This is the end
Of my life
I’m afraid
Where do memories go
When they cease to be made
Do they fade
Isolated
In coffins contained
Or live on
In some legacy
Shouldering blame
For the cornerstone laid,
For its labor unpaid,
For the road to extinction
For profits is paved

Crooked cops
Crop-dusting
Walking dead drops
Set up shop
Cracking rock
The crime lords of the block,
Never stopping
Mass production
Mass incarcerate
Consumption
Just repackaged
And reformed it
Into urban deconstruction
Underfunded housing project
For an upper
Classpiration
Gentrifying
Higher rises
Like a fentanyl
Sedation
Running rampant
Through the streets
And through the flesh and bone
It eats
And as the door comes crashing down
Its execution
Is complete
And so in summary
Impunity
With which it gets away
Has ever been
And ever will be
Making freedmen
Into slaves

In the farthest-flung fringe
A far cry from response
There resides an outsider
Comprised of what haunts
Him, a scribe to his host
To the world
A ghost writer
Askance in his stance
On the evil empire
Exile imposed
On his selfish desire
The ills of his making
Have taken too much
So afflict him with vision
But gift him no brush
For he will just
Depict it
As cognizant dust
As an infinite sorrow
Ephemeral joy
But what else makes a man
Of a scared little boy?

You would seem
So far away,
So old and gray
From me astray
Estranged in nightly,
Out of sightly
Slightly differing decay
Complacent discontent
Is swept
Under delusions
Wanting more,
What more perfections,
Burning questions
Could you possibly
Need answers for?
Is no
Togetherness
Of us
Enough to turn our bones
To dust
What must
Befall
Before it’s just
All future ideation
Hushed

Mixing the signals
Conflating attraction
With courtesy’s
Chemical
Overreaction
Unwanted attention,
Unflattering flex,
The presumptuous
Ego-dystonic
Wants ***
Nothing less,
Nothing more
Than to finish before
Recollections
Of dignity
Up off the floor
Or reflections
On mirrors
Preparing to split
Personalities
Rift,
We’re just not
Intuit

What if love
Was just fragments
Mere figments
Imagined
What draws bodies close
To embracing
Impassioned
Would tragic
Just typify
How it concludes
We confuse its temptation  
With swinging of moods
Could illusions
Enamor you
More than a kiss
What possessive delusions
Compel us to this
Missing piece,
Wishing more,
Holding dear,
Longing for
Bore the weight of its loss
Like misplacing one’s mind
And therein
It shall stay
It’s in one
We must find

Ghosts of my own
Shadows passing
From past mistakes
Drove a stake
Straight
Into remnants of fate
And erased every mark
That I made on this place
Pearly gates
I’ve been pounding on
Just empty space

So it’s back to the study
Of tending to legacy
How and why
Man persists
Writing his history

Down in the rabid
Whole world
Gone to war
Down in dumps
Of lined-pockets
That buy and sell more
Down beneath the extinction
Clockwork
Agent Orange
Down furthermore still
In its cluster bomb
Torrent

So back to the study I go
Tending legacy
Soon I will know
How and why
I write history

Barely an enemy
Faced on the front
But the one in the mirror
Undaunted confront
For we go to our graves
Free to liberate slaves
But we settle
For personal,
Tribal enclaves
Just a trivial anecdote
Lost in dilution
Delusions of
Sought after
Final solution

So back to the study we must
Tend to legacy
Soldier on
King and pawn
Written in history