They say in this world that everyone starts with nothing, that everyone has the opportunity to climb to the top with a cup of effort and just a sprinkle of integrity, that everyone is born equal, and that everyone succeeds.
They are lying, if not to you, then to themselves.

Fact is that inheritance will always be present in this world; parents will always die and pass on their wealth to their children.
Whether we are aware of this or chose to acknowledge its existence is independent and non-influential to this fact.

A lying billionaire may have one daughter and she may never have to genuinely work a day in her life, while an honest but unlucky displaced man may have one son and be unable to give him but a pair of shoes to place over his soft feet.

We are unable to alter this occurrence, for it is natural to wish for one’s own legacy to continue not only in genes, but in wealth, fame, and power, but it is crucial to acknowledge the differences of the lives into which we are born.

Distrust is key to
survival
in every aspect
of life
except within.

And that is why
I trust myself
to see myself
as myself.

Beyond that
everyone
is a liar
and
everything
a lie.

She embodies a
yellow-backed salamander,
only violet.

Surrounded by obscurity without gloom:
the depths of calignosity suffocate every speck in ebony ink.
Yet, every molecule breathes with ease.

It is the crushing, bewitching hour of eternity in nightfall.
A sigh exhaled is impassively terminated by the midnight dusk;
sound is silent here.

Emptiness gapes as the leviathan's gob
thick with gelatinous mucus,
vast, however jailing:
closed and unknown to the living universe.

The saliva sparks in a moment, as a release of static charge,
even though no solid is sensed, never-mind two touching
loaded with electric friction.

And then again, as a sparkler of summer's independence
now holding for just more than a whim.
An explosion.

Flecks of bright stains scattered within the physical aura breeze past;
they ripple like wave crests under a kaleidoscope moon.
Colors arc in the resistant free current: endless lightning.

The vacuum is an overpopulated city
of which the blind could never take census
and the ignorant believe to be mute.

Visual speech fills the void of sound.
It is the starlight of a body.

a dire desire
to flee
to wheel the spine around
and stumble in the opposing direction
quit, split, fly
the physical embodiment of escapism

a towering tsunami
there are only three directions to go:
to face
to exile
to be crushed a statue

a pinched atom
compressed in a chronograph
has a beach still to pour
during here and after now

a glinting ax
to smash the glass
easy

a tug
unlike a leash on a hound's leather collar
great draft horses quarter the prisoner
meat hooks pierce intestines
dismemberment
at its finest

overwhelmed
i run

Her eyes shine like undisturbed dew drops
hovering at the gentle fingertips of young moss
on the northern bark of a white cedar tree
under a lazy morning sun.

Spear points of obsidian pierce the disc:
banished from the core of a volcano
scorched by a molten heart
and choking on onyx soot.

The dawn warmth filters through,
carried by a serene and wafting breeze.
It illuminates the pleasant, tickling greenery,
bringing to light the depth of her irises.

Fire belches from the mountain's stomach,
and the flame ignites a gleam.
Her gemstone eyes shine
as though the embers have been captured within.

At the base, there is the earth:
firm and dark and cool.
Interlocking underbrush layers fawn with chestnut
overtaken but not undermined by powerful streaking tree trunks.

The rim is built of force and rumbles with strength.
A cast of bronze is seething and glowing.
Her intensity blazes as sun spots
deep within ancient amber.

She is as her eyes are
an indigo inferno:
seldom
and
elegantly alive.

worth less than worthless

And now at last you draw the ropes
behind my drooping head.
You even have the
courtesy to tie
the knot
in my
stead
.

I step gently onto the ground as I glide across the shore, padding with a light caution to protect the un-callused skin coating the bottom of my slightly burnt feet, the covering not yet thick and worn from a full summer of bare use. The sand underfoot is a speckled grey, thoroughly beaten to a fine, almost silky carpet, dark with captured ocean and fresh with salty spray. As the seconds pass, the darkness below fades, and my feet somewhat sink, though they are not engulfed, only hugged around the edges so that if I stepped away, a slight shadow of myself would remain behind. I do not, however, move, and instead, allow the earth to slowly bend for my being. I feel miniscule grains of shell aged several millennia rush between my toes as the sea easily escapes the weak attempt to cage it. The next wave tears in, and I see it frothing and foaming, rabid and furious toward the shore, but as it reaches me, it is little more than a carbonated, salty trickle. As the water laps at my ankles, I turn toward the dunes, away from the infinite horizon and know that the slight depression I have left is already being brushed into oblivion, my only mark flicked aside. As I pad softly away, the ground transforms from bland silk to stained glass. The speckled grey sand brightens to a yellow tan, then fireworks to an endless prism of shells, appearing like millions of hooks, swirls, and bowls, across the now slightly undulating ground. Like stars in the Milky Way floating throughout an endless sea of blackness, the shells are scattered in hued bands across the beach, twinkling with reflected starlight. Above me, doming the serene landscape is an azure sky free from all but a few cotton ***** which have been stretched by the sea fairing breeze to be all but transparent. The smell of salt reaches my nose as a bucolic waft emanates from the expanse to my back. I close my eyes, shading my vision and trusting the peace of my surroundings to hold. The faded calls of gulls echo along the shore and the popping of sea foam bubbles sharpens as my mind turns to rely on the sense of sound. Opening my eyes again, I see nothing of the landscape’s composure has altered. But for all its calm tranquility, isn't it strange, that I am walking through a graveyard.