Social Recliner
By Steven L Herring

Powder puff power trip
Words are weapons
and my two cents
won't cost you a dime

It's time
Let's climb to the top
of the digital podium
and break this soapbox
over the heads of anyone
who would listen
to the nickelodeon

A quiet man lives a quiet life
and I love him for it too
Too many traps yammering
and stuttering Stanley's clamoring
Keep walking and you'll
get **** on your shoe!

Trust me
I work for the government
I'm just here to help you
Grab a pen and pad
and gather round
the broken brick establishment

We are the embodiment
of eye stabbed with stick
in Novembers
and bitter winter cold
in December's ice slick

Sick and saddened summer's loss
Incarcerated in a Bradburian
*******
in an endless
loop like who licked
the back of this toad with my tongue, because I am TRIP PING!

Every day's dawn drowns dreams
and nothing hardly ends up
being what it seems
But in the end none if it really matters
Right, but we're still stuck wiping
blood and mud on our jeans

So yeah.
Say all the things!
I'm just gonna head out
because I spent the last
couple of years trying to untangle
but in the end I had to
cut all my strings

Plague of Hearts and Minds
By Steven L Herring

Alone
I've always felt it
Crowded rooms
Human-filled hallways
Bars brimming with patrons

Everywhere empty inside
I could look right through
solid mass and see nothing
but emptiness and black

But now that we're altogether separate,
Trapped in our rooms
concealed
Carrying our will to live gracefully
like a burden in our hands
I now relish in the fact
that we're all here together
All of us willingly weeping
Shrouded
Crowded under the same
black
cloud

Ominous in danger
Dangerous together
I see you
slyly smiling from
across the room
and our eyes light up
while our mouths,
masked with paper and cloth
crack a secret smile

And all of a sudden
we're not alone
We suffer together
under the same black cloud

Empty the Armories or Empty the Arteries
By Steven L Herring

The gun in my hand
is warm and bright
Rectangular box filled with evil
to light up the dark night

Mourning in glory
My ansible
to reach across the stars
telling even strangers my troubles
through the dim light of parked cars

I'm all thumbs on the trigger
but the cartridges are cocked and locked
Hovering over a pseudo-nuclear option
and the guilt gives way;
brain blocked

Come, clarity!
Soothe the savage beast in me
I don't level playing fields
I'm the creator of craters,
Blowing holes where love used to be

Carpenter of caverns
Lying just beneath the surface
Empty
The best thing
that ever happened was when I
dropped the magazine to the street
and made the chamber safe
Easy!

And now for my next trick,....

Year at a Glance
By Steven L Herring

I see a sea of violence
riding a wave of hate
set to crush
set to destroy
Pistol-lined pockets
The nuclear option tastes
like metal in the mouths
of the innocent
as we take to the streets

I don't know about y'all
but the excitement is scarce in me
I'm not to keen
on getting blood on my sneaks
Media wars by media ******
cut the path
to peace in pieces
and all I hear is a vacuum
******* sanity out of the air
Rusty razors
tainted with nair

Breakout!
Skin crawls with virus
Hot pokers pierce the iris
TV
Feeds me
My eyes rolled out
of their sockets
to that tune
by love and rockets
I'm alive, but for how long?
Gotta feed a firing squad
fifty copper jackets
harvested from the hearts
of the ghosts of innocents past

Outcast
Stressed out
Stretched out
for all the world to see
Disfigured and on display
We screamed,
but masks muffled our airway
Patient's color grey for days
Streets worn and black
Center lines jagged
Petulantly painted
by a basket case wonder
This lonely road rages on
Let it spill into the sea
LET IT SPILL INTO THE SEA!

Power From the People Y'all
By Steven L Herring

Born a battery
Watch me work
Take my cash
Never
Not
Once
but every time!

You're a bottomless pit
and I'm the ****** you created
Fed visually
Programmed for greenbacks,
but then robbed
It's a stick up
No one makes it out alive!
Shoot the ones sans masks first!

You push drugs!
Amphetamines are for kids
Sell me a house that I can't afford
PLEASE!  
Make me serve under your iron fist!
Puppet or pawn?
Depends….
Who won the election again?

Burned Out
By Steven L Herring

I wish I felt
something other
than backwards right now...
Like when you put your
hoodie on wrong…
Staring at the back of it
like ******!

But you can take
the hoodie off…
This feels permanent
kinda sorta…
The world is on fire,
and I'm watching it burn
from the comfort of my recliner

And I'm so numb to it
I want all action or all quiet
And I don't even really want to
hear about your riot!
Burn it down
or shut the **** up man!
I don't believe in words anymore
Feed the sloth
until he pops
or put the pigs on a diet!

The Conqueror
By Steven L Herring

There's a darkness
in the city lights
Heaviness sprays
like a firefight
Products
marketed and sold
boldly undercover of night
cast a shadow under lamp

Watch them scurry
Back into the shadows!
Back into the dark!
Fools will suffer fools
Makers make marks
As sure as the sun will rise,
the Son will set wrong to right,
and we will get our due.

A spider spinning down
On his face a frown
but when he landed on my arm,
through war's teeth sickly said:
I was cold, you gave me warmth
I groan with hunger
I will eat you
Crush the spider
Under palm and wear
his guts to dinner!