You don't have to talk to me, babe
No, you don't have to talk
I won't say a single word
There's nothing more I could say that you haven't
Heard it all before
What was it like before?
What was it like before the horsemen
Rode that final mile
What was it like to rustle cows all day
Drink up the saloon all night
Girl you betcha heard me right

I knew you weren't no saint, from the
First day I saw you I knew
Courting trouble ain't a winnin' game
Sometimes it feels the victor is the one who loses too
What does it all mean?
What do you need from me tonight?
Now has come the time
You better tell me why I shouldn't cut you off
Like I should have a long, long time ago
Tell me do you love me so?
Courtin' trouble ain't a way I know
Courtin' trouble ain't the way to go
Courtin' trouble and nobody throws in their hand with the winning card
So where you goin', Cat?
Where are you going?
Cat said I ain't going nowhere,
I'm staying right here with you
From sunrise till nightfall
I be with you throughout it all
I said Cat you're a dreamer, baby
But this is one of those dreams that just don't come true
You got no choice but to take it, baby, embrace it as the truth
One day you will look back
Laugh and recoil at scenes of your brutal youth
Laugh and enjoy the bitter irony
Of following a muse a man made spirit
Who can explain these things?
What are the feelings we share
And to what extent do we truly share anything?

Did you get the part about the horsemen?
It was one of the most painfully obvious placements of symbolism I've ever read
Just as the last sentence was the most painfully inept viz. grammatically butchered and la di da dee da
We want you to sing along
You remember that Carpenters song, "Sing"?
Hokey, corny song then, only made more hokey and more corny with the passage of years since the time it first made the rounds on the AM radio and the streaming realities of the music industry's eventual ******* by Spotify.
But that song..."Sing"
You remember that, I know you do
Let's sing that chorus
Here we go, everybody ready?
Ok, 1, 2, 3, 4
'la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear, just sing
Sing a song'

I asked you to not say a word
And you were chivalrous enough to grant that request
I appreciate your silence
As I also hope you have appreciated my own utter cavernous silence
Without a single word spoken between us
This was without question the most quiet dinner I've ever spent
With anyone
Else
But
You

When the weight lifts
I rise
Hope like sunshine fills
My eyes
With gentle certainty
Realize
All things change
Nothing dies

I'm not as smart
As I thought
I needed to be
Now I see
I never needed to be
As smart as that

I idolized the intellectual
Depression was my reward
For failing to meet that standard
But life gets hard as the years go by
Harder, harder, yet harder still
Death loses more of its sting
The older I get
Until I'm happy to go out
Like Kevin Spacey's character
In American Beauty
Lost in the portrait of better times
Distracted unaware of danger behind
For at this moment Heaven fills his mind
A camera shot the photograph in his hands
A hateful man shot a .45 slug into his head
With a smile on his face he fell to the floor dead
Life extinguished in the exact amount of time
It took for the flashbulb to illuminate the image
In the frame
Smiles all around, except for the executioner
He was miserable
Feeling the weight of pounds and pounds
Lowering onto his back

Never to lift, thrown into
Water
Drowned like unwarranted litter from the
Fat belly of a mangy dog
Sinking like the ******* twisted face
Of the unwanted feline
Ghost sends for the ropes
Ghoul fetched the heavy stones
Goblin tied the ropes to the animals feet
Gully dwarf secures the stone
And I'm the only one with the sense
To see what needs to be done

Weight has lifted
I'm not as smart as I thought I was
Slow down, read aloud
It's almost as relaxing as cannabis

But that don't mean
I ain't gettin no cannabis tomorrow
And I hope it's bomb sativa
Cuz I wanna fly

There you are
I'm sorry
I gave up on you
I forgot what you felt like
Filling the emptiness I had come to believe
Was all that existed

Poetry congealed muddying the waters
Hardened into a gelatinous soup of words
A monotonous stream of narcissism
Unafraid to employ half-truths
Unable to regulate the deterioration
Of chemically mutated thought processes
In love with language only

Brother's birthday
I didn't say a thing
Y'see I ain't spoken to him in years
Dysfunctional ****** up family we're from
I distinctly recall him not wishing for me
A joyous occasion
The ties that bind
Were severed loose with great skill
And apathy
A bag-full of hard feelings
Solid as the stones in my pocket
Neither of us cries
But I wonder about my old mother
Having seen what this despicable world
Has to offer
You don't get what you want
Drive on by and try try try
You can't help but see the hard truth
In slow motion, dreams burst like bubbles
Empty plastic sacs
Litter the sawdust splattered floor
Waiting for the beast
That feeds on this misery
I think he's right around the corner
I heard his belly growl
When he looks at me I will close my eyes
Smell his matted hair
Hear his muffled grunts
Then I'll kick him so hard in the crotch
He won't know what hit him
As he slides harmless
Down the length of my body
Distracted by vision
To slump on the ground

Only a moment to tell you
Bradley Cooper wearing a trash bag
Makes more sense

How I despise
Still yet I cried
Or at least

There's no shame in begging for your life
When you're looking down the barrel of an assault rifle
In the hands of someone who isn't listening anyway

There's no shame in turning the other cheek
When the spray of bullets penetrates
Both

There's no shame in being remembered as a victim
When you never had a chance
Or a choice in the matter