You will be diminished
as others finish
life’s strange race,
as living leaves you
in last place,
and you face
a world without them.

You will pull
faded photos from your mind.
Slightly distorted mental movies
that have been rewritten by time
will become bittersweet reruns.
Lies will soften or harden
previous facts
as you try to look back
to the past.

You will lose loved ones
over and over until
you no longer feel
an inkling of their essence.

I haven’t been
working on finding
all the answers.

I’ve been questing
for the best questions,
pursuing strange obsessions,
seeking the sparks
that will start
different parts
of poetical proclamations,
teasing out
certain doubts
to understand clearly
that I am not nearly
smart enough to know,
but I am bright
enough to grow.

When my heart
lights up and glows
it’s one hell of a show.

All splendid sparkles
and black holes,
all gray dusty roads
and sharp rocks
that pierce flesh.

Inside, I hold more
than just myself.
I am an infinitude
of lies and truths,
of words I use
to gift all of you
brand new and pre-used
perspectives that amuse
and inform.

I am the fractional form
of past identities
and future possibilities,
a projection part
hopeful and cynical,
a self-created symbol
that you will
eventually interpret
through the lens
of how you feel.

Sunday morning is a spiral
of dimmed lights
and despairing shadows,
of stairways to nothing
that dance in the distance
and turn around to find
time no longer binds
this strange and tired mind.

It is a body of fatigue,
so tired that it turns blind,
unable fathom
what was once
wondrously divine.

Windows no longer open to
a whole wide world
that I want to view,
but are closed,
painted black
with spider web
thin cracks
that let less than
infinitesimal light in.

Hope is made for forgetting,
until a long sleep
restores my stores
of optimism and inspiration
allowing poetic explorations,
as the windows open
to finally let more light in
and the stairways shift
restructuring themselves
to new realities
of delightfully
exciting possibilities.

The flame of madness
cracked and expanded,
holds hearts unplanted,
soil sick with slick
mind worms that take
turns gnawing through
the muck and the goop,
and the rotting wood to,
seeing moods shift from
angry, sad, then numb
to become all spent up
without any passions left.

Peasant eyes
tell pleasant lies,
but journeymen
are mastering men,
commanding them
to do their darkest
bidding,
leaving dreamers sitting
sad and dismayed
as the con artists run away
with the heart of what makes
love and language great.

Do not let me
be vexed by
exemplary
poetry.

Cause I am
lyrically
fantastic,
like other
lexical lovers,
and word writing
art brothers.

I love the
sweet
syllabic
ecstasy
of channeling
language
for my own
enjoyment.

It is pure
play
and self-pleasuring,
as I go one
measuring
my verbal dexterity
in combination
with clarity.

There is
a sad disparity
in what I write
and what gets through
to the masses who
find my art
hard to digest.

It is a self-serving mess
in which I express
an observance
of the madness
of merely writing
and not expecting
others to grasp
half of it.

The sun
no longer
streaks the sky
but seeks to die
as I try not to cry.

I am too tired
to create
anything I deem
great.

Over dependent
on stimulants
to wake up to
a creative vision.

Brain fogged
to the point of
being a rotting log
wasting space,
just waiting
to decay.

In my
fatigued state
there is a fear
I may never make
decent art again.

But I rest
and get up
to type out
something
beyond my doubts.

One poem,
the first of
the week,
a stumbling piece,
not my best
but a relief.