Carnivorous culture
Still courting the asp
In control
Just to watch it all
Slip from our grasp
Never pass on the chance
To see carnage
And slaughter
Still waging our wars
For more oil and water
Insatiable lust
To see death and despair
To declare ourselves
Empire gods
Without care
Don’t you dare
Read away
Yet another grim warning
I urge you
Embrace it
Don’t wake up
In mourning
A scorned
Hath no fury Earth
In it adorned

And now I will boast
For my pride is engorged
On abandonment’s ghost
Of the friendships I’ve forged
Through the depths
Ever delving
In deeper
To molten
The curtain of iron
Fist rules
Of the sultan
Could bring the judgmental
Before us
Defined
Could appeal sentimental
Committing the crime
And never so much
As offend
When the pen
That I wield
Ever mightier,
Summons the end

Reach out
Through the screen
Not so naive
To think I save them
Bade them all
A fond farewell
Within the hour
Then I rate them
On a scale of one to five
The session
As a whole
Describe
And should they need me
Come tomorrow
I’ll be back
At anytime

How sleep takes a hold
Of me now
Is astounding
Where formerly
Insomnia
The clock rounding
Unbound
By my childish fears
There is only
Exhaustion by day
And still go to bed lonely
Though not for a lack
Of a special companion
Just prep
For eventually
She might abandon
Me standing there
Fooling myself
To the last
I learn more from then now
Than I do from the past

You don’t know starvation
Salvation encases you
In a cocoon
Metamorphosis rendering
You in a tomb
Or immersed in a banquet
You cannot consume
Not a gleaming, ethereal
Rapturous tune
Some melodic muse meadow
Eternity bloom

When there’s food here to waste
But salvation embraces you
In a suitcase
Destination intending
No final embrace
Nor respite, from the home office
Lifeless escape
Just a go away
Far away
Fade
Happy place

But there’s nothing to eat
As salvation effaces you
In the devoid
When the maker class
Trades human nature
For droid
In an idle mind’s
Workshop
Of captives employed
By the one who evolved
From the God Asteroid

Try as I may
To tame it,
Rein it in
I can’t contain it
Just evade it as a talking point
And silently disclaim it
It’s the same old story
Reimagined
Beast that kills
The beauty pageant
Tragic downfall
Of the hero  
Bank accounts
Reduced to zero
Sheer calamitous
Despair
Sempiternal
My nightmare
Aware it all
Concludes
In nothing
Life itself
A mere MacGuffin
Stuffed inside
A womb
Entombed
Then by oblivion
Consumed

Back in this educate
State of mind
Earning
The title of writer
Inciter of learning
More mutually
Concomitantly
Guessing
The answers
The questions
The overall lessons
I plan so haphazardly
Somehow still getting it
Through to them casually
Just keep it simple
Be honest
Be there
And adroitly instill
This weird skill that I share

Semantics take chances
Like hopeless romantics
And thus my undoing
From love still eschewing
Revealing it feels
Unmistakably
Latent
She knows in her heart
But is stoic
And patient
Awaiting its fall into place
Opportune
More fortuitous
Whereabouts
Over the moon
For her form and mine
Melded
Dispelled the fell
Hell bid
On once upon times
Merely nursery
Rhymes
Just to lose it all gambling
On how she defines

We were the rivals
The antithesis
To offset
The in debt
The left’s clenched
Iron fist
To be squeezed ever tighter
On fruits of the market
Then,
As they starve,
Leave the people in darkness

I’m Mike
And this is my vanity project
The biggest bad bully
This playground
Conceived
A disquiet
Pariah
Orator
Aggrieved
Making ravens of crows
They’ve examined my brain
And yet still no one knows
Quite this kind of insane
Can’t explain
How the wolf
So avails his ambition
On lions
And tigers
And bears
In submission
How impossible precision
Of my mark
Is but a spark
And when you whisper
Wistfully
I am the echo in the dark
Harken back
To the exact
Unambiguous
Conclusion
And if my heart was still intact
I could depart from its
Illusion

Not just a fantasy
This time she’s real
And for once I don’t struggle
To feel how I feel
To reveal to her
All of my intimate
Darkness
Foreboding
Corroding my carcass
No more
She is coding
The mode of my mood
To conclude
Its exhuming
For good
Lay my demons to rest
In her soothing
Serenity
Melody
Sweet as sincerity
Piecing the fragments
Of dismembered memory
Back to reform
To adorn me in solace
Yet still not quite certain
In love
She would call this

For shadows are most
Inhospitable hosts
When you revel in devils
And settle for ghosts
You will always see evil
Subsuming the good
And consumed in delusion
Forgetting it could
All quite possibly,
Nay
Almost certainly be
All contained in your head
A threadbare
Lunacy

At least now
I get back to this
Mired in meaningless
Never the writer
I thought I would be
Just the one
Who gets by
On emotionally
Unapproachably
Truculent
Daily dose supplement
Of my deficient
Self-worth
Ego shattering
Into a million persona
Brains splattering
All across
Can’t carry on
Not the same
But my noose is indifference
The rope is existence
Resistance again
My futility pen
Proudly pressing its muses
To paper
To savor
Unfortunate cycles
Of bliss turned to anger
Whenever I fail
To maintain
The “my” concept
Own up to the tragic flaw
There from the onset

It’s almost like
There could be blissful
Amidst
The conflictual
Phantasmagoric
Abyss
Like a day
I don’t want to die
Nearly as much
The resultant
Residual
Remnant of trust
I’ve adjusted
According
To where she would stand
Were I poor,
Powerless
With no titles and land
Just a man
With a hand
For composing discord  
With this pain as my shield
And this pen as my sword

Inward seeking
Shrinking violet
Red dwarf
Morphing
Into silent
Shades evade
Intrusive gaze
A spotlight on
An empty stage
Arrayed for how I play
The role
Of one’s so growing older
Soul
Where love is found
Less in caress
But more in what
I can’t express

Have I done enough
Thinking
For both of us now
My accomplishments
Nothingness
Still don’t know how
I could ever be down
For a down-payment town
For submission
Conditioned
To bow to the crown
Never found
The unbound
To its soaked in blood ground
I remain
My remains
As the Earth spins around
Not demanding my presence
But yet nonetheless
She accepts me
Addresses me
An
Honored guest

Somehow still plenty
Of energy left
Fell asleep on the couch
Then into my bed crept
Like a crypt for the restless
Upon which I write
With increasingly recent
Infrequency
Nightly
Entire day typing
Like lightning
A living
Is humble and honest
Yet fraught with misgiving
I taught
More tautology
Wrought my own ends
As I sought the renewing
Undoing it pens

Now feel it flow through you
The upper
Class privilege
And rip it to shreds
In your miscreant mischief

Still so much without you
Not so much as doubt you
Could ever be there
When I wasn’t awake
Looking on as we’ve had ourselves
Lost in the quake
But await me no further
I’m bound to beside
You can hide.
You can bide.
All your time
In my mind
I’ll be there when you realize
At the end tides
There is no other rising up
Save our demise
Let me hear it be sung
Into walls of night shrieked
Let me watch
As it ruins
The siege In retreat
For no storming advance
Of tempestuous furies
Could stray from the favor
I wager on juries
On people
The equal
No more
And no less
But to me
She is everything
This can’t express

Why not just leave me
Alone all those years
You could see in me
Something
That seldom appears
Rearing its ugly head
Soon of late
On a date
Yet she even sees peace
In my war
Mental state

Nightling
In the quiet rapture
Soon to take you out
To pasture
Casting shadows
On the wall
As in and out
Of love
I fall
And scrawled a codex
On the floor
Rosetta ******
In Nevermore
Eternally
Nocturnal
Wake
Forsaken son
Of goodness sake
I’ll break into
Your safest space
And bank on black
You’ll never find me
See you at
My not-so timely
Unassuming
Doom and gloom
Just feed me to the void
In bloom

Insecurities
Tear me to shreds
In absentia
Unknown to myself
As I beckon dementia
I’m lost in her afterthoughts
Patiently waiting
Exhaustively studying
How she does dating
So far
From afar
More connection established
Progression is natural
Less force and more habit
Reception is spectral at times
In our minds
And though two different kinds
Do our spirits entwine
But unravel
On what constitutes
The divine
Only long enough to
Coalesce them again
In her messages sent
And his love letters penned

Inwardly introspect
Technical fouls
Still checking myself
Like a courtship of owls
And towering over my head
Ego reigns
I profess it with fiery sermons
Enraged
At an enemy
Memory
Bending me
Mentally
As I awaken
The madness in melody
Never exceed,
Never bleed
Dry of life
Save the need
To see fiends
At the edge of a knife
Let the steeds
In their stampeding tumult
Proceed,
Let the siege
Bring to ruin
Their temples of greed
Let tempestuous tyrants
Command hurricanes
I will summon the depths
To devour their claims
For the nameless one
Gave me a face
And its features
Erased its facade
My visage
Is the reaper
Procurer of withering souls
In the soil
Demurrer to furors
That free me in toil  
For only through struggle
Have we then progressed
May this echo
A Testament
To its unrest

He stomps around
In funny shoes
Maniacal tumults
Bemuse
Presuming his
Illusion’s
Charming
Alter-egos
Not self-harming
Nor alarming
His appearance
Law and order
No adherence
To the standard
Hold your tongue
The venom rhetorician’s
Gun
And still he wields the blade
At play
And shields his pain
So far away
From any castles
Long relinquished
Flames of war
Now long extinguished
Over all extinction
Reigns
Yet microcosmically
Campaigns
To win the favor
Of the haves,
The have-nots
And thee
Anti-class
And still makes time
To show the people
Rags to riches’
Glitchin’ eagle
Free to automate his nation’s
Technological contagion
Watch it promulgate the spaces
Thought once safe  
From other races
Then lay waste
To opposition
Let them live
On one condition
Kingdoms, queens
Must be the means
To mass produce
The God machines

Been away from it
Days
In estranged disgrace
Chasing
Some sleep
But my feet
Still insist in outpacing
The time it requires
To enter the rem
As a kid could be hours,
In seconds, now ten
All it takes
Stay up late
And before dawn awake
Just to do it all over again
Double take
But it’s hard to break habits
Convenience’s sake
If the pay out
Is played out
It’s still making sense
To be teaching my craft
And then drafting laments
Even if I’d prefer
Eulogies
Evergreen
Be they natural,
Pack a bowl
What does it mean?
Or the digital
Black as coal
Money machine

Excluded to me
Only one who sees
Wrong
Ever has our approach been
So flawed all along
So few willing to change
Reevaluate courses
Of action we take
Can’t unmake
The creationist’s stance
Just evolve
To sustain in the acid rain
Storm we dissolve
Or we starve
Carven stone
Of our monument reads
But a testament to
Our insatiable greed

Home was never quite enough
I felt the urge to venture far
Go get lost in a bazaar
And then collapse into oblivion
Just like a dying star

No home was never quite enough
I barely knew my shadow father
Love my mother and his daughter
More than every life itself
Could sooner be
Sheep to the slaughter

Home was never quite enough
No resting place could lull me in
Like the azure allure amphibian
Seductress songs
Could dull my grin

This home was never quite enough
There had to be totality
And end to this banality
In finding misses pieces out there
Scattered in depravity

My home was never quite enough
Eventually disowned
Only concluding overthrown
The global power order forces
Ever etched upon my stone

No home was never quite enough
And even now it yearns me back
How many times have I begun to pack
Retracted in reluctance
Fear facades replace
My foreign mask

For home was never quite enough
The elsewhere still awaited
As the years go by it sated
Wanderlust within
A gust of sin
And swept me on
Outdated

Home was never quite enough
An overstatement of unwelcome  
Overstay-stained cerebellum
Sooner seemed a silent specter
Often gone
But present, seldom

No more than a writer
A Nevermore
Sword
Can’t afford
To be published
Potential ignored
Lording over my thesis claim
Fame anonymity
Long to envision again
The divinity
Yet to return it
Relinquish its gift
Through the outpouring
Hourglass sands
Do I sift
To recover the note
I once wrote her
In love
After giving the corked-bottle
Vessel a shove

Saw the world
Perfect
This money’s not worth it
I swear it
Existed
Immediately
But beyond
Panoramas
Interminably
Conflict looms
To disturb,
To unbalance,
Perturb
Should we seal ourselves off
And kick fixes to curb
Such delusional
Fantasy
Fallacies
Cannot be
Anything more
Than alternative sanity

Cease your noise polluting
Convoluting
The details
When every utterance
Is substance-less
And tries
To no avails

Could ever forge the weapons
Wielded
Still reveal
That which I’ve shielded
Of the fates in which
I’ve sealed
My noble cause
As yet unyielded

Not in fear
Of fairer maidens
Or more stoic
Obelisks
For with it here
My pen in hand
I ferry all across
The Styx

I am the earth
On which it sits
The puzzle piece
That never fits
The ticks of madness
Of the clock
I am the nothing boy despondent
Watch me crash upon the rock

Then drop my remnants
To abysses
Like a pendant
Slips from hand
And as my memory
Like fish food
Scatters out
About the sand

Abandon not the dream
Of waking
After life
Is after thought
And after sought for
Nevermore  
Shall be
The rest for which it’s wrought

There must still be destiny
Judgment upon us
Not always the enemy
Waiting to bomb us
Not putting my head
To these jobs
Any longer
Deliver me unto
The end of the story
And stronger grown from it
The roots of my glory

If there were once slaves
Tell me how it’s still made
The same way
A news ANCHOR
Can make you afraid
And if I could not speak
Would I live just to eat
Should I not pay the homeless
Asleep in the street
For my vanity
Certainly
Sates itself thusly
My heart is still beating
Just leaky and rusty

Yet empathy still
Spilling out from my wounds
And I don’t just inhabit,
I thrive in these tombs
Can’t control what they think
So conditioned to help
But to care,
Really care
Demands more of oneself
To prepare
For the barely
Still breathing
Of others
Like watching the end
Of the world
Without lovers

I rhymed it once
I rhymed it before
Long before
The first quill and ink
Wept of Lenore
Not comparing
Just sharing
My prowess apart
From the influence
All predecessors
Impart
It was dark when I found it
Was gifted its light
And by night I unbound it
In what I must write
Not for pay,
Recognition,
Nor artistry
Rendered
In ways
I’ve conditioned
Myself
To remember
It’s some more inherent,
Innate primal urge
To from my peace of mind
The disturbances purge

It’s there when I need It
To forge into steel
The impervious tumult
Exultant I feel  
From the bowels of misery
Dregs of despair
From oblivion’s shadow self
Shrieking nightmare
Indomitable nature
Contained in the shred
Then extreme pressure
Pounds it
To unbridled dread
And impending doom
Drums
Like the thunderbolt
Stuns
And for powers that be
Or kids playing with guns
It becomes what awakens
And reaps ever-sleep
And for overlords weeping
Their demons as deep
It shall keep vivifying,
Reviving,
Igniting
Expressing itself
Like the muses alighting
And then
The crescendo,
The denouement drops
And forever the flow
Of its force never stops
Breaking down
The eternal fear’s
Molten blade mold
And it sharpens its bite
On god killers of old
Now embolden the brush
And the pen
And the mic
Then profess its soul stainless
Unto the last night

Up there immersed
In your ego
Imprisoned
Untethered
Yet bound
By the truth
You envisioned
To be nothing more
Than restorative
Justice
But in your wake
Vengeance
When settled
The dust is
Just envy and wrath
Not benevolent grace
No salvation
You’d sooner
Damnation embrace
Adoration you crave
Affirmation you seek
Exaltation eludes you
The hungry and meek
Do not speak of your feats
Nor retain what you feign
Your domain out of reach
Not a firmament palace
Or kingdom of clouds
Just deluded illusions’
Identity shrouds
So come walk down among them
Again
Now and then
Then return to eternity
Lonely to spend

Locked in a cage
Of a loner
A stray
Reaching out for the keys
Just deceives me the further
Like pleas of the psyche
Diseased
Commits ******
For no one else sees
Worst in me
Quite like me
And deliverance from it
More pricey than free
Elegies
I have lachrymosely
Dedicated
To fallen love’s
Cyclical saga
Abated
At last
She is there
Nearer still  
To renewal
Accrual of wasted years
Seeking approval
From whom I know not
Just a place to belong
To be welcome,
Be valid,
Not once again gone

Conscious expanded
I’ve been there
Abandoned
Erstwhile
Constituents
Of the old me
Yet eventually
My default setting
Me free
Just recedes,
Or rescinds,
Or reverts
To it hurts
To go so very far
And delve furthermore still
Into alternate methods
To thrill in the ****
Of the ego,
The love,
Delectation
Indulgence
Replaced by a mere fleeting glimpse
Of effulgence
That beckons,
And cleanses
And lends itself to
Be sensorily sorted
In starting anew
Brighter day,
Better life,
A respite from the plight
And if dare I hope
Someone
To kiss me goodnight

Makeshift machines
Making me
Out of touch
With a touchscreen reality
In my palm’s clutch

Let me run rampant
Across your enchantment
And lambent illumine
Your gloom catacombs
For I lurk
Go berserk
In accursed
Mirth manic
And contradict gods
Just to feel
More titanic
Volcanic at times
So inclined to destroy
Overruled,
Undermined
By these rhymes I enjoy
Thunder mind
Does not rest
Until bolts in the brain
Can explain
What I claim
In a more cryptic way

But none of them knew
Really knew
What I’m into
Went through
All the motions
Emotions
In rear view
In hindsight
Behind us
Was fun while it lasted
Though always outmatched
By the shadows I’ve casted

Get so discouraged,
Demoralized,
Idle
The longer I dwell
On how little is vital
How busy we make ourselves
Fearing reprisal
From any more status
Authority
Idol
Revival,
Restart,
Reevaluate
Where
I could be of most use
Have a reason to care
For a change
Really try
To deserve what I earn
Not just learn to comply
But what more felicitous role
Befits I
A defiant,
Subversive,
Discursive
From birth is
An urchin
Accursed imp
Worthlessness
I am the muse
Once removed
From the nihilist

War becomes normalcy
Fact into fiction
The thought police state
Of surveillance suspicion
Thine neighborly enemies
Love thee no longer
Your best friend
A media mogul
Fear-monger
Outmoded,
Outdated,
Upgrade
Or you fade
To irrelevance,
Loneliness,
Powerless,
BANG!

Oh no I just live here
Just try to exist here
Don’t own my own home
Rather roam
Open road
Than be humble
Abode
Welcome guests
Nonetheless
To my house party
Mode
Where I’ll make your acquaintance
Conversing renascence
And cohabitate
With all
Homeostasis

Where is the boy?
Who could all day imagine
When did he become
An old man-minded dragon
Obsessed with his hubris
Caressing his treasure
Distressed by the slightest
Same change
In the weather
Unfettered by suffering
Even his own
Unperturbed by atrocities
Building his throne
Atop bones and tombstones
All alone in his lair
And despairs so instinctively
No longer cares
For affairs of the heart
Former love for the people
Just sheep to the slaughter
All worthlessly equal
No path to salvation
Just sociopathic
Estrangement
Enraged
Disaffection
Defection
Deranged
Can’t contain
The brain drain
Disconnection
From what still remains
But a strand
Of abandoned
The show must go on
Let this script
Be my stand-in

Still finding my medicine
Feasting on sediment
Scratching a living
Off urban development
Much to the detriment
Of my convictions
When my ideals reap
The for-profit afflictions
Infecting my sturdy
Immunity to
The contagion of aging
A dying world view
Stays alive instead not
For more logical ends
But to bend to my will
What the future impends

We had beaches
And cities
And mountains
Ashore
We had more
Then we ever grew up with
In store
And we even had time
Time to talk to each other
And rare as a find
As it is
To discover
A newfound renewal
Of cordless connection
Without the conflicted
Discourse
Disaffection
Divorced from reality
Back to the dream
Temporarily
Merrily
Tasting cuisine
Could all seem
To be needed
Yet that’s what we lacked  
But still shells in the sand
Keep the family intact

This isn’t a gift
Nor a curse
Just a part
Of complete me
Eventually
Making his mark
On a world whose indifference
Too long to his words
Kept him down,
Not a sound
From his speech
Came without
An implacable
Actual
Need to be written
Ambitions
Envision
Imperial Britain
Some urge to preserve
Share what makes me
Exceptional
Soar in my hubris’
Downfall confessional

Lacking that
Lachrymose
Last word
Laconic
Discursive
Verbosity
My gin and tonic
Should it be a topic
That triggers incensed
Or my heart in a locket
Of loveless lament
For the loss
Is too grave to bare
Too dead to care
But more recently
Signs of life
Bloom with her there
And though rare
Are her thorns
As the cause of its drips
Fingertips can’t resist
To spill guts for her lips

Where do they come from
Up out of the drain
In the trash can they swarm
Can not hope to contain
Them in seemingly ceaseless
Invasions each day
If I leave but a speck
Of a crumb
They will stay
Inexplicable ways
They can bite me all over
And scratching
And clawing
Ensues
On my shoulder
I just want them gone
Many thousands I’ve killed
But unyielding formations
Are soon to rebuild
And their armies outnumber
My patience in seconds
As pest control’s number
More audibly beckons
But last thing I need
A homeowner’s expense
When the rent’s too **** high
Write it off
As incensed

Reducing the time
Spent expecting
To earn
Not my usual
Practical
Way to unlearn
Inauspicious
Habitual
Preferences
Render me
Merely a cyborg
With some
Human tendencies
More like dependencies
On the pretending
I know what I’m doing
Convictions defending
What’s left to believe
To stay woken up for
To look forward
To future good things
Still in store