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Dean Russell May 2018
If a man is only strong and righteous,
  What does that make me?
If a man is productive and protective,
  What does that make me?
If a man is duty and power,
  What does that make me?
If a man is money and ***,
  What does that make me?

What does that make me
  If my gaunt face and bony body grows under hate?
What does that make me
  If I proclaim wrong amongst complicity?
What does that make me
  If I write what you don’t know?
What does that make me
  If I scratch an insecurity to show humility?
What does that make me
  If I am encompassed in new morality?
What does that make me,
  If I realised forever is nothing?
What does that make me,
  If I inherit debt?
What does that make me,
  If I told you between my sheets is authenticity?

I’m forgetting what father foretold
Because what he foretells was from his father,
Who also forgot.
Dean Russell May 2018
Look at you, wearing

My father's shirt
My mother's broach
My sister's skirt
My brother's boots
My grandfather's watch
My grandmother's kerchief

I can see you
Bringing forth a siege from your palace -
Robbing my family,
Relentless! while they offer
No fight.

I don't know where my voice came from.
Whose bones did I inherit and let rot?
Whose muscles bring strength then shrivel?
Whose heart beats and will beat the end?
Whose eyes carved from marble and dirt?

I can't find these answers
But I can see you,

Wealth

Stealing from me.
Dean Russell May 2018
Death drew lines in sand,
Boarders on grass and divides
Sea and land. But know
The scorpion will strike, snake glides and bites

A predator; not of ill-belonging, but of fear.
Birds float across continents,
Dolphins flow and follow the tide.
Exhaust all energies or you can hide;

Forget illusion of deity and rebirth,
Of perfection and redemption.
Let live. Accept and move along,
Move along with your only feet for as long.

The absurd, the faults and the strengths,
Believe no charity nor fate or luck,
Swallow dignity and hate;
Or choke on beliefs soon to break.

What happens now is up to you.
Rise with scarlet sun and high-sky blue
For not even language is absolute; it deviates time.
Grasp words you know, tell me what’s mine.
I understand the world can be a cruel place; it is difficult to belong, to find others you may feel safe around. Our sense of self is influenced by so much of what we cannot control. I used to be afraid of this. Now, not so much. If you understand the words you think, you are more powerful. And if you do not, that is okay too. We cannot buy time; but we can allure ourselves through it.
Dean Russell May 2018
When I was sixteen
I was told I was a ghost in the machine.
This made perfect sense for I sought seclusion
From fright in my mind; I was hunting a delusion.
What was wrong and what was right
Could never be far or near or protected with might.

When I was seventeen
I was told I was a ghost in the machine.
This made perfect sense for I hated my mind.
Suffocating in a body howling with mistakes scared and lined.
Escape was hollow and deprivation
When a cold numb murdered little sensation.

When I was eighteen
I was told I was a ghost in the machine.
Laughter and warmth within and around,
Let us take a photo to capture what was lost and found.
Often I will reminisce about the night it all made sense
But I cannot remember it all, let loathing commence.

When I was nineteen,
I was told I was a ghost in the machine.
Now, I did not understand
For I could feel and touch and fall and land
Without sorrow or destruction at what I could not achieve.
Everything that happened, I knew now it was time to leave.

I am twenty six now,
And I remember when I was told I was a ghost in the machine.
Digital memory captured it all
And a scroll reveals the forgotten, the joy and the fall.
I didn’t realise at the time we place our spirits into devices so lean.

So let me tell you;
Guess what?
We are now all just a great ghost
in a pocket machine.
using technology in the present will remember your past and can predict a future!
Dean Russell May 2018
scared to sleep
weary to wake
does age bitter the soul?
  May 2018 Dean Russell
PoserPersona
A palindrome isn't a palindrome, intriguingly  
How can that be?
That something isn't itself by definition, literally
...Am I really me?
Dean Russell May 2018
c u
i can only watch age decay
into freedom
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