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

Thus rests the former
God king
Mortal man
Had it all figured out
Had the world in his hand
Had a plan
To take over
Destroy
And rebuild
As he willed
Into being
A tiny orb
Filled
With the felling
Of forests
The shelling
Of reigns
And the death knell
Dispelling
All doubt
To his claims
But his influence waned
In the advent
Of tech
And his subjects
Instead
Preferred fools
To elect
And rejected,
Disposed of,
Forgotten
Was he
And the core of him rotten
Could not
Legacy

Lines in the equal sign
Make them all wavy
Approximate
How we
The people
Go crazy
The proud,
Mighty, prosperous,
Virtuous
Free
We’re the ones
Tribal discord
Interminably
Comes between
Splits the seams
Sees us
Misanthrope
And if ever there was
A more
Imperfect
Union
I’d sooner
Strive for it
Than see it in
Ruins

Boundless oblivion
Bound to infinitum
Now there is hatred
The uglier faces
The sides of myself
Even friends shouldn’t see
When revealed
They resemble
Infidelity
But I swear to you
Never a moment
Forsaken
Nor haven’t a heart
Left for any
Pain stake in
So drive it still further
Remind me I failed
If you feel I am merely
Betrayal
Unveiled

I see that you’re hurting
So quick to
Deserting
And I am left
Parsing through
Pictures
Perverting
The storybook
Wedding
To dread
I’m reverting
To shame
I can’t say
What dismayed
Me this way
When I try to get closer
I just inflict pain
Disengage,
Disavow
Let the memories drown
Out the sound of
Cold silence
Eternally bound

There in your chair
And I can’t help but stare
Any words I could say
Couldn’t possibly bare
What the weight
And heartache
And what’s taken
Equates
What my shame
In its bottomless
Void
Could reframe
What was picturesque,
Beautiful,
Solemn
And sacred
To something so ugly
And tarnished,
Degraded
But still then you turn
And sincere is your smile
You still exude peace
When you could be
Hostile
And all I can do
In my infinite
Guilt
My unworthiness,
Watch
As they wither
And wilt

Now what
To say
Let it go
Old and gray
Growing cold
Starts to feel
As if slipping away
Is the only way
Forward
Into the grave lowered
And lower
And lower
Seems like
What I told her
A failed attempt
Saving grace
Breaking heart’s
Closure
If this
What awaits
Complete silence
Creates
Just this void
Ever-widening rift
Inundates
My already beleaguered,
Besieged
Peace of mind
Intertwined
With there is no
Forgiveness
This time

Once again having
Its day
Is the youth
If they lie to themselves
They won’t tell us
The truth
But they will
Obfuscate
And conceal
And withhold
Information
And earnings
And rights to your soul
Lest you let it grow old
At their rate
Turning gray
In their comfort
Conformity’s
Naïveté

Knowing my uses
Are few
Loosened
Nooses
Reclusive
At home
In the shadow
Seduces
Before I can even
But hope
To resist it
Commit to escaping
The paradigm
Shifted
Adrift
I’ve repeated it
Various ways
Rhymed astray
With another
Same ****
Different day
And replayed
All the worst case
Scenarios
Possible,
Plausible
Some
Imminently
Unstoppable
Come
Let me show you
The ones
Become real
And what’s left in the wake
Of the latest
Fate sealed

That’s what I call it
Alone
Through the night
When sedation
Persuasions
Still fail me
Despite
What I write
Weary eyes
Concentrate
On the page
How to lay it to rest
From the rest
Disengage
From this cage
Of fixation
Obsession
Incessant
Clock ticks
In the midst
Of my listless
Depressant

What this is
You’re dealing with
Emotions
Are no incident
But what you are
Cannot be changed
Cannot be snipped
And rearranged
Cannot be plainly
Simply
Gone
But can’t be right
To deem it wrong
If I have not
Been sliced by steel
And not been given
Time to heal
To feel
That this is truly me
Transitioning
Androgyny

Much has been lost
Has been wasted
In vain
Have I granted
More former
Engagements
A claim
Have I harbored
More harbingers
Of my demise
Was I born
Have I worn
This whole time
A disguise
Was I really there
With her
Do I awake
Days
Have unnervingly
Quickened
Their pace  
I’m afraid
That it goes
All for not
But our scars
And tattoos
As our bones
Feed the earth
And the life it renews

Maladies
I have a myriad
Period
Free will
Dystopian
Broken
No hope again
Basically
Sad by default
Feeling sick
Of existing
To quicken the pace
I submit
To an overlord
Order
I staunchly oppose
I’d force open
The border
But let the doors
Close
And can’t help
But adore her
As I decompose
Finding some last
Delusional
Semblance
Of purpose
In work
In abstractions
Attempts to
Convert this
Innate worthlessness
To constructively
Gained
From my fate at its terminus
Publicly
Hanged

Senescence in dissonance
Vanishing empathy
Shadow peripheries
Routine
Is sanctity
Memory
Failing me
Try as I might
To prevail
Something ailing me
Veiled
In impermanence
Desperate to last
As if rest of our lives
Before eyes
Hasn’t flashed
Past already
It’s heavy
The burden of knowing
The growing pain
Slows
When you cease
Undergoing
Imperative change
To the honeymoon
Phase
And with one simple phrase
Until death’s
How it stays

Boy
On his own
Now to find her
A home
Where it goes
From first steps
To the depths
No one knows
And despite how he fails
To exemplify man
She is with him,
She’d miss him,
Beside him
She’d stand
Should the aggregate good
Be excluded
From mind
And we turn
Face to fate
With the end of our time

Don’t let it settle
The thoughts into place
Lest you linger too long
In contemplative space
And let dwelling
Impel you
To stay in suspension
Remain in a state
Of immense
Apprehension
A tension
That stretches
And pulls you
Apart
Discontentment
Embitters
And sours
Your heart
Until want for not
Need no companion
Engagement
Embrace your relationship
Sinking estrangement

Now run the polemics
The rigged
Oil derricks
The towers you build
On the backs of the peasants
The offices brimming with
Cushy class clerics
The barracks
The ballots
The bastions
The bills
And the overprescribed
Overkilling us
Pills
Overfilling our plates
With dysmorphic
Ideals
Underserving
Community meals
You conceal
Generations of trauma
Decades of decay
For a gilded age
Golden gate
Ethno-state’s
Grave

True sides of yourself
See them broken
Misshapen
Concealed
Then revealed
Then what’s real
Is mistaken
Such fear,
Such despair
Your whole life
Disrepair
And if someone once loved you
They no longer care

Balance
Between
A hubristic
Humility
Deafening roars
Upon shores of tranquility
Lost in a storm
Of more social anxiety
Rot to the core
Of my shriveled
Sobriety
Tired
Go home
Girl and I
Can unwind
And even unsaid
There is pure
Peace of mind

If this isn’t it
What do words
Really mean
Have I seen it all
Spelled it out
Read in between
The lines blur
The subtext
Nothing left
To infer
Just discursively
Worsen
All hope for a cure
For enduring this illness
Too long
As untreated
Is just peace of mind
To the poet’s
Receded

Until final lines
Of dialogue
Eat me alive
May I struggle to find
The right words to describe
Should we come to conclusions
That we’re out of time
May we still take a moment
To savor the wine
And when us
Is but remnants
Of dust
And decay
May our love at long last
In its resting place
Lay

Success and experience
Trial and error
Power is vested
From birth
I was better
Invested my MIND
In my goal
Empty-netter
But weather
Or knot…
We all go out
Together
Is just my prerogative
Your interrogative,
Am I still willing
To let you all live
Human piles of
Self-serving ****
I could give
If it’s just
At the top,
Where the Party
Don’t stop
That I drop
The whole scene
On the next
Photoshop

Most days I’m normal
Can pass for
A person
Just slightly on edge
Of the world
I’m immersed in
Require the same
Bare essentials
To thrive,
I imbibe
And ingest
All it takes
To survive
But request
On occasion
The rest
Make exception
And see me as more
Than the point
Of conception

Come weep
Like a willow
Come mourn
As a widow
Come wallow
In hollowed
Out parts of my whole
Come expose
Why I sold
All that’s left
Of my soul
Come beseech
Me to linger
A shadow,
A stain
Come release
Me to bring her
Back home
From the grave

Embrace me
My last never bloom
For tomorrow
Uncertainty looms
On the spindles of sorrow
And watching it sow
Needle points
Of my dread
Would just sooner unravel
And lay bare the thread
Of not ready
To let you
Ignore what you read
And respond with
A silence
From which I once fled
But to wed
Is forgetting
Regret
Intersected
Us here at the crossroads
Of destiny
Bested
For I wasn’t made
To be anyone’s
End
But to fade
In what fate
At its best
Can’t intend

Did you come here to bask
In the thralls of your hubris
Or seek inspiration
For what it
Illumines
And true to its
Slightly
Unnaturalized
State
Did you find
To your liking
It’s in
Personate?

Just tallies
On a census
Still consenting
To a senseless
Lack of conscience
Still ensconced in
An archaic
Hyper tension
Knocking on the door
Extorted
Public swayed
To go to war
And on display
The Desert Storming
Makes conforming
Dying for
The worthy cause
Of their enrichment
Your enlistment,
Your expense
And yet
This peaceful
Demonstration
Is their right
To self-defense

Just write
The beginning
Envisioning
Sagas
Conceptualize war
Like you’re in
The Bahamas
Obamas
Have come and gone
Kennedies
End
And the Clintons’
Convictions
Don’t go to my head
Any more
Than the opposite side’s
Can attest
I just run the gamut
Of their standardized test

Late
When I think of you
Solely
In writing
And solemn
Reflect on what
Causes us fighting
Goodnight
After night
Against odds
We prevail
Against God’s
Predetermined
We’re destined
To fail

Original
When was it ever
Creation?
Surreal
It has never
Been
Civilization
Just homogeneity
Acculturation
Collective,
Procrustean
Reeducation
No self-aware
Movement
No choice
Occupation
Just merrily
Life is but
Assimilation

Been infallible
Idols
And I dole out
Judgment
Save all of the punishment
For my repugnant
Begrudging
Bewildered
Beleaguered
Bedeviled
Form-fated
To fade
Disappearing
Disheveled
Upon revelations
That I do not make it
Don’t tell her I love her
And through my heart stake it
And take with me
Only the burden
Of buried
Across
The flow souls
Like a river
I’m ferried
For there we
Once were
Once contained
Me and her
And it murmurs
Its resonance
Lulls its allure
Unobscured
In translation
That there is no sacred
No vow
More profound
Than in darknesses
Naked
Admitting
Confessing
Professing
Our faults
Our disgraces
Our destiny
Meant to be
What this exalts

It’s like
You get close to it
Make the most
Boast of it
Gloat prematurely
Expecting a raise
But demote insecurely
Your capital gain
You’re worth less
In the game
And identify solely
With figures
Of fame
But attain
Ultimately
No dividends paid
Just a diffident
Dissonance
Caught in the rain
Just an incident
Waiting to happen
In shame
And of innocence
Soaking in sin
Your soul stained
And of fortunes untold
For blood sold
You are blamed
Until all you can do
Cut your losses
And run
Come to terms
With the zeroes and ones
You’ve become

Go on
Not noticing
Stare
Out of focusing
Dare
To be barely
Apparently
There
Just remain
In your head
In your zone
Unaware

It’s ok
We are only
Mere humans
Behaving
We can’t always care
What the others
Are saying
Or doing
What they
Must prioritize
Paying
For who they present
To the world

On displaying

Cast my dominions
To somber
Oblivions
Long to return
To macabre  
Conditions
My patience
Is wearing thin
Yet I keep
Waiting
But counting the seconds
Is so
Aggravating
When you’ve made your peace
Suspend your
Disbelief
Just a little bit longer
You made it
Attained it
A life once elusive
Now you must sustain it
Without overcoming
Your darkest desires
In any way
Sating
Their grave of empires

Repression
Of urge
To be free
Be incontinent,
Unreserved,
Unbridled
Me
But you don’t want to see it
Can’t understand
Anger
When I express pain
You assume
You’re in danger
A stranger
It’s made me
To put on the smile
Pretend
I intend
To be calm for awhile
That I do not seethe
With the need
To defile
The idols,
Injustice,
Hypocrisy,
Greed
And the temples
They’ve built
And the laws
They’ve decreed
So I leave it to you
To decide
What I do
Either storm out in rage
And let madness ensue
Or eschew
From another miscast
Make a scene
Featuring
My hostility’s
Daily routine

Already in us
The lifespan
Diminished
Dominion
Of domino theorists
Unfinished
With business abroad
And the world market
Over
Still pumping
And dumping
Their waste
Down our throat holes
And goes into veins
A cocktail
Of their chokeholds
And cold
As the pulse grows
More soullessly
Blood flows
The poisoned
Polluted
Precluded
Provision
Nutrition
Omission
Produces
Submission
And we are but lab rats
Experiments
Testing
Their chemical
Compounds
Of boundless
Ingesting

I
Am but one
Tiny speck
Of the nothingness
Teeming
Within
This consumerist
Vast abyss
Classist rift
Stacking the odds
In my favor
Ensuring the wages
I cravingly
Savor
Unwavering
Taking
My share of the spoils
Then centralize
All the essential
Term oils
With limitless
Terms
To define
The decider
The lion,
The tiger,
The eagle
Empire

Just wanted to orbit you
Like you do
Moving through
Infinite space ways
Between where I drift
Non-exist
As I sift
Through a stream of diversions
A flood of submersions
My blood
On your drug
As I shrug off
Incursions
And versions of me
Cease to be
Unfamiliar
When one
Gravitates
To his need
To fulfill her

I’m the outsider left
In the darkness
Bereft
For too long
As I watched them all
Toil in squalor
Imagining
What they would do
For a dollar
There has to be more
Than my place on the earth
But to fight for it
Die for it
See her give birth
Was the land that they claimed
To its roots
Were engrained…
And I am the Communist
Seed
That they trained

What have we come to
When traitors can lead
When corrupt,
Vile vermin
Determine
Who breeds
Can it be
Only me
Who can see
It’s so blatant
So obviously
Just a demagogue
Racist  
A ******
Effacing
Most sacred
Tradition
Obsequious
Supplicants
Cowed to submission
So vow
As if spouses
To sheepishly serve
To uphold
Anti-heroes
You feel you deserve
But I bow
To no power
Mad
Impotent
Infant
A spoiled princeling
Who reveals in an instant
His true color
Red
In the face
With hot air
A buffoonish balloon
He could say it’s the sun
When it’s clearly the moon
But these doomed
Imbeciles
Will have not
But delusion
Defending their rights
In his new
Constitution

Ashamed
That I get this way
Drunken disgrace
Run my stupid mouth off
And forsake your embrace
As if any discordant rifts
Forming between,
Could make me start questioning
What your love means
To me,
Don’t want to do this
Without you
I can’t
And I’ve known it
First moment
I felt you enchant
Every inch,
Every fiber,
Of being alone
With the solace and warmth
Of there’s no place like home
And you truly are
Family,
My world now,
My life,
And if you would still have me
My beautiful wife

Inimitable
All comparison pales
Evoke the grandeur
Of my hubris
In your cautionary tales
For if it fails
To tell your story
Better than
Yourself
It loses
Right to choose its
Fallen angels
To your detri-
Mental muses
And the few
Who take control
And can command
Their true potential
Seldom further still
Master the skill
Of making instrumental
What no artist
In my presence
Would pretentiously proclaim,
This is talent,
This is gifted,
This is critical acclaim
Without first
Due credit given
Driven by
A motivation
Inclination to creation
From some source of inspiration

Wellspring of regret
One we cannot forget
And yet
To its fond few
We’re forever in debt
So make room for the new
And let out
What the old
Keep you clinging
To what could have been
Yours to hold
And don’t let it go
Next time
Around the world over
Embrace open minds
And they will
End in closure
Just know her
Time hadn’t
Precisely converged
Although from its
Incursion
In yours
There emerged
An indelible
Celebratory
Each day,
Despite how that fateful
Lose faithful
One stays

Am I actually sleeping
Or resting assured
Am I truly at peace
Or some sort of unmoored
Don’t know nothing about me
Just how I would feel
If I left her without me
The rest is unreal
Now I’m too deep
Too far
To turn back
Even if
Shades of solitude
Often too
Hard to resist
But still vastly outweighing
My thrive in the dark
Is my strive
To undauntedly
Follow my heart  
And dispose of the key
That once locked it away
And get used to the growing old
Life
Day by day

The power of our words
More than ever
Consequential
Merely publicly  
Expelling them
Can earn yourself
A medal
Or a cancellation
Fee
Discontinued,
Disavowed,
Disowned,
Disposed
Dismissively
So how to speak
And what to write
Nothing I say
Is ever right
And everybody is a victim
Of appropriated
Plight
And all their trauma
Melodrama
Just a newsfeed
To recite
A misinformed
Discord
Disorder
Terms
Conditioned
To comply
So keep it scrolling
Keep me posted
Only if
You tell me why

You don’t seem like
The small talk
Kind
So tell me
What is
On your mind
And in your heart
What claims
Your soul
What urges
Can you not
Control
Withhold
What you’d prefer to share
What most in public
Wouldn’t dare
Divulge
If it indulges sleep
You can’t be sure
Your secrets keep
Or that I’d seek
To understand
Reciprocate
Your candor
And
Expect
My intellect
To match
Gratuities
Preferred
In cash

You think I’m unaffected
Disinfected from the plague
But I grow sicker
As we wither
And they bicker
In The Hague
So don’t mistake this
For indifference
Won’t enlist
In their campaign
Of genocide
And Bidenomics
And its proxy war
Ukraine
So keep decrying its inflation
Boast its by
The numbers game
I’d rather focus on
The ones who
Inhumanely
Test its aim
So don’t disown me
If I only
See an arsenal arrayed,
Object to pay
To play a role in its
Unjustified
Crusade