Not about how I look
It’s about how I feel
Don’t aspire to model
Unreal
Abs of steel
Body images forged
In a foundry of fake
Ego-worshipping
Vanities
We venerate,
Escalate
Above normalcy
Mortals’
Informal appearance
To levels demanding
Religious adherence
To some sort of devil’s
Purse-nality cult
Poster-boyish pop stars
Idol minds
We exult
In,
Pretending
This kid’s an adult
Surely only more harm
Than success
Can result
When alarms aren’t raised
On the pageantry stage
Or the image displayed
Still outweighs
The health craze
Gets away with its ****
As if papists appraised
By the standards we set
For what flesh
Really craves
And the souls it enslaves
When the imp
Misbehaves
Just a phase
They say,
Verily,
Soon it shall pass
Blame society’s
Virally-spreading
Impact
With its constant
News-cycle’s
Truth-vanishing
Act
Just reflecting what we
Wish to see
Staring back
In the glass
At us
Perfectly snaptured
As dysmorphic actors’
Dystopian future
Buy-products
Enraptured
Like Thatcherites’
Appetites
Herd-thinning pasture
Refracting attractive
Distractions
Much faster
Than paces of
Heart-racing
Patients
Can gasp for
To ask for
A semblance of
***-figured
Sums
At the least
But alas becomes
Only
This beautiful beast

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

In being mindful
Not mindful of ourselves
We must also remember
We’re still something else
Something less than a beast
But much more than a god
For to err is too human
We are...tragic flawed

Prophet of lightning
Herald of gods
As the master of self
Tell me, what are your flaws?
Do you lurk in the shadows
And follow their steps?
Do you dwell on the twilight
Of leadership’s depths?
For as wise as you are
And as perfect a writer
The language of love
You have yet to decipher
It seems that in willing to power
You fail
To envision the overlord
Drawn to full scale
Perhaps not in your image
Or by your own hand
Can these creatures be made
The superior man
When their fate is extinction
Though not yet condemned
Are all your disciples
Who walk among them
To live and to grow
To be free and to choose
To triumph with pride
And to learn how to lose
As they fall from the grace
Of the bliss of belief
To share in eternal’s
Recurring motif

Watch the angels drop like flies
Olympus gods reclaim these skies
Reveal your furies’ fate irate
Your democratic nation state
The fairest warrior of wisdom’s
Goddess grace this city hill
In musing pupils of Apollo’s
Artemisian killing skill

Caught in a time warp
Of forward reverse
I have been to the future
The present is worse
And the past is the key
To the clock on the cage
Of the random screen cell
When the prison's a wage
And now nothing is real
I don't know who I am
Just what I am made of
And where I will stand
With my toes in the sand
And my body, the waves
Ironclad in a mountain
Of watery graves
To which I've adapted
To this changing climate
In my peace on earth
You have only to find it

We had land once
Some trees
A backyard
And a pool
Fall infernos of leaves
A whole mountain to rule
Me, my family and I
When we all OWNED each other
My mother would yell
But we loved one another
My father would teach me to hunt
And to think
When I wanted to ****
I would spill it in ink
And pretend I was heroes
And monsters
And god
For the scare in my head
Was of red Volgograd

Weariness
Has tempered me
But no mouthpieces
Censor me
Indenture me to servitude
Is only of my swinging
Mood
Exude I love you
Tacitly
And shatter hearts
As passively
Aggressive lets
Me fester in
My own regrets
Oblivion begets distress
My rest in peace
Of mindful quest
Should I arrive
Before contrived
Conveys finality
Described

I’m feeling that Northern aggression
Discretion
Con Fed Irate for-properteers
Cause Depressions
So great that my lessons
Require expressions
Of history’s vengeance
Enlightenment questions
Repoe’sd as my Winter Sol rose
Choice of weapons

Just a funky punk monkey
Still hunkering down
In a bunker
Like nuclear waste
Underground
In debunking  
Dysfunctional
Government sites
Black as nights
Without stars
Shedding light
On the sighting
Of UFO
Not so reality
Shows
I have seen
Where the wild things go
In a dream
From a nightmare returned
To tell tales
No one cares
To oblige
Even moments in passing
Me by
To describe
What utopia
Really implies
And belies
To the eye
And its peace of mind’s
Cheapest disguise
As a verdant oasis
Of homeostasis
Devoid of all suffering
Heinous disgraces
But parity
Rarely exists
In such forms  
That impurity
Prurient norms
Haven’t borne
The frail weight of the psalm
Before storm
Or the thinly veiled
Heavy crown
Lying adorns
For each rose has its thorn
And despite the new flower
In bloom on the Horn
By the ivory towers
Into
I was torn

The man who has everything
Dollars and sense
Luxury, leisure time
White picket fence
May have found what he wants
What they tell him he wants
Or what he really needs
For his own renaissance
But without a proportionate
Body mind soul
He is merely a part
Of some destiny’s role

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

But what’s there to be
In this ruinous Union
Delusional dreaming
Condition subhuman
Expected to serve
Undeserving
Indulgence
And deify wealth
In submissive exultance
Repulsed by its decadence
Still can’t resist
The acquisitive urge
To of status consist
When I move into
Home ownership
And foreclose
On the anti-establishment
Questions I pose
For convenience secured
And insured
Is the move
That they want you to take
To consent
And approve
To whoever they put
On the stage’s
Charade
To persuade us
To trust
Fund another crusade

Come closer to courting
Malevolent forces
For some form of
Temporal pleasure
Abortions
Discourses with fewer
Of flesh
By the day
So I turn from the faith
And to faker gods pray
But at least when they lie
I already expect it
And so when I die
At least that’s not regretted
As well
Had enough
Of lament in this lackluster life
To rebuff
Any pious hope pirates
Pretending they save
Anyone,
Any world
From an imminent grave

What divinities
Beckon me
This time
Enchanted
Enraged consciousness
In a shell of
Recanted
Positions all formerly
Formative
Certain
Result in this normal
Pejorative
Version
This boring
Embittered
Automaton
Person
More callous
More crass
Far less likely
To help
Unless it
Can enrich
My immortalized
Self

Try to change the system
And you’ll fail a million ways
Eventually it will be back
To reinstate its darkest days
Escape it, run and hide
It finds you
Taxes you and tosses you away
Like paper, plastic
Then reminds you how to choose
For who to lose for in the war
Enlists the poor
To fight its battles
Till it’s kickin’ down their door
And all the winners, so much winning
Never read but write the story
So its narrative is simplified
In God’s gold-standard glory
But it’s gory let me tell ‘ya
They’ll show burning baby boomers
They’ll build nations out of hatred
They’ll make zombies of consumers
But the realest of idealists
Keep it Lucy diamond left
On all that it’s my body policy
And corporate theft success
But also know what’s right
What’s good and just
What’s fair and free
Of broken trust

To make wholly the holiest
Mortals I tend to
Intending to be
Something more than a man
But I am
And I long for this biblical chaos
To end
Without care or concern
To seek pleasure whenever
The loneliness yearns
For connection, compassion
Detaching from grasping
The answers so near at hand
Desperately clasping
At nothing to find
Any meaning in time
Any purpose save for the one
Felt at her side

It should just be a piece
Not the puzzle
Complete
Of compatible’s
Precious stone,
Pressurized
Heat
But the beats
She uncovers
Keep pace with my stammer
And her ethos pounds
In my chest
Like a hammer
And sickle
In hand
She is reaping my keeping
No secrets,
Just weakness,
She sees it
She eats it
And sleeps like a baby
Goes dormant for days
Then volcanic erupts
In obsidian ways
And like diamonds from coal
My soul molded to lust
For her eyes
Oxidize
My last breathlessly
Rust

Haven’t yet missed
Any more opportunities
Just those eluding me
Never discovered
Developed immunities
Foreign to others
Whose ignorance
Shifted
From bedlam
To bliss
As domestically
Terrorists
Click the death wish

So I say again
I haven’t missed
Any chances
To take aim
And place blame
On bandits of bandwidth
Reframing the digital aging
King’s gambits
But can’t reprimand
Can’t command
We clean house
If they’re making us sick
At the click of a mouse

So I reaffirm I
Do not shy
From my duty
Engage civically
But at times
Rather rudely
When only I venture
To censor
The nemesis
Silicon-based
Artificial intelligence  
Clickbait and switch
The code
Ode to dystopian
Cyberpunk’s pulse
To make nervous
The system
And watch it convulse

Remembering back
To when I first arrived
Couldn’t speak, but to say
I was grateful to be
A brand new addition
To your family
And 2 months it’s been now
Growing fond and at ease
In your presence, your company
Meals you made me
All seemed to come naturally
As the ferenji uncertainty held
In two distant and different upbringings Dispelled
Of the looming rejection
In human connection
And comfort I felt
Without fail or despair
As your home became my
Latest place I could rest
Until really goodbye

I never thought raw meat
Would be a treat
I could indulge in
Yet as chewy as it was
There has not from me yet
Expulsion
Of the seasoned slab
Of crimson flesh
From mouth
Or other end
I found the flavor
Rather savory
As down my throat
Descended
Several chunks
And shredded hunks
Of some poor creature
I refrained
From asking what
The people call it
Even in a foreign name
For there is shame
I feel, still craving
Yet another juicy taste
Of what I couldn’t **** myself
Nor have the right
To deem its fate

What lonely compels us to do
Is confounding
I found you expelled
From my calling
Resounding
Still digging last ditch
Shots at loveless
Rebounding
Again and again
To right back
Where I started
Just build me up,
Tear me down
Lost and discarded
Like yesterday’s trash
Or a plastic-packed
Rapper
My self-esteem feels
Like the sight of a crapper
For useless would be
Understating the I,
Can’t do anything right
Don’t know why even try
Just decry
The society
Blame its elites
For this disparate wealth
World of likes and retweets
And I just can’t participate,
Work to keep paying,
Keep buying,
Keep spending
Keep ethos-betraying
Unless there is reason enough
To submit
But without any logical course
You are it

Still miss her like crazy
Pretend it don't phase me
But lately I've been
Thinking possibly, maybe
Just maybe
I have to believe it
Put her in the past
For the last time
And mean it
For two years of more
Continentally-drifting
Seems only to further the Great Rift
Of shifting
From living in loverless mountains amidst
What I tell myself
I really need
To exist
Back to shores of more wandering
Sandy-toed steps
In my infinite pondering
Bottomless depths

Can now almost taste
The escape from this place
A fate self-imposed to
Satiate my disgrace
An abatement of seldom
Placated irate
From occasional instants
Without confrontational
Indigents, feigning
Themselves as my equals
And unto my deigning
Accept them as people
If not for refraining
To make me a slave
Then for all my complaining
I'd sooner the grave
Then to lay one more night
In my erudite spite
Rife with try as I might
To look past the disdain
The contempt that we both seem to share
Is the same
And appears to be solely
The only
In common
We have
As I slowly, downtrodden,
Indifferent
Go mad

The primitive man
Could be genius to some
Yet to others appear
A disposable income
Expendable soldier
Irrelevant drone
Non-essential dog tag
Fake identity clone
So I try to be one
In a billion who sees
That much more meets the I
Than vocabularies

When she laughs
I collapse
When she takes off my mask
I can’t ask any questions
Just in her muse bask
Hope it lasts
A next day
Though aware we are doomed
To be rock bottom bottles
In trauma entombed
Slip away with her
Maybe
To save me
Tonight
She inspires
These heartfelt emotions
I write
And induces a terror
Of never forever
Like no one I’ve ever
Yet met
And then severs
All ties from attachment
Like none of it mattered
Without even trying
She renders me shattered

Slice through the fog
Like a moody
Intruder
My wandering mind
Cannot seem
To elude her
Can’t flood it in tumult
Metallic cacophony
Often epiphany
Specters are stalking me
Once revelations
Divine exaltations
Have morphed into clockwork
Berserk
Demonstrations
Against the machines
And their dream simulations
As much as I feel the peace
Pulsing prevail
I still fail to sale happy
And in it regale
In the love
I have dovetailed
In audio only
So like the Tin Man
I am rusting
And lonely

Remnants of
The overvoid
My life in ruins
Search destroyed
Employed for now
The tide is rising
All the other me’s
Disguising
In benign
Behind the mask
And still with tact
I teach the class
Can’t grasp
The concept
Seems bereft
Of all makes sense
I am the left
Adept in method
Head parades
Returning home
From my crusades
I bade farewell
Expelling daily
Agents of lament
Unmade me
Never saved a soul
At peace
Just wrote it like
The Ancient Greeks

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

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

On some other level
Disheveled
And gray
And forlorn
In my mourning
My love led astray
Is the way
I was born
Winter storm
Summer haze
And adorned
In light rays
On my darkest of days
Although torn
From the warning signs
Tempting surrender
I passed all the tests
But I failed to remember
The chapter,
The captured
Enraptured
Most turning
Of pages I’ve wept
In the oceans of yearning
For once again home,
One last from it
To roam
And in all of finality
Finally known

Keep your money worship plastic idol
Faith
Out of my face
Out of my oceanic,
Coral bleaching,
Overfished
Unhappy place
Go take your sacred spaces
To the crushing depths of doubt
Your fame and fortune are as hollow
As the love you are without
You value paperweight success
Define your peace of mind with war
And ***** away your peak potential
Till you curse the skies for more
Of what indifferent gods provide
Be of they science or compliance
To a prophet-motive virus
Spreading on to cover all the land
In codices of Cyrus

Time to get weird with it
What shall it be
Feeling mad science-fictional
Brain chemistry
An augmented demented
Unreality
All returning to nothing
Beyond what you see
A subliminal criminal
Mind-bending glee
In a blissful euphoria
Self killing spree
I have delved into heights
Of the darkest of lights
I have dwelled in the caverns
Of luminous nights
Felt the crushing despondent
Cold grip of despair
Immolate me in radiant
Dreamy nightmare
With the energy surging
Renewal of breath
In each step
I have tread upon Death
And in absolute loneliness
Beckoned the fates
To come alter my ego’s
Worst character traits
And assumed a new role
More befitting your eyes
As this tomb made of words
My Immortal goodbyes

I am
Inside the mind
Death do us Valentine
No more words left
To expressively
Redefine
Guided like
Heat-seeking
Mischievous
Myth
To the nuclear winter
Sea depths
I adrift
When the one I am with
Can’t commune with me
Frequent
And not even shadows
Malinger
To speak with
My Ill-fated omen,
Portentous
Lament
My immense
Commence writing
The next
Common Sense

Suppose I Should have warned you
We're impossible to ****
Composed of paragraphs
Our bodies are
The pages that we fill
And will precede us
For eternity
Preserve a lucid legacy
Remember us
If merely
In the dreams
Of our posterity
To follow free
As avidly
As writers on the storm
Of what we couldn't keep inside
Another captive minute more
and so in paroxysms
Scripted
Extrication from
The norm
An insurrection on
Existence
Indomitable
Resistance
And refused to come with quietly
A voice-suppression system
Raising volumes
Of our voluble
So much to say
But taciturn
Temperament
Defenses
Of the peace
For which we yearn
When turning tides of war within
To galvanize their inspiration
Often sought
But seldom found
Without an inkling's
Inclination
To encrypt it in
Eclipses
Of the cosmic joke's
Ellipsis
And persist in our struggle
To give life
To the unwritten

Failure still clings to me
Brings me
Downtrodden
By a deluge of self-pity
Patterns am sodden
Like just when I’ve nearly
Transcended the summit
I slip and instead
Into rock bottom
Plummet
Come climbing again
Under breath
Mutter curses
The boulder I roll up the *****
Is these verses
Reversals of fortune
Are my second nature
Ingratiated
To the ill omen stranger  
Familiar has it become
Plotting
And scheming
Untimely demises
Of childish dreaming
Refusing to let me
Succeed,
Persevere
I fear all I will ever
Amount to
Is clear
Just a good for not
Spot
On forgotten,
Unknown,
Unfulfilled,
Unaccomplished,
And dying alone

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?

My demands are as simple
As no more dead kids
No more wars against words
No more filthy rich pigs
When there’s still hungry people
In chains and in cages
Kept silent by tyrants
And minimum wages
Resorting to violence
When nobody listens
And nobody learns
That the past is still present
Tax breaks for Bear-Stearns
And the purge takes the form
Of the new normal anti-truth
Media swarm
Till your torn between
***** hands and kitty ****
Who to trust anymore?
In this land under god
Just a church and state
Propagate hatred
Facade

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

It’s all in your head
All the people you’ve fed
When really you see them
As better off dead
Than aware of the future in store
For their children
If money keeps killing their dreams
By the billion

A humanist thinking these people all equal
Original tops any  
Second rate sequel
And seeks to first understand
How to leak secret plans
Banned from the internet’s
Central core
Banking clans
Signing this peace treaty
Pen in hand everyday
Faded and fated to wait
Half a world away
Chillin’ on villain ambitions
I’ve seen
On the Mad Titan mind-bending
Time-ending
Movie screen

Oasis of duplicitous plenty
Its criminal overworld
Dripping its leaks
From a rusty, dystopian
Faucet ****’s squeaks
And I sneak
For the scraps
In the back
Making stacks
Of their precious supply of
The liquidized facts
Soon enough
The untenable
Fragile
Facade
Shall come crashing down,
As we drown,
In the mirage

But who can see the lies
Or the past
Or the sadness
What reason to be
If it all becomes
Madness
We’ve had this
Condition
To impulse repress
To reject
What no logic
Could ever express
And we deem ourselves
Dignified,
Justified,
Civilized,
Chosen
Audacious,
Complacent
Cesspool
We arose in
Just goes to show
There is no meaning
To us
No financial solution
Equates more than dust
No good deed
Goes unpunished
Just unrecognized
Nor esteemed institution
Can subjugate time
No decision
Brainchild
Conceiving
The mind
Nor command of my heart
Unto practical reins
Given over to lay with
Emotionless chains
Unexplained
Still remains
And unanswered
Abounds
And I still reclaim
All of
Philosophy’s
Crowns

All the realms of insanity
I’d sooner tread
Than be lost
In accosting
Immutable dread
For a shred of my dignity
Left to preserve
When the world
In its turning
Is malcontent verve
Wishing ill
On another
A massacre
Fracture
A captured
Caged-animal’s
Faithless
Enrapture
Encompass me
Weak
In conceit
Self-deceit
And expose my undoing
Like red upon wheat

If it ceases to work
I don't know
What I'll do
I'll have nothing to contact
The outside world through
And I'll lose
All my tunes
Until it can be fixed
And recharging resumes
Unimpeded in its
I assume perhaps dusty
Or rusty old bits
Of components internal
Perplexing me so
As I've tried everything
But I still just don't know
What could be
Going on
Inside cellular cells
That prevents the replenishing
Energy wells
Of my telephone
Owned it for years
And have known
It to guide me, remind me
Wherever I roam
With but a few
Complications, malfunctions
And power corruptions
But never a problem like this
To disrupt it
From showing me that
Little spark in the corner
And phoning me home
As an alien foreigner

These minimizing labels
There be pirates on these seas
And arming social revolution
Is in love with lunacies
Come in with tyrants,
Preaching violence
And enriching lesser clients
Privateers to privatizing
Water fronts to spread the virus
Be it powder wigs and kegs
Or kids with squids for their sea legs
It all submits before the rising
Of the bottom-feeding plebs
So call me leftist,
Call me liberal
I was born in the imperial
Ethereal imprisonment
The cargo hold’s
Bloodlust for gold’s
Dehumanized
Equivalent
A righty, if you write me
In genetics and supremacy
The strong, the weak
The idolized
And deified
Celebrity
But never on authority’s
Minority report
But indivisible as any individual
At court
And so I see the tribal fighting,
The internecine delighting
In the other side’s
Speechless demise
And stoke the reuniting

Still hittin’
Her hard
With disaster
Relief
Sinking boats,
Blocking votes,
No...
Congressional seat
Then deceitfully dollar
Diplomacy
Drain it
Of sugar cane
Brain
Generations
In training
To tolerate chains,
More urbane
Costs of living
Just giving in
When resist
Is just enlistment
A privilege to serve
In their wars of attrition
And still hear the bombs
Pounding into submission
The Spanish last bastion’s
Taino kid’s vision

You always bring me down
To earth
Just when it seems
I’ve bested you
You ground me in reality
As soon as I’m convinced
I flew
Up to the sky
You keep me from
My hands outstretched
Towards the sun
Yet even if I touched it
Or I clutched it in
A crushing grasp
You’d pull me to its blazing core
Reducing me to thermal gas
With ineluctable
Reductions
To my mass
And weightlessness
I’d sooner crash
Impacting on the surface
An extinction-grade
Atomic blast
Yet still I try,
Defy,
Deny
Your being without form or shape
Descending even now, pretending
There is some escape
From flightless fates
And leaps of faith
In your breath-taking power
Plummeting just like a penny
Dropping from the tallest tower

This game is like life
Build your roads
Conquer lands
Construct homes
And expand
As your city erodes
Into seas of surpluses
Exhausted too quickly
A populous guarded
But hungry and sickly
So play it just like
How you’d really develop
A civilization
As god
Not a zealot