A Midas touch will fade to dust
All heroes turn to sand
For nothing means a thing
Without a price tag on a man
So River Styx becomes my flow
And Tartarus my tone
I fly my pride like Icarus
Then fall from grace alone
Into Aegeans inundated
By a flood of trepidations
Odysseys to spread my spark's
Promethean creations
Aphrodite unrequited
In soliloquies of rain
In an Amazon catharsis
I dance naked in the pain
Of the Erebus within me
As my Gaia tears convey
The retribution of Olympus
Couldn't keep my muse at bay
For in these hands of fate
All forms of living art display
Cassandra's eyes clairvoyant  
To foresee a brighter day
When all will share divinity
Yet none need bow and pray
For all will feel my master peace
From half a world away

The depths themselves can’t fathom famine
Blood and iron winter storms
The screaming babies feeding flames
Of war and peace in all its forms
Where each exists the other lives
Combined they are the revolution’s
Radical Islamic bombs
And multi-state solutions
From imperial republics
Of democracy disguises
If the unelected leader
Is the one who compromises
The ambition and the vision
Of the world he still believes
With all the violence and the anger
From injustice he perceives
As inequality of faith
At the expense of every choice
And so instead he learns to speak in
Every people-powered voice

Either bow or take heel
All revealed
Is secured
Just as soon as you yield to me,
Lay down the sword
And return to your homes
Clear the streets of debris
And go back to consuming  
Your garbage tv
Still inducing my lucid
Hallucinogens
Fall in line
To my virus’
New synthesis
Of the truth from the false
In the form of a pulse
Sending bipolar currencies
Rippling across
The brain waves
Of the mindless one’s
Consenting slaves
And the graves that I dig
Beneath trade-ways are paved
In the wake of my seeking submission
Admission
Now trust in my bank account’s
Human condition
My weapons of peace’s
Coerced mercy mission
My laws to be broken
By only the makers
My bar to be set
By the highest test-takers
Erasing the chaotic
Host of scape GOATs  
I’m the satyr-horned tyrant‘s
Divisive vote’s most
Holy Ghost
Influential,
Convincing,
The quiet is listening
In deep to your sleep-stalking
Dream conversation
Wherein sanctity
Of my unity lurks
In my get back to work’s
Multinational perks
So persist in my
We’re all the same
Different day
And in my spoils revel
Your whole life away

Out of touch,
Out of tune,
Out of step with the times
Yet among a bit younger
Still often reminds
Me respect
Is upbringing
Integrity walks
And when court is in session
The leadership talks
Orchestrates the defense
Sets the pace of attack
And with sportsmanship
Runs any losses right back

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

Don’t go despairing
Young man,
Better smile
The grownups can’t have your angst
Turning hostile
So vie for authority
Feigning servile
And one day soon
Someday
Return from exile
Beguiling the voters now
Sowing suspicion
Like seeds
In your third
Underworld
Mercy mission

So easy to criticize
Indigent lives
Diametrically disparate,
Different from mine
But I try to remind myself
Daily to exercise
Patience
And probity
Judging too soon
And assuming
Can only mean
Preemptively,
Peremptorily
Deeming
Parochial view
Of the picture I’m seeing
Facile denial
To look a bit deeper
Into
What I still misconstrue
As this bleaker
Grim,
Dimly lit
Pit
Spitting image of meager
Believers deceived
By their god
The All-Reaper
Is creeping about
The bedraggled,
Beleaguered,
Bemired poor creature
Awaiting its fate
As it stares at a speaker
Non-native,
Unaided
Invasive speech teacher
Just trying to reach them
As equals
Of self
Even though he is privileged
With wealthier health

And I still adhere to nothing
But a payment
Mental state
A bunch of number
Cookie crumbles
To the wealth
I can’t equate
There is no fairness  
In indulgence
Someone always
Wanting more
You taught us borrow,
Spend and spend
Until we’re wallowing
In war
Through which beleaguered
Makes us free
A labor force
Supremacy
A gross consumption,
Mass production,
Killing spree
Serenity

No more the prince
On the hill
Over paradise
Peering out
Peerless
But vision
Was imprecise
Short-sighted somewhat
Naive perhaps even
Believing no influence
Waned in the region
No reason to think
Nor the proof to suspect
Usurpation awaited
And I would be left
But a pauper
A peasant
Cast out
From my castle
My kingdom
Comes under
Some treacherous vassal

My heart is like paper
Too over-used
So I tear it to tatters
For long have I mused
For something that matters
To put on these pages

But still my mind scatters
In crumpled up rages

To piece it together
And let the ink spill
Instead of the blood
From the love that I ****
Just to bathe in the flood
Of these heartbroken pages

And wallow in mud
As the madness engages

The siren's white noise
Deafening reverie
Shall make me a slave
To my black elegy
As I'm penning my grave
To bury these pages

Entombed in a cave
Of selfishness cages  

Where Ego proclaims
This man had no name
His words were but dust
In the void of his shame
So let him be ******
To Oblivion's pages

To empty his lust
For life's final stages

Forever reflecting
The face of Grim's reap
Hellfire hath scorned
My soul too dead to keep
No, I perish adorned
In these undying pages

To be never-mourned
By the turning of ages

Everything’s a factory
An industry
Aligning me
With fall in line
Assembly lining
Genocide
Is fine with me
It’s fuel to feed the fire
It’s the viewer
It’s the buyer
It’s the rule to heed
The necessary
Evil
The empire

For I have seen heaven
It's there in the sky
But you'll never reach it
And I know why
I feed off the energy of others
So that I may unleash mine
I need you to be happy
So I can craft muses
And you can be happy
And I, at peace

Built atop the promises
And broken in the lies
Then stolen from the peasants
For the gentrified disguise
The thinnest lines dividing pledges
To the people whose allegiance
To resenting oppositions
In petitions of their grievances
Elected under shady deals
Revealing just how similarly
Secrets are concealed
And normalcy is petty bourgeoisie
And bureaucratic tape
And the electorate is in on it
Complicit in the ****
It’s inescapable, two-faced and dull
The trite remarks and punditry
The policy dishonesty
The everything is free
And then perception is distorted
Knowledge power is withheld
And mass consent is manufactured
By the votes they buy and sell
To stretch the cyclical stagnation
In its literal translation
To the nation separated
In each origin creation
Still scapegoated by the pet issues
They prize as consolation
Maybe somewhere long ago
Perhaps the demos had foreseen it
Now the future generations
Hardly care enough to screen it
Just believe that it’s the only way
That progress is ensured
So keep diplomacy expendable
War-profiteers insured
For there are some who see
Both points and sides
Leave no rights left
In house divides

Ask me two years ago
Where would I be
I could never predict
It’d be close to the sea
I’d have never projected
The future in store
Would be one in which I
Didn’t have any more
Terse objections,
Complaints
Detestations to feint
That I actually care
Still concern myself with
Goings-on in the universe
Dare to commit
To a cause of nobility,
Selfless servility
Not solely self-indulge bliss
Instability
But, maybe its
Ignorance is unfounded
And by its abyss
I’m not always surrounded
Unbound and I’m often astounded
How free
It seems I really am
To choose my
Destiny

You beckon me back
To the path
Not yet taken
With you I’m the tallest
The strongest
The bravest
The boldest
When circumstances
Are the gravest
And I will keep pulling you
Back in my arms
Keep on letting you snooze
On your morning alarms
Still refuse to get used to
This losing you
Fear
Still exclusively
Write to you,
For you
Sincere
For without you I’m smallest
The weakest
The fakest
The coldest
In sunlit expanse’s
Oasis
So beckon me back
To the path not yet taken
For all those I’ve ventured before you
Forsaken

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

So many climbing
To mountain tops
Striving
To look out
And see something,
Anything
Flying
That feeling you get
Some sensational
Vertigo
Edge of the world
Not a care
In its worries though
Clouds in the sky
Rolling by
With the sun aglow
Show of force
Nature’s subliminal
Reinforced
Message
Be here
In the now
And in all things
Be present

Just secret thoughts
Fleeting memories kept
Some vignettes
For someday to reflect upon
All I regret
When I couldn’t quite tell her again
How I feel
But I know I still do
I still think that it’s real
Though a dream to believe
I could be what she needs
Who she wanted from me
Was not always the person
I wanted to be

Not all I believed
Has agreed with me
Aging
Enraged
A decade
Ago
Seldom
Engaging
What slight inclination
I had left to
Breed
Though defiantly
Calling out
Bastardized greed
In the sanctity
Answers
The books I would read
Clarifying
For moments in time
What we need
Most supremely
Most urgently
Now
We demand
What will feed
Progeny
Redistribute the land

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

Soaring away, what could I provide
Do you not perceive
Of my dying inside
Are you so naive
To believe I'm alive
Or that skeleton keys
Could unlock what I hide

In the cellars of cold,
Dark, abysses bereft
Of the soul I have sold
For recompense left
To steal my heart gold
In a present-tense theft
Of the treasures I hold

In troves now discarded
By knightly assails
Of princesses guarded
Beneath my chain mails
In armor regarded
As legendary scales
Of dragons bombarded

By dreadnought regret
In a galleon remorse
Oceanic lament
On my rocking seahorse
Capsizing I've sent
Myself drifting off course
Until I can forget

The lies I have tasted
Seduced by desire
The lives I have wasted
Consumed by the ire
Until I embraced it
My funeral pyre
Reborn to melt faces

With phoenix sun fire

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

Think of no others
Get lost in the grind
Through the gears and the fears
In the minds of mankind
You are falling behind
You’re a breed in decline
Like the falling of Roman
Republic’s design

How to just
Keep it
Authentic
I’ve vented
To many
A night
Out of sight
I’ve attempted
To plead with
To reason
To grieve no more
Difference
To bridge
Ever-widening rifts
Across distance
But this is
The way
I must do it
To build
What more powerful men
Exact tolls
To be spilled
To be billed
For its use
Mine are few
And obtuse
All too weakling in nature
Too quick to the noose
Of emoting
End noting
And doting    
In passion
Though sharp is the tip
Of the spear
That I fashion

I saw some people
In need
And I helped them
Some way
Shape or form
For a moment
I felt them
But also saw
Opportunistic
Endeavors
Fortuitous chances
To watch how it weathers
In whether or not
I decide
To be tending
Acculturation’s
Cultivations
Ascending
To more hungry lion’s
Shares
First feeding me
And what’s left of the carcass
Society
I would sell to the vultures
At auction
And keep
The pride rock
For my kind
To impregnably sleep
And in promises steeped
In self-serving deceit
Subjugate
Sycophantic
Hyena
Elite
And as long as no
Exiled kings
Should contend
You will never go hungry again…
And again

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

Take my castle
Take my sword
Take from me
The ship of lord
And let it cast
My subjects
Mourning
In forlorn
My soul adorning
Torn from pouring over
Volumes
****** into
Securing communes
Just to see
Equality
And constitute
Its polity
My policy
Priority
Revise the word
Authority
Devising its demise
And when apprising its abuses
So obtuse is my disguise

First it must break
Like a heart
Through a stake
Then partake
In the making
Of others relate
To creating,
Rephrasing
Our own contemplate
And pervading us
Phasing through
Matters
Too great
To control,
Or predict
To behold The Great Rift
And then swiftly
Through history’s
Rivers we sift

Values of poverty,
Piety
Heaven-sent
Somehow becoming
Traditions
More decadent
What other uses
For ages of plunder
Abuses of power's
Insatiable hunger
Foregoing,
Forgetting,
Forgiving excesses
With presents
Presented as
What he professes
But was it so prescient
Foreseeing
His birth
Rematerializing
Its tangible worth
In a splendorous
Spending-spree
Dollar tree
Industry
Gifting,
Regifting,
Now shipping
Religiously

I don’t believe in God
So you call me atheist
I don’t know what that means
To you

Those are your words
Not mine
My word is you
My word is me

It’s just so different
Thinking
Acting
Doing

It’s just not the same
As me
So we cast it out
We don’t understand

How nothing matters
To it
To this shell
Surrounding this person

But he does care
He does believe
In love
In pain

These are real
He’s seen them
He’s felt them
Everyday

But he can’t believe
In heaven
When his only angel
Left him in hell

It looks so sweet
Paradise’s promise
It tastes so bitter
Temptation’s lie

No being
No entity
No force
No eternity

Could ever return
The breath she stole
From my lungs
Beautiful thief

It’s just so difficult
Hoping
Praying
Believing

A day will come
When he will be free
To drown in those eyes
To save himself

Left alone
In its head
In its heart
Waiting

To mend the wounds
To feel the touch
To hear the word
To see the light

Scare away the darkness
She left him in
Her pain, his pendulum
Time ran out

Caged within life
Shackled to existence
Imprisoned in purgatory
Without her

So mark it a heathen
See if it cares
His only salvation
Is his lonely tomb

I don’t envy wealth
Redistribute its health
Comprehend its convenience
And savor the self
Long enough to destroy
At the end of fear
Void
Unemployed
Still deploying
My droids
Opioid
Like imperial fleets’
Archaeopteryx
Vision
All Rhodes of Colossus
Still bow in submission
To vanity’s
Villainy
Guilt
Contribution
The filth
Of free trade’s
Ethnic cleansing solution
The hack in the tax hiking
Ryker’s
Next door
We’re the youth who inherit
The engines of war
And will staff its advances
With hardwired sects
Of the next level
Technocrat’s
Spoiled execs
And we’ll show you
Who runs the world
Kids of the west

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

Distance is calling again
Journey on
Can’t be home for too long
Without want to be gone
But I cannot escape
Simultaneous waiting
Anticipating
The just meet someone dating
The app happenstance
Serendipitous disconnect
Spent the whole night
Imperfecting the intellect
Improbable as it seems
To improve
My impending doom
Imminent
Maggot food mood

The sickness of society
Itself
The impropriety
The clock
Tik-tok’ng
Virally
The world reacting
Violently
Too long repressed
This side of me
Pretenses
Prone
To primacy
Eventually
Become the norm
Undo the instinct
To conform
That comes from this
Excessive culture
Dog eat dog
Consumer vulture
Law and order’s
Infrastructure
Ruptured like
A housing bubble
Hospitals
Reduced to rubble
And beneath
The tons of toxins
Still our self-destruction
Blossoms
Love and hate’s
Unnatural state
Of unions we cannot
Equate

Becoming the writer
I dreamt I could be
I just never imagined
It’d be poetry
Not some novelty
Story
Compelling me on
To renown and acclaim
And conclusions foregone
No delusions of fame
Just a roof for the rain
And enough sustenance
To existence maintain
And if it’s supplemented
In wages or pages
I pledge to persist
To rephrase it in phases
Develop my craft
Indigent
Or affluent
And offer the movement
Consistent improvement

Normalize
The no more lies
Cushions of privilege
Urbanize,
Demonize,
Vestige of village
The thrill is
The ****
And the millions
In shrill
Shrieking panic
Demand it
And they pass the bill
But then we foot the bill
And the citizens
Rest
While the rest of us jest,
Freeze!
You’re under arrest

Infinite fragments
Distorted
From focus
The deregulation
Continues to choke us
And swarming like locusts
The banking clan
Broke us
And spoke in its
Serpentine
Privatized
Tongues
Stole the breath
From our
Microplasticity
Lungs
Pumped our veins
With arterial rage
Donut glaze
And what’s left of our minds
They keep locked
In a cage
They keep blocking
Progression’s
Diminutive leads
While expanding their
Theaters of war
Overseas
So it’s high time we seize
The whole picture,
Reframe it,
Imagine a nation
Of us
And reclaim it
The wealth we create,
That we generate,
Ours
We are masters of Earth
To their ******* of Mars
And the starlinks
And golden domes
Building their iron thrones
Shame will embrace
When we all lose
Their game of bones

Distorted shapes fade,
The faces age,
The pages turn
We make mistakes
Along the way
And from them
Lessons we have learned
More often failures
Than in victories
Still writing
Ancient histories
Concluding
In a moral
Nihilistic
Burning question
In reliving such a process
Is it progress
Or regression?
If for all
Of mortal nature’s
Human races
Have embraced it
In complacency
To sameness
In perpetual stagnation
Or if they, themselves  
Have ever been
Unbidden to its languish
Active agents
In its game
Or merely subjects
To its changes

Out of sync lately
Mistakes have been
Gravely
Impacting
Exacting
More making us angry
But strangely
As yet
Undeserving as I
Of forgiveness
She still seems to find it
Inside
Amidst dissonance
Distance
Disdain
And decay
But there’s no one
I’d still rather see
Every day
I just have to preempt
And preclude
Provocation
Not merely accept
It as my
Inclination

To me you’re all crazy
And I’m just the lazy one
Languish alone
Often talk to myself
Like a friend on the phone
As I watch you all
Frantically
Manically
Panicking
Planning
And scamming
Your lives
Micromanaging
Hyper-aware
You are barely
Apparent
And desperately try
To be not so
Aberrant
To fit in
And blend
And comply
Without end
In pursuit of delusions
Just playing pretend
The solution
The problem
Is how much you spend
But I know the price paid
We can’t hide from the grave
And I’ll take it to mine
As the one who’s depraved

No industrious,
Sedulous
Worker ant slaving
I just deride hive-minded
Throngs and mobs
Paving
The way
For a more supreme order
Since discontent rules
And the truth’s
A reporter’s
Opinion
Dominion
Still supersedes fact
What is that?
But I know
What you don’t,
And that’s that

Light up my vast abyss please
Let me write it
And only
When lonely
Forlornly
Recite it
I’ve been there before
Where the peace becomes war
And in slumber
Restore
Torn from pages
Of Nevermore
Once again
Almost
As always
It fits
If I keep writing out to its
Ghastly misfits

No end in sight Afghanistan
Still burnin’ flags out in Iran
Chinese steel grip
The Fuhrer’s fist
Still poundin’ on the podium
As Appalachia still succumbs
To ethnic cleansing *****
Peace-keepin’ like a North Korean
Sleepin’ on a Puerto Rican
Leakin’ all the in between and
Still you people think he’s speakin’
For the huddled masses, middle classes?
Cuttin’ taxes
For the battle axes cashin’ in
On truth denial gasses
Maskin’ babies bodies buried in
The Stormy normalcy
And no apology for Johnny
See why Colin took a knee?
Or did you miss the racial murders
Every single ******* day
I guess you missed the homelessness
Or the unequal gender pay
And when the kids take to the streets
You shut them up with adderall
Then seal them up behind a wall
Until their world’s a shopping mall
And then the Columbine each time
A new disorder
Breaks the mind
Until the Nero anti-hero
Comes to muse of its decline

Fleetingly wary
We aren’t alone
As a species
But personally
On our own
And the dread revelation
Intelligence
Solely
Just isn’t enough
To convince me
It’s only
This civilization we build
That defines
And distinguishes us
From developing minds  
So ephemeral
Cognizance
Merely a product
Of permanently
Be the way
We were brought up
Despite how we nurture
That nature
To harm
Fortify self-defenses
And rapidly arm
For a conflict ensuing
To err with more fanfare
Than opposite sides
Can barely take stand where
The human decides

Just another figment
Never coming back
Got myself
Into trouble
And couldn’t retract
The mistaken
Intrusion
Into the confusion
And from it
Still casts
A deceptive illusion
That all of this planning
This playing pretend
Comprehends
What the end
So prophetically
Pens
When it lends
But an ear
To the musing of strangers
Instead of defaulting
To surely endangers
My life
To take pity
To drown in the city
Still thinking its merits
Could Trump its decay
That the tyrants who built it
Would give it away

Pop the question
Say I do
Now I own the best of you
The rest of you will have to wait
Until the trials separate
Us both from first impressions
History lessons
And no way to consummate
A life spent married to possessions
Of the state’s repressed expressions

Indiscernible language orations
A prayer
Almost palpable now
In the air
Is it fear
Of a God
That compels their devotion
The spoken word utterance
Faithful awoken
With all of the vehement
Furor of man
Dispossessed of his land
Grippin’ tight to his chest
A pulled pin full of sin
Intifada Quran
Understanding his place
In the maker’s good graces
Mistaken intentional flawless
Creation
My ritual suicide serpent
Salvation