In my desire to understand,
I have questioned everything
out of existence.
The very essence
of my being
has become a flickering thing
struggling to remain present.

All passions, pains, and pleasant
memories
are just flutterings
from a dying butterfly’s wings,
fading faster than I can react.

We could be just a dream,
or a simulation within
another very well written
simulation, ad infinitum.

I think therefore I am,
and I am certain that I can,
at least I think I think
or are all thoughts merely
unrestrained subconscious
reactions that become conscious.

So, what more can I expect of you
because in my pursuit
of knowledge
I cannot say for certain if I exist
and in that strange context
I have questioned you
right out of existence
as well.

I want justice,
trying to fight against
the violence
of greedy politicians,
but instead of righteous
they give us the virus
of injustice,
promote the imbalance
of crime versus punishment.
Oppression is persistent
despite the insistent activists
who are resisting the ignorance
the rich keeps creating.

I want goodness
not in the abstract,
future, or way back past,
but right now
because there is
no reason for waiting.
The time for debating
has long since passed
and if you have to ask
don't bother just act.

Empathy equals truth and compassion
multiplied by action
and brings a better world.

I want justice but not the kind
lazy men claim to serve,
then swerve
to spin a fiction that prevents it.

I am the awkward
steward of my own stupid being,
pushing forwards
towards the shore,
not asking for
much more or
looking for
a reward,
just searching for
something to explore;

With A jealousy enveloping me
because I believe
so many things can be better,
yet the fog of complacency
hinders our society
as humanity drunkenly stumbles
towards chaos and a self-inflicted extinction
as we are all soon to be
evicted from our planet side life.

I am fury and glass
shattered so fast
that shards slash
and bleed me
before I can see freely,
thin lines of red streaking
and seeking something
underneath the skin.

As I walk through the wearisome
world that I live in,
with abusive people
and all that I give them,
that unspoken permission
to continue hurting
that heart that keeps turning
in self-recrimination,
ready for self-immolating,
exploding and incinerating,
cause I am tired of debating,
or outright stating
that I deserve better
than this ever-inflating bitterness;

When I cannot even
speak into existence
a pittance of the vengeance
that you deserve,
that well-earned remittance,
because my level of empathy
extends to those who hurt me,
while constantly denying
mercy for myself.

I am fatigued and ready to
fall to a slumber were
everyone I ever knew
can no longer reach
out and intrude
with their crude rude
self-important attitude.
Till, I am finally impervious
to all of this madness.

We build a brick furnace
to harness
desire's fire,
raise up a spire
to inspire
other people's
urgent desires.
Then with the right wind
we walk in
and really start burning.

We can earn a bit,
but it's all impermanent
so we hasten it
while we’re chasing ****,
and wrecking our climate.

The illusion is that
our train of thoughts
changes tracks
as the past is lost.
Railroads diverge.
Then lines re-emerge
as separate and distinct
traveling things
constantly moving
in controlled patterns,
we call our temperament.

I got a fascination
with the frequency
of my urination
in relation
to the caffeination
of my beverages.

I'm eating beans
and sardines,
so I'll be stinking
on both ends,
with smelly fish breath
and rude farts.

The bobblehead blackbird
that I heard chirp chirp
was preparing to pick away
at the rot and decay
of my soon-to-be decrepit form.

These four walls
are not made
to save
but built
to blockade
and enslave.

This cave
we engrave
with our strange
collecting ways,
soon becomes a
self-selected grave
for our histories
and all of our
distorted memories.

They disregard
and then discard
the laborers
who are working hard,
but how long can a man
struggle before
he can't stand anymore.

When stress is razor wire
that cuts deeper than
any normal blade could.
When he wants to do good,
taking care of his family
like he knows he should.

He may have two jobs,
working dusk till dawn
with only a little break,
not getting enough sleep,
and barely getting enough to eat,

but the boss doesn't mind
killing his spirit
while murdering his time.

Till, the morning comes
when even if his earthly
works aren't done,
and he’ll be forced to leave all his
responsibilities to his son.

He'll pass on
all that debt
as he passes on
with the weight of regret
for all that he hasn't done yet.

It’s a race against the clock.
Hoping the computer
doesn’t stop,
or that I don’t get
mentally blocked
before the explorer
stutters
and my cpu
breaks down
before I can do
what I meant to.

Don’t get caught in her eyes
cause that is where
her mysteries lie,
where the tiger hides
are waiting to pounce,
and devour every ounce
of the essence you have,
to satisfy the beast that resides
in her ever-enduring hunger.

You are a not a partner
just a hundred shades
of pretty little prey
that she craves,
and you will easily cave
to the charade that she parades,
to the play which she plays,
because you are desperate
in the perfect way
for her cruel love game.

Unprepared,
I sat and stared,
saw the despair
you shared,
not outright
but by the
fractures in your skin.

How your porcelain
starting cracking
and shattering,
how the weight
of everything
that was mattering
was just a smattering
expanding
and being pulled in,
an explosion, implosion,
finally denoting the eroding
of all that was once
your granite composure.

One poem a day
is what I try to attain.
I don’t even require
that all of them
are great,
but today
I need three poems
get me to
the weekly objective
I set for myself.

So, I am searching through
that pulpy goo
and purple ****
to find the rind
that sits and fits
in my imperfectness,
because I fell behind.

Now, I only need two.

Too much life will ****
your will to live and feel.
It’s a presence pushing in,
constantly pounding,
pretty pulses projecting,
energy worth inspecting
as an existence worth dissecting.

Desire equal to
one’s willingness to move,
as the same love is denied,
such passions are rebuffed
but others do not get to decide
whether your desires are right.

Expectations say
men aren’t supposed
think or act that way,
but there are years
where tears were
a reoccurring visitor.

Joys are allowed in as well,
an ecstasy of elevating
than crashing to devastating
proportions,
as happiness’s abortion
brings you back to earth.

Crashes from the atmosphere,
in longing for empathy,
for anyone to finally reach me,
while begging for everyone
to leave me alone.

There is nothing simple or clean
about the mess made by
my biological machine,
metal madness made flesh
thumping, rising in time
to be repressed, and depressed.

No god found just the sound
of other people’s pain intruding
solitude and peace eluding,
while I am exuding confidence and joy
I am ready to cash in finally crashing
into nothing.

That thin blue line
is razor wire,
is a gasoline-soaked blanket
trying to smother a fire
that it started,
its apples that are rotten
from the very bottom
cause the roots are
soaking up lots of poison.

Even though, I know
we got one bad seed,
and he’s been convicted,
he hasn’t been sentenced.
So, I will need to wait and see
how this ends
for Officer Chauvin.

National pride
is a lie
the rich spread
to divide.

Life is as slick
as the sand in which
your hand slipped
and now you fall
sinking in it all,
wailing in a pain
for which you
are not to blame.

So, when you’re feeling
tense and full of doubt,
I can be your armchair.
You can put your arm there,
rest your head on me,
knowing that I really care.

I got two good ears
ready to listen to you my dear.
Yes, I’m here to hear
whatever you wish to reveal,
cause I am a comforter.

Clarity is a rarity,
clouds cleared
so, I can see
sunny shades
radiate before me,

and it only comes
with a good night’s sleep,
whilst eating healthy,
exercising, reading,
chatting, and thinking.

I am of
something that
once sparkled
fiercely and far above.

I am earth and mud,
cells and atoms
all that particle stuff
that doesn’t measure up
to enough
to stop all the pain in
the world.

I am of love.
Peace and poetry baring
sharing my caring
and creative heart
a pebble to start,
a ripple that turns to
tear apart oceans,
with emotions in motion
that will eventually stop.

I am life
bound for death,
not remembering
how or why
children cry
or when I decide
this is my right
to live or die.

I am.

I saw hate scrawled
on rest stop walls.

I know how it is scratched in
the American skin
so deep that it has become the origin
of our country's identity,

but listen up closely
this isn't how it's supposed to be.

Cause you are as sweet
as the nectar from a tangerine;

As vibrant as the sounds of the tambourine,

though you let that corporate machine
destroy the music and taste of your being.

Mass media making a monstrosity of the populace,
turning crowd to this horribleness
that spits slanderous statements
of how and why we should hate other
men, women, and children,
how to see them as less than human,

but we are all sisters and brothers
in these struggles.

We suffer similar maladies,
falter and fail because of our shared
frailty and fallibility,
but I believe we have the ability
to be so much better.

They are the dark
overbearing powerbrokers,
not into power sharing
only lying and declaring
all that expands
what we are able to understand
an enemy of the state.

They lost the capability
of any sort of mimicry
cause they are deficient
in any sort of empathy.

The capacity
to imagine with even
the slightest bit of
accuracy
has vanished from these
social engineering
sociopaths.

So, from the depth
of their stupidness
and reckless pursuing
of personal gratification
they have set up
a system of stratification,
that regularly pits everyone
against those with the least
power and prestige
in our deluded society.

They want to rehabilitate
the image that people hate.
Instead, of trying to change
their bad behavior
they distort and overstate,
debate just to aggravate
and obstruct you from trying to
relate real facts to take
and share the uncomfortable truths.

Grand standing
while demanding
we hand them everything.

They are ****** villains
like cult commanders
who panders
to worse leaders.

These fallen leaves
echo strange tragedies,
as roots rot, on the spot
and time’s fury does not
seem kind enough to stop.

Tiny green things, browning
and disintegrating,
as humans move to change
despite the desire to stay the same,
shedding memories like a lamb’s coat,
losing layers and layers to
our own frailty.
Mortality is the knife at our throat.

Fear is the thief of time,
and time is the rogue
who pilfers everything
we think we know or own.

The tree will go on but we won’t
leaves will come and go,
like the season’s melting snow
and all the rings inside the tree
will marks the passing of everything
including me.

Have you forgotten me,
the grey beard that lives nowhere,
hungry, and looking through
ash trays for some stray ****
with just enough tobacco
to get a hit of relief.

Awkward as hell,
occasionally, talking to myself
because nobody else
wants to even acknowledge me.

These are my city streets.
This is my cold hard concrete,
an indifferent existence
cause people go out of there way
to ignore my presence.

Slender man who scans
the eyes of strangers
for some opening,
so I can ask them
for a cigarette
or a couple of bucks to get
anything to eat.

Shoulders slumped,
back collapsing under the weight
of exhaustion, cause it’s getting late
and I don’t have a place to stay.

So, I stumble about till I find
the closest spot to safe where
I can sleep and no one there
will threaten or shoe me away.

Like groundhog’s day
I repeat, a shade of myself,
echoing just enough
to survive another night.

The algorithm we live in
has become the dumb
nightmare we’ve been given,

a constant flow of concessions,
sad contrivances to survive this
cog in the machine existence.

The fight seems pointless
with only minor bouts of resistance.
If history teaches us anything
it is only labor movements,
those unions that win men
woman and children
any real economic equality.

There won’t be any eulogy
for this lie we call democracy,
while men of prestige and property
have been constantly fighting
against those who bring the lightning
of enlightening insights about this fight.

Shrinking borders while expanding profits,
supporting fascists regimes,
whilst demolishing and reorganizing
governments that try socializing
their own country’s resources.

Our local war mongers
want to rehabilitate
the image that people hate
twist and change the slang,
rework and spin everything
over and over again
as the kings of what is truly Orwellian.

They are so close to destroying
the environment and
every human edifice,
every ounce of progress
in the name of
capitalistic measurements of success.

I got forty-one exhausting years
of lessons in my rearview mirror,
some harsh, some painful,
some pleasant, some shameful,
but I don’t think that I am able
to overcome that education.

I’ve heard that steady drumbeat
pounding out a lot of doubt,
interlaced with the face of desire,
and in my love or lust I’ve
let my heart be hopefully inspired.

The curve of her jaw line,
the sweater slowly rolling over her flesh,
the breath that rises and falls beneath
her *******; her dreams and thoughts,
I long to hear, willing to pay any cost
to hold my dear near and listen,
just listen to what she wants to share,

and *** of course, sweet *******
after and before our delightful discourse.

But with each rejection I have become divorced
from expectations and any patience
with potential lovers.

With each observation, seeing how people
hurt each other, how they smother
or abandon, I find I am done with them.

Angry at myself and those women,
seeing them chose someone else
and falling victim to the despair
that I find there when they decide
they prefer the violent guy.

So, I take my lessons and eat them,
love can just leave me be,
cause I will not join or beat ‘em

I live under the threat
of each thread
of my being untethering itself
from my flesh as my essence
is disincorporated,
and my memories are evaporated.
Until, this dilapidated
leathered skin caves in
succumbing to the bitter ending
of my futile existence.

Specifically,
this spectacular
visage you see
speaks melodiously
with an expansive vernacular.

Once my mind fell
into the swell
of waves rushing
and crushing
the shore, salty sea foam
swallowing everything, I've ever known.

Our society is a symptom
of the sins of sick men
passed on to the next generation,
a slow disintegration
of our once hopeful nation
that never lived up to the principles
it was founded on.

Even when it sounded strong
it was always acting wrong.
The melting *** where
ingredients only belong
selectively and retroactively
when it's convenient for those empowered
by our corrupt society.

It's such a privilege
to witness and write this
practically garbage reflection;
I'm allowed to be witless
because of my whiteness
and dismiss any mess
that doesn't conform to my biases.

While political hucksters,
those suit and tie wearing
evening tv tricksters
these diseased minds,
news magicians
that claim thinking is sedition,
war is peace, greed is good
and only a seditionist would
question their perspectives,
talking points that are as fluid
and as gross as the bile and congestion
the curdles in my stomach as I listen to them.
While the fox news orators swim in,
stinking sewage, women and children
keep sinking, drowning in an ocean
of crippling poverty and emotions.

As of late I haven't heard
frogs croaking, a bird chirp,
or a single word
from someone
who hasn’t been hurt.

This pandemic has become
a sickness of rigidity and frigidity
in the face of human suffering,
leaving my entire being screaming,
seeming to be on the verge of combusting,
from the longing of loving the void;

While I am annoyed
by the corporate sponsors
who make immoral monsters
out of our political masters,
those pandering *******
who keep lying to you;
Then go on doing
what the corporations tell them to.

It’s a wasteland of confounding factors,
lots of knowledge but ten thousand stages
of played out bad faith actors who are after
wealth, pleasure, privilege, and power.

Old milk souls who are soured,
and so filthy with corruption
that not even a million showers
could clean the blood off their hands.

I’m certain no one really understands,
and I am tired of trying to hold their hands
and walk them up to the promise land
of wisdom, love, and compassion.

So, I spend the only currency
that has any true value to me,
time, energy, and creativity.
Then give it all away freely
hoping you will finally see,
what it means to be a humane human being.

May those who intrigue me
forgive me my curiosity.

I do not wish to intrude
upon your peaceful interlude,
are act in any way that may
be seen as undue or rude to you.

I am fascinated, at how you created
the person who I see
full of grand complexity.

Sparkling lines of stars reflected
in the blanket of your brilliance,
I feel it’s force and frequently
desire to be overwhelmed
by such solar fury that I am incinerated,
only to be reincorporated in my own reflection,
put back together much improved
by what I learned from you.

The poetess or scientist,
the athlete or artist
that sparks this
spectacular inspiration,
particles of experience expelled
and collected as new perspectives.

Witchy spells and butterfly colors,
mortuary science and deep ****** puddles
as I wander and wither a dithering fool,
striving to write and connect to
anyone who will read and believe
in my creative sincerity.

It is so selfish, and I am a terrible thief;
Stealing soft utterances, and glances brief
to place them in these temporary word things
I call love but equally mean poetry to me.

Thin wisps of water smoke
float through the air
making me cough and choke
as white vapors dispel
my own inner mental veil
of memories that are not there.

My eyes cloud up with stuff
that should make sense,
the energy of my very being
shivering and vibrating
into an altered frequency
as I try to unburden myself
of this twisted reality.

I am the butterfly who tried
to dream himself a man.
My wings fluttering to an effect
that I suspect will be multiplied
into a cursed crimson tide.

Sitting on the otherside
of my exhausted mind
trying to enhance my thoughts
with the caffeine capsules I bought.

But fatigue makes me
a duller version of the man
I always strived to be,
longing for the looming
death of sleep
where my consciousness
ceases and reorganizes
and another version dies
to be replaced by
a strange well rested guy.

If the union men win
against Amazon's vision,

if officer Chauvin
is charged for murdering
George Floyd,

if we can avoid
an economic crisis
and instead rise to face this
corruption and greed
versus human need
with dignity and compassion,

it doesn't seem like much
that I'm asking
if people could just stop basking
in their own stupidity.

I appreciate it
if you are empathetic
enough to relate to
the pains of others.

But, I have seen such barrenness
in the field of human empathy
for quite some time, and though I
have learned to enjoy my life
despite the tragedy that paints this world,
the pervasiveness of apathy
towards what should be our shared humanity
still haunts me terribly.

It's so futuristic
and mechanistic
those fatalistic
mystics of nihilistic
behaviors
that seemed to mirror
the feudalistic years.

How nimbly I stick my fingers
into the mouth of monsters,
those beasts with all the fury
and sound of playground dictators,
whilst sugar coating sour truths
and feeding them to those
I am aiming to argue into
the enlightened states of freedom.

If you if need your religion
to be kind to those who are different
than I can accept
what I normally reject,
but if you make the decision
to use that position
to treat others with derision
then you can take your faith
and put it in a dark **** place.

It's inherent
that we inherit
what's apparent
from our parents.

Time from before the big bang
has not been seen or measured
in any significant way
that I am aware of.

So, I am wondering,
based on converging hypotheses
did all of this matter and energy
from our universe which appears to be
expanding and is projected to do so eternally
due to dark matter, come from a less compressed state of being,
space that had massive materials swallowed by a black hole
and became the clay and the mold
of our soon to explode
reality.

It’s a trade in
as wage men
are trading
their time
and health
to earn themselves
a reprieve
from being
deprived
of what they need
to stay alive.

But the clock
is boiling them,
slowly cooking
working men
in a stew of
exhaustion.

Good health
and happiness,
is exchanged for
lots of stress,
anxiousness,
and a mess
of repetitive
movement
impairment
paired with
pain.

Body withering
along with
a dithering
mind that
subtracts facts daily.

In aging
the dark corridor
comes closer
and the coroner
is waiting
just outside
the late night
shift life
door.

Ignorance
is a sharp stark
spear to my
blood gorged heart,
the mess where I store
all the artifacts
I abhor and adore.

It is a corner covered in
all the tools used
for bludgeoning
all of my resistance
to a pulpy gore.

A set of stupid statues
sitting in a row
not seeing, hearing,
or speaking what we know.

The bane of my breath,
more horrid than death,
as I dull then destroy
that aspect which annoys
me greatly.

As I read and study,
veils remove themselves,
waters recede and I see
the once drowning
clown version of me
empowered to be
a lot godlier.

I am awed by
the forest green
glowing sheen
of spring’s clean
reflecting force,
as I am defecting
before the door
slams shut
on my creative luck.

I can overdo it,
get convoluted
till my rhymes
become diluted,
and my thoughts
become polluted
with alien intentions.

Swearing I am
too sophisticated
for those who
are frustrated
when they read me,
but they can
see through
the tricky ****
I try to do.

If it is
a zero-sum game
then I lose,
when I choose
to slowdown
and work through
the background noises
everyone else
forget to listen to.

In fact, I
overestimate,
exaggerate,
to inflate a debate,
that does not
exist in this place,
to try and say
something worth
expressing in
a beautiful verse.

But I am just
playing with words,
and they do not
love or need me,
nor does my
poetry or
my society,
both will survive
without me.

You’re preposterous
when you foster this
archaic hatefulness.

If you want to wait a bit
I’ll debate your rhetoric,
and we can fix that logic.

I’d like to settle it
if you listen my friend
so we can begin again
to set a healing trend
and mend the bonds
broken by those who conned
Americans into believing
that the poor people
were the ones deceiving
everyone.

I’m not settling
for a world that is
less than unified.
I won’t let my
compassionate love
be denied the right to thrive,
this is spot on which
I live or die for what is right.

And if you refuse to listen
I’ll just write another version
of the same poem.

Current movements
move men
to acts of destruction.

When acting on passions,
we ask people in passing
if this wit with which
we communicate
is enough to elaborate
our currently confused state.

The saturation of the markets
marks this as some capitalistic *******.

Mixed messages of messed up maxims
and the memes of mad men, fallen children,
and land barons,
of the lost bounties
once saved for sharing
the hearts made for caring,

but we will rebuild good will
in these soiled fields
by replanting the seeds of those
who rode the roads
from which we came,
who plucked the rose
from which the thorns grew;
Then bleeding passed along
the wisdom that they knew
could help us be better.

Fox news and OAN,
Ben Shapiro,
and Tucker Carlson,

fake newsmen
versus fake newsmen
vying for the views
of the uninformed population,
trying to defund
public education,
twisting perspectives
while being
super selective
with the message
they are constructing.

Obstructors of truth
as they misdirect
the electorate
with their misconduct;

Stir up fear and anxiety
about people who are
in the same boat
that we are.

A spendthrift grift,
cursing the gift to uplift
that empathy is
and replacing it with
vile slurs and *******.
All that bile interspersed with
the commercials we’ve seen,
cause it is a money making,
hate cultivating machine.

So frustrating
cause it is easy to see
the ouroboros,
that snake that devours itself
after it has destroyed everything else.

You don't bend
or work to make amends
with old friends.
You just muddle through
to the bitter end
cause it's a quitter's trend
that's got you shuffling
from one day to the next,
one nap with no rest
blank sheets cause your tests
are nothing.