I will tell you
the truth,
adjust and fine tune
till your view
matches
the matchstick
reality I made
for you.

I will cut and clip,
snip and rip
all of the
fanciful
fairy wing bits
that I want you
to forget.

I will mold
and distort,
stretch and contort
till your
red clay mind
conforms
to the norms
that I formed.

But if you dare despair
act scared
and air
your understanding
to try and repair
everyone’s
perceptions
of our shared
reality,

I will find you,
and take your rationality,
ostracize, or exclude
till you die
or submit to
the prechewed
military issued
world order
I eschew.

Brown
to graying
long whiskers waving
creature displaying
innocence playing.

It’s a youtube
rabbit hole
that I follow
to ease my
sorrowful soul,
that has been
swallowed
by this hollow
hateful
world.

A ten minute
diversion
from what is
so urgent
as cute and fluffy
kind of scruffy
otters eat
and live
playfully.

Soft
fur rubbing
adorableness
to counter
this
horribleness
I have witnessed
for most of
my life.

Sleeping
to swimming
squeaking
to running,
on the rock
sunning.

What a nice break
from the hate
I’ve seen.

Next stop
jungle sloths
hanging from
a tree.

Our love may catch your eye
Smile causing me to smile inside
Like a candle light in my life
Until we must part ways

Our love may say goodbye
May pray safe passage
Let other love ones fly
But they are still part of us

Our love may grieve
The darkest passing
Turn passions darker
Find heart broken by the leaving

And if our love does not return
Our heart may crumble and burn
Turn to ash in a flash
Make tears from flesh

Put in perspective of our shared past
We should know love never truly lasts
But in the briefest span of eternity
It is a wonder for humanity to see

Our love is a dry desert heat
Leaving me drowning in sweat
Till the scorpions sting me
Till life releases me

Our love is a furious tundra
Endless white winter land
Urging me on till my limbs go numb
Till I forgot where I came from

Our love is a hurricane
Wet and destructive
Violent and unproductive
Leaving chaos in its’ wake

What I am trying to say
Is our love really *****
So stay the **** out of my life
Oh **** wait, I’m *****
Let’s give it one more night

Our passion should bleed the heavens dry
Inspire strangers to smile and cry                                  
Whispering our poetry in their dreams
Imagine what we stand imagining
Hoping, loving, lusting, scheming
Our passion should fly like stars
Searing the soft night of strangers
Gazing on our constellation
Looking upon our lives as destination
Historical spot where we burned with the deepest fury
Our passion should never be a bubble
Unless of course its a bubble of ever expanding trouble
Growing and consuming all who cross its path
Making them better for it presence then for its lack

Was she painting the white roses red
Or the red roses white
Crimson speckled
Flowers
The red queen screams
Of with his head
And I finally realize
The parts that are red
Are the splatter art
Of the dead

Little albino avatar
I cannot tell
If your picture
Is a fiction
White skin
Raven black hair
Dark eyes
Darker lips
Hoops ready and razor sharp
To cut any man’s heart
If you are death
Than I am
Your ever humble
Corpse servant

There is blood in that black barrel
Children tattooed with life’s ink
But you think it’s easy to define
What is right or wrong
Red lines of history
Pools of sticky memory
Daytime nightmares
Bombed out
Shell shocked
Trauma etched into their DNA
And there is nothing I can say
To make that okay
No reasoning or words
To write the wrongs away
No speech that can save the day
While children put their toys away
To go and find their friends
Digging in the dirt
Instead of playing childhood game
They’re digging children’s grave

How many mothers are aggrieved of themselves
Shattered by the heart of matters which they take part of the blame
No longer denying in their crying
That they too were made fools
Beggars yearning for a redo
To undo the terrible truths
Revealed and reviled

How many parents would stab their own heart
To undo the part they played
On any given horrendous day
And see the ones they lost
Returned
Unburnt
Unscathed
Unbathed in blood
By the horrors of the day

And whilst some cannot rewrite those dark nights
Perhaps they can pass on the lessons in wrongs
So other mothers can make this life right

I wanted to rip the sorrow from my hollow bones
But when I swallowed the poison to stop the pain
My faint and fallow heart failed and then started again
Came thudding to a new budding sensation
The pain did not find its’ permanent cessation
But the darkness was dulled turned to a minor aching
My tightened chest eased to find less painful breath
It was hers and would not become my own death
So though she was gone I still lived on
Allowing her memory to fade away
She may be dead but I will still live today
And though it hurts the anguish will pass
And I will find myself mostly okay at last

I seek that sickly sweet suffering
Those tragedies that feed my writing
The knots in my stomach the tightness in my chest
Buried so deep but I need them to express
The purest poetry spawned from my essence
Take their forms founded in pain's presence
I need it more than nourishment
Such a sick and brutal self punishment
I leverage the scars on and in my body
To the art in all of her glorious purity

Oh Persephone you frighten me
Dark hair falling
Arms flailing
Hailing nothing
But the darkness you claim
The pain that maims
Your reason

Pushing the razor
Harder and deeper
Sliding it in and out of your skin
Like a credit card purchasing
Temporary relief
From your grief

You say that you are poisonous
But I say you have been poisoned
The virus is in the air
On the tv
On the streets
In some of the books
In strangers looks

In the aftermath
Heart break
Takes its’ place
Followed by apathy
Till there is nothing left

And though you never cut your chest
Your heart is still leaking
Leaving
A subtle arrhythmia
Hade’s fingers
Crushing each ventricle
Squeezing just enough
To keep you alive
In agony

Dreams are like poison ******
Dangerous dangling *****
Poking holes
In the status quo
Cutting queer angles
As strange jewelry dangles
From the tip of your lip
Silver studs
Tinted smoke from buds
Radical idealism
New types of feeling
Parallel the painful application
Of physical mutilation
The cocoon
That blooms with a boom
Scratching the exterior
The reach the wonderful interior
So when strangers stare
Looking at your hair
Or the rings here and there
When they Gawk
At the hot inked spot
Smile inside
Cause they only get to
Share the ride
For a little while

Picture your pain in a plastic pouch
Put it away till it’s lost like change in your couch
Maybe you’ll miss all this aching
Maybe you’ll be better for the loss
Maybe you won’t ever really rally past it
Maybe your pain is like plastic
Elastic and ready to snap back on you
Perhaps you can send the couch to the cleaners
Perhaps they will take all the pain you were saving
Wash it in foamy suds or dry clean it
Perhaps you should have just thrown it away

Genius is meant to grow
Instead dead ideas
Are spread like plagues
Wandering rats raid
The minds of the working class
Plundering their pocket books
Stealing time while filling their minds
With bile
Pockets of putrid **** swell
Filled with hate and fear
Tainting the clear ideas
Steering the flow away from
The expression of
Grand thoughts of science and art
And towards competition
Bitterness and regret
For a world of material goals
We have not achieved yet

I saw her put a strange face on
same tint as her old skin
but so much harder
made to display fake affections
guarding her against
false friends
and dangerous heart intruders.

Her skin became plaster.
With each betrayal her heart hardened
as did her skin, flaking and brittling.
Till, angry and trembling
I saw it splinter and splatter
sprinkling sparkly brain matter
on the floor all around her.

Thus, the face that remained
was left disfigured and stained
a permanent portrait of the pain
she had been struggling against.

Love lets children play
Fly away
In imaginary planes
Or soar in space
With alien races

It replaces fear
with compassion
Cares little
For what’s in fashion

Freeform, whimsical delight
No order or structure
No constancy
No normalcy
Freedom unrestrained

Our world might be improved
If more adults learned to play
In a childish way

Love lets children play
Fly away
In imaginary planes
Or soar in space
With alien races

It replaces fear
with compassion
Cares little
For what’s in fashion

Freeform, whimsical delight
No order or structure
No constancy
No normalcy
Freedom unrestrained

Our world might be improved
If more adults learned to play
In a childish way

The terrors come
Beastly
Feasting
On flesh
Carrion
Consumers
Nightmares

So I beg you
Play a song
To help me sleep
A piano
A violin
A beautiful voice
And even if I weep
Please keep
Playing me
To sleep

Come to me my purple lotus blossom
Unfurl your worn out petals
Before the burden of living
Crushes your tiny chlorophyll filled skins
Relax before your stem cracks
Like a sailor’s broken back
Crushed beneath the ships mast
Heavy with hopeful journeys
But trapped in one spot
Do not let the broken heart
Harden, turning pollen dry
And petals crumbling brown
But bloom my dear
If not for the sake of the sun
Then for its sorrowful lack

The night is speared
with splinters from
the brutish bore
that scarred
Atlanta's heart.
It is an over told tale
that fails to adequately
express itself.
There where she fell
feeling all
is where she lost
the only one
whom she thought
she could truly love.
Though all pursued
that swift footed muse,
sought to use,
and abuse her mighty heart,
it was my golden apple,
my forbidden fruit
of Eden's garden
filled with juicy wisdom
and sweet succulent knowledge
that won her.
Intelligence that sought to
empower her to
know that though
I long to love her
physically and passionately
my truest desire
is to see her elevated
not on a pedestal of adulation
for an ideation,
some fake iteration
but to see her truest self-exposed
and the heart of her art
allowed to bloom brighter
then that heavenly orange fire
we all call Helios.

There are beautiful words
waiting to be seen,
poems waiting to sing,
like the diamond glistening
waterfall that plays me
to a gentle sleep,
as it sparkles
and leaves stranger in awe,
while giving me reason to pause
cause I to am dumbstruck
by my own dumb luck,
confounded by such glory
that I nearly trip on my
untied shoes,
racing forward to write
all that radiates from nature to
the amazing being of you
my emerald friend who glitters
just as wonderfully.

Where can I put the pain of the world?
Can I stuff it inside while people buy the lie
that the race to possess is worth the pain they cause?

I want to heal them all.
I want to catch the fallen
the broken people calling
Out for mercy.

So I take it all in
one video,
one picture,
one story,
one movie,
one piece at a time.

Let it simmer in my stomach,
till I’m full of ulcers,
till the tension is to powerful,
till I’m a poet bomb
ready to explode
and let my ink bleed out
what humanity
has planted inside of me.

On tv it looks so copper clean
Ringing in naked dreams
Living out those picket fence schemes
To get the American bling

Morality is black and white
There are no heroic black knights
The good guys are just
And they just wear white hats

But life is painful
Like a cancer vampire
******* your life force
Pale skin quivering

Dark bags under your eyes
No hair there because of the chemo
Despair and denial on ivy drips
And reality tv made us ill equipped
To handle it

Sometime I wish the tears would stop
That the empathy would vanish from me
That I couldn’t see what I see
See what this reality has made of me

History is white sheets
Red arm bands, fat *******
Uninformed Loud mouths
A canvass that drips wet with my outrage

I sip the last drops of my stimulants
Drop the anti-depressants in the toilet
Forget my docility
Embrace more than half of my hostility

I don’t think much will change
Despite how hard I clamor
Despite the sparkles and the glamour
How I use the language to entertain and inform

This is therapy
In the form of Poetry

On tv it looks so copper clean
Ringing in naked dreams
Living out those picket fence schemes
To get the American bling

Morality is black and white
There are no heroic black knights
The good guys are just
And they just wear white hats

But life is painful
Like a cancer vampire
******* your life force
Pale skin quivering

Dark bags under your eyes
No hair there because of the chemo
Despair and denial on ivy drips
And reality tv made us ill equipped
To handle it

Sometime I wish the tears would stop
That the empathy would vanish from me
That I couldn’t see what I see
See what this reality has made of me

History is white sheets
Red arm bands, fat *******
Uninformed Loud mouths
A canvass that drips wet with my outrage

I sip the last drops of my stimulants
Drop the anti-depressants in the toilet
Forget my docility
Embrace more than half of my hostility

I don’t think much will change
Despite how hard I clamor
Despite the sparkles and the glamour
How I use the language to entertain and inform

This is just therapy
In the form of Poetry

Sometimes it’s not in the reading
But the in the hearing and seeing
That we find the beauty of poetry
Sometimes we forget their power
The world of words loses its’ way
Loses its’ sway to say what it must say
But when a new voice is given
The power resurfaces
When we hear the subtle tremors
The violent vibrations
The elevation of poetry is remembered
Like a long lost love
Finding old passions re-inflamed
The poetry is restored to its’ golden glory again

Poet, she writes for peace
While they ride to fight
Fly off to die for what is right
Left at home alone she cries at night
And wonders why
Her loves one try
To commit suicide
-
Poet, She writes for love
But she is not tough enough
She falls down more than
She is able to stand up
Poet, she writes because
To do less than that
Would break her in half
-
Poet, she writes against oceans
Rages against the tides
Struggles with emotions
She cannot hide
Struggles with the world
She cannot abide
-
Poet, she writes
She lives and dies
Fall and flies
Laughs and cries
She is yang and ying
Every single thing
All the ways she lives
All she has to offer she giv

Though I navigated their world with a poet’s compass,
needle pointed northward towards the stars,
sails set open to capture heaven’s winds.
Clear fabric flapping;
I found strangers laughing
at what I had that they were lacking.

But with the quill of curiosity
and the telescope of hope
to chart the rough waters ahead of me,
I became the sea scribe of humanity
wanderer in love with those
who will never love or know me.

Squid ink to parchment,
I write to the complacent
sending cresting waves of
hope, wisdom, and love.
The seas become the ocean.
My arguments become less cogent.
Till, my heart capsizes
leaving no survivors
in this saltwater wasteland.

Power is a living flame
Seeking its’ own expansion
Devouring all in its’ path
Corpulent beast
Of infinite hunger
Caring not what carnage
Burns in its’ wake

Once freed from the prison of the sea
The reptilian flee to see what they can see,
Hopping stones to find new homes.
Soft clicking cartilage bones.
Hot waters burping up bubbling sands,
Sipping the dripping goo,
Primordial ooze,
Protein potential,
For me and you,
From it to us,
A sweet but bitter tempest.

Broken box
Society’s cold shoulder
Children grow older
People get colder
Humans become more animalistic
Incarcerated *******
Humans don’t deserve this
Barbarity

Our city
Needs clarity
Eyes upwards in isolation
Nocturnal
Echo location
With no manifestation of god
But the sun feels so good

Freedom forgotten
Lost to new conditioning
A tumor that gains a stronger claim
To an inmate’s brain

We are not improving our world
We are just pharmacist repositioning
The world’s pain

I got running water
Cold or hotter
And I never have to
Watch my daughter
Get *****

I get internet and electricity
And I never had to watch my city
Get burnt from drone dropped bombs

I got air conditioner and heating
Even though I took a few beatings
I don’t have to be afraid
Of getting shot today

I got a job paying minimum wage
So after my bills I got a little extra
Coming my way
So I can buy books and go to the movies

May life may not be great
But I can’t debate
That when I wake up each day
I don’t wake up a slave

When I walk home at night
I am not walking in a state of fright
Anxious that some stranger might
Hurt me

I live better than over seventy five percent
Of the world
Even my worse days
Beat the haze of foreign war ways

They want a professional
Serious
Uniformed
Individual
To conform
To company
Policies
Hair trimmed
Beard gone
Shirt tucked in
Socks long
Black shoes
Scripted interaction
Lacking satisfaction
Just sterile reactions
A perfect attitude
Till I am a
Twin of
The men
And women
Who work with me

I got stuck creatively
So, I started looking for a prompt
Just by accident I found a million
One in the green grass growing
Another in the moonlight glowing
The blue seas flowing
The white winds when it’s snowing
The soft bare flesh of naked *******
The beautiful dancer was showing
Every sight worth seeing
And every thought worth knowing
Became my prompt

Let the seas claim me
With their salty foam
Rushing and frothing
Rabid with life
Grabbing my night
With their rushing tides
Pulling me into
Their dangerous depths

Dragging me to the same spot
Where you claimed your lot
Loving ghost gasping
For any breath

Let the seas that crushed my dreams
Crash and smash
And for the love of you
Drown me to

Picture your pain in a plastic pouch
Put it away till it’s lost like change in your couch
Maybe you’ll miss all this aching
Maybe you’ll be better for the loss
Maybe you won’t ever really rally past it
Maybe your pain is like plastic
Elastic and ready to snap back on you
Perhaps you can send the couch to the cleaners
Perhaps they will take all the pain you were saving
Wash it in foamy suds or dry clean it
Perhaps you should have just thrown it away

Enter Pygmalion
Sculptor of my flesh
Firm hands of a man
Desirous of himself
Ego outstripping
Lust driving
Hard stone chipped
The night sounding
Like an uneven clock
Tic tic tic with nary a toc
And the outer shell of my existence
Slowly fades
Chunks and
White marble dust
Removed to find my bust
My curves
My lips
My stony eyes
Fake garbs
With hard wrinkles
My shoulders sanded to perfection
Carefully crafted collarbone
Body finally fully formed
The master Artisan
Find his own enslavement
Obsession with his own creation
Thus all other loves pale in comparison
Perhaps that is the curse or fate
Of all true Artists

I got the nice guy rage
Anger that stirs
Beneath the pages
Past the posts I pasted
Parceled out in controlled fashion
Because my passion
Stems from the pain of the world
Floods and fallen stars
Broken expectations
Failure to pierce the infinite void
Of human ignorance
It is unhealthy

A weakness

A fear

That even if it is justified
I may find the same monster
Lurking inside my mind
That plagued my matriarch
The rage that darkened her heart
And contorted her face
As she lashed out at me
So with every available icebox
I freeze and lock
Those dangerous emotions
Till I am numb
Allowing only a fraction
Of said passion to ever surface
In my writings
Now I am afraid
That I locked to much away
Disconnected the locks and lost the keys
So I can never get back to the real me
All because I am afraid of the anger

An explosion
Rage at the system
Red
Violent
Rage at injustice
Blood
Anger
Rage forced inwards
Backlashes
Brawls
Or Self-harm
And the rage
Rages on

Today I understand incoherent rage
Learned the loss of my best disposition
With the youtube clip
Of a felt tipped double dipped *******
Spitting ******* about how the government
Is coming to **** him

Pleading please help me by killing them
Empty brained slack jawed hee haw
Huffing the exhaust fumes from some
Sixteen mile a gallon extended cab
Four-wheel drive ford truck

Chubby face running of with
Nineteen twenties style militia hate
Red neck panting and paranoid
Rallying others to his cause
With sloppy sentiments and stupid slurs

No information or reason
From this white entitled flat earth creationist
Spewing patriotism and treason
In the same stank skoal scented breath

Afraid of the Muslims, Communists,
Socialist, and Intellectual atheist

Won’t wait to debate with facts
Cause facts are what he lacks
Just rash reactions with explosive violence
Beating up protesters to the point of silence

Reality ******* in favor of
Slow pre-used slogans with no clarity

I am getting so tired of this
Same old ****

It is Ragnarok in the heavens
as the long snouted giant wolf Fenrir
faces off against rust colored clouds.

The Midgard serpent
stretches its purple, orange, and grey
body across the sky,

while embers of Surtur’s raging flames
cascade like spiraling waves
during the last seconds of
this dying day.

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.

Under rain the green leaves weep
Rich with life
Still the sobbing will not keep
Her sadness softens brown earth
Feeding the soil soothing the dirt
Under weird blues and grays
Strange hues still fill these days
Soft drum beats upon my skin
Ba dump ba dump ba dump
Like my heart always beating
In a strange rhythm
Always falling from outside
But I feel it deep within

Old glory red, blue, and gory
***** fast in the wind
flattering a country
with its symbolism.

Two young men running
race each other
up and down
the high school sidewalk
only a few blocks away
from the fairgrounds
were some guy
got stabbed in his junk.

Professional building has
only one small stained glass square
with a frame of brown oak
and a blue circle swimming in
light distorting frozen water glass.

A lady stands just outside of
the Wal-mart parking lot
holding up a cardboard sign
saying that she is hungry
and any food would help.
I try to pull over a little bit
but the traffic is awkward
so I do not resist it.

Corner to corner
two drugs stores compete
one CVS and one Walgreen
I’ve seen this struggle
on more than one street.

Older African American gentleman
sits by his bike a couple windows
down from the gym where I go
writing in a yellow notepad.
It makes me feel so bad
because I don’t want
to bother him or be bothered again.

The grass grows green
flowing in the warm spring wind.
The heat is sweltering
but I take all of this stuff in.

This is billions dollars
away from wall-street
and all the crooked politicians.
Business men do not walk here.
This is where most Americans are living.

Repentance is a pittance
If paid to the church,
But seeking forgiveness
Of those you have actually wronged
Properly paying them back,
Not keeping prisons packed
With some whites but mostly blacks,
Is were wrongs are made as right
As they can be.

Life seldom grants us absolutes
Before the truth of reason
Comparison was treason
Ignoring the fact
That some have and some lack
Was common practice

Justice was lackluster
Politicians and business men
Were fluff and lots of bluster

But now with all the information we have
Reason and comparison should be elevated
Inequalities should be seriously debated
Not with flowery words which inform so little
But conceal so much, but with science
Because facts find hidden truths revealed
And there is seldom to much truth

The ravenous
cavern is
where they come
to be devoured by this
horribleness.

Four strangers
and my mother
line up
to face a mirror
of fear
and suffering.

A fearsome fiend
appears
in each reflection,
major killers
from movies,
like Leather Face
Freddy Krueger,
Michael Meyers,
and Pinhead.

One by one
each person
is sliced and diced
right through
their life
by monsters
that never leave
their mirror.

Then comes the Hellraiser
reflected before
my mother.
Razor chains of pain
explode out
and pierce her skin;
Embedding and shredding
tender flesh,
rending red screams
of terrible suffering
from her lips.

In her agony
she reaches out for me,
but I retreat
in a state of fear
tinged with
a little bit
of indifference.

When she realizes
that I will not
be the heroic type
and save her life
she slits her throat
and dies.

Immediately,
I awake, ashamed
and deeply disturbed.
Though, I
do not believe
in any higher meaning
part of me wants to know
what that was all about.

The beatings were never super brutal. They were just the rough thud of her working out her frustration. The real pain came when I resisted or when I expected something better. The moment I forgot who and where I was she would remind with the belt, a ***, a boot, a wooden paddle, the broom handle, or whatever implement. The only way I could come out a winner was to illustrate my anguish. I tried being strong but the stronger I was the more enraged she became. So, instead I gave her a way to feel more powerful, enough whines, whimpers, and tears to satisfy her rage but leave me less scarred then I might have been.

Look at me,
I am desperately
trying to get you
to see my humanity.

I deserve dignity.
My struggles
do not diminish me.

Traveling, running,
drowning, falling,
hope is still calling
so, I move on.

Being a refugee
does not make me wrong.

Have you ever been
as strong as the heat
and desert winds?

Do you know
the kind of fear
that turns the slightest rumble
into another bomb,
or the nightmare
of knowing
most strangers
won’t bother showing
a single particle of compassion?

I am just an atom
blowing in the air,
here and gone
before you ever
noticed I was there.

I know life is not fair,
but why don’t you care?
How about a little grace
and an ounce of decency,
to highlight your supposed
superior morality?

Regrets

I didn't seem quite right

I though I should have known

After that big fight

She went home all alone

He hurt her with his word

And slapped her in the face

Still she turned the other cheek

Ignoring the disgrace

Her smile simply melted

And faded in the wind

As he took his fist to her face again

I wish that could change it

if I had a second chance

I'd take that ******* *****

And staple it to his pants

But things don't alway work out

The way that we would like

She went home that night early

And took both of their lives