Now decide where you stand
At the end
Of the world
When it’s into oblivion
Forcefully hurled
That we go
With uncertainty
All that we know
But in faith perhaps
Aftermath seeds
We might sow
May they grow
To survive us
In some shape or forms
May they weather the wake
Having borne
Superstorms
To preserve legacy
To surpass our potential
All time and dime
Spent
Wasn’t inconsequential

Without turmoil
Turning from turbulent
Trials
To what I’ve compiled
In more secret files
How miles and miles
I’ve traveled and tread
To eventually find
What goes on in my head
Is a spiraling
Virally
Spreading
Contagion
The rage
Can’t contain
The mass grave
I am caged in
Before
In my bouts
Of capricious good luck
I have sought after
Found
Raking long in the muck
A compassionate partner
To clean up my act
To provide me a peace
I’ve so ceaselessly
Lacked

We all have a role to play
Function to perform
Within society
We try to be
A little less forlorn
About the whole entire
Universal
Existential
Crisis
Seeking purpose
From the worthless
Void
That even now
Must write this
Affirmation
Of self-righteousness
What validates the strife
A simple note
A memory
And in totality
Is life

I’m grateful
Is all I can say
On a day
Where dependence
Sustains me
And expertise may
Be the primary reason
I still get to write
Get to live to see futures,
Sleep soundly at night
Because I cannot cut
The afflictions from skin
Can’t return me home safely
From waiting rooms
Been
On the operate table
The last couple hours
As people who care
If I make it
Empower
My waking mind’s eye
To in vertigo
Know
That although
Limited
Not my time yet
To go

Look out
One last time
How it all
Just goes by
How I started here
No one
Afraid to be seen
Lacking confidence
Cognizance
It would soon mean
So much more
Than a job
Now a part of me
Robbed
And though grateful
A hateful
Irate
Inclination
I can’t seem to quell
To dispel
Its frustration
When duties I’ve taken
For granted
Retired
And services rendered
No longer required

I’m not scared anymore
I’m just tired
Exhaustively
Seize where it goes
Does my lowest point
Caustically
Seek to corrode
The empyrean edifice
Feckless kings’
Treacherous
Half-assed attempts
To seem not
But a nemesis
Rather the victim
The hero
The savior
The puppet in penguin suit’s
Bankruptcy wager

Check my ambitions
Of power and greed
For today I must write
What the histories
Read
Not what leaves me
Beleaguered by
Years of devotion
Implosion
Awhirl with
Conflicted emotion
On one hand
The wheel
Toward the road ahead
Steering
Just now I’m not paid
To set down the path
Veering
The other still reaching for
Lists to give
Tips
And a look back to see
The familiars I’ve missed
How I wished to keep
Rolling along
What I learned
A new town
The best spots
Play my songs
As I earned
An affordable  
Stature
An honestly
Modest
Addition
Opinion
On timeliness
Promised
A charioteer
For a castle beside
The vast shore
And horizon
Deep into
I’d ride
Down its corridors
Stride
In its passages
Hide
And its passengers
Welcomed
Their guide to confide

My overloaded  
Brain
Is short-circuitously
Sane
And drained away
Its finely balanced
Jenga tower
Pieces lay
All strewn about the floor
Defeated
I’ve conceded
Earnings needed
When the wellsprings that sustain them
Are supposedly
Depleted
And it seems
Despite devotion
To in service
Indispensable
Convenience
Kindness
Courtesy
Is not so fundamental
As to render it
An integral
Expenditure
To budget
And from livelihood
Parts of me  
Now they must cut it

Reminded her of I
I am just your average guy
I go to work
Am always lurking
In a million reasons
Die
Before the fallen in submission
In its limitless capacity
Has taken from me
Plundered
Cast asunder
What impassions me
Like writing
Soul igniting
Lightning strikes
And nightingales
Be they encaged
Or just engraved
As never fails
To feel my serenade

Fleetingly wary
We aren’t alone
As a species
But personally
On our own
And the dread revelation
Intelligence
Solely
Just isn’t enough
To convince me
It’s only
This civilization we build
That defines
And distinguishes us
From developing minds  
So ephemeral
Cognizance
Merely a product
Of permanently
Be the way
We were brought up
Despite how we nurture
That nature
To harm
Fortify self-defenses
And rapidly arm
For a conflict ensuing
To err with more fanfare
Than opposite sides
Can barely take stand where
The human decides

From provenance
To Providence  
To prominence
I rise
Among students
And teachers
And principled minds
But in mines
I’m the guy
On the line
Getting by
All the while
Unearthing
What we
Stratify

Without these machines
There can be no me
Earning
Consuming
Subsuming
The natural world
Burning
Through boundless renewable
Bits of pollution
But only more robots
Can find the solution
And solve the intractable
Heedless conundrum
The needless
Egregious excesses
Must come from
Some source of organic
Emotively
Sentience
But rust in its oil can
Tin man
Descendants

Know I should for many reasons
Know I want
For even more
To be with her
All around the world
And rest upon the shore
That we reclaim
From seeing favored
Futures
Critically endangered
In the face
Of nation states
And longer waits
To break the silence
Can we see ourselves as humans
Or just predisposed
To violence
And divided
Never have we been
Inclined
To be united
Just innately
Form equations
For salvations
We can hide in
So as much as this is me
The same as you
The same as we
I must confide in
Only one among us
Her
That I can rest my head
Goodnight in

Dispossessed
Disavowed
Distant
Disowned
Have no plot
Crops to rot
Or a place to call home
And so easily stripped
Of a dignified claim
To a decent
Affordable living
Sustained
When an honest mistake
Can outweigh
The successes
And failure gives way
To implacable stresses
Impresses upon me
The titles and deeds,
The smallholders,
The Monsanto millions
Of seeds
The uprooted
And ripped
From their ties
To its yield
The ones blighted
And bound
To its dream-
killing field
Countless casualties
Rendered
Mere renters
And tenants
Dependents
On wars
Of some lord’s
Independence

This bastion
Comes crashing
Dystopian
Social experiment
Taxing
So prone
To mob rule
To upheaval
Amassing
But passing that off
For empowered
Is lacking
If all that amounts
To each other
Attacking
And in the ensuing
Hysteric highjacking
Of lives
Livelihoods
And our whereabouts
Tracking
We back oligarchic
Solutions
Divided
Or seek an anarchic
Conclusion
Ignited

To me you’re all crazy
And I’m just the lazy one
Languish alone
Often talk to myself
Like a friend on the phone
As I watch you all
Frantically
Manically
Panicking
Planning
And scamming
Your lives
Micromanaging
Hyper-aware
You are barely
Apparent
And desperately try
To be not so
Aberrant
To fit in
And blend
And comply
Without end
In pursuit of delusions
Just playing pretend
The solution
The problem
Is how much you spend
But I know the price paid
We can’t hide from the grave
And I’ll take it to mine
As the one who’s depraved

And we will see it
In the advent
Of our children’s
Reveries
And we will bend the will of titans
Bring the muses
To their knees
We thee unseen
Consent decrees
Still issue warnings
Troopers storming
Terraforming
Free degrees
For privileged legacies
To breeze
And earn their progenies
With ease
And vested in
Investing in
The inclination
To exceedingly
Succeed
We will remind them
Of the trees
And of the people left to feed
For we are ample
By example
Will we will teach them how to lead

Crooked cronies crowing
For a fatter slice
Of pie
Murderous
The blood is flowing
Reservoirs
Are running dry
And all the while
Skying high
The eagle profits,
Cuts its losses
And makes turkeys
On Thanksgiving
With its guns
And burning crosses
And its greater
Costs of living
Of the doves
And hawks
The parrot squawks
Their dreams of being free
But from behind
A barred complex,
A nest,
A caged
Hypocrisy

In command of my heart
I was hers from the start
And in parting ways
Rendered
Alone in the dark
Off the mark
A few times
Out of sync
With the spark
That originates
Gravitates
Back to renewal
Like nuance
And novel
Gives pause to refuel
To in retrospect
Reconnect
Severed synapses
And then progress
Prosper
Rebuilding collapses
And tactics
For how we
Attack
And engage
Confrontation
Conflated with
Wars we must wage
Just a sudden deathmatch
To match
Mounting affronts
Like the salting of earth
And the growth that it stunts
We annunciate once
To the victor go spoils
With each escalation
But both of us fighting
Lose communication

Could be verge of all collapsing
On the brink of giving in
But when I get there
Weight is lifted
And the blissful can begin
And when I see it
Stand beside it
In bewildered
Awe-inspired
Is the restlessness
Of past transgressions
Finally retired
What transpired
Be it sordid
Or unfortunate
Or scary
Is diminished
To the minuscule
Minutiae  
That I bury
In the sand between my toes
The ebb and flows
The drift away
From all the gloom
Marooned again
Upon the solace shores I lay

Lost
Lost
My precious is lost
But it’s not like I need it
To increase the cost
But we’re tired of trying
Of dying inside
Every day
Keep it quiet
And I would’ve
Stood with you
Looked to you
Smiling
Should all come to ruin
Return to exiling
Ourselves when the end of us
Doesn’t instill
What we feel
What we fail to see
Ails us
Ill will
The molehill into mountains
Too steep to traverse
The adversity
Can’t overcome it
Immersed
In impersonal
All out assaults  
On our faults
When the love becomes hate
And we hurt
By default

Enraptured
Contraptions
Devices
Newfangled
As circuits and wires
In conflicts entangled
Move closer to further
From peace
Global order
To tech hubs and giants
Securing the border
With job loss creation
Dehumanized
States
And robotic connections
That make better mates
Than reciprocates
Costly emotion
Is worth
An economy
Planned
Obsolescence’s
Earth
In control
Of a streamlined objective
Uploaded
To all the collective mind’s
Function outmoded

Hero in
My own crusade
Delusion
Egoist charade
A cognitively
Dissonance’s
Madness
Is my serenade
And music to my ears
The fear of failure
I won’t live to see
Now spreading rapidly
Beneath the surface
Cut it out of me

When the answer
Is cancerous
Dancing with
Necromancy
My enchantress
Fragility
Life’s
Not so sacred
Encampment
And no academia
Harbors my kind
For the sickle
Anemia
Sharpens my mind  
And I put it right back
To the grindstone
Benign

Climbing up
To peaks with you
To float with you
Through space
Renew
The happiest places
From where they begin
All the stars in oblivion
Starting to dim
Reimagine
This moment
Illumined again
And in sickness,
In health
Be prepared
For the end

Nights like this
I’m with you
Still I miss you
Far away
The only one
Who lifts me up
And then adorns my days
In gray
And though we stray
Returning solely
To the city lights
Surrounding
All around us
Haven’t found us
Permanence
A place to stay

Now I can really
Stop caring
Thread baring
Regaining
My bearings
Imbalanced
Repairing
The damage I’ve done
Open wounds I’ve inflicted
The monster I’ve been
In my skin
Self-afflicted

But no one wants
Trauma
The triggers
The switches
The wounds
Never heal
Until buried
In ditches
And tearing at seams
Of the poorly sewn stitches
Cannot be resisted
When tragedy strikes
When the moment’s
Resurgence
Resurfaces plights
And when sickness ensues
And envelops the nights
It’s this desperate outcry
Silently
My pen writes

Couldn’t keep track
Looking easily back
Would’ve saved us the hassle
Of having to ask
Do we keep fighting battles
Or letting them pass
For imperfect
Uncertain
The surface is
Cracked
And meticulous
Faultless
Attention
To fixes
Just makes for mistakes
When it narrowly misses  
And left in the wake
Of our unfulfilled wishes
We target remarks
With deliberately
Vicious

They take a long march
And recruit
The downtrodden
Enforcing their farces
Then throw the whole lot in
The ring
Where the circus
Bespectacled
Beckons
The animals caged
Labor slaves
Win elections
Politicized weapons
Discounting the vote
And outsourcing
Offshoring
The capsizing boat
To some far-reaching
Not my backyard approach
Passes
The buck
To the bucket list
Kicked
Working classes

In these pages
I’ll awaken
What the world
Has long forsaken
I will mourn the loss
Of nature
In these pages
I’ll engrave it
I will tell her that I love her
Bear my soul
For all to share
And I will cover
In these pages
Reasons readers
Should beware
Of when too long
Bereft of pages
To engage in
My catharsis
I become instead
The words
Never preserved
Except in darkness

Amusement
Sport
And profit
No unconquered kings
Could stop it
It was something
In the water
In the wind
And in the trees
A sort of sorrow
That could lift you
Swiftly
Take your soul with ease
Though it is not
Until she leaves
Can you imagine
How she grieves
And claim the same innate
Despondency
Through all the fated
Weaves

Ravenous gluttons
It’s rather
Disgusting
Discussing this subject
Another taboo
Never mind
We’ve more wealth
Than we know what to do
And get used to
Consuming
Confusing
Desire
With need
As the greed
Transfers now
Through a wire

Brain begins to die  
Thinking only
You will die  
And the moment
That you know it
You implode in
Can’t deny
There is no waking to
Another day
Unmaking
Past mistakes
Too late
No chance to change
The minds of fate
When deemed
Condemned
To suffocate

Imagine her gone
Then from there
Make it work
Until therein
The revenant
Residents lurk
And its resonance
Echo this
Desperate
Directive
Return to me
All we once were
Irrespective
Of countless transgressions
Committed
As innocents
Victimless crimes
Become indolent mimes
In the incidents
Making themselves
All the time
Before ever there was
Such a thing
As a promise
To keep us instilled
In a pocket watch
Locket
So locked in
The notion
Emotions must profit
From some innate use
Of what one can provide
And if not
Well…
What good am I!?
Sweep me aside
If we cannot confide
Anymore
Then it’s clear
That the vision
Envisaged
Was further
Than near

Don’t take it personal
Illness is terminal
Turned us
Into
Something else
Indiscernible
From the non-verbalize
Gerbils
Still running
Around the unyielding wheel’s
Torturous fortune
Inside a vivarium
Social distortion
Where trickle down
Sustenance
Keeps us appeased
And whatever they feed us
Much sooner diseased
Ever farther from freed
We are just pets in hands
Of the gods of greed
Squeezed

But who’s up to the task
Of unmasking the past
If the present
Sets precedents
No questions asked
And in decadence
Basking away
In our trifles
We cling to beliefs
Like a tweet’s
Assault rifles
So happy to trigger
Emote manufactured
Contrived
Artificial
Pet issues
Have fractured
Our psyches
Identities
Loyalties
Turn
From the bastion we’ve built
To the bridges we burn

Don’t feel like ranting
Not up to romancing
For wallowing
Follows
The dread
Notwithstanding
When pictures of perfect health
Suddenly torn
And no ounce of this worthless wealth
Mourned or reborn
Just reformed by conformists
And status quo showmen
Adorned in a flag,
In a badge,
Or an omen
But I am the no-man’s land
Landless
Entrenched
And the working class man’s
Underserved
Ubermensch
Rent these tenements
Spent my inheritance
Running
Their social experiment’s
Most unbecoming
Extreme destitution
Supreme ideology
Keep heads enrolling
In highways of robbery
Move the mass media’s
Passive aggression
To cover up holes
In the history lesson
And therein I seek
But a nugget of truth
Among glorified
Stories
Alternative route
To the root of the problem
The root of all evil
Unequal
Behold it
Uprooting the people

So many fragile pieces
Of complexity
To puzzle
To perplex in
What the depths
Of my unrest
Prefer to muzzle
But uncovering
The smothering
Of all the fragments formed
In a more normalcy
Dysphoric
Inner-portrait
I have worn
Has sooner torn apart
Attempters
Be they temptress
Or dementedness
Of mind, they miss the frame
For the entire picture
Bigger than
My maddest
Scatter-brain

Do not bear
Fear
Or weary
My irrelevant existence
My request
You just reflect
My categorical indifference
Just admit it is
The best
Approach
To forming these attachments
Just confess
If we had never met
And memorized these fragments
Formed these habits
Would we have it?  
Or confabulate
A tragic
Would you even need
To know my name
Or tune it out like static?
For what actively
Is listening
But passively
Imprisoning
The confluence of ego
And emotion
In some other
And to oversee
Eventually
Imploding as their lover

Haven’t yet missed
Any more opportunities
Just those eluding me
Never discovered
Developed immunities
Foreign to others
Whose ignorance
Shifted
From bedlam
To bliss
As domestically
Terrorists
Click the death wish

So I say again
I haven’t missed
Any chances
To take aim
And place blame
On bandits of bandwidth
Reframing the digital aging
King’s gambits
But can’t reprimand
Can’t command
We clean house
If they’re making us sick
At the click of a mouse

So I reaffirm I
Do not shy
From my duty
Engage civically
But at times
Rather rudely
When only I venture
To censor
The nemesis
Silicon-based
Artificial intelligence  
Clickbait and switch
The code
Ode to dystopian
Cyberpunk’s pulse
To make nervous
The system
And watch it convulse

The room would shrink
And vanish
I’d be left alone
To panic
Into darkness
Closing in
Around me
Soon would I be banished
Feeling famished
For companionship
Bereft of love
A cancerous
Despondency
Would start to grow
Your warnings
Echo
Told you so
And knowing we
Had come so far
Learned to accept
The way we are
Discovered some
Profound compassion
Deep connection
Satisfaction
Just to see us
Overcome
By strife
Would render me
Undone

Free peoples
Inherently equals
In status
Yet countless “illegals”
Made sheep in the paddock
Like bouts of the measles
Proliferate panic
Dehumanized by
A contrived apparatus
To those who resist
Cognitive dissonance
Dissidents
Do we want peace
And security
Caged?
Or do we want a war
So unlawfully waged?
On the ways
We identify
Seek affirmation
The species
Is specious
Compared to
The nation

Let this be the one
That will resonate
Audibly
Spiriting me
To a tune
Of most longingly
Late at night
Wondering
Where it went wrong
How it fell apart
Leaving some
Discordant song
In its wake
In its aftermath
Probingly vexed
To have clearly foreseen
I would make such a mess
Of such otherwise
Soaring highs
Tidy and neat
Had it all figured out
Saw the journey
Complete
But remember
I reminisce
Flee to my reverie
Lest I forget
And let memories
Bury me

This city
The world
All the rest of it
Looms
Overbearing
Without me
Expelling its fumes
Into some atmospheric
Calamitous ends
Into globalist visions
Dystopian trends
A greenwashing campaign
A whitewashing the stain
A robotic performance
Of hypnotic fame
But society
Beckons me
Back to bemuse
In its melody
Maladies
Fallacy news
Except now it’s infused
With a glut of my
Truths
And whatever you like  
All subscribe to my views

Maybe this isn’t
Adroitness
A talent
My skill with a blade
Not as brave
Nor as gallant
As one who was made
In a penmanship palace
Imbalanced
My trade
Often deficits
Palates
And I am left just
A distasteful
Impostor
Recounting the ways
I’ve repeatedly
Lost her
And offer it all
To judgmental
Reviewers
Who learn me like
Pro bono
Poetry tutors

Memorize these names
It’s fame
Makes idols of iconoclasts
And critics of acclaim
And so we put them on
This pedestal
Then thin the ranks
To skeletal
Like skewed dysmorphic
Perfect
Happy endings
Unforgettable
But Oedipal
Complexes
Just neglect
Abusing youth
From when they’re groomed
To how they’re broomed
To independently
Produced
When the producer
The seducer
Just reduces them to dust
But not of stars
On boulevards
But merely objects of
Their lust

Out of sync lately
Mistakes have been
Gravely
Impacting
Exacting
More making us angry
But strangely
As yet
Undeserving as I
Of forgiveness
She still seems to find it
Inside
Amidst dissonance
Distance
Disdain
And decay
But there’s no one
I’d still rather see
Every day
I just have to preempt
And preclude
Provocation
Not merely accept
It as my
Inclination

Wandering
Squandering
When have I not
Failed to reach my potential
And mentally rot
In a caustic
Corrosive
Self-loathing
Moroseness
That worsens
The more
I’ve expended
Resources
Exhausted recourses
And letting her down again
Just reinforces
Alone
I can’t hurt
I can’t harm
I can’t hate
I can’t blame
I can’t claim
I am not the mistake

Like ghosts in the wind
Into formlessness thinned
Having dimmed
What illumined
Implores I rescind
From promissory
Thresholds
Committed to stay
But my history
Written
Retreating away
From conflictual fronts
Confrontation ramparts
And a battlefield
Littered
In withering hearts