I the writer, word is life
I the fighter, pen is knife

Knight of shadows, sword in hand
Shoreline treader, toes in sand
Lion's pride, etched on the rock
Big bad wolf, shepherds the flock

I the schemer, hath no plot
I the dreamer, sleep forgot

Rising suns, ignite the spark
Waning moons, prefer the dark
Leather bound, an open portal
Ancient scrolls, withhold immortal

I the tinker, mastermind
I the thinker, out of time

What you’re eating
Out of season
Like a beast
Devoid of reason
Isn’t needed,
Just desired
Just a craving
Soon expired
Fed the flesh of others’ labor
Global slavers
Have conspired
To consume, convince,
Condition
You to slobber for rewards
That good nutrition is
Consistent with
What gluttony affords

I just want to help
And be so far away
Writing poetry novels
Adrift in the fray
Where the thirst is the worst
And the hunger is filling
And any a passerby
Is penicillin
For staring at living
Cloud shapes in the sky
In the valleys of Neptune
Is my apple pie
My American dream
Is a slice of New Yawk
And an edge of the earth
Talk the walk kind of chalk
In my linguistic lesson
The anti-depressin’
Limelight stealin’ Stalin’s
Best Gandhi impression

Winter's razor seashore kisses
Permeate my skin and bone
Slicing deeper than abysses
Sharpened on rock bottom stone

Now dead men's tales and widows lull
My vessel towards the blue it lacks
She reached inside my beating hull
And shipwrecked me to fill the cracks

With distant memory city lights
A dreadnought captain's ghostly fleet
Of anchors made of empty nights
I drag along this lonely street

Do I still have to say it
It’s mass exploitation
An ******
Free of charge
Pain mitigation
Salvation for all
Gullible
To be told
Just forget
The real suffering world
And behold
The eternal one,
Die to believe
Lies we tell ourselves
Honestly
Offer reprieve
From atrocity’s cost
And the loss
We bereave
But deceive you no longer
The lordly class can
When you take up the hammer and sickle
In hand

We all wear masks
To hide our face
The ugliness
The self-disgrace
The nothingness
The empty space
The blackest stains
We can't efface
The crippling pains
We can't outpace
How much we loathe
The human race
Concealed within
The darkest place
Yet kept too long
Upon the face
Disguises only seem to prove
There are some masks
We can't remove

Behind my own masks
I have spent
A lifetime clad
in my torment
Adorned in casque
of my lament
A shield against
the world's resent
Yet still my armor
left to rent
Split by smiles
never meant
False personas
I invent
Alternate skins
that I frequent
All these charades
I implement
Mere fallacies
of my descent
Deceiving depths
are imminent
And now the face
of true intent
To my dismay
is not present
Unless my heart
beats pure content
I fear my mask
is permanent

To belong,
To be loved
To believe
In the self
A deceiving
Needs-based
Deviation
From wealth
And the finest
Healthcare
It affords
To the well-
Off already
Born into
This hell
With a silver spoon dangling
From want-for-not lips
And a gold-plated platter
Of ignorant bliss
When in this
Squalid emptiness
Really quite simple
Is staying alive
When survival’s
Hierarchical-structure’s
Contrived
Not of orotund
Blunders
To understand all
But the hunger
That thunders
Without the rainfall

I’m easy to talk to
Or so
They might say
If I spoke
As I wrote
My awoken cliché
List of grievances
Seething with
Fury inveighed
A melodious
Medley
Relentless tirade
But the vehemence
Meaningless
Cannot prevail
Without targeting
Enemies
Too big to fail
So continue to rouse
Rabble ruffians
Huffing
And puffing,
And stuffing,
Their pockets with nothing
But broken home
Hopeless
Promissory notes
And peremptory
Purchasing powerless
Votes
I prefer the immersion
In mobs of unruly
And still punish pigs
With unusual cruelty

Interlocked existence gears
Rusting in their faith and fears
Cogs within the God machine
Life is but a robot dream

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

Can’t keep on entering
Into my life
I don’t want to be vulnerable
Texting goodnight
But she makes it so easy
So seamlessly
Fluent
For once
Conversational sides
Are congruent
Not making each other the whole
Bigger picture
Just speaking their minds
As it adds to the mixture
A confluence
Coming together
The goal
I just have to see her
And the rest will unfold

With you
Without you
My purpose is clear
It is all of it words
And the way they appear
To your eyes on this page
In the meanings they give
To emotions and ethics
And graves that we dig
With so little to live for
No reason to pray
To what only exists
In my maybe someday

Don’t want it depleted
Be better deleted
Entirely
Finally free
Of my need to be miserly
Dollars and cents
No more nickel
And diming me
Anxiety
In numerical form
All the ways I can spend it
Within my brain storm  
I could give it away
Put a dent in my debt
Or regret yet another
Failed self-invest bet
And on that note
It makes me think
All that I am
Is an app
And some digits
Computer program
That I do not control
And at one moment could
All at once
Hypothetically
End livelihood

Waiting around
I converse with myself
Climbed a tree today
Picked some bananas to sell
Or to barter
With shopkeepers
Down at the market
Compartmentalizing
The extra
To part with
Or keep to eat freely
As soon as they ripen
In but a few days
More of boring old life in
My site
Took a hike
To seek quiet,
Imagined these hills
Fulminating
In riot
If I were inciting
Rebellions
Contriving
An artifice to
See the fires
Igniting
But as the day ends
And the sun vanishes
From the scene
My passivity banishes
Any a notion
Of causing commotion
And looking for trouble
Where nothing is broken
Evoking instead
Of promoting bloodshed
In its stoking the furnace
Forged steel in my head

If I could keep writing
Indefinitely
I would go on denying
This not meant to be
Normalcy
By default
To a fault
I’ve resisted
Opposed it
Repudiated
Its existence
Since that implies
Sort of
Intent to control
The unfolding of life
From the afterbirth hole
To the hole in the ground
Have I ever been bound
To creation’s design?
And if so
Is there really no thought in my mind
That is mine
Of my choosing
My ego volition
Or merely the maker’s
Deliberate decision

Was I somebody
Or somebody’s pawn?
Just a piece in a game
Making moves
Moving on
Now it’s gone
Either way
The potential career
The commute,
The computing
White collar veneer
The appearance of wealth,
Status boost,
Middle class
Just delusions of grandeur’s
Next vanity mask
But I wanted it
Fond of its
Ease and convenience
So much I romanticized
Crowning achievements
Would seamlessly
Elevate me
To positions
Where fullest potential
Ambitions
Envisioned
Perfection expected
Realistically proven
But failure again
Pens the bitter conclusion

But I couldn’t have
Killed for you
Died for you
Hurt you
Put you through
Distance
And disconnect
Silence
Imagine my voice
Wasn’t writing you
Try this
Immediate fix
For the broken
Recognizance
She was the thoughts in my head
You were there
But one night she appeared
As a temptress
Ensnared
The I love you both
Specially
You would still question me
Ask me the truth
And then let me be
Memory

No, I wasn't there suffering
Whip cracks
And axes
Or clashes with fascism's
Poisonous gasses
I didn't pay taxes
Imposed upon masses
Or stash my trash cash
Beneath cardboard box mattresses
Sleeping in heaps
Of the stock market's crashes
I've never known hunger
Or Dust Bowl thirst-glasses
I've never been lower
Than lower class rations

I just cut my losses
My checks, balance bills
And of rights
Mine are human
From birth
To the ****
So I feel
The injustice
Disgust and distrust
Of the ones who still toil
In history's rust
And to those who still spoil
Themselves in its lust
I admonish
Will ever by hammers be crushed

Medusa my muse
Can you not be alone
Do you need me to choose
How you turn me to stone

No venom laments
Or cold, lifeless stare
Could halt my attempts
To freeze in your glare

Your hair although snakes
Your scales worn in shame
Your frigid heart breaks
Claiming mine all the same

Your mirrored dejection
Remaining concealed
But beauty reflects in
My Perseus shield

I let down my guard
And lower my blade
The gods left you scarred
And ravaged, unmade

Poseidon's fell sin
Athena's wrath scorn
Only hardens my skin
To match your sad form

In cavernous depths
I see your true face  
Now take my last breaths
With your gorgon embrace

Medusa your gaze
Be it mine alone
Show me the ways
You can turn me to stone

Three harpies moved into the mountain
And soon
The excluded among them
When into its room
Glooming in the pale moonlight
And wondered why sense’s
Sincerity setting
Intuits the looming shadow’s
Seven heaven’s
Outlaw renegading
Fade serenade
Blade
The miraculous suicide
Watch it replay
Then another one to tell me how
To simply think about it
Worries flowing,
Undertowing
Show you how
To drink about it
Can’t forget her
Even on my death
Bedraggled
Linen shame
She murdered me
Now makes me **** myself
And sell what’s left of sane
To any tangential
Dimensional
Divulging
In discursive
And immersing my rehearsals
In eternal hearse
Immersive

I never found it difficult  
Or struggled much to find
The words that could describe to you
The chaos of my mind
I just can't find the ones to say
Exactly how I feel
Or felt
Or will feel for you still

Your passion was an ocean
An ambition with no bounds
Tranquil rebel hurricane
Of righteous fury sounds
Your flare was of horizon suns
Untouchable devotion
To set upon the world in peace
And keep the earth in motion

We left no trace out in the woods
And got thrown out of bars
We burned oppressions to the ground
And then lit up the stars
We blew off doing homework
My house was next to yours
We just hung out like normal kids
Avoiding all their chores

You shared with me the benefits
Of vegan life subsistence
While I explained dimensions
Of a limitless existence
You were everything I wanted
In a serious decision
The perspective that I needed
To then clarify my vision

So never was it hard to be
An anarchist with you
Yet still defend and advocate
Moralities we knew
Still too good to be true
Was often how I'd feel
Wondering how could this woman
Possibly be real

Do I get better
With age,
Or just worse?
All it takes
Is a look through
My past
In reverse
And the verses
Of greater
Creators unbound
And unlimited by  
How the senses
Must sound

So easy a caveman can do it
But few to its word
Convince others
He drew it
Upon set in stone
Scriptures
Speaking their tongues
In all languages’
Origin-
Stories are spun
And from one
White as snow
It becomes
Avalanche
And from dripping red lips
Is the kiss
Of romance
For it dances
With devils
And levels the field
Playing aces up sleeves
Is the Art of its Deal
It will steal
To feed millions
Of stocked-market shelves
As it spells out
It’s death-sentence’s
Prison cells
Of the orphans of its
Unaborted fetus
And its silent night’s
Slit-wristed
Christmas wish list
Just like Jesus himself
Still makes use of its gifts
With the oratory glories
Through gory holes
Seep
Hissing its allegories
And counting its sheep
Deepest secrets of its
Fatal weakness
Sequestered
In festering cores
Of its hordes
Of confessors
Still preaching what it
In its malpractice
Teaching
The meek to inherit
The earth
By beseeching
What it
Seeks to keep
Beggars’ hands
Ever reaching
And pious denial
Disciples
From leaking
Its nemesis
Genuine
Freely
From speaking
Against
What its crying wolf
Fenced-in
Mike Pence’s
Expenses
Dispense with
To bolster its trial’s
Unerring defenses
And while we try
To prohibit
Its urge
Overruling our will
And our subconscious serves
Its injustice for all
Reign of terror sustained
It’s corrupt crusade
Black-money-financed
Campaign
It’s enrapturing trappings
Of fortune and fame
It’s scandalous escapade’s
Ignorance feign
The extortion
Contortionist’s
Warped-picture frame
Of mine’s
Victimless crimes
In the system it games
It’s prescription pops fired
In mental health rain
Ever blameless
It stains
Reputations
Exclaiming
Its puppets insane
Always true
To its name

I stroll superciliously
Down the street
As I smirk at the poor souls
With little to eat
Unconcerned with what burdens
Weigh heavy on shoulders
From peaks up above them
I'm rolling the boulders
And wondering what
It would look like in smolders
If I were to burn
It all down to the ground
And expropriate any remaining
Estates like the Derg
In my own Terror Red
Irrepressible urge
Be the scourge
Be the bane
Of their archaic ways
And with no one left standing
But me, a new reign
Would expand and consume
The survivors in pain
And the world would at last
Know my name
And in vain
Never take it again
Unless I so ordain

Is this why I do
What I picture
Undone
Why internalized voices
All rolled into one
Like a gun to the temple
Corroding the psyche
Gets triggered in silence
Appearing unsightly
Unloading its violence
In public now
No chance
I’ll ever come quietly
Not so politely
Conveying anxiety
Try as I might
To cast doubt
And aspersion
There’s something unspeakably
Sinister
Lurking
And surfacing
So close
To breaking the skin
Is its
Solace in madness’s
Most aloof grin

There sits a crimson satyr crowned
The overlord of underground
In left he twirls a steely blight
Upon the surface world by night
With right commands his vile jest
To welcome avarice, his guest
The next of sin to him akin
To all the wicked souls therein
The boiling cauldron antechamber
Brimming with his seething anger
Pain and sorrow, anguish of
One fallen from the grace of love
And in its hellish rendezvous
A shadow deal to conquer you
Is sealed in some ungodly tongue
The hook upon which faith is hung

The world is a battlefield
A chess board
My oyster
The mission
The vision
Two coins of the same
Get a job
Go to work
Kind of sadistic game
So the next time you see me
Return from beyond
With a changed peace of mind
Know I’ve already won

Still licking my accolade gladius
Clean
Of the victories,
Triumphs
And grandiose schemes
Monumental
I thought of them
In adolescence
Seem trifles
Compared
To the slaying senescence
Achieving its
Ego supremacy
Killed
By the millions
Whose blood
By my hand
Isn’t spilled

You think he could ever see you with my vision?
Divine works of art that I sculpt in your image

My lust for you knew not the guiltiest pleasure
Just all of the cosmos I'd give you forever

No matter the chaos and eons between us
Regardless of my exploration of Venus

Her sanctity's  songs do not war in my mind
Without you to fight for the peace I've enshrined

In the labyrinth puzzles I'm trying to solve
Create minotaur rage without you to evolve

Me from moral's abnormal reality portal
To Brahma Samsara's omniscient immortal

When the answer
Is cancerous
Dancing with
Necromancy
My enchantress
Fragility
Life’s
Not so sacred
Encampment
And no academia
Harbors my kind
For the sickle
Anemia
Sharpens my mind  
And I put it right back
To the grindstone
Benign

Systemically racist ******* mad papists
Obsession with fame
And some monetized anguish
For gods still elude them
And goddesses still
Rule the night
Shining bright
And forever they will
Be together endeavoring
Reaching, perfecting
The ensemble stars
As if movie directing

Attempts at reforming
Don't stop global warming
Your valiant best efforts
Impress no one less
Than another dead kid or more
Under arrest,
Can't rebuild it back better
Endeavor to change
What won't work
About status quos
Stuck in their ways
And updates
To the program's
Internal software
Are no cure for the virus'
Lack of prepared
So compare all your prices
The shipping lane's closed
And submit to mandated,
Free-traded,
Imposed

First instinct
Is hold on tightly
Thinking of her
Daily
Nightly
Never to appear
Unsightly
So politely
Open doors
And in her absence
Raining pours
Exploring every
Involution
Trying not to probe
Too soon in
Or we watch it all
Fall down
And never see you
Come around

Single days are rarely so monumental
So metal,
Tea kettle,
A sea in the breeze
Of the crimson rose petal
Bed leveling
Be devil
Letters
Unfettered
And spell-casting
Summoning
Armies of fiends
And with mastery
Stimulate
Wildest dreams
Like a Green Revolution
Not littered in red
Like the golden boy
Peace keeper’s
Hole in the head
I learned most of the time
Time is not on your side
So disguise
Be advised
I’m goodbye cyanide
And I change the course
Only
To keep it free earth
Not what capital Pigs
Think their ego is worth

Mind
Corporeal shell
Carnal desire cell
Within temporal confines dwell
Imprisoned

I just wake up and I write
At night
And in the twilight
I am the owl
In the eye
Of the tornado
Anthracite
I burrow under the ground
And in the crown’s contorted coffers
I’m still lurking around
‘Tryna’ figure it out
It could be China
No doubt
It’s coming down to this
Imperial
Delirium
Bacterium
I claw it and I clash with
Magisterium
Experience
Appear when it’s too real
And when I’m feeling too
Hyperion
Then put it to the pit
And then the wavelengths I emit
Become the vanquished on the pages
Merely smudges I omit
And mark ‘em whether
In the netherworld
Or heavens
It is hosted
I still summon subterranean
Relationships I’ve ghosted

In the heart of the forest
My evergreen eyes
In their luster and shade
Ever-dream of the skies
Above clarity's glade
And the peace that surrounds us
Connecting us all
As it hangs in the balance
I just waterfall
Into wind-chiming whispers
And mountain stream songs
As they carry my mind
To the realm it belongs

What is this warped
Standard beauty
Obsession
This skewed
Self-esteem
That distorts
Your reflection
Is it
A pretentious
Consumer-based
Model
To blame for
The single-use
Plastic-faced
Squabble
Or simply just vanities
Staring inherently
Fairest of all
On the wall
We apparently
Cannot see clear
Merely peering in glass
But somehow
We make shards
Of the one looking back

See all their faces
They all disappear
Then I’m here
Retrospectively
Counting the years
Where they went
Where they go
Never know
Grow apart
For however ephemerally
Had my heart
In their clutches
Caresses
Embraces
Misplaced
What we felt for each other
Like markings erased
But it makes
Perfect sense
Every time
Looking back
Couldn’t perfectly
Change
For each other
Exact

Done applying
Myself trying  
Feels a lot more like
I’m lying
To the still aspiring me
Determined not to merely be
Legitimately
Seek employment
Minimize
Reckless enjoyment
All for nothing comes of it  
I’m sick of it,
Just want to quit
Stop kidding,
Still pretending I
Was somehow meant for more
Than die
Another boring, dreary day
Regardless of
How far away
Or how sublime surroundings get
Or how within the wind I’m swept
Rejected just begets regret
And failures I cannot forget
The culmination?
Ruination
Worst case constant
Contemplation
No scenario
Adds up
To what I’ve ever wanted
Stuck
In this sepulcher
Of bad luck

Lost
Lost
My precious is lost
But it’s not like I need it
To increase the cost
But we’re tired of trying
Of dying inside
Every day
Keep it quiet
And I would’ve
Stood with you
Looked to you
Smiling
Should all come to ruin
Return to exiling
Ourselves when the end of us
Doesn’t instill
What we feel
What we fail to see
Ails us
Ill will
The molehill into mountains
Too steep to traverse
The adversity
Can’t overcome it
Immersed
In impersonal
All out assaults  
On our faults
When the love becomes hate
And we hurt
By default

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

Sometimes I fail you
But to your surprise
I could be the truth
In your whitest of lies
Though you poison my mind
With each drop I despise
I care not for her name
But I drown in those eyes

I can show you the steps
That you first took alone
I can ripple in time
With the skip of a stone
I am all you have seen
I am all you've been shown
I am yesterday's news
I am dinosaur bone

As you look to the future
I'm stuck in the past
Sometimes my reflection
Is all shattered glass
Like pieces of puzzles
In shadows you cast
I have been by your side
How you grew up so fast

Still here I am now
In your mind, out of sight
Invisible werewolf
More power at night
When I bathe in the glow
Of your faintest moonlight
Then a radiant dawn
Makes my phoenix ignite

When I carry your gifts
Into each present day
The dreams you recall
Are the ones I replay  
As you sift through the sands
Of these oceans astray
To find her again
Let me show you the way

That’s me in despair
Over there
All alone
Been around the world over
Still finding my home
Among those who saw profits
Exported ‘em on
Made it spread
Out in rockets
And then
It’s the dreaded
Undead
Picking pockets
The stock market’s
Bloc chaining
Gangs on the docket
The gains
Are net losses
The reign
Draining brains
To reclaim
The forgotten,  
Abandoned,
That we propagate
For some other gods
Means of controlling
Create
Like the state
Regulating
The hate speech
It deems
To be anything but
In compliance
With dreams

Maybe this isn’t
Adroitness
A talent
My skill with a blade
Not as brave
Nor as gallant
As one who was made
In a penmanship palace
Imbalanced
My trade
Often deficits
Palates
And I am left just
A distasteful
Impostor
Recounting the ways
I’ve repeatedly
Lost her
And offer it all
To judgmental
Reviewers
Who learn me like
Pro bono
Poetry tutors

Incorporeal
Spiritual
Entity
A million points of light
Single unit
Of reality
Reduced in half
To ad in-finite
Then I wonder
Who designed it?

The unrivaled ego
In all of its vanity
Herald of Nature’s
Impending calamity
Sheer existential
Endurance
Incarnate  
Still armed to the teeth
Is my ethos untarnished
I harness
Indignant
And channel it
Rage
My composure as chill
As a blizzard ablaze
For in balance I strive,
With fluidity glide
I’m the tempest emerging,
Storm surging inside
And I won’t be denied
The landfall
After all
The deniers
Acclimatized
Feel me alive