How to know
If it’s good
If it resonates,
Satisfies
All the prerequisites
Poets prioritize
Or if it yet again
Fails to immortalize
My harmonizing
In balancing
Lows and highs
As glorified
Passing lives
To the other side  
Not necessarily
Essence extinguished  
But a small piece
I’m at peace
To relinquish

Let me wallow,
Wither,
Wilt,
Let me waste away
With guilt
Permit me perish
Atrophy
And relish thee
Catastrophe
Until such love
Comes back to me
Enraptures me
Again ensnared
Entangled in
Its fragrant hair
Its vanity affair
Laid bare
Across my inhale,
Exhale chest
Its *** contest
Conquest
Impressed
Upon us both
To ever rest
Within a dead of night
Embrace  
And wake to see
Her smiling face

Cue the routine
Make it new,
Push the product
Green accrue
Sate the craving,
Watch it sell
Expand consumer
Clientele
Persist dependence
On the urge,
The verge of death’s
Euphoric surge
Continuously
Hum the buzz
Nostalgia stuck
In how it was
To feel the instant  
Use ******
The validation
Status boost

September already
Soon it’ll be cold
I’ll see snow again
Wishing
I wasn’t so old
And was elsewhere
Committing myself
To a cause
All the while
Denial
Would tally its flaws
But at least I’d escape
From the winter-bound fate
But awake still to seasonal rain’s
Mental state

Been losing this struggle
This battle with life
And with nothing else better
To write
I am rife
With conflictual
Obstacles
Making it worse
And of course
They all say
It’s the way
Universe
Has intended,
Determined,
Discerned it should be
But how could it,
And why,
Would it do this to me?
Strip me bare
Without love
Nevermore
Naturally
Helplessly
Make me watch
As my friends fall apart
And allow me to botch
All attempts to restart
The malfunctioning system
Corrupt-data driven
So riven with viral
Can’t talk to me’s schism

I really don’t know
About anything
Just
That I still couldn’t feel
It all fading
To dust
You’ve been friends
Since I went  
To your house
And met others
Who looked like they weren’t
As close as us
Brothers
Was how I interpreted
It
More than mine
He was my
Younger guy
I don’t know how to find
Where I lost the mentor
The a bit older kid
Just a bit different than
Most of what
I once did

Stay thinking,
Stay healthy
Stay liberal of consciousness
Be patient,
Be wary
Drinking the substances
Let the kids talk
Let them join
In the learning
Accept the alliance
The second it’s burning
But yearn to get back to her
Still on the mind
She’s still thinking
About you
Can’t stop the rewind
And forget or forgotten
You are still alive
If you want it, go get it
A reason to die

What does anyone do
At the end of such times
Does it wallow and wilt
In the fading of rhymes
Or admit that it still
Is mistaken
I know
Or still has to face forward
And think of it slow
In the show up as usual
Lost and alone
You look dressed for a party
Political throne
And the worker bees buzz
And the servants condone
Unacceptable rifts
In the peace
I am prone
To embody
And sway
And then never more stray
To the morning
Stay sleeping
Don’t wake to dismay

Almost forgotten
My daily prescription
A dose of the coffin
Cacophonous diction
I caution you isn’t
For faint of heart
Written
Just listen to how
By the sound
Of its scraping
Against the confines
Of its rhyme’s
No escaping

To tell you what
I think of you
Would ruin you
So let it go
Don’t pull me to
The undertow
I won’t follow
I can’t return
To where
Only my friends
Could turn
The kid they knew
The boy who grew
Beside them
As we morphed,
Into
Some form of more
Enlightened being
All we’d lost
We gained in seeing
Fleeting moments
Passing by
The peace for which
We’d sooner die
Than let some verbal slur
Disturb
The unperturbed
Reverberations
Telepathic vibe
Relations
Made us what we are today
No matter how
Away we stray
And none could ever pull the plug
We are the one
Convergence drug

We’ll take that republic
The monarchy’s
Old news
And soon we will publish
What constitutes
Breakthroughs
In what the people
Can finally do to
The tyrants
Still silencing
Riotous styluses
With
Threats of violence
And weaponized viruses
As they deny
The sound sciences
Highness is
Set upon by
The sirens
Of your highnesses  
Buying compliance  
Since timeless papyruses
Kept adding clients
From granaries minuses
So we could feed
The advent
City-state
And repeat the whole process
Again
Make it great

Dead to you
To the world
All the same
None to blame
For eventually
Even entombed
Would I stray
Run away
Never stay
In one place
For too long
It is just like you said,
I was already
Gone

Reminisce
In it
Reflect upon pieces
And fragmented memory’s
Ironed-out creases
Reach deep to unfold
Those I can not keep secret
And keep with
Traditional
Be me
Replete with
Occasional fantasies
Some day
To meet with
To sleep with it
Passionate love with it
Make
And unto it
Break
With convention
Hearts take

A gifted reminder
I am a good man
Was exactly
What I needed most  
From my family
Who see what I can’t,
Or refuse to acknowledge,
Or bury as deep
As confessions from college
Where she and I met
And had little to hide
But still had to conceal
I was dying inside
When she made me think twice
About being
Alive
And she gave me a reason
To want to survive
Yet denied her incredible
Revelry
Spell
And the devilry
Sorcery
Razing its hell
As we paralleled
Fell
Into lucid romances
Enchantress
I wish I was still  
In your trances
But happenstance glances
Upon your new pet
Make the day of my birth
One I wish
To forget

Weird that you even
Could care
I am here
Let alone
Have once loved me
And breathed in my ear
With your hands all around
What defined me as man
As I melded into
What I don’t understand
To be body
A form
As the *** can be sure
What I only could think of us
Gasping for more

Well she’s gone
For sure
And the other
Just knows
We were so ******* high
It will never be sure
That I guess
You don’t want me again
It was just
A few kids
Falling into
The when
And then oh
How it happened
The wow
Was spectacular
Now
And when you looked away
I was getting there
Lost in the fray
The dismay
Couldn’t tend
To be anything more
The days of us
End
And you couldn’t endure

Could cut the tension
With a blade
I never understood
The saying
Obvious
We aren’t friends
But on false pretense
Still depends
A sort of multi-facet,
Tacit
Truce
To minimize
Verbal abuse
And loosen lips
In shared critique
Just bite your tongue
Before you speak
With liberties
You haven’t earned,
Preserved,
Secured,
Or not yet learned
For we have both
Returned from far
Abroad
From peace and war
And yet have more
Left to endure
Than how we still
Settle the score

Can’t complain
So they say
Copacetic acceptance
Don’t really want more
But I’m sure I should get it
Before I grow older
And surely regret
What I didn’t acquire,
Attain,
Or achieve
What I spent fortunes to
Live to die
To believe

My body is a temple  
Toppled
Not so long ago
I couldn’t stop
The self-destruction,
The defilement
Alone
And so unknown
I left the ruins,
The remains
Of what was me
Forever bound
And never found
By any archaeology

I mean obviously
There are things that I hate
Rather show though
Not tell them
Or enumerate
Since irate is so seldom
How I would describe
What I wish wasn’t this
Human racial divide
It is more like perplexed
On occasion
More vexed
That we don’t see the same
**** sapien
Guilty of blame
For the state of affairs
In despair,
Disrepair
Currently 7 billion
Infections
And counting
And all of their countless
World hungers
Amounting
To egotist
Listlessness
Discontent
With
Their impermanence
Waiting to simply
No longer
Exist

Help me prioritize
What I am able
To save
And away with
The rest I am fabled
To wrest from the graven
Eternity
Yearning
For more than immortal’s
Desirous burning
Returning us back
To undo the mistakes,
Rectify the divide
In disparate heart breaks
If I could be so bold
As to empathize with
Those who fall
Into its
Ever-widening rift
And persist
In existing
Within its abyss

I showed you my friends
So you knew it’s for real
Then I conquered the world
So you’d know how I feel
All alone
Out among
The reminds me of you
In review
Then I granted you
Glimpses into
The becoming
Us loving
Each other
Discover
We are more than just
Sexuality’s
Mother

Don’t mean to be so
Enigmatic,
Ecstatic
Is more so
The mood
I am in
Around you
But so much to consider
Could be misconstrued
As relinquishing any
Game play
Upper-hand
When really I just
Want to you
Understand

I guess I am loved,
And respected,
Inspired
And dare I say
Maybe
I’m even
Admired
But there I go
Bringing it
All back to me
When the second
Another someone’s
Energy
Enters into the room
And reminds me that I
Have so much left to learn
About how I decide
What to say
What to ask
What to advocate for
How to be
The same me,
Among we
Furthermore

Been really off
Deep-ending
Out late pretending
Offending my closest friends
Seldom expending
More energy
Even less money
Although
I can’t stop buying into
The drunk undertow
And don’t care about much
That I used to think so
And with nowhere to go
Or to do
I am mute
In the presence of others
I want to rebuke
But the truth is
The working class man
Knows his place
And then there’s me
Floating
In thought’s
Outer space

We laid there together
But couldn’t quite seem
To forget that the world
Wasn’t living the dream
Or at least wasn’t seeing
What we were conceiving
As of the ethereal
Garden of Eden

No one knows
No one sees
My true form
Elegies
Anonymity is
My eternity
Breeze
Still the chill
That pervades
The warm veins
And intuits
Remains
She so spectrally fades
Until afterlives beckon
And banshees bemuse
As I lose once again
To the mood slayer’s blues
For the soothsayer
Pays me to play
With these words
But it’s to my dismay
They are broken records

To hell with your virtues
Your muse
Philosophic
Your views are as skewed
As foresight
Is myopic
Your moralist
Rectitude
Principles,
Politics
Shrewd stoic fortitude
Couldn’t quite stop it
No certitude
Pseudo-science
Can preclude
Nor exclusive,
Parochial
Faith
Larger loom
Than the shadow of life
Into death
The abyss
All submits to existence’s
Sisyphus myth

Chase the next high
I just drag out the time
And reply
Perhaps less
Than the next average guy
Mystified
By external
Infernal
Contraptions
Enraptured
The dread in my head
Or the sideline distraction
I’ve mastered
Attractions
But not what the urge
Keeps insisting I do
To distinctly
Diverge
From instinctively
Acting
It out
Or believing
That someday far from it
Again
I’ll be fleeing

I sensed a disturbance
I haven’t felt since
We were younger
But she
Was the same
Seductress
And though welcome advances,
Enchantments,
Romance me
I can’t entrust her
Conjecture  
All I’ve heard
But she’s cute
And she’s cool
When my vision is blurred
And my speeches are slurred
I would guess or assume
I was blacked out before
The mushrooms
We consumed

We just have to perch
And the lurkers
Come searching
They know we’re the guys
That get high
With the earthlings

Let me dwell in darkness knell
On everything I thought was well
And revel in the deepest
Spells
Awaiting what the evening
Sells
And then the end
Excels
And fells
The forest that I cared
Could be
The everything I thought
Was we
The most uncanny mystifying
Calculation
Truth denying
Twisted face
Away erase
Some lesser being
I was whence
From there I disappeared
And gone
I was still journeying
Upon
Some final answers
All must know
The undertow

I got your traumatic
In peace
Wreakin’ havoc
And bring the disorder back
Full automatic
Been trackin’ the fascists
Since smilodon reigned
And still fashionin’ spears
For that ***** paw’s claim
Left’em slain
As a stain
On prehistory’s cave
Where I offered the primitives
Visions ablaze
And made slaves
Of the shadows
They caste
Off their chains
And together we toiled
In disparate ****
Till the spirit of Waqqa
The crescent moon lit
Sickle gripped,
Sinews ripped,  
Chattel whipped and equipped
With the will to subsistence
Existence
Resist
And from such a collective
No lord could evict
Who was with
The community
Even me
Free
From the fossilized,
Privatized,
Posted sign,
Property
Paradise cost
But a Lost World’s
Monopoly

Dodging these job interviews
Like a muse
Who just can’t seem to choose
Between passion and peace
Oh and that silly piece
Of no more the tree speech
Can be heard
Is a factor
I don’t want to teach

Pressure to be
More productive
Make money
Or earn it I guess
So I don’t feel so scummy
Awaiting each checking
Account summary
One a week
And then maybe
At night
With more ease
I could sleep
But of course
She’d be there
Still fomenting
Unrest
And regrets
Would ensure
Drowsy pills
I ingest

Michael
Michael
Archetypal
Archangelic
Vicious cycle
Likening himself
To gods
Yet with himself
Is still at odds
To be so fallible
And flawed
By body image’s
Facade
Yet having ventured
Far abroad
Still gleams and glooms
Inspired awe
And has created
Educated
Darknesses
Illuminated

Keep reading about
How the good life is led
How by telling the truth
I would rather be dead
Than have pled
With the night
Interlocutor’s
Silence
To bring you back to me
And end
The disquiet
From narrowing further
My impudent fervor
The pride in my ideological
Murmur
Some dent in the armor
Of resting assured
Guaranteed is tomorrow
I give you my word

Manifests as this form
I was born
To embody
But not of material,
Tangible,
Godly
Is more so
The Word
I’ve preferred to refrain
From its overuse
Save for
I can not explain

Dismal despair
And decrepit decay
I could wander on
Thinking about you
All day
And reviewing each syllable
Letter intended
To make me
Agreeable
Never offended
And neither you
Tried to do
Anything doomed
I just wanted to see you
And me
On the shrooms

To put it precisely
As drunk as I am
And as high as I’ve been
I just wasn’t the same
Than I was tonight
With my friends
Thinking this never ends
I was just picturing
Who could be hotter
But **** me for thinking
They could’ve been
Smarter
I met some dull drones
So far gone
In unknowns
And I thought of you SOLELY
As they were
Exposed
To my miscreant,
Mischievous
Know what I mean?
It was you and I bringing
This world
To its knees
But preserving the peace
In the order
Before us
But challenging each
Single gap
In its fortress
And figuring out
Institutionally
We could make it all work for us
In harmony
Or until
We could see
Maybe there in between
Us together
Somehow
It just wasn’t
The means

Not the strongest
Not the fastest
Not the smartest
Not the tallest
Not the weakest
Not the slowest
Not the dumbest
Not the shortest
Just a sort of
Pretty boring
Form existing
In distortion
And I morph into
The aether
Somewhat often
To report it

Get productive
Try to write
A little more
Copy all my older pieces
Somewhere safe
That I can store
Them for
A rainy day infinity
Just get you off
My mind
But even shining
In divinity
I can’t leave you behind

I know they were wrong
This was not meant to be
No divine order deemed
Such a despondency
Could be all I’ve attained
In my 25 years
Could be all that I’ve lost
To the cost
Of my fears
And the one I dread most
Never seemed could be real
But there had to be choice,
Indecision,
Free will
On the part of us both
In discussing it still
And supposedly
Some pre-determined’s
Of course
Just like
How most marriages
End in divorce

Ceaseless sorrow serenading
One more day
Spent contemplating  
How the greater poets do it
Lose her
And somehow
Get through it
Crafting elegance
Insensate
Any more or less
Dispense with
Manacles of moving on
To find in Nature’s
Mind
The bond
Beyond the realms
Of what dispels
The limitation’s seven hells
Like wedding bells
And knells of death
The faint and dissonant
Regret

The rest of your life you say?
I let you slip away
Now I know tragedy
Isn’t a silly play
Not melodrama
Nor actors in masks
Not mementos and trinkets
And lost artifacts,
Heart attacks,
Broken pacts,
Or the past mistakes made
Can’t compare to the pain
Of how it can pervade
Individual fibers,
Recesses of real  
And then at your core
Rip you apart
To reveal
What you actually feel
To have known along
It was wrong to have doubted
You’d someday be gone

Think i bother with the silly
Piddling triflings of the self?
I’m just the you and I alone
Forgotten anyone
Whose else
I know tomorrow when I run
I’ll move as hard as I can go
And write you stronger
Than I’ve ever
Thought about the undertow
You know I’m thinking of you now
The conscious mind can not contain
And I was thinking of you
Down
Below the rotting in my brain
I was insane to think
Beyond you in the distance
I could sink
And not return to walk the shores
Of all the oceans that I drink

Thought I was meant for more
Than just a being
A parasite
Day by night
Writing,
Retreating
Some look away
Girl affront  
Truly receding
From thinking I’m only
Just slightly
Incapable
Of doing anything I
Could have dreamt above
But I was still tearing up
Just before
Thinking of
How the time wastes
And I haven’t seen
You in love
I was just waiting for you
In replacement
But having found none of her
Left to erase me
In even friends
We were men
Having to end
Laughing, tracking back,
To the past
Still eating discipline
I was discovering
Sickness in history
And resurrecting
My savagest mystery
In its abysses
The lefty swipe
Righty shift
Back to inquisitive
Balance in emptiness
Mark my words stated
The Sisters of Fate  
Bow before me
Created
And haven’t yet sated
My passion for words
Just wish someone else heard them
In lessons I’ve learned

And now my day is done
I write the dumb
Sad song unsung
And hung the rest of my potential
From the gallows
In my lungs

Don’t harp on the doomsday
News muses
Too often
But lately it seems like
The world is a coffin
And lost in its glossy
Dysphoria coughing
I wish we could save it
From more
Holocausting
From panic pandemics
And fumes we’re exhausting
But shrooms in my mania
Glooms
Are so awesome
And even up on them
You know I’d be there
For what’s ethical, righteous,
And just
To be fair
I would even allow
The good masses to play,
To protest,
To get riotous,
Frolic all day
So long as you sat with me
Out on those steps
And still called them the sheeple
With me to attest

Focused in sheer contemplation
The waves
A cascading
Sedation
My consciousness craves
And I bathe in euphoric
Horizons
At dusk
As the winds are the words
Of the friends I entrust
With my sanctity
Solace
Adept introspection
As all of us delve into deeper
Connection