They got you
struggling and sweating
but never ever getting,
what you’re working for,
just regretting
the wasted work weekends
that you could have spent
with family and friends.

Busting your ***
while your boss
busts your chops,

piles of work so high
that even nine nights
of nine hours overtime
can’t catch you up.

So, another day late
while your family waits.
The sunlight is gone before
you even hit the door
to go home again around ten p.m.,
and you came in when
it was still dark and raining
in the very early a.m.

Food and clothes,
restaurants, and shows
vehicle repairs,
health, home,
and car insurance,
college tuition,
then loan repayment,
mortgage, medical debt,
and the bills aren’t done yet.
No money left,
for your late retirement;

What’s the point of
being crushed
under all of that
work stuff
when the pay
doesn’t add up
to enough
to get by
late in life?

Its been a hard time.
Your anxiety is high
and on the rise.
You’re on the verge of
being hot headed enough
to burn all your bridges
and fail all those missions
you’ve been working on.

Slow your roll,
know your soul,
take some self-control,
let it all go,
so you can grow.

Between a rock
and two harder places,
living in crowed spaces
while tensions are growing
patience is going
the way of the dodo.
You and I both know
these smokes stacks
could easily blow.

Slow your roll,
know your soul,
take some self-control,
let it all go,
so you can grow.

Coins in a fountain
won’t get you any wishes.
These mole hills are vicious
and may really be
the jagged edges
of mountains
ready to come crashing down
and smash the ground
you built your
foundations on.

Slow your roll,
know your soul,
take some self-control,
let it all go,
so you can grow.

You may want a little
sugary snack
with a side of
captain jack
and a couple of packs
to smoke
before your heart attacks.
There may still be
some time for all
of that,
sweet surrender
to the tender
pleasures
unhealthy activities render.

But maybe instead
you should turn your head
take a breath,

and slow your roll,
know your soul,
take some self-control,
let it all go,
so you can grow.

This techno toxification
has overridden
the better parts
of my younger heart,

stealing my idealism
and replacing it with
toxic digital *******,

multi-window
varied speed
hi-rez videos
that don’t offer
anything
I really need.

They spike my brain
disrupting it with
excessive hits
of unexpected
dopamine.

Still, I go on
living life in
thirty second
increments.

My attention span
is diminished
while life’s demands
are like poorly planned
skirmishes.

But what this
age of wonders
offers is
access to unlimited
connections
and information.
A way to override
the overlords
of state and business
and connect to people
that we may not know
but could grow with us
and learn to love
compassionately.

What can you say
to a rogue road
word warrior
who fight’s a
new dragon each day.

Tilting windmills
that really are
fat cat monsters
in red sports cars.

Gentlemen protectors,
consummate failures
that succumb to the thumb
of corporate jailors
in this capitalistic
prison system.

Self-directed learner,
midnight oil burner
whose biography
would barely be
a once a day
page turner.

What can you tell
a man who sees hell
in beauty
and pulls
psychedelics
from cow ****.

When reality has been
subjected by
profitable trends
and the world’s end
is only a minor irritation
to their united nation
of bank supporters.

What do you ask
a dreamer
before he passes
knowing that
dead men’s dreams
cannot outlast
greed driven schemes.

You spent your cash
but sold out
and gave them what
they wanted.

You can bet your ***
it’s cold no doubt
and my soul is haunted.

Dear mother and father listen.
These government stooges
came to get them.
They blamed and hit her,
while they shot my little
baby brother;

But you do fine.
You stay in line,
work your shift.
You do your time.

Now your ends
are barely meeting,
while the strangers
you left seething
are hungry and screaming,
are crying and bleeding.

They were all needing
your assistance,
but you wouldn’t give them
a single glance or instance
of the compassion
they were missing.

So, now I cry
cause you won’t try
to improve this life.

It’s just a game to you.
The tv says get more stuff
so that is what you do.

It’s not nineteen eighty-four
anymore but we are still
waging a non-aging
information war.

Still pushing mixed metaphors
in a malformed mob mentality
that leads us to this brutality.

This not Mortal Kombat
but war mongers keep bringing back
uncountable atrocities and fatalities
too numerous to count
as we drown in blood and sorrow.

We got the worst case
of a full human race
ground hog’s day
where no one learns
that we need to change our ways.

The pressure is building up
the boiling tops
of racist *******
just looking for
the perfect chance to explode
and drop their lava like load
of violence and destruction.

It wouldn’t take much
just a little more love
for all of us
even the lonely street people.

But it seems to me
that these hopeful dreams
are just coins in an empty fountain,
like I am the last one
up this fractured mountain
where compassion got dropped off
at the tippy top
and now it is just a blood smear
on the city sidewalk.

Hope regenerates,
revives the lives
obscured and decimated
by the fear and hate
that others propagated.

It is the struggle
to not be swallowed
or let oneself
be hollowed
by harrowing
and narrowing
experiences.

It is brave beyond
the storms
that were never calmed
as children waited
whilst winds rattled
and eroded
the foundations
of nations
founded on
lies and illusions.

It weeps for
the millions
and millions more
who never got
to live and explore
the unscored
foreign shores,
while longing to share
what it finds there,
helping strangers grow
and know mercy.

It is my love for humanity,
that mourns the loss of its greatness,
in seeing it succumb
to the will of the wicked and the dumb.

So, now I have come
to disdain the vain claims
that cause men to maim
the innocent,

now I pay my penance
cause even though
I am not a participant
I am still complicit
because I have chosen to
abstain from doing
what great writers
should do.

Instead of fighting
I retreat in defeat
lay down on the ground
to feel life's heat
slowly ease from these
fingers that once teased
great poetry.

Now, I seek solitary inspections
of abstract reflections
waiting to die
knowing humanity
will follow me
swiftly.

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.

tired and depressed
lost and abandoned
no love
no hope
until one day i stumbled on a drink that made me feel alive
don't let the name depressant fool you
it slows my reactions the thoughts
the voices that tell me i'm worthless
alcohol was the solution i have been searching for
even better it was always there
always there.... and if i drink a little more the high lasts a little longer
i was all alone and hurt
until alcohol came and clouded everything
it was the escape i needed
and that is how i was made an alcoholic