The world makes you invisible,
treats you as if you are an imbecile,
till the retching tears
tear across your tired face,

but I see you.

You try to do what’s right,
but that is not always easy to define.
It is exhausting seeking  
to steady a conflicted mind,
while trying to keep on
being kind,

but dear I know you try.

So, later in the night
when you lay your head to cry,
I know it isn’t much.
It’s not a kiss or a hug,
or that special lover’s
soft assuaging touch….

but I see you.

Let’s keep it
simple and clean,
no glass shards
with sharp edges
to pierce our hearts,
no porcelain skins
ready for the
rupturing
as all that is within
comes spilling
out.

Let’s sit silent
in our sub city
of social misfits,
so, no one talks to
anyone else who
can relate to you
and what you are
going through.

Let’s forget
that there is
something there
underneath the hair
and that shaggy beard,
pass the tired eyes
haunted with
loss and fear.

Let’s just
have toast,
sit and roast
this material world
and all of those
little lost ghosts
who will not
return here.
After all its
a wild world
and I can’t save
everyone.

Let’s just give in
to social media’s
mad messaging
that says we are
just cogs in the machine
working
until we die.

Why would we
ever try to be
a decent human being
when we could
just continue
sleep living?

If they deny the grace
of the color of your human face
then they are a waste
of the clay that made
the human race.

Human diversity enriches
this pittance
of an existence.

So, let them keep their ignorance.
True grandeur is lost on them.
Just know my poetic friend
that this pathetic trend
of labeling others
by the shade of their skins
is tragic and troubling
cause I am bubbling
with love for all that shines
from within
to enrich the beauty without.

We are all tourists in this life
but some are better visitors
than others.

Some of us are aliens,
cause we are
out of this world,
and twice as far
as two trips to mars.

We are all travelers
on a floating sphere
that barely keeps
the atmosphere here.

So, some people need to
replace their faith
with a new space race
cause this age is a disgrace
as we face a state
of climate decline.

While the cosmos
may be fine,
we may soon find
our visa’s have been
terminated
and our species
is near its end.

So, I missed you,
misused
the tales
that other dudes
passed on.

I stole
the swollen heart of
the dark art’s love,
in observing
and serving up
other peoples
stuff,

little notes
about their lives,
things that I
did not experience
or survive,
but I still write
about those desperate nights
bringing their realities to light.

I plagiarized,
with a chameleon’s guise,
took their truths,
rationalized,
and fictionalized
with little details
and larger lies.

But isn’t that how
strangers empathize?
Isn’t this how
creatives thrive?

I finally got the piece of the puzzle
that people use to muzzle
modern dissidents,

this backpack loaded with
all the gadgets you want to get
so, you don’t have time to
join the resistance,

videos and social media,
games with rewards
they use to feed ya
a sense of techno satisfaction
from imaginary actions
kind of like prayer.

I finally put the hours in
to get my promotion,
getting home late
suffering from exhaustion
and other stress related
maladies.

I finally got fired
and rehired
to work my way
up the corporate ladder.

I finally got to retire
just in time
to expire.

There is nobility in humility,
but discipline and persistence
has its value in this resistance
and I am always seeking
that self-improving
human empathy moving
kind of thing.

There is nobility in kindness.
To take your darkness
and resist the urge to give in to it,
instead becoming
the one they are shunning
for the wrong reasons
as you take their cruelty
and give them generosity.

It is a sinking ship
that sails amidst
all of this madness
and maintains
that which fools
struggle in vain
to take from them.

“Look out for yourself.

Keep quiet,
and bow your head.

Do not stand *****
or act with defiance.

Do not try and deny us
when we tell you
you’re all wrong.”

There is nobility
in staying true to who
you are
and who you strive to be,

especially,
when you live in a society
that just wants another
cog in the machine,
another out for themselves
sucker super psychopath
who likes to laugh
at other’s suffering.

A lot of things have changed.
A lot of good folks have gone,
and I’ve forgotten most of them.

Timbers tremble in the woods,
losing leaves these grieving trees
prepare to go where nightmares
fear there will be a terrible dry heat
burning every single thing.

Desolation on a scale
that makes reality
look like a biblical hell,
but I tell myself
we can do better.

We all know
that dreamers lie,
and I include me
in that tricky
category,
because
I do not see
humanity
succeeding.

I only dream
of fallen forms
retreating
due to
our self-inflicted
descent into
death’s dark hallway.

This poison pill
is not the hill
I wish to
plant my
flag upon.

This dull blade
that bade me bath
in the bloodbath
that warlords make
for the sake
of profits
is not the tool
I would like
to use to fuel
my creative life.

This crushing
weight
of unwieldy hate
is not the force
I would choose,
and yet
unfettered fools
debase and abuse
themselves
and all of us
for their wealth.

They seek to conquer
with sick implements
of destruction,
such impediments
to the betterment
of our human
condition.

Art’s armament
is not adequate
to defeat them,
and I do not know
if I alone
or all of us
can beat them,

but I will not
concede to their greed
and be what they need
to feed their profit machine.

Dear daughters of Eve,
sweet children who bleed
because god perceived
that he was betrayed
when your sire ate
the fruit we believe seeded
the knowledge that we needed,

and the punishment given
was the ability to conceive
in a woman’s womb,
the greatest boon
from said fertility,

oddly,
something
that a man can
never achieve
despite his raw virility.

So, the punishment
for gaining knowledge
is really a gift on both ends,
cause the fruit of your bodies
is where each successive
generation begins.