At least for now
Can claim a living
Earn my girlfriend’s hand
Forgiving
Me for daily
Disappointments
Knows my pointedness
Is poignance
Shrouded,
Hidden
Not for long
I soon reveal
To her
What’s wrong
As if she wasn’t
Here already
In my head
And heartbeats steady
When her voice
Dispels
And quells
All levels of
My inner hells
Then only
Inner peace
Resumes
Where formerly
It just entombs

And I will never ******* matter
To a soul upon this dying world
Seems like it’s always ending
And into the setting sun I’m hurled
From once again
At pinnacles
Of hubris
I am circling
To unearthing
Tragic flaws
A cause
For which
The struggles worth it
Though a better off position
From what happens
For a reason
Must reveal itself in time
Or I’m
Deprived of my completion

Then parts of you fade
That once wholly you made
The most vital component
Of how much you made
Not financially
More existential
Affirming
That all intellectual
Causes
I’m earning
The chance to excel
Don’t expel me disgraced
For a harmless,
Albeit now costly
Mistake
But you make of it
Consequence
Where none is needed
And take from me more
Than I ever believed in

That’s all we ever were
At the beginning
And the end
From reservations
To the ad campaigns
Of bliss
Disinformation
Just Americans
Ahead of them
The dread of lesser nations
Ever conquerors
From wanderers
The squandering potential
On divisions
When the vision
At its best
Experimental  
Come together
When the weather seems
To mystify us all
And from the ashes of our ruins
We will grow
A shopping mall

My sorrow disarms me
When ignorance harms me
Had known you
This meant to me
More than a profit
Could ever predict
What it feels
To have lost it
Perhaps then you’d think
Not in numbers and code,
Not in protocol calculi
Heartless and cold

My dearest enchantress
My last second
Chances
Romance is revitalized
There by your side
Most profound
When I’m down
In the ground
Where I died
Or a part of me did
And there’s no resurrection
Not sure if a god
Would undo my transgression
No furthermore lessons
Nor tutoring sessions
No gainful employment
Of actual skill
Just robotic hack protocols
Running the mill
With their judgment,
Indifference,
All empathy lacking
Forgive and forget
Would be humans reacting
But no, cast me out
Revoke my
Humble claim
Make the smallest mistake
The worst I ever made

Not another word
About my misbegotten
Purpose
All compendiums
Addendums
End
In every bit as worthless
As these verses
Reimburse me
For the squandered
Fortunes fated
To be spent
In purgatories
Just a man
Incarcerated
In a prison
Of what vision’s
City ruins
Have created
I have crumbled
Inundated
Like a cookie dipped in milk,
By the weight of over-shaded  
Like a flower left to wilt
There were no pills
Or panaceas
To alleviate undoing
Only bills to pay
Atop already
Mountain debts
Accruing
All before we even come to her
To once upon a time
We were
Like fairy tales
Enamored bliss
Impaled upon
Unhappiness

No other way
To emphasize
I never asked
To be alive
But now that I’m
Beside you
Strive
To feel you are
The reason why
When at the end of love  
Retakes me
Only yours
Rejuvenates me
Makes me a holistic
Man
Still waits for me
To understand
Awakens some inherent
Calm
Before my storm of longing
Song
For ever long
I’ve serenaded
Visions of
A love
Not faded
Plain and simple
True, sincere
Heartaches
And breaks
When you’re not here
And when I fear you
Losing faith
My hope becomes
A restless wraith

Citizens
And denizens
Behold the city ruins
Sins
The toxic pit
Of veterans
Overprescribed
Their medicines
Americans
Addictive state
Its own worst enemy
Equate
In theory
Its ideals
Foretold
A sheepish populous
Controlled
And molded by
Their tales of old
The power brokers
Chokehold
Sold
Us all a panacea
To the ills of governed men
Just convince them they are free
Increase the ease
With which they spend

So this is what
Dying inside
Most resembles
I get all depressed
And I never
Write better
Just give me four walls
And occasional light
And I’ll gladly dwell
Well
In a cell of my plight
Not in spite
Of the doubt
I can make it out there
But in fear
I’d be living
The daily nightmare

Hey you guise
What is really your name
What primordial phantoms
Still dance in the rain
What enchants you
Romances your
Dark necromancy
And grants its surrender
Without sycophancy
Reveals inner-workings
Of secrets entombed
What it feels
Like a gentle,
Identical wound
And it sees through
To where
You must shed
The veneer
And it shows you the way
That you truly appear

Still slingin’
‘Dem warhawks
Right ‘outta the skies
And exposing the con-artist
Fascist disguise
Give a ****
On what side
Of the aisle
You’re on
If you lie, cheat and steal
From the people
You’re done

Try to learn from it
For there was a moment
In it
When you truly loved each other
You went with it
For you’d miss it
In the presence of another
For its absence
Was a future
Tends to spell
Impermanence
But we dispel it
As a nemesis
Of consciousness
Submits
Like flags in tatters,
Nothing matters,
It is useless to resist
So surrender
As it were
To her most enduring
Vow
And if it isn’t you
Still solemn
Be her sacrificial cow
And take to heart,
Not yet apart,
Remain rejoicing
In the now

This is the end
Of my life
I’m afraid
Where do memories go
When they cease to be made
Do they fade
Isolated
In coffins contained
Or live on
In some legacy
Shouldering blame
For the cornerstone laid,
For its labor unpaid,
For the road to extinction
For profits is paved

Crooked cops
Crop-dusting
Walking dead drops
Set up shop
Cracking rock
The crime lords of the block,
Never stopping
Mass production
Mass incarcerate
Consumption
Just repackaged
And reformed it
Into urban deconstruction
Underfunded housing project
For an upper
Classpiration
Gentrifying
Higher rises
Like a fentanyl
Sedation
Running rampant
Through the streets
And through the flesh and bone
It eats
And as the door comes crashing down
Its execution
Is complete
And so in summary
Impunity
With which it gets away
Has ever been
And ever will be
Making freedmen
Into slaves

In the farthest-flung fringe
A far cry from response
There resides an outsider
Comprised of what haunts
Him, a scribe to his host
To the world
A ghost writer
Askance in his stance
On the evil empire
Exile imposed
On his selfish desire
The ills of his making
Have taken too much
So afflict him with vision
But gift him no brush
For he will just
Depict it
As cognizant dust
As an infinite sorrow
Ephemeral joy
But what else makes a man
Of a scared little boy?

You would seem
So far away,
So old and gray
From me astray
Estranged in nightly,
Out of sightly
Slightly differing decay
Complacent discontent
Is swept
Under delusions
Wanting more,
What more perfections,
Burning questions
Could you possibly
Need answers for?
Is no
Togetherness
Of us
Enough to turn our bones
To dust
What must
Befall
Before it’s just
All future ideation
Hushed

Mixing the signals
Conflating attraction
With courtesy’s
Chemical
Overreaction
Unwanted attention,
Unflattering flex,
The presumptuous
Ego-dystonic
Wants ***
Nothing less,
Nothing more
Than to finish before
Recollections
Of dignity
Up off the floor
Or reflections
On mirrors
Preparing to split
Personalities
Rift,
We’re just not
Intuit

What if love
Was just fragments
Mere figments
Imagined
What draws bodies close
To embracing
Impassioned
Would tragic
Just typify
How it concludes
We confuse its temptation  
With swinging of moods
Could illusions
Enamor you
More than a kiss
What possessive delusions
Compel us to this
Missing piece,
Wishing more,
Holding dear,
Longing for
Bore the weight of its loss
Like misplacing one’s mind
And therein
It shall stay
It’s in one
We must find

Ghosts of my own
Shadows passing
From past mistakes
Drove a stake
Straight
Into remnants of fate
And erased every mark
That I made on this place
Pearly gates
I’ve been pounding on
Just empty space

So it’s back to the study
Of tending to legacy
How and why
Man persists
Writing his history

Down in the rabid
Whole world
Gone to war
Down in dumps
Of lined-pockets
That buy and sell more
Down beneath the extinction
Clockwork
Agent Orange
Down furthermore still
In its cluster bomb
Torrent

So back to the study I go
Tending legacy
Soon I will know
How and why
I write history

Barely an enemy
Faced on the front
But the one in the mirror
Undaunted confront
For we go to our graves
Free to liberate slaves
But we settle
For personal,
Tribal enclaves
Just a trivial anecdote
Lost in dilution
Delusions of
Sought after
Final solution

So back to the study we must
Tend to legacy
Soldier on
King and pawn
Written in history

Whatever I don’t use
Becomes the gloomy
World away
Electrify
Entire nations
At the standard
Rate of pay
For what remains
Of degradation
Is the only thing that matters
Only flag I’d sooner wave
Before reducing it to tatters
Silver platters
And the scraps upon
Could fill my empty bowl
But some primeval,
Greater evil
Is devouring me
Whole
For I cannot be in control
Of cultivating
Innovation
I cannot feed all the people
Empty promises
Salvation
Merely offer
But a morsel
Of my hunger
To fulfill
What a good meal
Among the rest of us
Collectively
Could steal

Living in
Transition years
Converting to
Transmission gears
I fear we are
Becoming death
Becoming
Less
Autonomous
Peacekeeping mess
Intent
To save
Content
With content’s
Shallow grave
Amassing
Mass extinction
Wealth
Relapse
Environmental health
Collapsing edifices
Fall
Behind the mask
Broadcasts
A pall
And after all we’ve built
To last
Somewhere along
The system crashed
So now we either
Disconnect
Entirely
Or redirect
The tech,
The mecha-
Intellect
Unto a course-corrected
Flesh

More passer
Than dribbler
The scritch and scratch
Scribbler
My flow is a river
In come what May
Winters
I swim in the shiver
And even in bloom
All my numinous
Withers
My luminous
Gloom
Still obscured
To the witness
My freakiest nature
Survivalist
Fitness
A wishlist
Of ashes
Compassion
Impulse
And with tact
My collapsing
Synapses
Convulse

Anchored
Drag me
Solace as ever
Serenity weeping
Cantankerous
Sadly
My life away sleeping

Can’t give up
Reaching for
Seeking
A meeting
Convening with clarity
All the more fleeting
The seating is limited
Lighting gets dim
And obscuring its absence
Oblivion grim
Underpinned
By the fins
Circling as I swim
Overtones
Of imploding
Corrosive
Head spins
Barely scratching the surface
Of where to begin
When I’m out on a limb
Saying
Find what is lost
But before you sell souls
Please consider the cost

Anger boy sees all of you
He feels what you are going through
He wonders why there’s such distress
It vexes him, they can’t express
The same unbridled rage
In pain
Just quell,
Dispel,
Suppress,
Contain
What still inclines you naturally
Object
To counter-
Factually
Bemused of ruin’s
Rhapsody
Tumultuous,
Tempestuous
Aggressiveness
Passivity
But anger boy still wears it on his sleeve
For all to see
He differentiates the hatred
From the seething enmity
He contemplates the hidden faces,
Safer space’s
Veering gaze
But looks away unfettered,
To a better
World ablaze

This is not your home
More a land of enchantment
We dream for the high-rising
Homeless encampment
We pray for salvation
Pay for
Subjugation
And waive our proud colors
For brand names
Emblazoned
And raised in
This race-based
Freemason’s e-state
Is to learn
Lady Liberty’s
Lecherous villainy
Some more illusory
Profits
Grand wizardry
Class-driven
Rifts
Of consumerist misery
So be forewarned
Welcomed all as you are
This is not opportunity
Knocking that hard
It’s just no-knocking
Crack rock
The vote
By design
It’s injustice for all’s
Justice
Taking the bribe
This is men left behind
ALL THE TIME,
ANYTIME
For a nickel
And dime
Violent crime
Rates are high
But the views
Are sublime
So remember in venturing
Here
On vacation
Be it
Permanent
Or a special occasion
Again, I implore you
Be sure that these shores
Are a lot more
Than more than enough
Food in store

Bury
The verity
Flowers on graves
Are like coffins
Of cargo
Containers of slaves
And the heroes
Have vacated
Privatized shores
And the product
Keeps pushing down
No-knocking doors
And the wars
Are a whirlwind
Of feeds
On repeat
Leading us to believe
That the truth is a tweet

Sacrificed her
As was yet
Undeserving
To be of the
Beloved
To be one with the
Beloved
To be suns above
Beloved
Came undone
For my
Beloved
Never wandered roads
More rugged
Jagged, sloping,
Craggy
Climbs,
In winding
Hindsight
Going blind
Beseeching
Seeking
Modes of teaching
Scattered pieces
Peace of mind

And still in the shadows
Your shallows
Astound
Knew this wasn’t a movie
Keep moving
Unbound
But see through me
Exclude me
From fond recollections
From funds I’ve collected
The sum of my most
Disrespectful
Transgressions
Contrition incarnate
Discards me like waste
To a thoughtful exile
In dissonant space
Having learned
And unlearned
And relearned again
Better
It’s better
Having loved
Than been drugged
By forever
Been judged by the netherworld
Deemed to be temporal,
Rejected,
Resent
To lament my mistakes
And wake up to her
Once again
Beautiful face

King of the jungle gym
Under the rubble dim
Light of survival
Is vanishing
Fast
Felt so tall
Just a moment ago
Harkened back
To a time before memory
Anchored longevity
Fleeting few moments
Reflection embraced
Still lamenting components
I couldn’t erase
No escape
From the weight
Of the crumbling facade
No uplifting salvation
To make me a god
Or equate such disgraced
Afterthoughts of creation
To some more outlandish
Evolve explanation
Acceptance of place
Beneath all mortal burden
Bequeathing assumptions
Default to uncertain
This earthen slime mold
Can preserve the self gone
Can deliver me from
The untimeliest bomb

Can’t get no
Status faction
Satisfaction guaranteed
Just parakeets
A pair of beats
Commodifying
Cost of need
The price of greed
Inflates like ego
Gives you power over me
Or so you’ve seen
The dream machine
Forever justifies
The means
But in the hands again
Of people
Breaking equal
Treatises
We feed the treachery
The fallacies
Of drama queen decrees

I know
I was there
Stranger place
Stranger time
The strange faces
I’ve seen
Estranged
No friend of mine
Not the least bit
Resemblance
Of love to lament
Nor a letter
To send
In my pen’s eloquence
To a worthy of waiting
For reiterating
The myriad ways
I could feel
Recreating
The meeting space
First laid my eyes
Vivified,
Vivid
Given to smitten
With my own demise
Never home
But to show her
A welcome befitting
The one to whom
Rest of my life
Is committing

What hath wickedness wrought
Scared to have a real thought
For submissively
Venerate
Sorrow
Do I
And permissively
Wait
On tomorrow
To die
In the mind
Resides peace
But unrest never sleeps
And if food for thought feeds the brain
Mine overeats,
It devours
Digests
And expels
The excess
In some monstrously
*******
Ego-death  
Mess
And repressing
Ensuing
Onslaughts of forlorn
Is my fear
That from one
Into many
I’m torn

Crescendos of overloads
Water my brain
And I’m down the same drain
In a whole different way
Grew apart
Closing in
All my memories spin
And within a prismatic
Class bubble
Chagrin
Is my gleeful indifference
Immersed
In mesmeric
Existence
Misshapen
Hallucinogenic
Mistaken so often
For misaligned
Misery
Maladaptations
To malcontent
Miserly
Still none the wiser
To omni-dimensions
Still so much to see
Is believing
Suspensions

Let’s pretend
We trend to like
We tend to
Mostly
Playing nice
The sprawling
Fallen
Paradise
A part of nature
All its own
We decimate
This one true home
Insisting in the cloud
To save us
As we let the lords
Enslave us
Digging graves
Like Vegas babes
Keep track of time
Like meter maids
Still underpaid
And overworked
And haunted
Everywhere we’ve lurked
By what a curse
It is to live
To be this me
With more to give
Yet gifted with
A lesser power
All the universe
Is ours

I am peace in the flesh
A reprieve from distress
The primordial Netherworld’s
Retrospect death
An angelic embrace
Fall from Grace
Bliss despair
And I fluctuate
Dreamscapes
Like any nightmare

And I brought all the words
That I needed to say
Dare I form them
Some rather
Material way
Some ethereal sway
Taken hold
Of my hand
And with dexterous
Penmanship
Each inky strand
Made its mark on the page,
Freed my soul from its cage
And let spill the life force
By the edge of my blade
Let it flow unreservedly
And
Unrelenting
Instilled
In serenity’s
Solace lamenting
And still
In calamity’s
Calming
Fomenting
A wrath only I
Could begin to describe
And a madness
Of malice
Too warped to decide
Which is which
Who is who
Where to go
What to do
In an infinite void
There is merely
Beware
We are here
We are now
We are locked in its glare

Grow up in a swamp
Dampen spirited
Sinking
There’s no coming back
No escape
From rethinking
This home
We are rooted to
Stone’s throw
From who we knew
Soon to submerge
In the dismal
Mundanity’s
Tireless dirge
May it serve
Unrelenting
From Quaker to Cat,
Like the memories’
Nemeses
Harken us back
To catharsis
In darkness’s
Walk through the woods
The reclaiming,
The changing
Of old neighborhoods
But to leave it behind
In the mired
Decline
Is impossible
Lest you
Return
Time to time

And that’s when I wrote you
Came right out
And told you
We were just
Reflections
Of similar figments
Our differences
Deeper than people
Of pigments
Upbringing
Diverges
In privileged
And poor
As the middle class
Widens the rift
Even more
What a chore it’s become
To among them
Reside
When a score
Of conquistadors
Seeks to divide
And presiding
Unprecedential
In his crimes
In his locked box
Of docs
In his Fox
Populies
Is the traitor,
The ******,
The racist
Tax fraud
Still enriching
His image
Like profits of God

Must have meant
Something then
Same old
How could it end
What makes us
Carry on
Forward from here
For the whole world imploding
Dark nights
To appear
For the fear
Sinking in
I go through it alone
Maybe turn over
Every last
Perfect match stone
Before finding the one
If such notions exist
As an actual form
Or a premature kiss

Apparatus
Against us
It wickedly
Works
From worthlessness
Into a purchase
Converts
Any currency
Currently
Rotting in vaults
Any hapless
Homemakers
Estranged in their faults
So deranged
In their stranger things
Bingeing
Addictions
Adrift
In the rifts
That still shatter the kitchens

Shards of a shimmering
Sanity
Slither
The rain,
Forest flame,
Mortal-stained
Rivers wither
And little known
Little me’s
Watery grave
Seems a long way away
In some newfound malaise
Where the waves
Undulate
Even out
Across land
And alone in its
Thralldom
I stand but a man

You can read
Whatever you want
In any font
You write your name
May it contain
The pages waiting
On the narrative to change
Upon the ways
Its flags are waving
Over battlefields of graves,
Beneath its shades
Belies the aisles
Mercantile
Sails of slaves
And if we wanted
To improve it
We would have to let them choose,
Even if it means
The winners
Would have nothing left to lose

Holes in my running shoes
Same old recycled news
Nooses
And crosses
And lost is our
Helpless youth
Soothing albeit
To see it
Inspired
To rise to the skies
Like a funeral
Pyre
Aspire
To signify
This is defiance
Our dog eat dog world’s
All too human
Alliance
And we compromise
With our difference’s
Union
But never on vision’s
Imperial ruin

As you so
Beseech
I am getting more sleep
But lost sight of the now
Peering into the future
Appearing more often than not
In the past
But try as I might
To traduce the consumer
I find myself molded
On models of class

Well where will we
Wallow
When weathering
Woe
If the one who weeps
With us
Won’t drag us below
Will we find
Sanctuary
In various others
Go run to
Succumb to
The some of them
Lovers
Asunder I’d sooner tore,
Bore out my soul
Before treading the sand
Without your hand to hold
So behold
But a testament
Fragment
A statement
My orphan heart
Lost and found
You are its claimant

Mindless hate
Fueling,
The spectacle
Ruling
The idol lies
Hypnotized,
Slavishly drooling
Like homeschooling
******
In repressed
Insecure
And alone,
Unexpressed
Will turn into
A war
For your loyalty
Soil,
Your toil,
Your vote
For the royalty’s
Dynasty’s
Building a moat
And awoke
Is unwelcome
Just go back to sleep
As they reap your American dreams
Counting sheep

I will always be the shadow
Seldom seen,
Rarely heard
Barely verbalizing
Any
Written,
Stutter
Spoken word
But on the mountain
In the fog
I am the ghost
Of mostly gone
I am forgotten,
Undesired,
Disappearing
All along
You cannot find me,
Just remind me
To at times
Make presence known
And should I feel like talking
Only locking eyes
With her alone

Seal me in a cell
Of serendipity
Dismayed
I feel the flooding
Wishing well
Of unanimity
Betrayed
You know my name,
Control my brain,
Made me exclaim it
As I came
And in your absence
I am rapturous,
A ravenous
Despair
And in my sadness
I am avarice
A fathomless
Nightmare
The prey ensnared,
The barely breathing
Sense of freedom
Self-deceiving
There is only
Bound volition
Inclination
To be yours
A blind ambition’s
Snap revision
Of my book
Of nevermores