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

Sorrow debilitates
No system operates
Well
In duress
An insomniac
Heart attack
I can’t express
Any clearer
Than dearest ones
Dying inside
Every day
As you watch their whole world
Inundated with gray
But it’s been that way
Long before
You can remember
For you
Have felt others’
Despair
Since forever
And weathered storms
Tethered
To some sort
Of faith
In a genuine smile
Still crossing your face
When embraced with
Eternity’s
Sole resting place

Choose not to partake
I forsake
Pleasure-seeking
Deprive my desires
Of decadent sleeping
In speaking
Reserved
Only purposefully
Verbal
Averse to attachment
And suffer eternal
Existence alone
In a godless indifference
Illusions compel me no more
To their influence

I saw
How the world
Felt without her
Beside
The unbridled temptation
To soar through the sky
At the end of the earth
Where I still hear the chirping
Of never come home
And I never knew less
Than an age made of stone
But despite how I roam
Like a satellite phone
And the void beckons sweeter
Than her pheromone’s
Ceremonious coaxing
My psychosis
Host
Into melding together
Its empathy ghost
With her most
Incandescent
Vivaciousness
Spirit
I couldn’t quite overcome
Why I still fear it

Then I’m back in the lab
Like the ghost
Of Ahab
As the coast
Is consumed
In the gloom
Fog of mad
And out from it emerges
Convergence
In form
Of the soon
Be forgotten
Undying
Reborn
From the torn
More asunder
Than plausibly
Posed
Like the posies
In bloom
Where no sign of life
Grows

Intent is in
The intonation
How I feel you
Hear you say it
How your truth disguise
Displays it
How your lying eyes
Betray it
Once the probing question
Raises
How could I be seen as racist?

Darts around
A winged missile
Through the thickets
Bramble
Bristle
Probing tents
To find its breakfast
No sign if its
Nearby nested
Just a welcome
Bird intruder
Desert-dwelling
Bug consumer
Flightless seemingly
But races
To and fro
With barely traces
Of its tiny feet
In tracks
Across the sand
Hope it comes back

The high society
Hive variety
Narrow
Mindlessly
Anxiety
Actively striving
To overprescribing
To first do no harm
Just alarmingly
Medicate
Future doomsdays
To preemptively
Automate
On our behalf
Now it’s teaching the class
Some in front
Some in back
And the ones in the lead
Still don’t know how to act
Just be taught to succeed
To monopolize need
With a pedigree
Meriting
Ivy League greed
And proceed to convince us  
Its capital gains
From the poisons it pumps
Through our varicose veins
And the garbage it dumps
In our wishy wash brains
All the same
In the ways it uplifts
And enriches
The rest of us
Broke in
Its system-wide glitches

Public life
Afterlife
Spotlight is dim
And it flickers
And fades
Like a stage
Pseudonym

We shared the same room
The same bed
But I dread
Getting into her head
When inside her undoing
Eschewing from ruining
This union through
Everything I would say
I could do
To keep you
From discovering never a love
I declared to be true
And least of all this ill attraction unto
Her lascivious libidinous
Easy come
Easy go, watch me leave
Before you
Even know

Don’t circle back
Nor derail off the track
When you come around
Seeking
The answers I lack
For to be
Is to think yourself
Universe-centered
And few could but fathom
The others I’ve entered
Demented
And tempted
By lovers lamented
Extents to which most
Only ghost me
Preventing

False flags,
Fallen idols
Are flatlining vitals
Declines of empires
Who can’t feed their people
Distractions of
Factions of
Separate but equal
And even the pretense
Democracy wanes
Until only
The cash-cropper’s
Judgment remains
As the guild
Fixes prices,
Elections,
Opinions
But can’t repair roads
Lead to Roman dominion

Not intent
But intonation
Saw what my people
Had built for me
Waiting
Safeguarding
Regarding
Me
Of the mandating
It can’t be forever
Prosperity yields
It will not be eternal
How awful it feels
For there will come a time
We must choose
Who we are
And through proof
Or in truth
See the solely sworn servitude
Back to the youth

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

The you when I see you
Can still express care
I’m just trying to see through
The screens everywhere
Everywhere that I go
Still enjoying the show
You’re all bound
To the sound
Alter egos aglow
At the spotlight’s behest
They’re all altered at best
Your identity?
Industry
Image ******
And when faced with the truth
You prefer picturesque  
But unfiltered
Be sure
My persona charade
In the digital world’s
No cliché masquerade

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

Guess we weren’t worth saving
Or only that once
The pretense of salvation
Was dust into dust
Just to sire creation
Abandoned to fate
But still willing us freedom
To reincarnate
As you did
The deceiver
The charlatan
Prophet
Instilled with your Word
And imbued with your gifts
But like any man
Bows
Before my
Hieroglyphs

Infinity drifts
In a sea of could be
Of serenity
But deep beneath it is me
Still submerging myself
Where the light doesn't reach
Instead of sun-bathing
My shell on the beach
Where at least I would only
Imagine
The fathoms
Below me, the undertow
Dragging me slowly
Away from the shoreline security
Lonely
Back to the Abysses' jaws
Gaping
And homely
As ever it were,
To the pensive philosopher
Sunk in his sordid, assorted
Leviathans
Grasping for breath-bereft depths
That inspire him

Does it think
Any more
Any less than I do
Or does it simply do
What it has to get through
An inherent, instinctive
Autonomous act
Irrefutably true
Biological fact
Just does not seem to me
To be easy, believed
I myself think enough
For us both to perceive
And in consciously willing
It so do I know
It indeed contemplates
Where in death does it go

Soon
Worship nothing
Before a false idol
Consider these signs
That I’m seeing
As vital
Flatlining
And idle
Of minding
Its business
Its dealings
Provoking
The pulse
Of the polls
To its feelings
For fear
Is the sheep
To the slaughterhouse
Martyrdom
I am the bomb
In its first class’s
Carrion

This is my life now
Be told what to do
Just get used to the ways
That I fail to please you
Could be going through some
Minor
Internal crisis
Infecting
Afflicting
My love like a virus
And I just
Want something
To cure the
Divide us
Retire my
Self-righteousness
And unite us
But try as I might
For impartial
Provider
I’m building a home
With some sticks
And a lighter

This bastion
Comes crashing
Dystopian
Social experiment
Taxing
So prone
To mob rule
To upheaval
Amassing
But passing that off
For empowered
Is lacking
If all that amounts
To each other
Attacking
And in the ensuing
Hysteric highjacking
Of lives
Livelihoods
And our whereabouts
Tracking
We back oligarchic
Solutions
Divided
Or seek an anarchic
Conclusion
Ignited

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

I need only to smirk and you’re mine
Anytime
If it’s god that you want
I have dozens in mind
Devilishly divine
Bending time like a grandeur delusional
Spine  

In a mad hatter ectoplas-mystical slime
A prismatic drug addict’s first nursery rhyme
Of accursed hearse verses of graphic design
Now to lay to rest intellect spectacles musing
Of selves glorified more than those of my choosing
To deify Destiny’s
Deathly serenity
Plentifully sending me vibrant surprises
And penning my ending in violent demises
Disguises surmised by the climate arises
Girl always there riding my similar waves
As I try to save face digging mechanized graves

But the cloud tentacles
To the depths
Drag me down
To demented ascension
Black holes in the ground
Where disciples of light
And my huntress in white
Vivify me by day
Resurrect me at night
To instruct and deduct
Reasoning in a state
Of a being supreme
Contemplating its fate

Most days I’m normal
Can pass for
A person
Just slightly on edge
Of the world
I’m immersed in
Require the same
Bare essentials
To thrive,
I imbibe
And ingest
All it takes
To survive
But request
On occasion
The rest
Make exception
And see me as more
Than the point
Of conception

But for her
I am lust
And libido
Entrust
Every ******
Of my blade
To the page
And combust
Like a wayward inferno,
A magnified ant,
A Promethean seedling,
A nuclear plant
And my rant
Slash and burn
Still unearthing
Unerring
From Gaia rebirthing
‘Til deathless
Despairing
And wear her depression
Expression
Unvarnished
Full force of her nature
Have I learned to harness
And won’t soon submit
To her profligate
Enemies
Taking her vengeance
To weather extremities
When their atrocities
Go unrepentant
All in
Her empyrean
I am transcendent

These national
Rations
Don’t cut it for me
So I take my fair share
Indiscriminately
It gets dim in here
Sometimes
But moonlighting in
Is the ravenous
Werewolf
At home in his skin
As the rest of flesh
Crawls
At the crack of his grin
In the back of his grimacing mind
Pulls the pin
And explodes ego overloads
Headiest spin
Still forewarned
Have the vanquished
In desperation
Formed against him,
A last ditch’s
Coalition

But have failed
Every time
Tried to match his travails
With a pales in comparison
Devil details
Get the gist?
His hiss kisses
With stone cold abyss
He’s the nail in the wrist
Of your Christmas wish list
And he first gave the Satyr
The paper to burn
And he first tabled
Time revolutions
A turn

As you gawked
At flaw-stricken
Bird paradise feathers
He tinkered
With weather
To build you an ark
And when questioned
His genius
Just witty remarks
I’m the sleight of hand,
Smoking gun,
Shot in the dark
I’m The Engels
Revved engines,
Red vengeance of Marx  
And still shark any bullet
With frenzied
Aggression
Then just as swift
Teach you
Its history lesson

Felt good to be coveted,
Wanted,
Desired
But she was too simply
In normalcy mired
And barely could form
An opinion
Or query
And of my intentions
Seemed overly
Wary
As if I was there
To embarrass,
Abandon
Her, at my expense,
My performances
Stand-in