How tragic that I have fallen for
my peacock colored angelic
poetically created fantasy,
how her lips are rainbows
and hair falls fancy
full of vibrance,
though she is written in silence,
hazel eyes always focused
in some far-off distance
behind me,
the man who longs to be
the one she is truly seeing.
Galatea to my Pygmalion,
though I know there are billions
of possible lovers out there,
I do not care or dare
avert the heart I share.
She is my obsession,
and I am her devoted
poet possession.


-2022 December

Straight out of the gate
if you’re standing with hate
then you are my nemesis,
so vacate the premises
because your premise is
parallel to white supremacists.
Your weakness is obvious.
Our problems can’t be solved
by ignorance that abolishes
any semblance of human decency.

Life’s strange variety helps society
overcome unforeseen calamities,
create new works of art
and science that moves us
from here to where we could be
traveling universally,
whilst expanding intellectually.

Your violence
doesn’t help human beings;
It loosens the strings
that tie us together.
Defining a stranger
as a danger
because of their color,
imaginary borders,
or gender identity
doesn’t serve to
strengthen our foundations
but turns earth to rot
as those who have a lot
use the wealth they got
to disseminate hatred,
and take more and more.

I know you love it,
but take your Sexism,
Transphobia, Racism,
and discrimination
and shove it.

-2022 December

You thought that you could tempt me
with the power to destroy entire cities,
see the people renting slip into poverty,
see good intention blur then blend to become
the kind of corruptions that is to blame
for all the atrocities humanity has done.
-
But I am not the anti-social monster
who would willingly harbor cruel intentions,
not the type of person who could see
and fail to mention
innocent people being held in detention.
-
If I had to choose to give my life,
my life is something I can afford to lose
to proactively oppose those who grow
chaos and suffering for profits.
---
-2022 December

All I can see
is a wasteland of
stone, glass, metal,
and wooden rubble
in an open air prison
where children are living.

Six thousand bombs,
stirring up
thick clouds of grey dust,
obscuring the horrors
people are enduring.

The attackers are
barely even
warning people
to move on.
The exits are blocked.
The power and water is off.
The suffering doesn’t stop,
and these civilians
are unable to leave.

How are you unable to see
the hell spring of grief
that is burning human beings,
the furnace that still cooks
even when no one bothers to look
because all of the crooks
were just waiting
for the perfect excuse
to make the news
with a justified genocide.

Mass ****** and more oppression
with the weapons
America supplied,
and guess what,
another child just died,
more parents got radicalized,
and if they survive
will you be surprised
if hate is the new demoncont.
that wears their tired red eyes.

The rich guys lied and decided
that unequal retaliation
is perfectly justified,
so we are on a road
to the extinction of
human decency
as the world murders
our collective humanity.

Crack, boom,
the sound of thunder blooms
orange heated chaos,
breaking the foundation
an entire building.

A whole family line
gets an early burial,
as what’s left of my heart
gets carried inside,
popped in a box
to be buried alive,
because their beat
was the same as mine.

Nothing I write
will change the minds
of those unwilling to
listen and see people who
are close to total annihilation,
as deserving of love,
and compassion,
but even so
I am still asking.

Help, please, help!?!


Instead we get beheadings,
mass shootings,
****** assault,
retaliation,
and the expectation
of more tragedy to come.

I can easily condemn
violent actions taken,
but I need to understand
the origins of this rocky foundation,
and potential solutions,
because I can’t stand the
horrors I am facing
without eventually breaking.

The tic click tic click
is a slick sick trick
of time playing with
my mind,

some twitch
a phantom itch
with no obvious
cause for it,

a voice dragging me
from the comfort of sleep,
yelling out my name,
so I get up to see,
but there is no one
out there calling me.

I am scared
because my family
has a history
of mental illness
in varying degrees
of severity,
and I am afraid
that one day
it won’t be me
questioning my sanity,
but a clinical certainty.

I don’t want to go
because I feel responsible
for my seventy-year-old
infirmed father,
trapped by a self-imposed
sense of obligation,
self-erasing, and disintegrating
any chance of self-elevation
in the pursuit of
taking care of
someone I love.

So many years lost trying to
help and get through to
someone who doesn’t
seem to have a clue
what his angry outbursts do.

I feel guilty for wanting my own life
minus all this major family strife.

Ten years I’ve been too scared to leave
because I didn’t know what I would do
or if I could even afford to move.

Will I step forward or be subdued
by fear and attachments to
a situation that holds no true
future growth for me?

I break my pattern
and reduce the restriction
of obsessive attention
to a particular
schedule or behavior,
because if I want to
I can do it now or later,
take the time to savor
the flavor of the moment
because I own it
and not the other way around.

This type of freedom is profound,
and easy to achieve
even though it frequently eludes.
Obsessions frequently intrude rudely
and take more time than
I care to admit to.

The world may be
very close to ending
or not,
but my life is all
that I really got,
so I will greedily
hoard my individuality
and liberty to see and perceive
that strings that seem to direct me
and sever them immediately.

Nature fashioned
a thorny crown
to cut my scalp
and bleed me dry,
leaving me to decide
if I should cry
or try to write
my suicide note.

There was no lover to
pull me from the sea,
or make anything
mean anything.
So, I was just floating,
tears and snot soaking
this body choking
on bitter salt truths.

There was no fire
to keep me warm.
So my digits,
and heart went frigid,
and that rhythm
that was given
to the living,
I no longer missed it.

The sun disappeared
and when the clouds cleared
even the moon had skipped town.
The tides came and went
pushing me out,
and pulling me back in again,
but I was already too dead
to drown.

The husk they found
was a terrible art display
of a soul fried and flayed
till it up and flew away
to smoke itself and disintegrate.

My five-disc cd player
shuffles through
sad soft songs
that sing
me and my depression
to sleep,

a melodic muse
to still the
inner tempest
and let this
lonely witness
escape the deep
shades of darkness.

Alone with
someone else’s
consequences,
in so much pain
that I try to end this
but even suicide
is hopeless
for me.

There is no opening
out of this bubble
that I have been
living in.

There is only
the cycle that
washes, rinses,
and dries me out,
makes me cry out loud
when no one is around,
but never tell anyone
that I am hurting.

The pills and razors
are still not working,
so I’m just burning through
my terrible twenties
and most of my thirties,
never ever feeling worthy
of any sort of love.

I know I won’t be here forever,
and I am just wasting away,
watching politician playing their games,
play acting outrage while preventing change.

There is a no place for my face
that shifts and distorts from the pain
that I am forced to witness over and over again.

I’m not the cleverest
but stating facts makes me feel like
I’m trying to scale Mt. Everest
while screaming against the bitterest winds,
like I am going to have to watch all of my friends
slip off the top and drop nonstop
until our whole civilization ends.

I’m just dressing my heartbreak up in
stark sparkling words meant to
amuse and enlighten all of you,
until the same fate catches up to me to,
and my legacy disintegrates
with the rest of the human race.

The trees pirouette past me
as I drive fastly,
outpacing other drivers racing
against the resignation
that this human nation
will not change
despite all that we are facing.

Time’s eternal tide
brings pressure from all sides.

Still, I go on contemplating
losses that are devastating.
Shouldn’t broken bodies bombed out
cause a pause or at least minor doubts,
but it's like their lives don't matter,
like these children aren’t even collateral.

In that realization I succumb
to a dark cavern where a
mad Minotaur makes a cold
depressing labyrinth that shakes souls.

Language is the only way
I can take control
of this stark pain,
as I use metaphors
to explain and distract me
from what is exactly
happening,

but pretty words are like
flowers scattered on
a festering wound.
The rot goes on
and all too soon
this buffoon
will fail and fall.


-2021

If life is a show,
it is one that
goes with the flow,
growing and retreating
with the seeding
of insights
we are receiving.

Rivers shift, feeding
bigger bodies.
Life is change,
but no one
really taught me
how to accept
that reality.

People come
and go
in and out
of our lives
and periphery,
occasionally
coming in for
a reentry,
then fading
into background
static.

Life is for the living
to grab it,
because death
will not grant us
any grand reprieve,
so all I need
is what I see
to go on existing
whilst being me.

-2021

I’ve been to the ledge,
looking into an abyss
certain that I
wouldn’t be missed
and even if one person did,
they’d be better off in a world
without me in it.

I’ve seen shadows creeping
while I was almost sleeping
halfway between
waking and a dream,
with a spiderlike scribble
crawling across my blanket
that I couldn’t smash
or even shake off.

I’ve been swept up
in a manic moment,
then began drowning
in an endless pit,
and almost died in it.

So many self-inflicted
near misses, electric,
pill bottle, and razor kisses
but my body insisted
on living when my mind
wanted a quiet end
to the painful buzzing.

Some say it gets better,
and for me it did,
some say all you got to do
is keep trying to live,
some day you will make it.
It’s one struggle at a time.

But sometimes people
go into those dark caverns
and never come back.
It’s not a beautiful death
just a tragic final act.

-2021

A grin with thin rimmed glasses,
smiles with delight
as she speaks to her sprites,
whispering
with hands wide,
telling them to listen to
her tale of things that go
bump in the night.

“When I was very young
there was a crooked old tree
that sat savagely waving
down the road from me,
a mess of gnarled branches
that looked like they could
grab you up and take a bite.

One day I went out to play,
saw a small squirrel,
and chased it all the way.
Until, it climbed up that
wooden monstrosity.

Distracted,
I did not notice
how the grass reacted,
shrinking under my foot falls.
I failed to see
how far I had actually gone,
because to my little mind
the distance from my yard
to that tree was shorter,
but in reality, it seemed to be
approaching me rapidly
as what was behind
faded out of sight.

Daylight became night
quicker than expected,
and I suspected
that I should go home,
but when I turned around
I found that I was lost,
and all alone.

I heard a twig snap,
then felt a limb smack
me on my lower back.
My body seemed to contract
as I lost my breath,
and a fog of coldness
washed over my flesh.

The wind lifted
a small pile of leaves
revealing tiny
black shiny beings,
a nest of chittering beetles
that started skittering
ever closer.

I cried out. No sir,
and tried to hoof it out of there,
but I had lost my sense direction
and didn’t know where
my small house was.

A little bug
that looked like
a hairy brown spider
leaped up on my dress.
I quickly flicked it off,
then flinched when
I heard something
purring.

I turned in time to see
a small pair of glowing eyes
focused directly on me.

The feline
passed by
rubbing gently
against my thigh,
and then strutted away.

I followed that kitty,
and I thought we
were heading back to my city.

We passed a stone fence,
and a small wooden hut,
a little gas station
that didn’t have much,
plus a tiny graveyard
and a busted gray car.

I walked so far
that my feet got blisters,
saw a stranger,
and cried out, hey mister,
but he didn’t even turn around.

I kept going not knowing
if I would ever get back.
Nervously, I started to laugh.
I had probably snapped,
cause I was scared and starving.

It was dark and cold,
and I couldn’t find
anyone to help me.
People didn’t even
acknowledge my presence
unless I bumped into them.
I tried to speak,
but no one would listen.

I never got home,
just settled here
in this little cottage
for the last
seventy plus years.

No one has stopped by,
in such a long time
so thanks for listening
to this story of mine.

Now, come closer my little dears,
because I am soooo hungry.
I don’t want to be rude,
but you look like food.

Why are you running?

You see when you heard me calling,
you shouldn’t have listened,
like me,
you to are now missing,
but I know where
your new home will be.
There’s a place in my stomach
because it is so empty.”

The little old lady smiled,
chasing the last small child,
with a sharp tap on his neck
she laid him to rest
in a well-dressed bed
of greens and liquid red.

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.

The day unveils
it's beautiful bright self
pulling back the curtain of
twilight’s twinkling.

Dark body undressed in favor
of nature's flavor of greens
that I long to savor
as I repatriate her repainted clouds
that cover a light blue complexion.

Don't you know it.
I can be super stoic,
the sentinel of security
sitting safely secluded
to prevent people who
want to breakthrough
and intrude on those
who are trying to do
what they’re supposed to,
so they can get paid
and take care of those
who they are close to.

I'm not Santa Claus but I'm hefty.
I'm not jolly cuz life left me
navigating deftly
across time zones
where minds roam
while I dream of a present
that presents positive possibilities;

Not Marvel’s what if comic book realities
that I used to collect,
but issues that direct
my heart towards acts of compassion
as I ask strangers what they are lacking
that makes them malicious actors.

I have not discovered the ultimate factors,
or removable variables
that would enhance our ability
to be superbly gifted soldiers
of love and humanity.

Weary, I'm still searching.

Death makes
imperfect things
into haloed beings
with white wings
fluttering in
ascension.

It turns attentions
away from the
anger and towards
more perfect abstractions
of past painful actions.

Uncomfortable truths
becomes distorted memories,
that we extract from all of these
filtered false realities.

Grieving becomes
the reweaving
of what was undone
into a long-viewed narrative,
as our current imperative
is to turn chaos
into purpose.

Seven shells for sale,
so what we got
could be bought
and what was lost
could not.

Searching the sandy beach,
hungry, all we caught
was an empty net
that wished to be
filled beyond belief
with the bounty of
that great deep sea.

Our children weep
and dream of stomachs
bursting with treats,
while hurting eyes meet
in the same discreet
heartbreaking defeat.

Dr. Cornell West.
is not a retreater,
but a bright spirit freer,
a spectacular speaker.
His vernacular is sweeter
than any lazy deceiver.

Who's to blame
for the fact that
this world is gone insane?
Is it run by the inane?
I need to ascertain
if they have an *** for brain
or are they snorting aspartame
like it's *******?

All our institutions are infected with
the arrogance of a definite existence
ordained by their sick insistence
that their way is how it has to be,
that their actions are the ultimate
manifestation of mortal man’s morality.

But their certainty bothers me greatly.
Life seems to be made of generalities,
and a myriad of shades that play with
our desire to easily define what is right.

Our errors are laid out in plain sight.
We can observe a minor fraction of the slights
committed against those with little defense,
while we let wicked men gather about them
more wealth and acclaim, a platform to defame,
and rename the victims of their big money games
as enemies of us all. We let them build a wall
between our wisdom, knowledge, and hearts
a black abysmal structure that keeps us apart,

When shared struggles should obviously be
what turns strangers into allies and family.

It is private,
inviolate.
Yet, I intrude,
dress up and abuse,
take their suffering
as my perfect muse,
take dark interludes,
and use them as cues,
as tiny clues
that lead the way
to make poems great.

Sorrowful inflections
become wordy reflections
worked to perfection
for my ego’s elevation,
for the ecstasy of creation,
and this drug I imbibe
gets me super freaking high.

Tears and stress,
bodies undressed,
hearts exposed
and in taking those
I become criminal.

Liminal moments,
seconds stolen
for the sake
of verses swollen
with emotional clarity.

I claim sincerity;
That I write these lines
to help closed mind
break the barriers
between truth
and what emotions mean.

But as these words meander on,
I wonder is it right or wrong
to write the painful songs
that do not belong to me.

Poet’s passions
are prevalent
but lesser men
classify them
as deadly sins
denying the
black ink within
that boils to the brim,
forcing her or him,
to take and bend
words to their own
passionate whims.

I'm tired of having to
make allowances
for other’s attitude,
excusing their abuse
of me because
I'm nice and accepting
while not expecting
reciprocation of said treatment.

The midnight sky
is large and quiet.
All of nature
has gone silent.

The stars glimmer
on the inside
and the outside
of my tired mind.

I am ready to
go to sleep,
but still standing
because I have
promises to keep.

One solitary figure
reflecting all things
that fill my exhausted
inner being
as I keep walking.

Forty-one years
have led me here,
a life I built upon
a throng
of cluttered paths
I tried to clear.

I tried to hide my fears,
but would have been
better figuring out
why I have so many doubts.

So, silence becomes my ally
as I ponder perspectives
that elude most.
I am the ghost that boasts
in poetic forms
as I declare
I still don’t know
what I am doing here.

Oh, my dear
adorable nephew
let me hear your
heartstrings sing,
let them go on
vibrating in daydreams
all day long.

Let the chorus
of Angelic voices
raise you high
and all your
bad choices
help you
grow up to be
better than me.

Do not be
limited to
what you see
or how you were
taught to believe,
do not let logic
or religion confound
the heart of
compassion
when it is found.

These are not
the best or
worst of times
just moments
passing too fast,
precious seconds
that will not last.

So, what I ask,
is that you
remember how to laugh
and have a blast
in this one short life
you have to live
as I impart
the heart of love
I have to give.

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.

I was not taught to write well.
In that arena I educated myself.

As I paid attention
to the frayed dimensions
my teachers failed to mention,
to the apprehension
that caused me tension
as I sat in detention
for sins no one
would clearly define.

It was clearly my mind
that wrought upon me
such severe punishments,
but in that dissonance
I found my relevance.
In my confusion
I learned to write away
my dark illusions
and replace them
with my imagination’s
strange and playful whims.

What a delight
like a sprite,
my fair and funny
fairy maiden
made in
the imagination
that makes friends
with all of the creations
of forest folklore.

I wish other people
spoke more
generosity into being
like this magical
benevolent being.

As I peruse social feeds to ease
my boredom, she softens my aching blues,
as every story ends and begins
with artful acts of compassion.

Shadows
of distorted memories,
bruises and welts
well hidden,
so child service
couldn’t see,
and every time
the counselor asked
what was bothering me,
I just shrugged
and said “nothing much,”
because afterwards
I would get
threatened or beaten
if I didn’t give her
my full confession.

It was a place
where I
had no control,
a time were
I had to do
what I was told
or else.

Then on to school
where I wasn’t cool,
just too smart for
my own good,
always reading
some different book.

Poor clothes must have
put a target on my back,
but it didn’t matter
cause I always fought back.

Some called those
the glory days
but I wouldn’t
return to that
time or place.

I came to you
with games
and love
to spare,
with a heart
that cares,
seeking to
end despair
in favor of
a better world.

You came
with hate
and violence,
the will to silence
all those who
would be kind to
you and others to.

You bombed
and brutalized
told our people
horrible lies
to make them despise
the good guys.

You turned homes
into ****** battlefields
tortured and killed
cause it was a thrill
to sit back and make
more than a cool mill.

But one day
when you
refuse to change
I will come back,
attack with rage.
I will return your plague
with the self-inflicted
bitterness made
from thinking
things could be better.

I tightened the circle
let the lines loosen,
then in my state of confusion
pulled them tightly.

I subtracted loved ones nightly,
despite my social media
connections
my real-life affections
became whispers in
the distance from
previous family members
and friends I’ve loved.

With a noose I constricted
till it was too perfect.
Then I ****** it.
It was like when
I was biting
my tongue
just hard enough to hurt
but not enough to cut
that slippery tool off.

I choked and cough
felt the loss
as I tried to break
my own neck.
I signed my own check,
by happily self-secluding,
and the excuse I was using
was the best scape goat.

As grief scraped my throat,
I tried to cleanse my palate
stirred my mind like a salad
all vegies and greens mixing,
lying and saying it was healthy
but really just tricking
myself into doing what
I was always going to do.

Death by a thousand losses,
each cut cost me
a fraction of my identity
and hopeful personality.

Until my corpse
swung from the rafters
and tears sprung from
melancholic laughter.

Then nothing came
happily, ever after.

Politicians
extort men
to retort then
go on acting
bad again,
whilst reporting
trends that tend
to move friends
to end good
relationships
in favor of
spouting off *******.

Is it preposterous
to think that
poetry could foster in us
a deeper understanding,
make empathy a commandment
moving us towards
capturing compassion’s actions
like they were transactions
designed to pay for more
good in the world?

I had patience but
I lost it cuz
I've been accosted
by a boss that was
both **** and big
stinking *******.

Felt the terror
of time’s
terminal
ticking away,
chasing each day
as a parade
that works towards
my end.

Now,
it's do or die
write to live
not right to life.

So, short stalks
get lost
as I buzz by
on my
summer day drive
thinking about
what it means
to be alive.

With a single stroke
all lines are broke,
the past becomes
previous paths
that I wrote.

Death is no longer
a possible future
but a present presence,
tired of playing
and predatorily pursuing,
now settling in for chewing
up my tired old skin.

Breathes are heavy labors,
and there is no hope
that they will come easier later.

A million-fold roads
collapse into one
reality,

and unlike this poem
life finds its inevitable ending.

I can barely catch my breath,
there’s a sea of swirling madness
bodies bursting with endless
tragic tears of sadness
and all the sobbing leaves me
heaving and breathless.

Wishing I’d see death less
and more days of happiness
for all the world’s children,
but I can always hear them
crying, begging, for heroes
who will save them.

Little girl amidst the wreckage
loves her people,
lives in fear of the evil
acts of other nations
as bombs burst her foundation,
and she is left feeling
lifetimes of devastation.

Years of boots on throats,
of truths I wrote
of true experiences
only slightly altered
by my lack of living in it.

but I can see the way they live it.
Fear, and sorrow, pain planted upon
the soft soil of childhood.

I can breathe but I
don’t think I should,
don’t think people are good
as other human beings suffocate
I don’t want to take their place,
but I would exchange pained
lungs and ease the air of despair
from their chest to mine
to give them time to repair
their hurting hearts
as they breathe in fresh oxygen.

Snap back
and ****** that
which fools lack,
don’t give them slack,
life isn’t a card game
we’re not
dealing blackjack
but serving facts
that track tragic acts
that sees sane minds
and hearts snap
in half,
till we all cry so hard
that we have to laugh.

Damning verses
from ancient scripture
gave excuses
so he could hit her,
with logic as fluid
as ***** dishwater
that ******* father
beat on his daughter.

I cannot be an apathetic
version who is free
to float carelessly
through life,

I am more like a specter,
an abstract human inspector
who sits and observes this sector
of our shared humanity.

Not bullet proof because
the pain of those I love
breaks all the barriers
I placed to save myself.

No super strength like Atlas
cause my stamina will not last
as I bare the whole world
on these small shoulders.

I cannot fly by high in the sky.
I cannot speed through this life
because each tragedy draws me
deeper into dark caverns of
human suffering.

I do not have any superpowers,
just lots of empathy and hours
to reflect and write a speck
of some gloriously poetic
lines that many may find pathetic.

I'm lonely
but only
temporarily
using these
words sparingly
as I search
this dark area
for some sign
of hope.

Weeping with pre-grief
because I see
uncertain future possibilities
as inevitable tragedies.

My brothers and sisters
seem strange and deranged,
lost in cycles of hate and pain
that drain the vein
of what’s humane.
  
So, I want to rewrite
the wiring inside
that has them dying
like others do
with withering emotions
that cause violence to brew
the kind that silences
the few who
would speak truth
about this mess.

Its two thirty a.m.
or maybe later,
as she lays there
on the outer limits
of the small town
gas station parking lot
just off the highway exit,
trying to sleep as safely
as she is able.

Couldn’t be
more than
twenty-three
with a fully loaded bike,
and body tightly curled
under the cover
of her safety vest
of bright colors.

She smothers herself
under bright streetlights
cause at this time of night
or morning the lights
offer some limited sense
of security.

A concerned security guard
tries to wake her,
mistaking a mam for sir
drops a bottle of Gatorade
for her to drink later that day
and a sandwich.

He tells her
the gas station attendant
called the police.
Then to ease
his concerns
passes a couple loose ones,
leaving when he is done
getting a short explanation
of where she is coming from
and where she is going.

This is where the narrator’s
lines end but leaves him
wondering miles down the highway
if the police hassled her
or left her undisturbed,
so she could get
a few more hours of rest
before the hot day
forced this girl
back on the frontage roads.