessness
To selfishness
Only by taking care of yourself
Can you begin to take of others

This is where our course had led:
On your bed,
In my head,
Your errant thoughts were read:
Why is it we so dread
Joining ranks with deathless dead
When they their mortal cares have fled?:
These thoughts you gave to me unsaid
As our blood was shed
Beautiful, crimson red:
To new horizons tread

I don’t get lonely
Or, if this is loneliness,
I much prefer it

A name follows you-
Even when you’re made anew.
Neither can you leave your face,
Or entirely forget your birthplace;
We must have done some misdeed,
In a past life, indeed,
Because we’re of a lower caste,
Doomed iconoclasts,
Fighting for nothing,
And eternally suffering.
And when we’ve had enough of it,
Enough of being misfits,
When we realize it was designed this way,
And that there is no “someday”,
Then we’ll venture six feet underground,
To tear a heaven down.

It feels as though something has ended,
Philanthropy has been expended,
People are left to their own devices
To sink into their own vices.
It’s not right, that we’ve lost our care
For how our fellow man fare;
Blind to one another’s pains
And entropy is left to hold the reigns.
What we lost, can we ever find
When we ourselves are so supine?
Nevermind we’re all one soul
That together form a reconciled whole,
Different branches of a single tree
Limbs that emblematize you and me;
And when we leave the poor out in the cold,
Forget and ridicule the old,
Renounce our secular vows,
We’re just splitting off another bough.

I love the words that I read here
The ones that you leave spoken,
Your hopes and loves, doubts and fears,
The thoughts you write upon being awoken

Offering perspective,
Through a page, to see your reality,
Concocts a connection:
The power of empathy

Old, young, the chained and the free,
And especially the pariahs,
Whose words read to me
Like a personal Messiah’s

I read them from my bed,
Words of comfort, words of woe,
I suppose I could just leave it unsaid,
But I wanted to say hello.

Just one, red rose,
Red lips, cute nose,
A smile, bright eyes,
An hour, time flies,
Dancing, the rain,
Car drive, fast lane,
Forget, the time,
Useless, bad rhymes,
A drink, or two-
No, never that few-
The future, the past,
The outcasts, outlast.

When others look into my eyes
They see a thing to despise
I do not know what they see,
I wish they would just see me

Take it as a compliment
Branded heretical.
Bring on the pyre,
And set it afire;
When they resort to
Crucifixion
You’ll know you have the right
Convictions

“Perhaps one did not wish to be loved,
So much as understood.”
I’ve never fully understood anyone,
I doubt they’ll understand me,
And that’s ok,
It might just not be meant to be.

It’s when, to follow your dreams,
You give up everything,
And you, piece by piece, are consumed
‘Till you’re living in a nightmare

In their beauty, an unparalleled race
From a higher, supernatural place,
Driven to hidden, underground refuge
When mans’ cynical wars the earth deluged-
Leaving only the slightest, unclear trace.

They knew no pain, nor any suffering
And the world is darker from their leaving
And we are left to pick up the pieces,
While our own ambivalence increases,
Seeking to find a singular meaning.

You may call it naive wish fulfillment,
But I will search for reconcilement.
I will upturn the soil and the roots,
Until I may procure some lasting truce
Make amends for Ill-judged revilement

And then mankind again will have a guide
Some holy beings to gift us back our pride
What a dream, to again have dignity
To direct our kind to benignity
So we may be pulled back from the wayside

It’s all very romantic, isn’t it?
That some saviors will see us fit.
It takes the blame off us,
Makes our apathy superfluous,
Proves we are not hypocrites.

But maybe we should fix our own mistakes,
Go outside and clean our own ******* lakes,
Stop hiding behind flowery language and care
Waiting for a savior when they are rare,
Before our zeal irreversibly breaks.

When you've come so far
And you're still not who you are
That's the hardest part

Never get too close to anyone
For awhile it’s almost fun
You may be even glimpse the sun
But inevitably it’s always over
All you’ll find is two leaf clovers
With death, a goodbye, or just an arbitrary day
People always go away.
Sink back into your pit
Consumed by manic fits
That you love too much to let go,
It’s how you cope with woe.
They are not meek
Certainly not weak
Wise beyond years
They forgo future tears
They’ve found, having been hurled-
Innumerable times from a great height-
They just prefer the underworld.

A smaller God
Held in the palm of your hand
That will dissolve in you
And you with it

I have learned how to smile through the rain
How to glimpse all the bright lights in the dark
You cannot be harmed when you love the pain
And you yearn for more which to embark
I feel the cold winds again start to blow
The sun hides and I can see my own breath
Freezing, blinded, and not from all the snow
But I no longer fear impending death
However tomorrow, or next year goes
I will not be content to hide my face
In spite of everything, my passion grows
And I will never give up on the grace
Seasons change, cold does not last forever
There’s no such thing as worthless endeavors

A sofa for a family of four
A van out in the wild
A punk band on tour
Or eternally exiled.

Everyone has a place,
Or a kind of mission.
Whether they choose to run the race
Or live in defiant sedition

Is there a place for our song?
Somewhere within our purview?
Will I find where I belong,
And will it be with you?

We live in a world of lost and found
Get lost so we can be found again
And then retreat back underground
Until the process ends

I’ll be your Dracula,
You know all I’ll need is your heart.
You be the wicked witch,
All you will need is a hooked nose,
‘Cause you already cast your spell on me!

Tallies on the wall.  
Doors that rearrange,  
In strange, entropic ways.
That dissemble and confuse  
To keep two locked in the halls;
The lights flicker, periodically-
They spot shadows on their peripheral-
Likewise in intervals.
They seem to speak,
But only mockingly.
They did not choose this fate;
The house chose them.
Some must be condemned-
Like Minos and the Minotaur-
For a terrible hunger to abate.
Another tally in the frame.
They’ve been this way earlier,
Though their recollection’s getting murkier,
While hands reach from plaster,
Reaching to claim.
They must learn to love the maze
The freedom in being confined;
At least their goal is defined-
After all, once you enter, you may never leave,
And are doomed to tread the lengthways.

Outside cars pass and children play pretend
By a for sale home overgrown,
Inconspicuous, yet locally it is well-known:
You never get too close
To the house that never ends.

Take a breath, we are free,
Shut our eyes, and now we see,
Forget what’s right, forget what’s wrong,
And now we dance, to an inaudible song

Broken seven seals
You will never know what’s real
Spurning the surreal

You say you hate the human race
I say you have a lovely face
You think you’ll never reach the place
I think that you would miss the chase
So I unlace
And you embrace
And with the world we keep pace
‘Til the day we disappear
And leave without a trace

A dream half dreamed is
A life half lived

“Why do you daydream
All your waking time away?”
You have nerve to ask.

There’ll be another day
When the night is through
A time to get away
A chance to start anew

There will be another year
When the year ends
A chance to reappear
A chance to make amends

And when the world is dust
Swallowed by the sun
Apathetic atoms will not fuss
Over the fact that we are gone

‘Cause one day the Universe will die
And Everything will become undone
But human experience imply
There’ll be another one

A simple solution
To all the world’s problems-
Have you tried turning it
Off and on again?

It’s hard to be here
And to be sincere
When you run on caffeine
And fear
But it’s easy to be coarse
To stay indoors
When you see the whole world through
The filter of remorse

Poised to succeed
In all of your dreams
You have the support
And the means
Endured a painful trek
Metamorphosed from a disdainful wreck
But you’d rather be something else
Than a large paycheck
All the agonies
Pursued through wistful blasphemies
Have led to naught
But a sorrowful eucatastrophe
Because you have bills due
Things to live up to
It’s wishful thinking
Wanting to paint the skies blue.

Truth, what a grand prize,
Truthfully, I think truth is lies.
But I wear a stark disguise
Of being mesmerized, hypnotized
By all that people idolize,
of what the righteous advertise;
But truly I’m demoralized, unsocialized,
Thoughts practically mechanized,
Belief has been excised,
potential unrealized,
And my spirit’s been vaporized.
One benefit to being ostracized:
At least I can’t be radicalized.

Magic is real,
It is not what most expect-
A two-bit card trick, vanishing act-
But everything we feel,
Everything that has an effect.
You don’t need prayer
Or spells to cope,
Just an unbowed mind,
A little flair,
And the illusion of hope

I’ve always been an all-or-nothing
Kind of guy:
Give me everything, or I want nothing,
Triumph, or don’t even try.
I never could quite surmise
The point of compromise.
If I could not win, I would rather lose
Without being handed a consolation prize.

I realize now the nuance of it all:
Nothing’s black or white,
Short or tall,
Wrong or right,
There’s more than one kind of fight,
And the blind sometimes have more sight,
The middle road’s sometimes the best one,
And always the least contrite.

Someday I’ll have a desk, with a scenic view
In nature, where modernity I can eschew.
I’ll write stories, some might even be true;
And I’ll be free, do always what I choose to:
Escape this wretched trap that benefits the few,
Finally be content, not always so blue.
If this sounds appealing, I hope you find it too.

Reminisce, sweet bliss:
The lasting worth of
A summer night’s kiss.

Ask yourself why you doubt,
Why you fear and cast about.
You are heading the right way,
Who cares what others say?
You have no concerns to allay.

What will be will be,
All wisdoms do agree;
Like a lion and a roar,
A soldier in a war,
You will do what you are made for.

“I am not afraid; I was born to do this”,
Your actions are not remiss,
Nor for nothing,
But for everything:
A singular meaning.

Write, and do it well,
And love until your death knell.
Mind your well-being,
Bitterness is unbecoming,
The world is on the upswing.

Everything happens for a reason,
Reasons are plentiful

Blood is thicker than water,
But blood dries and crusts up and stains
And inevitably turns a dull brown,
While water flows forever
And wipes the stains away,
And when it dries it’s only a matter of time
Until it rains again!

If we could see our destinations,
We would not trouble ourselves with the journey.

Small steps,
Cover more ground.

Quiet voices,
Make more sound.

Peaceful weapons,
Draw more blood.

Ten million drops,
Unleash a flood.

Locked away, in tower grey,
The crime of innocence;
And in the streets, disarray,
Observed from the distance
Of a somber penance:
A sinister interplay.

I love America
But sometimes I hate the U.S.A.
How do you spin,
Blocking airways?
Two party system;Our United States,
Couldn’t give better delegates?
And I despise all of the
Idol Worship,
Trickle-down culture,
Your distractions, weapons. Change;
not an endless hunt for newer things.
When Patriotism Trumps
Common Sense,
1776,
And we Masquerade our Liberty
Confined in an invisible pillory,
And you accrue,
While we make do,
At this point, if you are asking me,
Then yes, I would prefer shared misery
To your “equal opportunity.”

Welcoming arms
Holding you at arm’s length.

Like the muscles in our fists, and in our legs,
The heart too needs to be torn apart
Again and again
So that it may rebuild itself
Stronger than the day it was before,
And like how we can lift more with our arms,
And run more with our legs,
What hurt us the day before,
Suddenly has no effect
In our heart

Truth is found when one can
Reconcile the irreconcilable
That’s why it’s so elusive
And Illusive
Because you can’t,not completely,
At least not humanity,
Paradoxes obscure, but also vindicate,
The all
And everything.
And creation is a scientist
And we are its Petri dish,
And creation is a mystic,
And we are its parish.

How terribly dull it must be
Relating exclusively with fact
Where everything is a known quantity,
Is your sense of wonder even intact?
Or did you leave that behind too,
With everything interesting about you?

I do not feel a desire to rhyme
Nor work within any sort of structure
Traditions are a waste of all our time
And who needs iambic pentameter?
Whoops.

I keep a notebook,
For when I have ideas,
Someday I’ll write them.

The road to heaven
Is paved with bad intentions.

I’m so far away
If I could run forever
I’d not make halfway

I had an interest in archaeology,
Sorting truth from lie,
‘Til I realized those remains,
Will someday be you and I.