Shoes of all colours and sizes
Shuffle by my North American Middle Class House.
We are temperate, they walk in all seasons,
Down here, between the Great Lakes.
These S-Westerners look haggard;
Even the young...
All waiting... waiting for the veil to lift.
Smiles are cracking, making new lines
Like road maps to happiness.
And yet, it's worse
In Talibexas, Loseiana and Floridistan,
Where there are fewer paths.

My friend Dale
complains constantly.
He's a millionaire,
but says he's
always broke.
He quit drugs, and
rubs it in everyone's
face.
He rages when the
world is at war,
and complains that
it's too quiet during
peacetime.
He talks horribly to
his friends, and he
smokes cheap cigars.
He doesn't like
art, and he's never
read a book.

Dale has a small
pond in the back
of his house where swans
listen to Mozart and
mate, while squirrels and
raccoons share pomegranates
and waltz all night
long under that big yellow
laughing moon.

I remember.
I forget.
I wonder why.
You're so easy to remember.
You're so hard to forget.
Time ticks out no respite.
Today I am wrong.
The other day,
I was right.

I've poured cement
On a love
That will never surface
Again.

I wish I was stronger
That my mind would leave me alone
I keep trying
Pushing through all of these walls I've built
I keep trying
To focus on the little things to get me through each day
To focus on the positives in every single day
Why can't I just stop
Stop worrying about how I'm meant to do this because the pain and sadness doesn't stop
I wish I didn't feel so strongly
The emotions I carry weigh me down so intensely
I don't want this to be who I am or how I am
But it's the only way I've ever known how to be
Countless years of trying to brake this cycle just to function
To not feel so alone
To be happy
To be able to feel free of what I escaped from
To stand proud of who I am and that I'm here today

I feel this is going nowhere

And I’m just here for your ego

To know I’m still a fish on the hook

For when you’re ready to eat

You make no efforts of security

Or curiosity, and preached about depth when

You’re standing in the shallow end

I should know your plagiarized speeches

And your fake woke phrases

The grand risings happening are the realizations in my head

That you use your mouth for talking but not giving head

The energy faded as soon as you had your cake

That post-sugar high come down

Spoiling your appetite for something sustainable, savory, and fresh

The only thing you’re craving

Is the sweet taste of flesh

He lived down the street from us,
And came to be known as,
The man whose wife left him.
We speculated and surmised.
None but two knew the reason why
He became
The man whose wife left him.

He stopped cutting the grass
And weeding the beds.
He won’t play his uke
On the porch like he did.
From all accounts,
He was a good Dad,
None ever heard him
Explete a foul word.
He worked till retired,
Never was fired.
I'm told he lived a gentle life;
Never started a fight,
Or ran from strife.
That's what I heard
About the man whose wife left him.
Left to his own devices,
The man whose wife left him,
Left.

Where do society's extremists abide?
Rallies and Racists go side by side.
BBQs offer up well-done bigots;
On Jordan's lap dance the zealots.
Dogmatists rant in wild front rows,
True believers don't put on such shows?
Sexists cower in coastal Compounds,
Sects marry often in Salt Lake towns.
Troglodytes tan beneath southern suns.
Sepratists hold their final stand
On this side of The Rio Grande;
Fanatics occupy far Left and Right,
Partisans Op Eds are meant to enlight.
Mysoginists grab till they have blisters,
Huns and louts date brothers and sisters.
Philistines take our private spaces,
And whistle-blowers can't show their faces.

Of all the ists I know and abhor,
The musicist is a bigoted boor;
A connoisseur I abjure,
Who chooses tunes he insists
Are superior than my interests,
And disses tunes I like best.

So now I'll lay my needle down,
I've turned the table that goes round,
And plead musicists won't hesitate
To enjoy the tunes... don't discriminate.

The Coronation is
A
Royal
Pain
In
The
Cosmopolitan
****;
The crowning achievement
of
Royal Navel Gazing.
Chuck it (them) all.