It’s best to stay away from the sick
Lest their plague makes you a pick
Romantic, their calling
Inevitability falling
To not stray from the flock is the ‘trick’

Like holiday lights
A line is a mess
Impatience ignites
Organization at test

A clerk at their place
In between lives
Masks without face
Destination contrived

Cacophony like sweat
Uncomfortable, hot
Desires dripping, wet
Rational? No thought

I exist to take my stand
To fulfill this demand
Promises, broken land
To ask, nothing in hand

Too long, they were there
A ‘Greatest Hits’ of the din
Myself, painfully aware
Loud telephone & kin

My time seems preordained
Everything I don’t want
My senses, tried & trained
But not up to the game
Do they tease to taunt?
Do I seek? Do they flaunt?
Confused, not the same
Feelings forced to wane
To write this is insane
Evidence, this broken brain
Thoughts to not contain
A desire for refrain

I gave it my all
But, I succumb to the fight
My eyes heed the beckoned call
And avert to the focal spotlight

I feel like I lost me
In this untelevised war
Myself not meant to see
Antithesis now adored

—-

A meandering idiot takes the stage
The book of illiteracy, he takes his page
Doomed and trapped in a common cage
By hope for everyone and a better age

I return again, to a familiar friend
Adequate chemistry applied
I broker the deal for my end
Intolerable reality greatly supplied

I set the stage, nearly every day
To slip asleep, a terminal dream
To rest to awake to no fray
A dead drunk bathtub scene

Much sleep, a chance to not wake
Some days, several tries to rest
Lay my head for goodness sake
Truly for everyone’s best

A carrot on a stick
An animal of brute
Parts do not click
Observations astute

Another faceless slave
A mindless vacation
Escape; I scour to save
A land of no nation

No poral to the greater world
Impotent actualization, brow furrowed
Frustration, angry lips curled
A limbless dancer in a futile twirl

Just a perspective, not a sinking ship
Simple solutions, reality will admit
A hefty feline spent their frenetic fit
They rest on the switch of the power strip

Where does our mind wander,
For all the dreams we've squandered?
Where do our thoughts rest,
With nothing left to test?

When we are only young
Ideas are never unsung
Temperament, time, older.
Proclivities grow bolder

Less adventurous, per se
Life in a ritualistic way
Tempered and more object
Analyze the subject

Many years, under the hood
Odometer miles, some good
We are now at this place
To look our choices in the face

And answer:

'Has it been a good ride?'

Gimmick in three lines,
Forced brevity, shallow words—
Haikus, I despise.

The man is mad but, he is fair
The hostages' fate flips in the air
The coin tumbles, two sides, a pair
Gravity steers to the man in his chair

"Fate" says the man, "is in our hands"
Result occluded, desperate strands
The verdict of nefarious plans
"We all want--NO! We demand!"

"We all believe there is something owed"
"A cache of treasure just for us, stowed"
"Our wealth for subscribing to control"
"A fruitless and folly toll"

The man of madness makes his reveal
The future of the captives it did seal
Heads or tails, bound they reel
Hopes palpable of a favorable deal

"It seems that you will all be set free"
A sigh emanates amongst the captive company
Bonds removed, Stockholm comradery
A passing dismissal to the powers that be

"Free from 'freedom', this was your chance"
"To escape this tired song and dance"
"You could have been heroes, not this stance"
"To return to comfortable circumstance"

"The path you celebrate was the failure state"
"Decency and humanity to arbitrate"
"I cannot harm a life doomed to wait"
"More than the misery in your own stake"

"I have achieved nothing but, you have lost"
"A life with no meaning worth the cost"
"A Hallmark version of Faust"
"A reality casually glossed"

The hostages promptly depart
All aside from this seeming upstart
Younger then the rest, set apart
Comes inquisition from the heart;

"Did you think these people would change their minds?"
"Where fed insipid mediocrity is all there is left to find?"
"A people who measure themselves in how far they are behind?"
"Zealots perpetuating ego with no concept to be kind"

The man takes the coin of 'governance' and reveals the truth:

It was blank on both sides.