I find my humanity
in stories,
in Japanese Anime
and cool manga,
where all those heroes
spring from things
that seem unbearable.

I find my humanity
in far flung fantasies,
of fictional realities
where characters strive to be
better than they were previously,
where they are constantly
working and growing like me.

I find my humanity
in flowing verses of poetry
that sweep stale cobwebs
from my sad cluttered head
and help me see things differently,
which is what my scifi perspectives
also offer me.

Even though, sorrow stains my
poetic flows,
bringing in
cynicism,
and anger towards my fellow men.
Even when people tend
toward hateful trends
of violence, sexism, racism,

somewhere in the art I love
lay similar hearts of
humane ambition,
of nuclear fission,
of dreamers on a mission,
and there my humanity
is frequently restored to me.

It’s the internet
and I hate it,
dealing daily with
raving lunatics.

On a regular basis
I see raging faces
of uniformed racist
ranting about baseless
accusations.

I thought I had the solution,
to the mass confusion
generated by
all those pasty old guys.

I was certain,
and I rationalized
that once they realized
that the fox news dudes
we’re feeding them lies,
they would come around
to my point of view.

What a sweet certain avenue
I followed you through
thinking reasoning was needed
and that it would change you who
truly believed in the hate that you seeded.

But now I admit I am defeated.
As far as I can see
some people are not open
to changing and growing.

No more tears left in me,
so back to my bubble I go,
where my people agree
and know what I know,
a safe space where I will stay,
cause while the world burns
I am certain to be squirreled away
with the rest of my disheartened,
dry eyed dying idealists.

There is a furnace
that burnt us,
turning smiles to dust
and kindness
to distrust.

A place where
suspicion
was sharpened
to the point of
cutting the hearts
that might
offer true love.

In that hell
some have seen
a shell
form around themselves
whilst others have internalized
the fires that fried their lives.

I have been there to
and turn those blazes toward
breaking swords
and building bridges
to places where we
can be a gentler breed
of humanity.

What makes us human,
is not easily defined?

What clutters this mess
we call conscious
is not something
I can measure well
with my mind?

What drives the feminine mystique
is a perilous penultimate peak
which I seek?

What moves us all
to walk or crawl
when life’s pain
is overriding
our common sense
when our existence
does not permit this
persistence?

What is the truth?

The world melts this minor being,
and brings me bulging colors
that are bound to smother,
changing flavors that I savor,
and simple pleasures
for my leisure
into tiny tear glass droplets.

A kaleidoscope
that humans broke
but still strange swirls
geometric
help me through
the ***** that’s hectic.

I rebel against the entropy,
even as my own particles
turn against me.
Chaos is my mortal enemy
but still I seek structure
longing for order,
whilst knowing that it is all a lie.

I try to thrive,
despite how life splits me
eye from eye
offering inverted perspectives
as I turn inward
to find the shadows
and angles that built this
city of strangeness.

I fall to slumber
uncertain of it all.
Then awaken to spring
still waiting to fall
chilled by the feel
of December’s tentative tentacles.

Bloated buffoon
looks like an
orange painted baboon,
and this is me
writing as the moon
settles and sends streams
of deep blue
thoughts into my dreams.

I am not currently adding
a **** thing
to what we are discussing,
just venting in poetry.

But I watch the mad masses
follow him
into oblivion
believing
that what they are seeing
isn’t reality.

The king of no tact
and he just reacts
without a tac of facts
to point to,
and like him
they are reacting
without a lick of sense
to hold them back.

So, they stroll
with a straw-hat troll
who has no self-control
to a place from which
they will never come home.

I palm my face
in shame for my race
and all that I can offer is
another freaking useless
stanza of words
no one will heed
or even read.

Once deeds spoke
of seeds stoked
with showers of
life’s breathing love
breeding hopes of
rebel poets and other
artists.

Now, you paint with
endless darkness,
as brush strokes
of dust motes
choke all of those
your greed broke.

I do not know
if we have the
strength to grow
and overcome
the cold blacked out sun
from which your
bitter heart sprung,

and the shadows
from which I run
from which this
dreamer’s heart is hung
to swing lifeless
like the corpses
of beautiful horned horses
and other fairytale dreams.

I cannot say if there is enough
beautiful fiction
to trick them
politicians
into doing what is right,
into trying to rewrite
the black void
into new light,

but this is the life
I choose to scribe.
This is how
I will choose to die
or thrive.

My good intentions our mine
and no one else gets to decide
what my purpose is.

Even when, half the time
I am confused as ****
about all of it.

Welcome to the chamber
where I place all of my anger,
a place where you’ll find danger
if you try to hurt a stranger.

Welcome to the bathroom
that you see in the back room
where the **** rises high
and stinks up the night,
where the pigs own the sty
and the stench brings
tears to my eyes.

Welcome to the ending
of yesterday’s beginning.
Now, face the shadows blending
as prism prisons starts light’s bending,
where darkness does conform
to the wicked arts the corrupt perform,
but dragons still the rule the castles
that knightly fellows refuse to storm.

Welcome to my frustration.
It’s been brewing for a while
and all that boils in the pots
has stolen swollen smiles
and replaced happy faces
with clenched jaws
of undealt with rages.

I could have been happy if,
I didn’t have to live with
the secret expectations
of someone who believed
in the ascension
of humanity.

I could have smiled more,
if the world that I adored
was filled with fellow hearts
that held compassion’s
glowing spark.

I could have been a better friend
if I hadn’t been condemned
to feelings and deeper thoughts
passions of a darker cost,
but as the rose wilted
all hope was lost,
all my childhood dreams got
caught, cut up, or co-opted.

I could have came home last night
and told you all it would be alright,
but I am too tired to lie,
and I am too tired to try.
So, I say goodnight to this deceiving dream
of believing in
the good hearts of my fellow humans.

It’s a dark recollection
and all that I see
is a crumbling city
getting ready to
to collapse
on the scraps
of human vagrancy.
  
My car grumbles through
as my stomach growls,
a little less louder than
the late-night owl’s
party howls.

Got enough gas
to make it pass
the homeless guy
scrounging in the trash,

and beyond
the ***** blonde
drunk lady
looking through ash
to get as few
smokable butts.

I am doing all right
chasing nine to fives
to get by
and picking up
two extra
late night
shifts.

But the breaking point is
the mind I got
doesn’t fit,
seeing suffering misfits
brings me back down
to the heart of my history
when the hungry one
was me
and I would sleep
on a city bench
next to a slow street.

While cruising Corona on the net,
I saw pangolins not eaten yet.
Many, you see, believe its scales,
Are cure-alls to cure whatever ails.
And its meat festoons the rich Asian table.

Who ate the pangolin from head to toe.

China lauds its laws to say they save
The endangered pangolins,
At home, in Asia;
Yet in Wuhan, locked live in cages,
In wet markets like our Dark Ages,
The scaly pangolin is sold.

But Revenge,
We know,
Is a dish best served cold.

Coffees zombies swarm,
coming in for their bitter friend
that awakens them
with the warm caffeine stream.

Red eyed dead guys
drive by as they supersize
specialized styrofoam cups of
the black muck that they love.

The cream swirls in a spiraling
sort of sick dependency,
to feed their urgent need
to compensate for a
severe lack of sleep.

It’s a horde of horrible things
moving without ever connecting,
a herd of cattle off for the
slow slaughter they call work,
and it really, really hurts.

It’s a war of attrition,
a sorrowful chorus,
that lacks the eloquence
of any previous composition.

A collective set in last place,
poor paces of a human race
as they squander the resources that really matter.

Something is amiss
in this dark dismal abyss.

Something is off,
out of sync
with the way I think
we all should be.

Something isn’t right
about this human plight.

Perhaps it is the fact
that the will I have to act
has been disintegrated.

Maybe it is because
the species that I love,
this herd of humans
has led me to believe
there is no better future
left to see.

Humanity has taken
that last shreds of faith I have.
Our species has shaken
the very core
of my once hopeful mind.

Now, I find I have no purpose
because of this worthless
existence.
A lack of meaning
and human decency
has stole from me
the drive to be
anything more than
a twig floating in
our shared timestream.