Just give me a forum
A pen and a pad
And I’ll write you,
Recite you,
The speeches I’ve had
For the audience
Drowning out
Thoughts in my head
Will revolt
Without plentiful
Circus and bread
So the mob
And the masses
The plebeian horde
I appeal to
Revealed through
The edge of the sword

It’s the fact
That I still even laugh
I’m assured
At the end of my rope
I have not yet endured
Unobscured by false hope
And allured by despair
Grown inured to rock bottom’s
Idyllic nowhere
Seen it clear
As I know you still know
That I care
That the soul consciousness
Of the universe
Pales
In comparison to
What the two of us had
For I still read it gladly
As you see me sad
Think me mad do you,
Well,
Maybe unwell at best,
And at worst
Still alive
As the day that she left

Perched on a limb
Like a grim
Aquiline
Carven stone
Chill to bone
Upon passerby dine
By design
I am fearsome,
Revered by the spawn
Of the underworld
Dwelling beneath me
Upon
The withdrawn
Abyss paragon’s  
Gothic hell swan  
Monument to the last
Will and testament’s
Moribund
Moral supremacy’s
Edifice
Orotund
Ancient facade
Of the godless in gray
Overseeing eternity’s
Urban decay

Recalling vaguely
Hazy instants
I was maybe
Making imprints
On some inkling introvert
Some innocence
Who couldn’t hurt
My dearth of mirth
Impervious
To even what her at wits end’s
Most murderous
Intentions penned

They made it seem like
Love was more than enough
Like two people who fall in it
Never rebuff
All the time
Perhaps even
Forever
Believe in
Wholeheartedly that
It just wasn’t a scene in
Another romantic
False narrative
Standard,
The find you,
Consign you
To all questions
Answered

When they meet again
To rejoice in some end
But the real thing
To less happy ones
Often tend
Though I must say
The theme
That they get
Most correct
Is in its nothing left
All you’re left
Is regret
But of course
No one heeds
Universal guidelines
Just continue to wait
For the stars to align

Getting closer
Wasn’t sober
Nor was she
Just eerily,
Intuitively
Reading me
Like energies
And aura stuff
Enough deduced  
To call my bluff
Before I even made it
Stating
Might as well
Depart this place
And maybe see
Where all this leads
But so convinced was she
To sleep

But stay with me
A moment longer
We just met
Please don’t dishonor
Me,
I left her leaving free
Not even love alone
Could be
Eternity
She knew its loss
Was more than we
Prepared to cost
The world was not prepared
To fall
Down from the sky
Renew it all
The selfishness that would have bade
Us back into the former grave
I told you I was meant
To leave
Without you
Then without you
Grieve

Imagine that
Warmth drawing near
Another person
Left to fear
Perhaps in understanding them
We could be friends
But so it ends
In just do you
Forgotten who
Could even speak
This language true

The good and just god
Or the God is just good
Either way
A falsehood
Only mortal minds could
Believe true
Despite proven
We too misconstrue
The conclusion
Illusion
As piety’s cue
To divine its define nature
More than a fruitless
Attempt to uncover
The root of its hubris

Finally options
Some odd jobs to do
Just a few
But they’re pulling me in
More than two
New directions
To take one would be
Some more waiting around
Yet another would see
Me take off of the ground
And the third doesn’t sound
As exciting,
Enticing,
But stable, secure
If I am
To live life here

Dilemma
Conundrum  
Becomes the undoing
Of preconceived notion’s
Position renewing
Its self-assured
Reaffirmed
You interviewing
With demoralizing
In question
Belying
The answer must be
Part of me
Compromising
Components of my
Perfect worldview
Is skewed
So surrender to madness is
True rectitude

Do I get better
With age,
Or just worse?
All it takes
Is a look through
My past
In reverse
And the verses
Of greater
Creators unbound
And unlimited by  
How the senses
Must sound

Kind of funny
How one day
This person you’re with
Could be there
And the next
Doesn’t seem to exist
Reminiscing
On each second since
We first kissed
And revisiting it
Is futile
To resist
But I try nonetheless
To make memories fond
Not deny
That we did possess
Some form of bond
But the what-if remains,
The mistakes go unmade
And I punish myself
In oblivion’s fade

Like lovers I’ve never met
Nothing left
Left to fret
So I just stay at home
Write of
How dead I get
As to avoid
The ensuing regret I guess
Lessen the chance
Of romances
I make a mess
Couldn’t express
In a billion lifetimes
To this intimate stranger
The depths of my mind
At the first sign of feeling,
Imagining things
Fall apart
From the heartache
Catharsis
She clings
Onto its intense darkness
Salvation lost cause
One more fool’s errand to
Rectify tragic flaws

Of course you can stay with me
Make an impression
Remain at the fore
Of my morbid confession

Just promise to haunt me

Beyond the grave
Daily
I gave you my word
To not ask you to save me

Mere seconds asleep
But was deep
In the rem
When upon me befell
A malicious demon
And what happened then
Still haunts
My waking night’s pen
At the edge of my bed
It is there once again
Not of form
Nor of feature
A shadowy creature,
Insidious wisp
Wickedness
Its demeanor
Don’t know what it wants,
What it thinks,
What it seeks
I can only grip tighter
The covers and sheets
And replete with paralysis
Fear
Cognizance
I can only succumb to its
Malevolence

Another downtrodden
Despondent
Disclaimer
Apologies for
Imminent
Misbehavior
In vain I’ve attempted
To temper
My anger
To try to be tame
But am made
Out of rancor
But thankfully
For those
Still reading
Alone
I’m no threat to your precious
Pretensions
At home

What more could I want
Than a living for this
Repressed gift,
Sustenance,
And a place to exist
In consistently nearing
A writer’s potential
But limited by
What it lacks in essential
Deprived of what I
Need to buy,
Stay alive’s
Are like locks on the chains
Binding me to these rhymes

Steeped in my stupor
About to tip over
A graveyard of beer cans
Is at my disposal
It flows though
The vocals
And so it goes
Global
The locals and I  
Keep it chill as Chernobyl
For there in their midst
Still exists
A slight rift
And with each sip approaches
The paradigm shift

How many times do I have to say it
Your very first breath
Was a form
Of enslavement  
Not to me
Certainly
Who would do that?
You of course
Don’t submit
To some other guy’s
Chat
Just my splat
Not again
It was sooner
Dependent
On any first girl
In the clime
Who was willing
To aid
In the world order crime
And unto has bade
The injustice of mine

And I’ll go to sleep hungry
This life
Is a challenge
Even with friends
I am never
Imbalance
Just down
With whatever vibe
Brings them alive
And as I
Dead inside
Think of you
All the time

But I couldn’t have
Killed for you
Died for you
Hurt you
Put you through
Distance
And disconnect
Silence
Imagine my voice
Wasn’t writing you
Try this
Immediate fix
For the broken
Recognizance
She was the thoughts in my head
You were there
But one night she appeared
As a temptress
Ensnared
The I love you both
Specially
You would still question me
Ask me the truth
And then let me be
Memory

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