Middle-class, educated, better than all of you. The poet
whines that the people he said were his friends
were his friends. Too eager to stick it to the man, his sentences end
where he pleases.

Not understanding, as his peers are hurt when insulted,
he blames the age to which he was born
of his troubles. He should have been born in the fifties.
Absolutely nothing was wrong with the fifties.

Love is not a safe place. It is not the taste of their name
coughed by the cancerous lung, drowning in overused metaphors.
A lover is not a tool, to take you in and give you everything
they have, to spew a 'better' person next year.

Death is not the endless peace, nor the bliss,
nor the torture nor infinite void. It is the end, no matter
how artistically short you write each line,
and none of it mattered.

Illusions of age
Won't you share your A/S/L?
Open ***** now, please?

Pen to paper, the ink soaks. Dead.
Scratching assaults the ears; curse their successes,
To the back of the mind a lone idea regresses.
Assessment. Assessing? My political skills?
A half-formed venting, though calms.
I shift in my chair.

Every detail grotesque, I shift my attention
To the blank face of my enemy and my saviour.
It must have been ten minutes. Twenty? No, two.
Dragging and dragging, yet engraining in my mind.
My kingdom for distraction.
I push back my chair, and sleep.