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.

Oh dear,
I would like to borrow tomorrow,
steal your tears and sorrow,
sip the salty water
from your well weathered well heart,
spend all the stars like currency
to buy you a bright new hopeful spring,
and hear you sing of poetic dreams,
of dancing fiends
who happen to actually be
super friendly,
while a little serpent slithers slowly
out of curiosity to a spot where we
can sit laughing at all that scars
our creative spirits.

It is a shame
that true gems
are not given
the light they need
to sparkle spectacularly,
whilst dull coal figures breed
contempt and greed,
spreading the diseased seeds
of creative mediocrity.

We mere mortals
are not granted
greats spans of time,
cannot cross
the expanse to find
the coal has compacted
cause the fact is
that practice
will outlast us.

New beauty perceived
will be retrieved
long after death’s
dark and dangerous reprieve
has collected our tired forms,

but I prefer to be
awed by the artistry
that you share gracefully,
exposing exploding shards
of your rapidly beating heart
along with the other parts
that presently bleed poetry profusely.

I have today grown old.
I was never told,
Make every day count.
I counted days,
Missed some years,
My advice may fall on deaf ears
To those who know how to live their lives.
Everyday. Everyway.
It's not easy.
I recognize the mantle
On my children's faces;
See them counting milestones,
Running theirs through the paces.
How do I tell them
Count every day,
and not count every day;
But make every day count?

If you want to get your soul
stole by some swolle bro
then I know a place where you can go,  
but if you're looking for something
more like a lover who wants to
explore new venues with you,
to dance on distant shores,
those soft sandy beaches,
see swirling sea storms
and similarly moving whirlpools,
volcanic expulsions of passion’s ecstasy,
or the insatiability
of the cosmic spectrums and eternity
mingling with infinity,
if you want poetry to try to see
everything that is beyond belief,

then I highly recommend me.

In my desire to understand,
I have questioned everything
out of existence.
The very essence
of my being
has become a flickering thing
struggling to remain present.

All passions, pains, and pleasant
memories
are just flutterings
from a dying butterfly’s wings,
fading faster than I can react.

We could be just a dream,
or a simulation within
another very well written
simulation, ad infinitum.

I think therefore I am,
and I am certain that I can,
at least I think I think
or are all thoughts merely
unrestrained subconscious
reactions that become conscious.

So, what more can I expect of you
because in my pursuit
of knowledge
I cannot say for certain if I exist
and in that strange context
I have questioned you
right out of existence
as well.

I want justice,
trying to fight against
the violence
of greedy politicians,
but instead of righteous
they give us the virus
of injustice,
promote the imbalance
of crime versus punishment.
Oppression is persistent
despite the insistent activists
who are resisting the ignorance
the rich keeps creating.

I want goodness
not in the abstract,
future, or way back past,
but right now
because there is
no reason for waiting.
The time for debating
has long since passed
and if you have to ask
don't bother just act.

Empathy equals truth and compassion
multiplied by action
and brings a better world.

I want justice but not the kind
lazy men claim to serve,
then swerve
to spin a fiction that prevents it.

Don’t get caught in her eyes
cause that is where
her mysteries lie,
where the tiger hides
are waiting to pounce,
and devour every ounce
of the essence you have,
to satisfy the beast that resides
in her ever-enduring hunger.

You are a not a partner
just a hundred shades
of pretty little prey
that she craves,
and you will easily cave
to the charade that she parades,
to the play which she plays,
because you are desperate
in the perfect way
for her cruel love game.

Unprepared,
I sat and stared,
saw the despair
you shared,
not outright
but by the
fractures in your skin.

How your porcelain
starting cracking
and shattering,
how the weight
of everything
that was mattering
was just a smattering
expanding
and being pulled in,
an explosion, implosion,
finally denoting the eroding
of all that was once
your granite composure.