My second reflection  
Appears in the mirror
And suddenly I’ve
Never seen myself
Clearer
Begrudgingly
Sigh
I no longer
Endear her
Can’t cheer her up
Fear
That the ending
Draws nearer
That my complete picture
Omits
The mirage
That the photos
Cut deeper
And scar my visage
And you’ll just see
Deformed
Mutilations
At best
An unlovable beast
From his man suit
Undressed

If I had nothing more
To say
I would’ve written it
Another way
Grown old
And having been
All out of options
Settled down
Ingest the toxins
Of a modern
Lifeless
Strife
Without a sound
And buried down
Forever deeper
What I never
Wanted found
But I am just
An open book
And readers
Cannot help but look
And what it took
To tell my story
Started with
A simple hook
A line and sinker
Master tinker
Overthinking
Critically
And if you lose me by the end
Well then
There’s plenty in the sea

When we finally
Wake up
From the dream
Could it be
This is not the forever
We used to conceive
We are not as together
As like to believe
And when leaving
Is all that
Alleviates
Stress
Is there anything left
But a ruinous mess?
If the sound of my voice
And my presence
Perturb you
And absent
Its resonance
Doesn’t unnerve you
As much as it would
If I was
The one wronged
But still couldn’t undo
Beside you
I’ve belonged

But now everything’s changed,
So much ice
In the veins
In the air
In the room
In the gloom
It contains
Hurting you
Hurting me
Is now all that remains
And we don’t feel the same
As we used to before
When I open the door
It’s like bracing for war
And I see us still trying
To desperately cling
But we keep going back
To the same exact thing
Such irreparable harm
Such appalling disgrace
Can’t erase
The betrayal
Just watch as it breaks
Us down further
In fervor
In heartache
Inveigh
When no terms of endearment
We have left to say

Starting to prefer
Alone
Though
I want you
But before
A mere name
Could be slipping right through
Seldom kissed
I commit
A most faithless
Adrift
And I stared for too long
And I gazed in her eyes
But at night
Only you in the dark
Would I find
Only you
Who reminds
That my longing
My yearning
For dying inside
Cannot weary
Or wayward
My down for the ride
Further still
Have I shown you
The places I hide
When I cannot keep carrying
Days out of sync
Sinking
Crushed
By the weight
Of my ego’s distinct
Inclination
To feel itself
Safe
In the warmth
Of the moments
I am not a wraith
When you look upon me
And I cannot escape
From the hold that you have
Over my last embrace

Am I just
The next transgression
Never learn my lesson
Stressin’
Lonely graves
I must
Unrest in
Empty suits
I look my best in
Can’t befit
My corpse decay
As hollow as
The sky is gray
When half a world away
You flee
And no sunlight
Enlivens me
No sight
Nor taste
Illuminates
No scent
Nor touch
Intoxicates
It all just resonates
Despair
And melancholy
Everywhere

Moments eternalize
There in your eyes
And I crystallize
Memories
Nemeses
Vie
For a seat at the table
A place in the stable
And I am still willing
To gladly
Disable
My sought after
Loveless
Redemption’s
Return
To companionship’s
Rift abyss
Feelings confirmed
In the actions and words
Undeterred
Unreserved
Until my
Hope to die
Guilty sentence is served

Perplexity
Vexing
Confounding as ever
Attraction not only
I see us together
And romance is not
What you think
What you want
Is a love letter
Penned
In illegible font

Undeserved
Underserved
They still need us
To turn
To keep catering
To
The downtrodden
To earn
What a dignified living
No longer affords
And what destitute
Institutes
Leave uninsured

It’s how much I’d miss you
To you I submit to
And none more among
The great many
I serve
More than her
Undeserving
Will I
Ever learn
How it hurts
To be bearing
The weight of betrayed
How to stay
Inclinations
Inflictions
Of pain

The longest goodbye
The most longing to die
I have ever considered
The flowers have withered
And soon enough die
Upon hitherto
No more embrace
We can trust
We just give in
Forgive
And just feel the love
Rust
And like that
She is gone
I keep trying
I fail
Can’t avail
Me enough
And whatever becomes of us
I will still
Wanderlust
Wondering why
Does it hurt
To alive
And return to eternity’s
Longest goodbye…

Make us a creature
A villainous
Wretch
Skulk about
For the precious
We formerly kept
After theft
And a fratricide
Made it our own
And we made a new home
Out of shadow and stone
And the bones of our victims
All strewn about caves
And all hapless intruders
Play our riddle games
For our psyche is shattered
Persona is split
And discarded,
The heart
To a bottomless pit
Where we wait
And we stare
And we talk to ourselves
We’re forever condemned
To a ring’s
Magic spells

Now that I’ve lost you
It’s clear
What it cost you
What put you through
Days of unhappiness
Plainly
As clear as it’s been
From the start to me
Mainly
But often
As into the coffin’s
Unmade me
My love still persistent
Albeit,
Ungainly
In ways I could phrase it
Mistakes just erase it
And then no forgiveness,
No hoping
Could save it
If yours disappears
Then we cannot endeavor
To once again
Rest
On the shores
Of forever

This time
It’s not unto death
I can give
Anything left of love
Of my life
Yet to live
If you don’t even like me
Can’t stand the mere
Sight of me
Push me away
Day by day
And by nightly
I’m once again grossly
Mischaracterized
As the guy
Still disguising himself
Suicide
Although I
Only wanted
You ever to hold
Onto me
If I truly
Enlivened your soul
And enamored your heart
And enraptured your mind
And enveloped your body
In mine intertwined
So if this isn’t it
Anymore
The dynamic
Just let the ensuing
Depression
Be manic

Without markets
It’s darkness
No cable
To spark this
That works
To connect
An anonymous
Marxist
With Cominterns
Burning through
Forest and field
More ideally
Than killing ones
Capital yields

Cavalries,
Fleets,
And the streets
Are all mine
All these corridors, mine
All these concubines, mine
All my coffers are brimming
With enemies’ dime
And my dungeons still reek
Of the insolent swine
And my right to command
All the land
Is divine
But I will
Cause depression,
Make hunger a weapon,
And question the curs
Like a history lesson

Difference of opinion
On who’s fit
For this position
On which either one’s
Division
For the country
Is consistent
With their actions
Speaking louder
Than their policy decisions
If their words
Are incoherent
And their facts
Are blatant lies
And we can see
Hypocrisy
Definitively
On both sides
But can’t agree
That mental faculties
Though clearly in decline
Do not determine
That the candidacy’s
Cancer
Is benign

God is just
Your shame
Your insecurity’s
To blame
Not everyone is out to get you
Not a reason to complain
So stop deflecting
And diverting
Only hurting
Your pretension
With each mention
Of the overwhelming
Trauma
You’ve endured
In no dimension
Left conceivable
Will you be reassured
You’re not a victim
Not a target
Just entitlement
Incarnate
But your followers,
Subscribers,
All the eyes on you
Desires
Are made fleeting
And enfeebled
When you’re asked a simple question
Can you really live without it
But a moment’s
Inattention?

Little man
Gets enraged,
Is why every war’s
Waged,
And nothing stays
The saber-rattling
When it’s simply
How we’re made
And what we gain
From our crusading
Must be powerfully
Displayed
And what the makings
Of arms racing
Yields an arsenal
Arrayed
And what precipitates
Intimidates
Obliterates
And fades
Like an imperial ambition
Spread too thin
In its campaigns

Beach party
Me
Is the center of gravity
All the unfolding
Revolving
Depravity
Slightly on edge
As I’m calm
In your presence
The ledge
To your bottle
Of anti-depressants
So kick off your shoes
Take the plunge
And unwind
Let the waves
Set the pace
Of the wake
Peace of mind

Continuous
Bickering
Makes us both
Sickening
Slipping right back
Into silences
Listening
Only to sounds
Of our own
Reassurance
The other can’t possibly
Get this occurrence
I’m hurt
And you just
Carry on
Unperturbed
And it worsens
Two persons’
Attempts to be heard

Reap the rewards
Of my sacrifice
Waning
With mastery over
The death I was
Draining
My lack of condolences
For the deceased  
For the filter feeds
Bottom feeds
Newsfeeds
A feast
Not the least bit concerned
With who lives
And who dies
It’s just malice and madness
That sells
And belies
We’re all smiles and gladness
But something inside
In its torturous torment
So tacitly writhes

Turn back shadow
Now go
Be away with you
No more coercing
My gaze
I’m afraid of you
Beckon me over
No longer
You siren,
For I am
Tonight’s
Disengage from this
Tyrant
And I will still staunchly oppose
The compliers
And tally the taking of tongues
Of the liars  
So hold yours
And head for
The way you came in
Anything you could say
Unoriginal sin
And much to my
Still grinning
Chagrin
****** bin
I know I
Cannot finish
What you can’t begin

What they want from me
School
What they think of me
Cool
With me
I do not care
To see
More inadvertently
Misinformed
History
Slipstream the psyche
Incite
And invite me
To join in
The party
Like woebegone
Lightning
It’s often times
Frightening
How quickly
I rightly
Rewrite
What your preconceived
Narrative
Judgment
Recites
As the way it was meant to unfold
Unexpected
For I am the entrance
Examiner’s
Lessons

Innate
In your state
Of anxiety
Mired
In someone to save us,
To lead us
Required
But how can the few
Or but one
Serve the many
If only the strongest
Procuring us
Plenty
Survive on conniving,
Contriving
The tribe
And by infinite finance
Campaign laws
Abide

Unity
Community
What good if it
Will ruin me
What causes
That the people
Ever rally
Could get through to me
Remove me from
The confines of
A singular
Impunity
If nothing in my head
Is ever wrong
And I can claim
The tantamount
Amount of power
To whoever
Thinks the same

Of my highest conceits
She is there
In the sheets
And in parcels
Of parchment
My sorrowful weeps
Knowing we will
Forever
Beside ourselves
Sleep
Even if
What the distance’s
Dissonance
Keeps
In its keep
No, its stronghold,
It’s fortified bastion
The walls that we build
Unfulfilled
Without passion
To lack satisfaction
But practice content
Will most likely
Much sooner than late
Breed lament

Intercepting their spies
Therein enemy lies
Still romanticize ways
We can say
Our goodbyes
Despite actively having
Familiar relations
More intimate moments
Distorting equations
Of perfectly
Planned
Unforeseen
Consequences
When we’re in the business
Of breaching defenses

More useful to you
When I’m here
And I’m quiet
And nightly
My psyche  
Is shrinking like violet
And no one to turn to
To talk to
Beguiles
The moments we have
To defensive on trials
The miles and miles
I’ve tread in exiles
I’ve fled
With but dread
And the words it compiles
To somehow coherently
Articulate it
Relate it
To all of them
Then I restate it

Maintaining the guise
Of a normal life
Taking
Its toll on my
Loving wife
Hearts have been breaking
And I have been making
It worse
In exhausting
All options
To keep us contained
In our coffins
More often than not now
Despite
How we’re home
We resort to
Withholding our thoughts
All alone
All along
Still enamored,
Still genuine love
But it’s like
We’re preparing
To be
Deprived of
One another again
Can’t accept
It’s the end
Can’t cause anymore wounds
That we know we can’t mend
Can’t relinquish the feeling
Serenities ease
If the ghost of you
Swept away
In the sea breeze

Always the mind
Of a younger man
Mine
Has become suddenly
A much older one’s
Spine

Choose to hate me because
Choose to love me despite
What I get into thinking
Alone in the night
When by day
Just a regular
Cellular
Leveller
Revel in
Devilishly
Rendering
Relative
All my impersonal
Woebegone
Songs
To the rest of us
Just predisposed
All along
To be wrongfully
Righteously
Sure of our ways
So convinced
Moral rectitude
Isn’t a maze
But a page
In a book
Higher plane
In a prayer
Like a little lamb
Crams
To get in…
Doctrinaire

When did I become
But a shadow to you
But a faint recollection
Of all we’ve been through
Barely anything left
Worth redeeming us now,
Of love, all but bereft
I just can’t fathom how
We could come to this
Bottomless,
Cyclically toxic
Exhaustion
The falling out
Fault lines
Increasingly often
Can’t soften the blow
When it has to be said
Can’t keep feigning alive
When inside
We are dead
And what we can’t control
Tears apart
At the seams
What a future together
Had woven in dreams
Will eternally haunt me
Again, how I fail
So abjectly,
Completely
To build it to scale
What I feel,
What I know exists
Boundless for her
When it keeps on collapsing
In what we once were
Plain and simply
Companions
With more time to spare
But what looms in the distance
Discordant despair

Nowhere you could go
That I won’t
Come and find you
Nowhere you could be
That I wouldn’t
Remind you
The time could go by
Without me there beside you
And I will still strive
To uncover
What hides you
Reside in your deepest
Recesses
And reach
Out to lift you up,
Strengthen you
When you feel
Weak
But we keep speaking over
Each other again
After vowing to not so
Discordantly end
The next argument,
Or the relationship
Sinking
In dreading,
Regretting
The what were we thinking

Venture forth
Not for
The promise
Of better days
Do so
Pursuing
The founding
Of better ways
Forward
And onward
You go
Undeterred
When in doubt
Trust yourself
Not just words
That you heard
And assured
You’ll be fine
You were here
For a while
Not perfect
But flawed
Ever more
Versatile

By silent, dismal
Voids of gloom
Forever I will be consumed
And as she closes in
On closer
I cannot resist
Disclosure
There is no
Escape from this
Eclipsed by some
Innate abyss
A disposition
Dimly lit
An extra piece
That doesn’t fit
A can’t be fixed
Internal glitch
Off-switch
Beyond the reach
Adrift

I said depressing
Not depression
One describes
And one implies
A more immutable
Condition
A disorder
We disguise
And when revealed
To you
It seals
Your condemnation
Of my plight
For I am just
The silence shrieking
In the darkest depths
Of night
And this is just
A cry for help,
An SOS,
A desperate plea
That resonates
In your commiseration  
So inaudibly

Brought my bastion
Packing
With me
Half a world away
No need to build
It over
Better
All attempts
To start
Delayed
No minds remain
Have I not swayed,
No feeble brains
Left to invade
My best endeavoring
To memory,
Eventually
Will fade
For I have made
My bed
My home
My place
On earth
Out of
The grave
And from the cradle
To its breaking
Shell
My body can be laid

Farther down
Than ever
I have ventured in
Uncertain
Unaware I was becoming
But an agent
Of subversion
So averse
To any orders
But abide by natural law
And only broken on
The impact
Of my fatal
Tragic flaw

Running so far
And hard
Hitting the trenches so hard
For a living
In service
To purposeless
Since the beginning
By practically
Shaping
Ideas into forms
Gone as I
Can surmise
Was the source
Of her scorn
Wounds will not cauterize
When one actively healing
The other
Bleeds out
Every ounce of sincerity
Cannot amount
To apology
Eulogy
Ever my words
Have meant but
Incredulity
Like singing birds
Go unheard
Nothing new to me
In the ensuing
Routinely
Bombarding
Accruing
The losses
And with them
Departing
The battlefield
Having secured
Lasting peace
In which horrors of war
Can so restlessly sleep

Somewhere
Along the way
Became the man
From once the boy
Not in an instant
But a litmus
Test
His limits
Could destroy
And what he saw
Not what he conquered
What he squandered
All the time
For he observed it
Then reverberated
Learning
To define
What constitutes
His attributes
As archetypically
Adult
And what refutes
His stance
And stature
As the leader
Of some cult

Measured
In merely
The fruits of his labor
And deeply embossed
In his cross my
Engraves her
For only on
Standards
Of what he provides
Will she teach him
To share
What his steely nerve
Hides
What divides them
This time
Is his task
To abridge
And embrace her again
Overlooking the ridge
Only there
Where he goes
For her
Over
And over her
Onward
Again
To the void
Ventures in
Then he finds him the one
That gets under his skin
But illuminates
Permeates
Every synapse
In her absence
The vacuousness
A relapse

Wish you would come
Back to bed
But I know
Had it stayed in my head
I’d be out in the snow
And we’d only grow further
Apart
In distrust
And we’d let our bones fade
By themselves
Into dust
So I only intend
To prevent bitter ends
For what’s merely temptation
Could never suspend
The impending
Foreboding
Without you
Portends

Now she is fantasies
Sanity’s
Banish me
Vanish in
All the words left
I could panic in
All culminating
In one disrepair
How ungainly the weight
Of the burdens I bear
Could successes equate
Into failures I wear
Into depths I could barely
Escape from my lair
If she’s not
Everywhere
In my sight
And my mind
And she turns back
To look in my eyes
One more time

What I
Cannot take
To the grave
‘Lest it later
Unearth
What I swept
In the cave
What confessed
Unexpressed
I forget
To address
And regret
Resumes reaping
My restless
Decay
And by day
Drone away
In the silence’s gray
When inevitably
I destroy something else
For a long time ago
Did the same
To myself
And continued
To reinvent
New and improved
Ways of ending
What other lives
Need be removed
But still failed
To conclude
That to do so
Consistently
Makes you unmoor
From the anchor amor
‘Till she walked out the door

Cut the head off
The snake
‘Fore its many
Temptations
She’d hopelessly sate
My reptilian cold
To the sickness
Afflicted
My sheerest indifference
To pain I
Inflicted
All must be met
Swiftly
With lessons in empathy
By her own words
This is action’s
Peremptory
Testament’s
Genesis
Thee most decisive
Discourse
Instrumentalist
Musing his final
Attempt to be brave
To remind her
His love
Was designed for the grave
And embossed in
Conceding
To her
It was made
That exhausted,
Defeated
His body be laid
At her feet
Once again
To unrest
In his shame

I do this again
And again
And again
Hurt the ones that I love
When love’s all
I intend
To stay true to its course
To renew its remorse
To resort
To finality’s
Looming divorced
From reality’s
How much I try
Just to fail
Disappoint you
Go down with the ship
As you bail
Walk away
Without saying
If this is goodbye
That you’d really feel
Better off
Waiting to die
Or devising
Some sooner conclusion
Exclusion
Of me and you lost
To the cost
Of delusion
But needless
Assurances
Meet expectations
Like promises break
Before I even make them
Just stake them through hearts
And return to my coffin
My solitude tombs
Of increasingly often
Immersed in your silence
Where my mistakes shriek
I am puny,
Irrelevant,
Useless,
And weak

There when I’m going
Through worsening days
When I need your
Companionship’s
Various ways
Understanding this
Bond that we share
Only strengthens
How far we would go
Just consistently
Lengthens
The depths we uncover
The vulnerable sides
The internal unrest
Now at peace in your eyes
No disguise
Need apply
Anymore
I found you
And my vows remain true
From I do
To its tomb

Into the roles
And alternative egos
I go with the flow
What you see on the stage
What you get in the show
But for students
And people
And guests alike
Making
A living
Forgiving
Professionals
Faking
For stake in
Their trade
Begets status
Is power
And cowardice
Avarice
Has to speak louder
When really
Internally
Mawkish
And meek
Is who we really are
So much deeper
Beneath

A vessel
Inherently
Flawed by design
Or by some divine miracle
Meant to decline
In the wake
Of its rise
Meteoric
Downfall
In the crash
Aftermath
From the ashes
We crawl
And begin
To take shape
To walk upright
And break
Through a cosmic egg
Shell
Through this living hell
Wait