Everything is pure imagination,
colors pulled from the mind’s
massive palette,
as new dimensions reveal themselves
in swirling abstractions
of curling rainbow action.

The colors she sees internally
are multi layered and 3d,
rapidly releasing childlike energy
and remaking her inner existence
into a safe fantasy,
as she takes that imagery
and makes it her waking reality.

She takes the power to paint and reshape
a poorly formed life of pain
into a playground of
crimson, purple, yellow,
pink, and blue
for everyone to view.

Everything fades to background noise,
and there is only art unfurling,
as the unconscious writes its own story,
as time moves at its own pace,
letting awe and intense focus
color her sweet cherubic face.

Sometimes we slip through the cracks
fall down a hole or trip into the looking glass
and never manage to find our way back.

Innocence is betrayed as it is parlayed into
the whole growing up thing that
we don’t want to do.

Playmates fade away as we lose yesterday.
Their faces blur then just disintegrate,
along with the games and stories we made.

Time becomes the anchor that weighs us down
as we struggle and drown in deadlines.
Playful pixies dust fantasies are lost to these
important and emerging responsibilities.

Teddy Bear hugs and fairytale love
become the stuff of forgotten hopes,
and with each romantic advance rejected
the dreamer dejected retreats to
the safety of a stale and scheduled reality.

Till the mirror reflects the inner sadness.
Our shoulders slump, skin sags, and wrinkles,
as our eyes lose that sly Peter Pan twinkle.

-2023

The lion is
lucky if
the lioness
doesn't give him
a violent kiss.

It doesn't take
a kitchen knife
to butcher life
or a motorbike
to ride until I die.

Instead, I take this journey
on a broken gurney,
not a suffering soldier
but a poet older
than any bolder
active warrior.

My tourniquet tightens,
as blood loss lightens
my mental load.

This damaged road
is full of broken bones
and scattered scraps
of marble stones
that no longer fit
the foundation of
a safe home
full of love.

That's why I still roam,
searching alone,
staring at my phone
looking for answers
to a call I'll never make.

Every breath I ever take
should hold some purpose,
but the truth is
my search is fruitless.
This existence is useless;
Just another wound
that will not heal
but festers and rots
as everything I thought
held value gets lost.

In my mad mathematic trend
I subtract family and friends
from my equation,
becoming the inevitable immigrant
as I finally cross life's bitter border
to nowhere…

I’m repulsed
by callous jokes,
from wealthy blokes.

How rich men thrive
while the innocent die
choking on their own bile.

A thousand lives
of hard knock
lessons we learn
as businessmen
take their turns
making cities burn
with bombs
that blow up
leaving children
growing up
and crying out loud,
“I miss my daddy.”

I met a monster
and I called her mother,
dangerous to no one other
than myself.

Every night she would berate me
make me think that she hates me
as she violently laid her hands on me.

I feel like I would have been safer
in the arms of any stranger,
cuz a decent person
wouldn't put that kind of hurting
on someone they claimed to love.

All the years that I lived with her
I learned how to suffer
indignities like they were trivialities,
and with each verbal and physical attack
I learned how to turn my mind black
and inwards towards
my own sharpened sword
as I skewered myself.

The rhetorical implications
of what we're facing
has us chasing devastation,
but I'm way past the crazy station
and on mile marker mad hatter.