Who would call them losers
Because they couldn't stand;
We lifted when they moved about
On worn out knees and hands.

We didn't call them fools
Because they didn't talk;
We oohed and ahhed with all their sounds
When they stood free and walked.

We heard a blend of letters spew
Like spilled out alphaghetti;
Raving with their oral prowess,
Like roars on the Serengeti.

As years passed by, and they were graded
(And most certainly not by us);
They might return with D's and E's,
But we never judged or fussed.

This is how we treated them,
Our children that we raised;
I pray that our changing world
Will forgive, forget and praise.

I tightened the circle
let the lines loosen,
then in my state of confusion
pulled them tightly.

I subtracted loved ones nightly,
despite my social media
connections
my real-life affections
became whispers in
the distance from
previous family members
and friends I’ve loved.

With a noose I constricted
till it was too perfect.
Then I ****** it.
It was like when
I was biting
my tongue
just hard enough to hurt
but not enough to cut
that slippery tool off.

I choked and cough
felt the loss
as I tried to break
my own neck.
I signed my own check,
by happily self-secluding,
and the excuse I was using
was the best scape goat.

As grief scraped my throat,
I tried to cleanse my palate
stirred my mind like a salad
all vegies and greens mixing,
lying and saying it was healthy
but really just tricking
myself into doing what
I was always going to do.

Death by a thousand losses,
each cut cost me
a fraction of my identity
and hopeful personality.

Until my corpse
swung from the rafters
and tears sprung from
melancholic laughter.

Then nothing came
happily, ever after.

With a single stroke
all lines are broke,
the past becomes
previous paths
that I wrote.

Death is no longer
a possible future
but a present presence,
tired of playing
and predatorily pursuing,
now settling in for chewing
up my tired old skin.

Breathes are heavy labors,
and there is no hope
that they will come easier later.

A million-fold roads
collapse into one
reality,

and unlike this poem
life finds its inevitable ending.

I cannot be an apathetic
version who is free
to float carelessly
through life,

I am more like a specter,
an abstract human inspector
who sits and observes this sector
of our shared humanity.

Not bullet proof because
the pain of those I love
breaks all the barriers
I placed to save myself.

No super strength like Atlas
cause my stamina will not last
as I bare the whole world
on these small shoulders.

I cannot fly by high in the sky.
I cannot speed through this life
because each tragedy draws me
deeper into dark caverns of
human suffering.

I do not have any superpowers,
just lots of empathy and hours
to reflect and write a speck
of some gloriously poetic
lines that many may find pathetic.

Its two thirty a.m.
or maybe later,
as she lays there
on the outer limits
of the small town
gas station parking lot
just off the highway exit,
trying to sleep as safely
as she is able.

Couldn’t be
more than
twenty-three
with a fully loaded bike,
and body tightly curled
under the cover
of her safety vest
of bright colors.

She smothers herself
under bright streetlights
cause at this time of night
or morning the lights
offer some limited sense
of security.

A concerned security guard
tries to wake her,
mistaking a mam for sir
drops a bottle of Gatorade
for her to drink later that day
and a sandwich.

He tells her
the gas station attendant
called the police.
Then to ease
his concerns
passes a couple loose ones,
leaving when he is done
getting a short explanation
of where she is coming from
and where she is going.

This is where the narrator’s
lines end but leaves him
wondering miles down the highway
if the police hassled her
or left her undisturbed,
so she could get
a few more hours of rest
before the hot day
forced this girl
back on the frontage roads.

There are beautiful words
waiting to be seen,
poems waiting to sing,
like the diamond glistening
waterfall that plays me
to a gentle sleep,
as it sparkles
and leaves stranger in awe,
while giving me reason to pause
cause I to am dumbstruck
by my own dumb luck,
confounded by such glory
that I nearly trip on my
untied shoes,
racing forward to write
all that radiates from nature to
the amazing being of you
my emerald friend who glitters
just as wonderfully.

I used to hold on to grand ideas.
I used to believe I could change
how all the people in the world feel.
So, I spoke out, encouraged doubt,
directing people to the tools they had
to distinguish what was good and bad.

But after I had a thousand doors
slammed shut on my smiling face,
after each blow cracked the smile
and tears were sent in to replace
hope for despair for the whole human race.
I just settled in to enjoy the show.

Some claimed my actions were cowardice,
but in truth I was barely handling it.
Now, I’m no longer striving for justice,
just speed walking one step out of line,
just breathing several second out of sync,
adapting but not accepting how
other people act and think
knowing that we are on the brink
of destroying almost everything.

What is a foolish poet to do,
but write what he knows down
and give to all of you who
will not even deign to read it,
as you take our planet and bleed it,
of every natural resource
and ounce of human compassion.

Every act of violence is like a bomb blasting,
and demolishing every bud of hope that tries to bloom,
and even though I want to laugh have to I cry
cause no matter how hard I try
I’ll have to sit and watch as we all die
too soon.

You will be diminished
as others finish
life’s strange race,
as living leaves you
in last place,
and you face
a world without them.

You will pull
faded photos from your mind.
Slightly distorted mental movies
that have been rewritten by time
will become bittersweet reruns.
Lies will soften or harden
previous facts
as you try to look back
to the past.

You will lose loved ones
over and over until
you no longer feel
an inkling of their essence.

Sunday morning is a spiral
of dimmed lights
and despairing shadows,
of stairways to nothing
that dance in the distance
and turn around to find
time no longer binds
this strange and tired mind.

It is a body of fatigue,
so tired that it turns blind,
unable fathom
what was once
wondrously divine.

Windows no longer open to
a whole wide world
that I want to view,
but are closed,
painted black
with spider web
thin cracks
that let less than
infinitesimal light in.

Hope is made for forgetting,
until a long sleep
restores my stores
of optimism and inspiration
allowing poetic explorations,
as the windows open
to finally let more light in
and the stairways shift
restructuring themselves
to new realities
of delightfully
exciting possibilities.

The flame of madness
cracked and expanded,
holds hearts unplanted,
soil sick with slick
mind worms that take
turns gnawing through
the muck and the goop,
and the rotting wood to,
seeing moods shift from
angry, sad, then numb
to become all spent up
without any passions left.

Peasant eyes
tell pleasant lies,
but journeymen
are mastering men,
commanding them
to do their darkest
bidding,
leaving dreamers sitting
sad and dismayed
as the con artists run away
with the heart of what makes
love and language great.

I’m so deluded
cuz I self-secluded,
claimed I wasn't included,
but I avoided the party.

I was the ghost only partly here,
whining about my fear
of dying alone
when I stayed at home
on purpose.

I'm the one that didn't call
friends or family at all.
Guess, I was too afraid
to get on the ball and fall,
better to choose to be by myself
than be rejected by everyone else.

They try to keep
the deep blue deep
inside a plastic cup,

but I open my eyes,
point them towards
the turquoise sky
flying but never
getting high enough.

Break the clouds,
pierce the veil,
reveal the stars
that cook themselves
like I do.

Circle the curve
of time and space,
faster than the pace
I make to take
first place
in life’s race.

Inside my skull
a universe unfolds
as I write new rules.

Falling faster
as the atmosphere
incinerates my skin.

What horrible pain,
what a terrible shame,
but like the phoenix
I want to burn
and rise again.