Teach me where I belong in
A world that believes in absolutes

No place takes reason for reason
A cruel world it is where the liars are in
Control where the truth seekers are paid
In pennies and pain and where
Can I find you here

The absolute truth is that nothing
Is absolute but no one believes
Little red

No place takes good for good
For good always ends
I am no good at fighting but fighting
Is the only good these days

Teach me where I belong in
A world that doesn’t accept indecision
I am on one side or I am on
The other and I don’t want to be on either

I just want to be allowed to live

I miss the days when I did not
Know the good old days when ignorance
Was bliss five years ago
I was still innocent
I didn’t know

My home is drowning and
Nobody cares about whether we can
Breathe because we don’t breathe
For him because lives are only numbers
We are only stories in the end but these
Days people only care about the
Past is the past and no one can forget it
Not even me even I cannot
Escape the allure of the rearview mirror
When I’m running
Out of road my future is futureless when
He doesn’t want me to
Succeed he thinks he is God but he is
Sinking like a lead zeppelin and he
Will have to drown with us unless he is
Dead before he can

Teach me how to belong in
A world that does not exist
Step one is to find forever where hides

The future doesn’t matter anymore
It is futureless unless we
Save it now but now is over in
A decade or so
I do not know whether I will live
Past thirty I think not

I don’t want to live in
A world without color without coral
My home is on fire and I
Cannot breathe but we have already
Established that my lungs are full of water
Anyways we have
A decade or so

I feel I am the only one left
who cares
who cares

Merwin saw lions in China.
I found a chessboard on the ceiling.
I saw a hookah in a caterpillar's arms
Cradled like a child.
I found no rabbit
But I did find Alice.
The caterpillar claimed innocence
And I hope he's right.

The white knight never piped up form above,
He never took a step.

I think I'm losing the game.
Chess was never my thing,
But then, dead people were never my thing,
And here I am
And here she is
regardless.

Those of old saw meaning in the stars.
The stars in her eyes are too cold to hold any
meaning.
I can't decipher my next move from her eyes.
Stars make terrible chessboards.

I don't think I want to play this game anymore.
Alice is offputting
And the wonder has left
Wonderland.

Merwin saw lions in China.
We never made it that far.

It's a small bottle with a cap.
It smells like cinnamon
And it's made of glass.
I filled it with as many languages as I know
And sealed the cap with wax
And I filled the little bottle with all of the things
Middle school me needed to hear.

I hope she finds it.
I know she won't.
She looked at stars but could not
Reach them.
She watched the scalloped water, she would not
Touch it.
She always saw the empty in the ocean,
She never saw the future I put there.

I put a message in a bottle and sent it into space.
I filled it with hope for someone
I've never met,
The people I have always been.
As I watched it wash away,
I knew I needed it back.
I am not done needing it.

I told them all
eres suficiente,
you are enough,
I never got to know if I was.

I never got a bottle back.

When I died, there were stars.
As the blinding fury leaves my eyes,
I can blink them open and watch.
The creek marches sluggishly forward,
And my body is there, below.
Immediately, I regret it.

I will watch my father scream,
My mother cry, my brother hear the news,
And wonder why.
Years will pass, and her next tears
Are at my brother’s wedding,
Which I will watch, but not attend.
I will never meet my nephews or niece.
When my parents join me later on,
They will ask me why and why and why.
That night, it will rain.

I will reach for the family that I never knew,
And never knew me,
Whisper in my niece’s ear
All the things she needs to hear
From someone who has been there before
And followed through.
Even further down the line,
My brother will join us in his old age,
But he will look exactly the same
As last I saw him.
He will ask me why and why and why,
And the only answer I will think to give
Is silence.
Silence and rain.

All I can do now is wait for morning,
For them to find me,
And hope that they will forgive me
When next we meet.

The night is crisp and clear,
But in the morning,
There will be rain.

I

The city is in decay -
Has been since it sprouted from the earth like a sapling,
Will be for as long as it still stands.
The only permanence is entropy.
Nature makes its bed
To unmake it.
We are eternal and mortal.
The jellyfish unbecomes itself into the polyp.

II

A millennium ago,
The ocean fell from the sky, drop by drop,
And dragons were a myth.
Dinosaurs came around
And dragons were a myth.
Humans came around
And dragons are still a myth.

If time is linear, time travel is impossible.
If it is cyclical, I have met my descendants.
If it does not exist, then I am still two and twelve and seventeen,
Young and old, a child of Schrodinger,
And eternal.

III

A cup of tea sits hot and cold.
It should one day be ice,
But not today.
Today it is full of salt.
Moses parts the Red Sea
And a motley crew of revolutionaries
Wait for tea leaves to steep in the harbor.
It is somehow simultaneous and distant all at once,
Another child of Schrodinger.
The sea rushes closed on an ocean floor
That is still made of sand.
Dragons are still a myth,
But the fish neither know nor care.

The tea goes down the drain,
And I replace the salt in the shaker with sugar,
As it should have been,
And for now, All is Well.
I walk into the adjacent room and
Immediately forget why I am there.
All is no longer Well.
The world forgot where it came from,
Mammals forgot the dinosaurs,
****** forgot he was Jewish,
And I forgot what I wanted here.
I want more tea,
But I don’t want to remember the salt.

IV

Time is short,
Born, spent, and dead in an instant,
But born and born and born again after that.
The city is in decay.
Teotihuacan was once New York.
Machu Picchu decays into the mountain again,
Venice and San Francisco will one day be underwater.
Kings held slaves when the monarchy thrived,
Nazis rose to power in their wake..
The people revolted against the crown
As their descendants march for peace, pay, and freedom.
There is no originality,
Time has proven this.
It unbecomes itself into the polyp as its feathers turn to ash
And pyramids are born in Egypt, the Americas,
In the courtyard at the Louvre.
Only time remembers when dragons were more than a myth,
And quarks became friends with each other.
One day, humans will be the myth,
And no city will stand, so no city will decay.
Tea will come in only salted flavors,
And dragons in none.
The only permanent is entropy.

IV

North of Never lies Nothing
Lies more never.
Lies a voided ether,
My future.
North of Never lies the Fall,
My sleeping quarters.

Selling this property
Will not be easy.
Not in this county,
Not this economy
Or country.
North of Never is freezing,
Property value is low,
It's time for me to go,
But where?
I've only ever
Been North of Never,
What else is there?
After the Fall,
There was nothing.
What better place is there for me
Than North of Never?
My future North of Never?

V

North of Never is South of Society,
An inkier sea than nothing
Is the heart of society.
I live on the border
Where Society ends and Never starts.
Where Society ends is where havoc starts,
As if, for all of its flaws,
Society is still worth something more than nothing.
No longer strange how fearful they are
Of being kicked out.

Havoc is the name of the county
North of Never,
Hence the low number of inquisitors
Looking to buy my property.
I only wanted it because it was so cheap,
The true price was not listed.
At the time, the true price
Had not existed.

When I bought this property, I was alone.
I was satisfied with being alone.
I had never known any else,
Any better.
When I bought this property,
I bought a lifestyle,
Where morning starts at ten am
And sleep comes never.

VII

I am burning in a fire I lit.
I made my bed and now lie in it,
But I never realised how thorny
A bed of roses would be.
I have made mistakes.

This house is my biggest mistake.
Becoming the Fall was my biggest mistake.
They are the same thing after all,
For North of Never lies my home,
Lies the Fall.

My brother is a drama queen with no morals.
He cheats on his wife with everything with a pulse.
So many of my nephews are the result of my brother’s lust,
I would be surprised he is still married
If I did not know his wife as well as I do.
His wife is over possessive, and angry,
However she is righteous and fair.
Forgiven on that front.
However she is also our sister
And if I had any right to judge, I might.

My other brother has no cares.
He has had an ongoing competition
With our niece for ages,
Since the spring and the olive tree.
My nephew enjoys arsonry and war
And I wonder if he is a sadist sometimes.
He is my other niece’s side piece, essentially,
Whom is married to yet another nephew.
Our history is riddled with ******,
And I wonder if we are really all powerful gods
Or just afflicted by advantageous birth defects.

I am the most normal of us all
And I spend my time with dead people.

We need help.
Send your best therapist.
Maybe send multiple,
The first few might meet an untimely end.
Sincerely, Hades.