Acknowledge
Confront it
Then bare its hide
Vanquished
Showcase
Its disgrace
And deliver its anguish
Unto
Any would be
Assailants
Make safe
Its estate
With a state
Of surveillance
Invest in its fear
Appears deep
Insincere
And then watch as
Its dissidents  
All disappear
By enabling
Its boastful,
Accomplished
Facade
Like the dread of death
Feels itself
Closer to God

It’s like time just elapses
I’m there in its passage
But absent
Somewhere unbeknownst
Is detachment
From make this a memory
Cherish serenity
Let it define
Reassign your identity
To the Book Facing
Erased
Interpersonal
Words left unsaid
Ever dread
Irreversible
Say your goodbyes
To the moment
And look
To the future
As if
You are now off the hook
For recalling
What made it
Indelible,
Sellable
Some crowning moment
Achievement
More credible

This is my home now
You taught me to seek it
To keep it
To teach it
And need be
To reap it
Of every last drop
Of its lessons refined
And its ocean’s
Emotions’
Unstable
Reminds
This is not paradise
40 million confined
This is not a utopian
Grandeur’s design
This is not an oasis
Of free-flowing rhyme
This is Wild West crime
Within Rome in decline
This is prices will rise
In the flames of the tides
And from not but a gleam
In the stream
Came the dream
And conceived
In its nightmarish traffic
I scheme

I’ve wandered more wastelands
Than care to admit
For to her
Omnipresence
I couldn’t commit
Just submit
To mirages
A hajj
Without faith
In messianic
Guidance
I can’t imitate
Like a wraith
Neither living
Nor dead
I remain
But a remnant
A mendicant
Staking his claim

Reputation precedes me
Proceeding to please
With perfunctory effort
And optimal ease
I relieve you of duty
And duly note when
You assign me a task
And a time to hit send
And my record yet
Still undefeated
But benched
Temporarily
Permanent role
Method acting entrenched
Yet I’d sit here all day
Representing my squad
Though my cause
All works out
I’m still tragically flawed

Let it elapse
Watch it flashing right past
Before eyes
Mystified
At the days gone
Aghast
At how so much has changed
Even more
Stays the same
And I’m older than
Ever before
I became
Mortal man
In his fallible
Fallacy
Folly
He thinks himself tall
Falls for her
Out in Bali
Enthralled
By he finally found
What he sought
Although not even
Actively looking
He taught
All he could
Still remember
Not quite a contender
For any awards
Except bested surrender
With fervor
Befitting
A fiery sermon
And still retrofitting
The Fates
I determine
With what I envision
Revision,
Rewrite
And reclaim every page
Like a thief in the night

Maybe not yet
Couldn’t be the right time
If we haven’t quite met
Is it safe to define
This romantic
Semantically
Not ascertained
As rhetorically
Verbally
Just unexplained
Inundation
Of all too forgotten
Emotion
Feels more like a promise,
A vow,
But unspoken
For now
There is day in
Day out
Demonstration
You give me a reason to live
Ideation

Who fathoms
Such fell
Otherworldly
Monstrosities
Pray tell the master
Of cosmic
Hypotheses
Inter-dimensional
Overlords  
Reigning
Unyielding,
Unbound
By these pages containing
The secret to death
And its infinite ominous
Dominance
Bottomless
Is the oblivion
Marking my provenance
Summon calamity gods
In my godlessness
Vaunted to prominence
In the abstract
Science-fiction
Addiction
Dark matters
Of fact

Undoubtedly real
Just can’t make it here
And ending up
Back on the streets
Is my fear
Weary-wandering
Squandered
My last tachyon
Of potential
Resentment incarnate
To her
Detrimental
Eventually
Anchored to love’s
Codependency
Pulling the petals of lust
Incrementally
Just a few thoughts
Inescapably
Lingering
Confidence slain where it stands
And I’m hindering
Any constructive
Deduction
Mistaken
Like prodigal sons
Of the oneness
Forsaken

A wrathful
Shameful
Sordid soul
My sole objective
Lose control
No goal I haven’t yet
Achieved
Except forget her face
Aggrieved
When my temptation
Can’t resist
Alluring me into the midst
Of dissolution’s
Weather vane
I wither in
The acid rain
And can’t contain
The desert thirsting
Don’t come closer
Bubble bursting
Worst of all
My uses few
Eschew from trying
Something new
If all it costs
Is gainful time
Another daily
Nickel
Dime

Beginning anew
Passing through
The old haunt
Where I’d go for 8 hours
Of status to flaunt
But all based
On white collar
Delusions of class
Signaling that my virtue
Could for purpose pass
Though the truth was
My uses were few
And far cries
From the life that I wanted
To lead
In disguise

Could call it karma
Whatever that is
Could’ve easily lost it
With nothing to give
Left to show
For myself
Just keep playing the game
With the hand I’ve been dealt
But I’m tired of drawing
Unusable cards
And then building my house
Of collapsing glass shards
And graveyards
Are unearthing
The rest of this piece
In my rest in peace
World hunger
Selfishness feast
But I have to come first
On my list of priorities
Tamed and coerced
By the proper authorities
Warring
And *******
And snoring
Like boars
As the gunman just walks through
The school’s open doors

Aggravation
A waste of a day
I’m irate
Had to pay
For a test
That I failed
To equate
To necessity
Prerequisite
Need to know
How to drive this car safely
To stop
And then go
Now I go even slower
More cautious
Each turn
When approaching
The limit
No rubber to burn

And there through the balcony window
Appeared
Such a beast
As the devil himself
Could revere
And it said unto me
A most cryptic refrain
In increasing vexation
I scared it away
But the next
Lonely night
It returned
To its menace
All perched
In the lurch
Echoing
Of my penance
And as I paced
Pensively
Gleaned its
Propensity
To follow me
With its eyes’
Dark immensity
Piercing
Most fiercely
My hollowed out core
Its now resident
Resonant
Cry
Nevermore

See all their faces
They all disappear
Then I’m here
Retrospectively
Counting the years
Where they went
Where they go
Never know
Grow apart
For however ephemerally
Had my heart
In their clutches
Caresses
Embraces
Misplaced
What we felt for each other
Like markings erased
But it makes
Perfect sense
Every time
Looking back
Couldn’t perfectly
Change
For each other
Exact

Getting the hang of this
Loosening noose
Of this not worth my salt
By default
My excuse
No more use
It’s defunct
A debunked
Absolute
To be what I aspire
An alternate route
Is available
Offered
Contained
In her text
And I anticipate
And await
What comes next

We get up
We work
We in darknesses
Lurk
We of earth
We forget
We were stars
Before birth
We revert to
Desert
One another
In peril
We civilized people
Prefer to be feral
And where all the wild things go
We reload
And we bode
Of extinction
Instinctively
Sown
We are harvesters
Harbingers
Of the undoing
Pollutants,
Intoxicants,
Blood debts accruing
Our own bitter end
Our untimely demise
We are all
That the known universe
Can surmise
And perhaps we are fallen,
Condemned,
Walking dead
But in fight for our life
We are thee
Watershed

Put all these languages
Into my own
Yet still can’t seem to find
The right words
That have shown
What she means to me
Meant to be
Not ascertained
But intuited
Nonetheless
Just unexplained
How it falls into place
How for thirty plus years
Unaware of her face
Now I see it in waking
In dreaming
Embracing
Perhaps the remainder
Of no more retracing
My steps
When the next
Foot in front of me
Guides me
To her course correct

World is imploding
I’m stuck in it droning
Unknown to it still
In this quest
Of disowning  
So long ago
Left
Dispossessed
Was my message
Until homelessness
Was my lonely
Last vestige
Of clinging to
Abnormally
Non-conformity  
Lost in the scale, scope and skies
Of enormity
Mourning my
Torn in two
Unification
The love that once lived
To rue days of forsaken
Awakening
Sum of my fear
Contemplation
And dwelling no further
In its ruination

Try to write
Something else
Anything different
An inkling appears
And is gone in an instant
With her at the fore
Frontal focus
Fixation
My typical
Ritual
Excogitation
Deflates
Dissipates
And creates instead
This
Then updates the thread
Waiting
The taste of her kiss
My escape from debating
Domestic abyss
Is replaced
And embraced by
It’s her that I’m with

The only road left is
A lonely rogue leftist
Still cast as the shadow,
The villain,
The foil
The salt in the wound
Seeping into
The soil
To render the once arable
An unbearable
Barren wasteland
Sleight of hand-
Written parable
Barely still stand
For a national anthem
Would rather invade
All your mansions
And ransom
The sycophants’
Cancerous
Cancel campaign
Can’t explain
The disdain
For disparity’s reign
And still stained
In its tainted
And vitiated
Lizard brain
Becomes colder
And more calculated  
A numbers game
All I will pay to play
These days
The rest is just
Lack of success
Instant replays

Illogic illusion
Construct it with me
Needn’t be
Any less
All too real
Fantasy
Than two people who care
He is here,
She is there
And no distance could sever
The bond that they share
Never dull
Or diminish
The moment
They hold it
Refuse to let go
Without gripping too tightly
And fall for each other
In writing it
Nightly

And then I’m without her
The nights all about her
And for
Never could
In sincerity
Doubt her
Just write that I found her,
Somehow still astound her
She whirls in my world
Revolution to crown her
Revolving perpetually
All around her
As down as I get with it
In disarray
She’s the order I take
To keep chaos at bay
And in grim disposition
Illuminates gloom
When I ruminate life
Like an unfulfilled tomb
A foresight panoramic
Enamors my manic
My thoughts of her
Peace
On a beach
In a hammock
A breeze
Overseas
Through some kind of connection
The next step along
My pursuit of progression

One single word
Didn’t think
Much of it
But decisive it proved
Nonetheless
Not to split
All too soon
Long before
We could ever be sure
This is what we both want
To desist searching for

Yet to be gainful
If anything painful
The way that it made me
Too smart for my good
Now I can’t seem to do
Anything
Others would
For potential
Ambition
Or just the objective
Rent check
And utilities
Maybe a pension
I’m just apprehensive
Another failed test
I excelled in the class
But forgot all the rest
When the glass sky impressed
Upon me
Other visions
And making a living
Was suddenly
Prisons
Sooner the grave
Than careers in decay
Student debt
And degrees
Dust collecting
Display

But what’s there to be
In this ruinous Union
Delusional dreaming
Condition subhuman
Expected to serve
Undeserving
Indulgence
And deify wealth
In submissive exultance
Repulsed by its decadence
Still can’t resist
The acquisitive urge
To of status consist
When I move into
Home ownership
And foreclose
On the anti-establishment
Questions I pose
For convenience secured
And insured
Is the move
That they want you to take
To consent
And approve
To whoever they put
On the stage’s
Charade
To persuade us
To trust
Fund another crusade

Now we
Can get back to
Discussing
Entrusting
Removing the time wasted
Spent over lusting
It’s just
You I want
Feel you won’t
Run away
Hope I don’t
Make you doubt me
With something I say
Or more often
It’s technically written
In stone
I’ve been too long
Avoiding
Not being alone

And now it comes crashing
Again
It’s like clockwork
A couple months in
And for her
It does not work
A lot left to question
Like why the charade?
Was it all just pretentious
Emotions conveyed
Seemed authentic
Assurances
Future projection
Romanticization
I know it,
I felt it
This time it was different,
She listened,
She cared,
Let me speak
She would seek
To see more of me
Bared
Unaware as it went
By along
Seemingly
To be both what we wanted
Indefinitely
But it’s me
Who can’t seem
To be all she would need
When it’s all said and done
They eventually leave

Let’s take a few months
Of this getting to know you
The real me,
You feel me
Explicitly told you
Withholding no side
Of the life I’m about,
Yet despite your acceptance
The lingering doubt
Unexpressed,
Just suppressed
Now you choose to address it
Is not what you want
Anymore
So why press it?
At all
Any further
Your choice is made
Done
I’m just sorry
I’m not what you want,
Not the one

What lonely compels us to do
Is confounding
I found you expelled
From my calling
Resounding
Still digging last ditch
Shots at loveless
Rebounding
Again and again
To right back
Where I started
Just build me up,
Tear me down
Lost and discarded
Like yesterday’s trash
Or a plastic-packed
Rapper
My self-esteem feels
Like the sight of a crapper
For useless would be
Understating the I,
Can’t do anything right
Don’t know why even try
Just decry
The society
Blame its elites
For this disparate wealth
World of likes and retweets
And I just can’t participate,
Work to keep paying,
Keep buying,
Keep spending
Keep ethos-betraying
Unless there is reason enough
To submit
But without any logical course
You are it

How could someone so far
Feel so close
Within reach
Like I’m already next to her
Down on the beach
And each day
Through destabilized life
Disarray
She is my equilibrium
Song that I play
The insightful awareness
Her fairness
Inherent
She sees me in ways
Not so often
Apparent
Unerring
Assessing
The depths of my mind
And repairing
Its faulty
Default
Out of time
For with her
There is more to be spent
In progressing,
Improving,
Correcting
Recursive transgression
A reason to stay
When I’d much rather leave
Broken dreams
She awakens
As yet to achieve
Not aggrieved,
Nor consigned
To no chance to attain
And as long as she’ll have me
With her
I remain

Was there in a former life
Mighty,
Exalted
Convictions
Ambitions
To pantheons vaulted
Me up to ascending
Empyrean visions
But lost my place
Somehow
To squalid conditions
Returned to the soil
To toil
And labor
And sharpened my edge
Of depravity’s razor
Sharp intellect
Circumspect
To be applied
For it only would yield
Fallow earth
Deified

Wish this was you
I was texting to
Speaking to
Worst case scenarios
Silently
Seeping through
As the time passes
Between us amasses
A chasm so vast
When you still appear active
On apps we’re not using
For more than each other
Exclusively choosing
To see where it leads
Without squandering options
Though limiting mine
When I’m locked in these clock-ins
A coffin too early
To bury me in
If you go
And I’m left
Devastated again

Don’t settle just yet
For the easy way out
The perfunctory effort’s
Diminished amount
Of concerted
Reverted to
Just getting by
Such a welcoming trap
To succumb to and die
Having never affirmed
Your invalid credentials
To still go unlearned
Your holistic potential
With no differential
To make you unique
Clocking in again
Out again
9-5 sheep

Dynamics are changing
The time zones estranging
Decreased frequency
Of these letters exchanging
But maybe it’s me
All too idle
Anxiety
Fearing the worst
She’ll be saying goodbye to me
Unworthy urchin
In lurches
I try to be
Calm and collected
Composed
And aloof
But to lose what this is
Would be rain with no roof
Would be my
Heavy heart
With no burden of proof
Although not as if there
Ever were
Guarantees
Just a world away girl
And a boy’s
Fantasies

Best to get something out
Jot it down
Make it sound
Pleasantly
Melody
Kept in sequential
With rhymes
Undefined
Undiscovered potential
Is all I intend with this
Penmanship ******
The trend-setting ends
And I never remember
How far from her gone
I became
Me unmade
And in hindsight
Proceed
Onward in
Retrograde

We’ve mastered
Being busy
Being everywhere
But here
For in the now
Is seldom ever
Where we wanted to appear
Just something
Somewhere
We all more or less
Agree is good advice
But when we’re planning for the future
Overlook
The paradise
And present danger
Still contains her
Out of mind
And out of sight
So don’t pretend
To be awareness
Sanctimonious at peace
With every moment
In its passing
Without thinking what to eat
It all comes next,
It’s imminence,
It’s take it all away,
Within an instant
And you dread it
And regret it in dismay
When I emerge from the unsettled
Boiling kettle’s
Piercing shriek
I am the gravest warning
Storming
In your current lack of sleep

Here’s where kindness fails you
When the personal
Ordeal
Becomes too burdensome to bare
When you’re aware
What it reveals
About your character’s
Concealed and obfuscated
Tragic flaw
When insecurity detains you
In its most disordered law
Just look around
And think
How many
Could you benefit
But choose
Instead to isolate yourself
In inner-workings it includes
But yet excluding
Who the closest
Of among you’s
You can trust
For in your back
Sooner or later
The betrayal shall be ******

A reason to make my life
More than a failure
A letter per day
I just don’t have to mail her
Provides for enough time
To gather my thoughts
She’s the light in the dark
When I’m lonely and lost
And like frost
In the presence of heat
She flows through me
Infuses with my
Inner muse
And subdues me
Renews expiration
Of my daily dose
When I’m close to succumbing
To what I dread most
It’s this notion
She’s far more awoken,
Accomplished,
And down by the ocean
I’m drowning in conflict
Could she be
The years that remain
Or in vain
Will my wholehearted efforts
Eventually wane

This was all I wanted
All I hoped could be for me
But you just took it
And removed it
From my every reverie
And never see me
In this place again
Dispose of me like trash
And then you look me in the eye
And lie
With each pretentious slash
Across my face
Erase my stasis
Back to basics
I was making
Only more of
Complications
When you looked at me
Could feel the tension
Churning aggravations
All too late for me
To state my place
Embrace the wasted spaces
I have occupied too long
Belonging
Only to the void
And in the shadow
Of your banishment
My future is destroyed

It’s not what defines me
This box that confines me
Resigned in acceptance
Complacency
Finds me
Remind me this was
What I did
Who I am
Is a kid
Growing up
To be more than a man
What I can do is write
In control of my thoughts
Not sit still for 8 hours
In nevermore sought
From this life that I lead
That I fail
To achieve
That I keep being me
And could anytime leave
But she keeps pulling back
Is the reason I stay
And the ease in which I
Come awake the next day

Don’t circle back
Nor derail off the track
When you come around
Seeking
The answers I lack
For to be
Is to think yourself
Universe-centered
And few could but fathom
The others I’ve entered
Demented
And tempted
By lovers lamented
Extents to which most
Only ghost me
Preventing

I’m thrashing
And moshing
And flailing around
On my blades
Like a stray
Rabid dog in a pound
Like I’m not in control
Of my feet on the ground
And I hammer it down
A clenched fist
Of the left
And deflect
Away bullets
Still visiting death
Upon youth of the nation
Our future,
Our pride,
And I silently roar out
The anger inside
Let the wind in my eyes
Hide the liquidized
Pain
And then bang on the drums
In my
Morning migraine
All the while
My cardiac
Under arrest
I refuse to take rest
Until this is expressed
So let muses
And Titans
And furies
Converge
And confer
Upon me
Metal gods
To secure
Today’s victory,
Triumph,
Prevail over all
For henceforth
And forever
The empires fall

Need something stronger
A little bit longer
To last
When I’m passed
The returning to
Older me versions
I stashed
In a baggy of buggy
Feel creepy and crawly
Bizarre human oddity
God in its folly

Just leave me some other
Lifeline
In decline
I don’t care about money
Just keeping what’s mine
Since I know that I earned it,
I burned it
And spurned it
Rejected inheritance
Merits
And turned it
All into
A big
Ashen pile
Of cash
And then patched it all up
When I needed it back

She only exists
In the app
Other world
As of now
Can’t be sure
She is even a girl
But her genuine
Words are heartfelt
And sincere
And each day I look forward
To having her here
On this phone,
On this screen
As of now
Just a dream
In the meantime
Becoming my
Daily routine
To engage
And write letters
A digital age
Sort of courtship
Attempt
To find love far away

This ones about her
Never were
Quite together
The girl I could say nothing to
And upset her
No better for it
Left with nothing to show
And now haunted I drown
In her overshadow
But I take away nights
I could write her
Illumined
Exhumed
From her echoing chambers
Entombed in
The trauma,
The drama,
The anger
Consuming
Us both
Without hope
We were just passing through
She was seeking subordinates,
People to use
I romanticized
Her broken heart
As my muse
But still couldn’t add up
All the factors divided
To solve the equation
With secrets confided
Can only sustain
The facade for so long
For we both preferred love
Buried in a sad song

Don’t take it personal
Versed in rejection
It’s like they expect
A Prince Charming
Perfection
A text or two
Too much to ask
I guess, right?
You’re too busy
I get it,
Forget it,
Goodnight
It was so nice to meet
Alter ego you
Screening
Each struggle for power
Has some deeper meaning
We know what we want
Of course
Only one thing
A committed,
Submitted,
Indefinite fling

Edge of depravity
Habits
Are forming
I’m working
In circles
My night
Is the morning
And more
Appeals only
To substance abuse
My ambition
Is solely
Not yet to the noose
For tomorrow
Might see her
Appear on my screen
In some semblance
Of my
Serendipity dream

Remnants of
The overvoid
My life in ruins
Search destroyed
Employed for now
The tide is rising
All the other me’s
Disguising
In benign
Behind the mask
And still with tact
I teach the class
Can’t grasp
The concept
Seems bereft
Of all makes sense
I am the left
Adept in method
Head parades
Returning home
From my crusades
I bade farewell
Expelling daily
Agents of lament
Unmade me
Never saved a soul
At peace
Just wrote it like
The Ancient Greeks