It’s a wonderful dream,
two hearts following
similar paths
to our last gasp.

Sharing stories
caring for these
final moments.

Holding hands
on unplanned
walks across
untainted lands;

Conversations,
that create
new nations
and other
undiscovered
countries
of our minds,

silent smiles
that speak
more poetically
than any verse
created by me.

Till, my tired body
goes to sleep
eternally,
and soon after
my sweet lover
follows.

The Red Moon waits above
The Dead City lights
The Director of Elements
Queen of the Sky
The 4 Sacred Winds
were given new life
Listen to the breath
of howling Death
As a New Sun rises
coming up in the West

Chronicle catastrophes
Confrontation of concrete cities
Calling for the confessions of cruel
communities
A cunning currency became the ruler
Civilians were converted to complying consumers
Condemning the cultures causing them to crumble

Creating social confusion
Convincing the masses
That the Kingdom of Heaven
belonged to the high ranking classes
Compassion cries in its coffin
Credit cards turned graves
Raising the rates as corpses decay
But Death was always free
Never required a fee
So let it be written on the graves

“From debt to death prices were paid”

It’s shift change,
and pit stains
paint my blue shirt.

My feet hurt,
and I’m ready to leave work,
but the teenage party ****
doesn’t come in,
so of course I
am not leaving,
just grieving
my lost evening
freedom.

Sixteen-hour anxiety,
cause I almost O.D.
on carbonated caffeine,
as the sugar and acid
eat away
causing
painful tooth decay.

Make it home and hope to
get enough sleep to
make it through
my next shift.

Unload those greasy clothes
onto my bathroom floor
before I change into
my holy t-shirt and
ripped up shorts.
Don’t even make it to the shower
cause I am out in less than
a quarter of an hour
after I enter the front door.

In again, wash, and repeat,
I know this isn’t me.
I could do so much more.

Boss yells get your times down!
Fix this order!
Stop lounging,
if you got time to lean,
ya got time to clean.”

My co-workers only see
another cog
in the fast-food machine.
Even when I’m not clowning,
I am still a joke to them.

So, tired but it’s not just
sleep that I need.
So, burnt out that
I just want to up and leave,
but I’m twenty-three
and it won’t be
till I am twenty-eight
that I get free,
running off to another city
to get a higher degree
and escape this restaurant
barely get paid
minimum wage
nightmare.

He help me unhinge,
So the rope fell down,
I was saved by the hangman,
Until his noose slipped around.
"Here let me help you" Im certain he said..
But I was fooled by the hangman,
And now I am dead.

On a good or bad day
there is almost nothing
I have to do or say.

I get to wake up
and shake up
my world view
as I observe
all the strange
things you do.

I get to go to work
but if I choose
not to do
that
then I can loose
my decent paycheck.

I could hurt myself
or try to be better.
I could communicate
or be incommunicado
and stay embittered.

I don’t have to be nice,
but if I want to brighten
my own and someone
else life
then I can try.

In fact the only thing
that is not up to me
is that I
do not have immortality.
Eventually, I will die
not matter how hard I try.

Behold the marvelous mystic mind
that divines the truth behind
those enemy lines.

Look closer to the bolder beholder,
at the one poet who told her mother
not to trust her father,
that serpentine swine who dined
on mankind’s wasted time.

Here is another poet with his artistic wit
intertwined with the fine wine
of philosophical and scientific
observations he made fit with
a halfway decent rhyme scheme.

Now, I present with perfect present tense
the ultimate meaning of all of it,
no more flowery prose
ready or not here goes
my genius,

Behold……
oh crap. I forgot it.

I cannot be certain
or see beyond
this sea of grief
as I mourn the
slow erosion of
empathy and love.

I know that
kindness
and decency
still exists,
but violence
and corruption
is far more evident.

The earth is suffering
as are her children,
and no matter how much I wish
I cannot will them
back from the precipice
many seem to want to
stand on.

This could be
humanity’s
last revelation,
with no more good to come
just the mess of mad men
who run us all in
to the burial grounds.

I have not seen
cities set in stone.
Lately they have become
such fragile things
that I wonder if alone
is the way I am
supposed to be.

I have not seen
faces set like masks,
but stretched to laugh,
to sigh or gasp,
in stark contrast.
I have watched them collapse
as the axe
cuts them
from a light grin
to light receding
as pain’s wet reckoning
of regret falls on flesh.

These bodies are not
made of broken rocks,
but of wrinkled skin
made for changing,
exchanging time for
less and more.

The road is infinite,
rolling while I walk on it,
surrounded by
sparkling skies
and lightning flares
flowing in jagged lines
from one star to the next
as their gaseous fury dies.

Small ponds reflect
family happiness
with sweet interludes
of quiet evenings
and adult conversations.

The gravel breaks
disintegrating behind me
in my movement’s wake.

My eyes glaze
as school days
are razed
by all that adolescent angst.

It’s not a cage,
but a strange stage
the pushes me forward
and away as I escape the past.
It moves so fast
that I never get the chance
to relax and look back.

My brother is born.
My brother grows up.
Our highways diverge
but frequently
his road re-intertwines
with mine.

Time cracks eternity
splitting all reality
as red water drops from
another dying sun.

My nephew is born,
and ages swiftly
growing up before I can
appreciate the man
he becomes.

Still, I move on
unable to go back
on that broken cement track.

Tired, I long to rest,
hoping I did my best,
but knowing
I could have been
so much better than
the man who stares towards
time’s inevitable end.

Till, the road ahead
is like the road behind,
and my body breaks,
as does my mind.
Death’s lips parts this
dark slippery chasm.

I long to laugh,
ache for the chance
to go back,
but the highway is a
hungry beast,
and there will be
none of that for me.