We cannot get back
to the past
that we once knew
cuz that would undo
all the progress
we've made.

Life's not like
a video game.
We don't get to redo,
no replaying
going through
old levels
that we want to.

So, if it's just one shot
one life that we're given,
one moment to live in
this game we're playing.
Then it's not about winning.
It's not about losing.
It's not about gaining another day.

I won't see you after I die
but you can always stop by
and read what I write.

I begin to end the wind
that whines in my mind,
and unwind the vines of time,
cause I hope to uncurl
the twine and find
a spark of the divine
behind the flesh facade
you have put on
to service everyone,
whilst denying yourself,
the kindness you are trying
to give away every day.

I am empty,
negative spaces
that do not reflect
or absorb
any light
or other
things of
great import.

Earth conforms
to fit the form
of my warm
footprints.
Plants bend
when I touch them,
but no one sees
my being
or hears a
single thing
from me.

I am the master
of nothing,
apathy embodied,
too tired to be
hopeful,
or naughty.

Warm winds work
their way
around my body.
Water falls all
around me,
but what
can a void feel
when it is not
even real?

Night after night
laughter just feels right,
cuz it brings with it the light,
that relief of delight.

I'm a porch distance
from other witnesses
trying to commit this
human wisdom
to other men.

I'm a poet
always writing,
inviting others in
to a shared understanding
but it doesn't matter
if I master
the technical skills,
if I can't relate
to what other people feel.

Then I'm still
just a second-rate hack
wearing an off-gray hat,
a Mayberry man
with two hands
on my gun belt
as I shoot myself,
whilst dumbfoundedly
wondering “how am I
going to come back
from that?”

It’s incomputable,
yet irrefutable.
Emotions are too
numerous to name,
range from strange pain
to shame, love, hate, and apathy
then back in again reworking
and adjusting what must be
excruciating
as inner monologues are debating
between placating the dissonance raging
or succumbing to one avenue that
let’s ****** picks specific emotions,
inspires wildfires, plucks devotion
from the rose of desire.
Till, that red flower expires
blooming and falling after
consuming all the air
inside and out there.
I don' t know who cares,
but empathy adds new levels
to this confusing and bruising
black brackish brew,
that mad man-made stew.
It is stirring, creating odd paintings
and then moving onto brand new
blank canvasses.
Who could manage all of this,
especially since it is just a fraction
of all actions.

Cypress lumber wood sign rotting
as it slumbers sitting slightly slanted
on a rocky side road
where hardly anybody else goes,
but I know
there's a history behind
the paint chips and brown board
colored up business sign.
It's just that that history is hard to find
cuz most who would remember it
have left this world far behind.

There is sorrow in seeing
strangers weeping and bleeding,
people on the streets needing
a little respect and compassion,
but the cops keep blasting.
While the media is gaslighting,
the whole scenario’s so sick
that I can hardly fathom it.

So, I am using poetry
to process all the horrors I see,
using extreme means
to cut my thin seams,
while deconstructing
the blockage obstructing
humans from grasping
what it means for
a black mother to be gasping
trying to bring back the air
that someone stole from
her first-born son.

Police profiling then rewriting history,
has me on the verge of vomiting
in rage and nausea,
so tired of trying to explain
the validity of a stranger’s pain,
knowing these people
are just as worthy
of the justice America serves me,
as corporations go on
greedily slurping
all of our resources.

My privilege is to see
a blue shirt and not think
that they are watching
and following me,
to not worry if I hurry
cops might think
it’s justifiable to shoot me
in my back
because I’m black.
I don’t have to experience
or understand any of that.

As strange as it may be
to study the history
etched on the faces
of all those grieving,
to feel the shame
of not enough people believing
in what they are seeing;

Having the hand that points to the ground
be the one that forces them down
pushes their face in the dirt,
kicks them when their immobilized,
then goes on to demonize, telling lies
about how they were **** like.

The powerful keep trying to create
then put people in that fake place
that the wealthy claims their race makes
it inevitable that they will go to,
while the rich keep on insisting
that the state is and has always been great,
but it’s time to make it great again.

I remember there was time
when all I knew how to do
was write a simple rhyme.

When syllables were sounded out
and I never had any doubts
that people would come to
understand what I was
trying so hard to do.

But as the days went flashing past,
as every single poetic query asked
in hopes of harvesting
some sort of understanding
saw my heart’s standing
slowly decline and fall off the vine
to be crushed into pulpy and ****** wine.

Days of devotions
turned to weeks of
just going through the motion.
My grandest schemes
turned into dusty dying things
and my spirit withered
in the desert, starving
and dehydrating.

Now, I have a skeptic’s wisdom
and the dreams I once tried to
give to all who live
have become the victim,
eviscerated and desecrated
by the lies of those who thrive
on making Americans
into automatons
and all other humans hated
for not being dumb and isolated.

What is grief,
but the withdrawal symptoms
of a drug we may not have known
we were taking,
the transmogrification
of affection’s deeper emotions
into the compensation
and reorientation
of our strained
inner identity,
in the absence
of the loved ones
treasured presence.

I am an overzealous ant
marching forward towards
the winds that block any rewards.

Perhaps it is better that,
like a gnat
I can’t
fathom how miniscule I am,
because contemplating my own
insignificance
would paralyze me,
and in indecisiveness
I would succumb to
a predator’s predilections.
  
Sorry sweety that crap was
the last gasp of an exhausted brain.
Blood pan waiting to expand
as useless feces falls freely
from the top
that is ready to drop
and stop
thinking.

Poetry attempting to
discover ourselves minus
the lies imposed upon us
by others and ourselves
is quite difficult,

because we can’t always be as grand as
the deep blue sea or swirling space clouds
that pirouette in that cosmic mess we call infinity.