Take your best shot
I’ll await the sales pitch
But a purchase for me
Is a matrices’ glitch
And unless it reads
Resting witch face
On the shades
You can count me out,
Just browsing…
Maybe some trades
If you’re open to bartering,
Make me an offer,
Actually,
Just leave
The keys
To the coffer

Keep to myself
No one else
Understands
What goes on in my head
And the thought it demands
To maintain equanimity
Synergy with
The divisive,
Conflictual  
Other me rift
Still adrift
Doesn’t want to be found
Or befriended,
Coerced into making his family
Extended
Would rather end such
A delusional journey
With no lessons learned
Except I was unworthy
Of love,
Happiness,
A career,
And a home
Just abandoned all hope
And embraced die alone

Did you really think
Making it
Finding it
Easy
Just comes to you naturally
Gifted from god
But remember
You’re out here
Exposing the fraud
Not applauding the fake
Till you make it
Free trade
See right through
The duplicitous
Profit charade
Under guises
Devising
Their statement of mission
Proselytization
New world
Imposition
Of ordered
Conforming
Adhere
And obey
I remain the untamed
Feral dog day
Astray

Self-induced ego boost
Write me a line
Reassure me
I’m meant to be
Flawed by design
Not deficiency,
Defect,
Disorder,
Distortion
Of problems unsolved
And blown out of proportion
Too often with me
I get tangled in dread
Inundated with angst
And then wish I was dead
So remind me
Alive
Still has reason to care
And apparently
Still
To keep dreaming
Will dare

If it comes to
The crumbs
Boring holes into boxes
And slipping away
Undetected
Then toxins
Are all it will take
To be rid of me
Finally
Just like the vermin
Exterminate
Quietly

Was I somebody
Or somebody’s pawn?
Just a piece in a game
Making moves
Moving on
Now it’s gone
Either way
The potential career
The commute,
The computing
White collar veneer
The appearance of wealth,
Status boost,
Middle class
Just delusions of grandeur’s
Next vanity mask
But I wanted it
Fond of its
Ease and convenience
So much I romanticized
Crowning achievements
Would seamlessly
Elevate me
To positions
Where fullest potential
Ambitions
Envisioned
Perfection expected
Realistically proven
But failure again
Pens the bitter conclusion

Does everyone
Wandering in
My direction
Provide me a reason
For more self-reflection
A lesson,
A reason,
Was this meant to be
Fail to see
How it all happens
Naturally

Failure still clings to me
Brings me
Downtrodden
By a deluge of self-pity
Patterns am sodden
Like just when I’ve nearly
Transcended the summit
I slip and instead
Into rock bottom
Plummet
Come climbing again
Under breath
Mutter curses
The boulder I roll up the *****
Is these verses
Reversals of fortune
Are my second nature
Ingratiated
To the ill omen stranger  
Familiar has it become
Plotting
And scheming
Untimely demises
Of childish dreaming
Refusing to let me
Succeed,
Persevere
I fear all I will ever
Amount to
Is clear
Just a good for not
Spot
On forgotten,
Unknown,
Unfulfilled,
Unaccomplished,
And dying alone

Searching for
Edification
Relation
Not only
Have so much in common
Elation
I guarantee you and I
Aren’t so similar
Maybe I’m salt
And you taste more like vinegar
But
Just because
They go great
When together
Does not mean they should be
Tongue-tipping forever

Whole world is burning
And I just got fired
When did I become
Prone to failing
And mired
In following orders
To still no avail,
For surely some side effects
By compare
Pale
To this ghastly affliction
Still plaguing me thus
I am just
Never good enough
To the side brushed
Like the dust in the wind
Except worth even less
When I clean up my act
I just make a worse mess
Of performances
Albeit standards are high
And at times seem impossible
Why even try

Go back to
The only known place
You were raised in
From living so long
Out beyond
Deprivation
Of homeliness sentiment
Homelessness tenement
Sleep in the sediment
Weather is inclement
Never the sun
In the sky
When you need it,
Just
Overcasted out
Reasons to leave it

Ensnare with my arrogant hair
Barren gorgons
And arid wastelands,
Robber barons,
And Mormons
Alike
And still stormin’
The shores,
Waging wars
Then awaiting the swarm in...
Ignoring the warnings,
Invade any brain draining
Third world conforming
To get back on track,
On the road,
To the beacon
The opportune nest,
Restive garden of Eden
Distribute it evenly,
Plunder its troves,
Then enrichment,
Conscripting
Its voters in droves
I convince the invincible
Youth to support us,
And bury the gentry
Who choose to abort us
Beneath what their legacy
Formerly claimed
A hegemony over
The soldiers enchained
‘Gotta cavalry charge
Of the labor force
Horses
And infantry drones
Who have grown so remorseless
So prone to divorces
Their arguments formed
In a silence’s moment
When omens of showmans
Class clash
Is the act
I remind the fine-diners
Of how to react
To the change
They don’t want
To result from the bill
Like hypocrisy
Eats,
But can’t stomach the ****

What claimants
In vain
Challenge my
Right to reign
Over pages’
Precipitous,
Outpouring pain
You’re in my domain now
So sit back
And shut up
And just simply stop reading
When you’ve had enough

And how do you plan
For the end of the world
Hold the ones
Dearest near you
Embrace the undying
No fear
Just adhere to
The deathless defying
For never were we
Even here
To begin with
And back to the same
Non-existence
Relinquish
Illusions so long
Our identities formed
In anarchical nothingness
Shall be reborn

Look a bit deeper
Allow it to settle
Keep delving down further
Keep testing your mettle
For some day soon
Chances to prove it
Ensue
But may lose you
Could pass you right by
Never knew
Your potential
Intrinsically
No more,
No less consequential
Than hundreds of
Millions untold
Lifeless stories
You had all these dreams,
Aspirations,
But worries
Seemed always
To permeate floodgates
Of keep the gray days away
Dreadful at bay
Let it get to you,
Get you down,
In that state
Stay

Bury it now
After nights of conversing
The warning signs
Clearly laid out
In immersing
Yourself
In a cyclical
Mute repetition
Refute only what
Is unjustly
Contrition  
For we in our outpouring
White guilt and shame
Cannot take anymore
But still buy it the same

As if it mattered
Colored lives
When nothing in the world
Survives
She’s taken
Great
At this rate I
Have only stake in
Yet to die
No reason to report
To work
To have the boss
Impugn my worth
Incentive’s solely
Meager pay
Misplaced ambition
Power play
Some day I could be
In control
But don’t get fired
Is my goal
For now
And patiently preside
Over the wasted,
Bided time
Until she stands
And cracks a smile,
Asks to use
Some stupid file
All the while
Unrequited
How she makes me feel
Ignited

Vile urchin
Always searching
Never seems
To know
Himself
Cant play the hand of cards
He’s dealt
Everyone else
Is unaware
How garish fanfare
Everywhere
Spares no expense
To steal their minds
As his just constantly
Rewinds

Stay the same
Let me learn
In burning
Let me turn
Insane
In vain discerning
Love is made
Where none now dare
To enter pain
I see her smiling
At me
Widely
Wildly gleaming
In her eyes
Betrays she might
Assume disguise
To try me on for size
Fits all
To please her
Beckon call

Trusted
Can you be
Not some day
Disgusted
By who me
Is currently
Trying to
**** with
How long before you
Growing old
Place the blame
On the gray
Eats your face away,
Love me the same?
Could you still
Find a pill
That would will it to power,
Coax me from the shell
When I’m tepid and dour
As I become
Who I can’t hide anymore
The two facets,
A *******’s
Pacifist
Casket
Denotes composition
Of journalist dissidence
Thought that was your job
Then how did it get to this?
Lack of communicative
Former kids
In idyllic
Umbilical cords
Severed from
What the last plane attached them to
Back to you come

Goodnight to
The rest of the world
As it wakes
The earthquakes
Somewhere far
From what stake
I have left in it
Anymore
None left to gamble
I placed my faith
Too long
In peoples’
Preambles
To flawed constitutions
Consistently
Riddled
With holes in the plot
And foundations of brittle
Collapsing,
En massing,
Unrest in the streets
With the corners
And shadows
No scraps left to eat
An effete
Feeble tenuous
State
Disingenuous
Promises make
Us look more
Like the terrorists

Should get back to writing
Now quiet
The mind
But instead
I make boisterous
Tumults inside
There’s no way
She’s not taken
Don’t even try
Save it
For some other
One in a billion
Vicissitudes
Pass through my life
And expect me not
To confuse
Fate with coincidence
Once again
Increments
Come and they go
What remains
Is eventually I
Start all over
A gains

These national
Rations
Don’t cut it for me
So I take my fair share
Indiscriminately
It gets dim in here
Sometimes
But moonlighting in
Is the ravenous
Werewolf
At home in his skin
As the rest of flesh
Crawls
At the crack of his grin
In the back of his grimacing mind
Pulls the pin
And explodes ego overloads
Headiest spin
Still forewarned
Have the vanquished
In desperation
Formed against him,
A last ditch’s
Coalition

But have failed
Every time
Tried to match his travails
With a pales in comparison
Devil details
Get the gist?
His hiss kisses
With stone cold abyss
He’s the nail in the wrist
Of your Christmas wish list
And he first gave the Satyr
The paper to burn
And he first tabled
Time revolutions
A turn

As you gawked
At flaw-stricken
Bird paradise feathers
He tinkered
With weather
To build you an ark
And when questioned
His genius
Just witty remarks
I’m the sleight of hand,
Smoking gun,
Shot in the dark
I’m The Engels
Revved engines,
Red vengeance of Marx  
And still shark any bullet
With frenzied
Aggression
Then just as swift
Teach you
Its history lesson

Push me to the brink
Deprive me
Mired in despondence
Drive me
Mad with grief,
Forlorn,
Rejected
Feed me nothing
But regressive
Failure
Cast me out
Alone,
Bury me
Away
Unknown
Forget I ever lived
At all
Delete
The writing on the wall
In shadows of
This urban sprawl
Resourcefully
To bed I crawl
And ever wake
Another day
Adapting to
The disarray
As if some kind
Of wild creature
Streamlining
My body
Sleeker
Weak at times
But mark my words
If need be I devour herds
Then seeking my next meal
Reveal
The rest
As hungry
As I feel

At this point
I’d settle
For cliché rose petals
Still plucked and discarded
For wine bottle revels
In nights we spend days
Barely seeing each other
The difference it makes
Is estrangement as lovers
But I have still yet to uncover
The veil
When I try to discover
What’s under
I fail
To see why
We so gallantly,
Typically,
Think we must strive
To prove all of mankind
Is affirmed
By a bride

When reaching the brink
Take a step back and stare
At the rest of the world
To remind me to care
A bit less
About frivolous nonsense at work
One more email detail
That I miss
Isn’t worth
The discouraged,
Demoralized,
Downright
Defeatist
Default to disdain
For these office elitists
When it
Isn’t perfectly preened,
Polished etiquette
Judgment and drudgery
Dress-rehearsed rhetoric
Better yet
Let me explain
My mistakes
At a pace
All too hasty
And cutting the brakes
On the full speed ahead
Destination soon dead
And the tire treads’
Only distraction
Is dread
That I’m digging my grave
Where I’m building my home,
That I’m going in circles
Where I used to roam

Grim as I’ve ever been
Waiting to die
Though at times
I may smile
I’m faking behind
The misfortune,
A most sordid
Torturous
Malady
Sounds like a job
For a cubicle salary
Spare me the lecture
On empathy
Drained
Enervated
Until my last nerve
Have I feigned
My last drop of compassion’s
Communicate brew
Until leave me alone
Is the obvious clue
Leading you to discover
However you feel it
Does positive, negative
Really reveal it
Or just make it more
Difficult to explain
We’re all narcissists
Analyze this
Ego brain

Want to see
How the filthy rich live
Before I
Should become one
Myself
Rather die
Than comply
With the status quo notion
Of progress
Achieved
Only set in slow motion
And masses aggrieved
When appeasement has failed
And the stimulus spent
When the city upscaled
Can’t afford to pay rent
When the gentry
Carte Blanche
Becomes staunchly imposed
On the food insecure
Still ensuring their homes
Built atop the displaced
The eviction note’s
Victimless crime
Is eraced

There must be the end
Of the darkest tranquility
Silently,
Virally,
Into senility
Spiraling into
A bottomless
Pit
From the tempest tirades
I created the glitch
And a twitch into selfishly normalcy’s
Itch
In relinquished resistance
To actively
Passively
Still in existence
Oppose it,
Expose it,
Reveal its facades
And bring structures
To crumble
Like Titans
To gods

That’s me in despair
Over there
All alone
Been around the world over
Still finding my home
Among those who saw profits
Exported ‘em on
Made it spread
Out in rockets
And then
It’s the dreaded
Undead
Picking pockets
The stock market’s
Bloc chaining
Gangs on the docket
The gains
Are net losses
The reign
Draining brains
To reclaim
The forgotten,  
Abandoned,
That we propagate
For some other gods
Means of controlling
Create
Like the state
Regulating
The hate speech
It deems
To be anything but
In compliance
With dreams

We can bask in our hedonist excess at will
We can ****
Any life
We deem lesser
With skill
And yet still
We are capable of
Inner peace
I know all of you’ve
Felt it
As happy at least
To be not so
Materially
Predisposed
Or to claim to have
Earned it some way
Undisclosed

Typical, miserable
Modern life listical
Sticky note overload,
Stuck in a
Cyclical
Course of correction
Yet barely
Dirigible
Sense of direction
I aim for perfection
But always fall short
Through disorganized
Scatterbrained
Thoughts have to sort
Through the stress-induced fog
To dispel the despair
And repair it with
Documents left to prepare
For performance evals
And a palace of somber
Senescence
Deep into the night
Do I ponder
And wonder how much
Longer, I must endure
An existence in which
Only loveless allures
Me to strive for the end
Of the infinite
Endlessness
Watching the world
Melt away
Like my sentences
Leak on the page
Of polemicist rhetoric
Nobody cares
So I drain it of sentiment
Grin and I bare
The next day’s
Falling tenement

Nowhere left
You need to go,
Nothing left
For you to know
Impermanence
If lingered on
Too long before its
Once upon
A time
Will leave you wishing
Wells
What dwells within
The seven hells
Can only be
Conceptual
The prose
Of intellectuals
And literal
Is critically-acclaimed
The fame and fortune
Game
The influence is everywhere
Original was never there
So stare intently
Into it
Abyss
I am
The nothingness

Admire not always
Equating desire
I wanted to hear you
Appear to conspire
Against me
Preemptively tempting
Descent
Reinventions
Of tempestuousness
Lament
Unrelentingly
Holding me under,
Asunder,
Inside
In your presence
As placid as thunder
No wonder I stumbled
In humbling hubris
You needed no man,
Little boy,
And you knew this
Exuded it
True to your word
From the horse’s mouth
Thinnin’ the ranks
Of the herd
And that one’s for you
Out there
Without me
Succeeding
Exceedingly
Stick to your guns
Without bleeding
And that’s where the peace became
Nothing remains,
I would bathe
In a river of it
To reclaim
Your attentive
Retention
Of my complete
Sentience
And still even now
Can’t complete a whole sentence

Tye-dying tycoons
With the blood on their hands
They deceive us,
Then leave us,
The really Bad Lands
Still abandoning kids
As if
Domestic terror,
To hawk and dove
F-22’s of a feather
All silent on climate
In inclement weather
All wires and viruses’
Six second tethers
To whether or not
There’s an ocean on fire,
A sickened sphere
Nearing
Its next Dallas Buyer
To coax the illusion
Of culture supreme
Propagating its art
Like the seed in the stream
So concede all your dreams
To the fascist fact-actory
Watch the facade of god
Build the ol’factory
Sense of the dollars and cents
In the hacking spree,
Even your stocks
Aren’t safes
When the state
Has already cracked codes
Of your mind,
Calculate

Not into this night
Rather write it
Away
But instead I’m reviewing
This life
Pressing play
To resume
Repetitions
Of watching it go
Passes by
In an instance
Each aspect,
Component of me’s
Been relinquished
I look through the glass
But what’s looking back
Different
And it
Doesn’t recognize me
Anymore
Reminiscent of only
The mask that he wore

Another night
To roam alone,
Reclaim my ronin
Ego throne
I came a long way
Just to learn
In solitude
Could not discern
With certainty
I would return
To once a month
Day offers
Coffins
As my will
To power
Softens
Glossing out
The fanciful
Declassifying
Push and pull
Numeric factors,
Data hackers,
Economical
Disasters
Should they prove
My widow maker
Currently
No single taker
Seems to want to
Etch her lie
Across my heart
And hope to die

Productive days
Of improv humor
Lately I’m
A real late bloomer
But a tumor
Lurks beneath
Metastasizing
In the deep
The sunset looming
Out of reach
No one to share
Its fading heat
And I fear never
Will return
Shall once more lend her ear
To learn
The myriad
Aways of me
Intricacies
Deceptively
Expressed
In this
Suppressive state
Oasis
‘Bout to immolate
At any moment
But despair
Still constitutes
The everywhere
I go,

No golden fools
Aglow,
Nor soulless ghouls
Sold out for show
Quite artfully enough
Pretense
My shattered psyche
Imp laments,
As I laugh last
At their expense
Though not aghast
At class
Distinction
Just as natural
As extinction
More surprised to find
The kind
Of people
Who see dollar signs  
Can look like me, or you, or us
Just must be someone
I could trust
Like confidantes
No strings attached
Contracted obligation
Scratched

Still hittin’
Her hard
With disaster
Relief
Sinking boats,
Blocking votes,
No...
Congressional seat
Then deceitfully dollar
Diplomacy
Drain it
Of sugar cane
Brain
Generations
In training
To tolerate chains,
More urbane
Costs of living
Just giving in
When resist
Is just enlistment
A privilege to serve
In their wars of attrition
And still hear the bombs
Pounding into submission
The Spanish last bastion’s
Taino kid’s vision

Have it all figured out
Do you notice the silence?
The time is
Too late
And you haven’t surmised it
My guise is
Beside itself
Loathing devices
And you can not help me
The way she entices
My sociopathic
Traumatically
Psyche
Inducing illusory
Glands
To exuding
Some mental secretions
Of secrecies seeking
Someone to confide in
To hide in
You don’t care,
This session is over
Good day
And goodbye then

Forgive me I’m new to this
Form of survival
Each time I approach
I am dead on arrival
No reasoned and practical
Method
Successful
Attempts to be more
Than myself
Seem essential
In order to turn
Even hi
To goodbye
For eventually
Soon enough
You won’t reply

The kid state of nature
Still brutish and short
I’m the wretch in the bowels
You couldn’t abort
Still distorting the false narrative
In my favor
I savor the suffering
Graven slave labor
Unwavering in
Serpent eyes of the tyrants  
Attesting my patients’
Rapaciousness virus  
To stop making conflict
Where none need exist
You American
Simpleton
Cease and desist
On insisting
Your cancerous culture
Still answers
The question
Who watches the watchers
With voter rights tamper
If viewer discretion
Advised,
Advertised
Still decides
The election
And class divides
Settle
The natural selection

Don’t want to relinquish
Creatively spark
To the mentally-taxing
Evasion of darkness
I feel like a carcass
Just fed
Better than
Contradictory’s
Starkest
Disparity
Paradox
Toxins polluting
Utopian blooms
To a tombstone
Of ruins  
Reduced to
The narrowing focus
Priorities
No more recalcitrant
Question authorities
Just have a seat
Keep your hands busy
Eat
Imperfections,
Correct them,
Delete and repeat

Don’t want to feel alive
So go switch off
Concede the time
Is not of yours
For any taking,
Any making
Of design
Refuse to speak
Don’t deviate
From fate
Is sealed
In shades of bleak
Rejuvenated
From the enervating
Make a living week
If you go seeking
Conversation
You might find
Only deceit
But when you try,
Revitalized
By what you say
Begets replies

Sitting in
On the these meetings
We have to stop kidding ourselves
There is meaning
Just rhyme without reason
So force me to plan
There’s no time of the season
Returning their land

Everyone’s so averse to solitude
But madness is more of a perpetual state
for me
Just varies in
Severities
And barely
Even
Scares me
Anymore
I’m more abnormal now
Aborted my ambition
And create instead
A battleground

Though what you aspire
To be
Isn’t much
More than what you
Desired to
Serve as the crutch
Props you up
At the end of days
All in the thralls
Of finality
Keep holding on
As the walls
Closing in
To diminish
The outer appearance
And render you
Bending to
Internal spirits
Extending their hand
To the one it’s been dealt
As if it could be held,
Could be felt
By itself

Hard to commit
When no one gives a ****
When it’s literally
You vs. the world
Call it quits
On convictions
Why give them
A second thought’s
Mindful devotion
When most people
Can’t even fathom
The notion
Surprisingly, as it could be
When religions
Of most
Contain similar
Selfless traditions
At least in description
But seldom in practice
Hypocrisy
Still spins the world
On its axis

I like it here
The quiet life
Appeals to me,
Reduces strife
And might just be
A place for me
To stay,
Remain,
Not run away
This time,
Just settle in
Refrain
From feigning
How it all goes wrong
The longer I still write this song
Is little more
Than wishful thinking
Lacking acumen
Or skill
No instrumental
State instilled
I simply try to make it sound
As pleasant to the ear
Is bound
In hearing
Not quite listening
As actively
As whispering
In darkness to yourself
At night
And then from nothing
Something write

If it really came down
To my last day on earth
I suppose I would do
What is actually worth
The investment of time
Precious mine
To see fit
Make amends
Mend the wounds
I am still burdened with
All too soon
If it ended
In fire and ash
Or a hole in the ground
It would not amount cash
Value added
To genuine closure
Regardless of cost
To my fragile composure
Again in your presence
To bridge the division
The distance
Insistence
I’d only make you and I’s
Pleasure
The mission