Is your humanity held captive
  by your intelligence

Does your soul remain imprisoned
  for a self-inflicted crime

Are the wishes you made, abandoned,
   prisoners of the wind

Is the cell locked deep within you
    —on whose walls you mark the time

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2019)

Your love is a cigarette,
burning with passion.
I breathe you in deeply,
watch white turn to ashen.

My stress disappears,
a temporary buzz.
You make me feel better,
your smile always does.

My lungs draw you in,
inhaling your air,
while telling myself
that you must really care.

I know I should quit.
You're bad for my health.
Your love's filled with toxins
that sneak up with stealth.

As soon as you're gone,
I'll crave you again.
Headaches and heartaches,
I need you again.

So light up another,
Until I get smarter,
old habits die hard,
bad habits die harder.

Last time I promise,
I can't keep this up.
You're killing my insides,
your love is corrupt

The longer I love you,
the more toxic you get.
I'm addicted to you
like my first cigarette.

Sunshine!
Sickly yellow
slow-light colored streaks
slithering worse than sweat
down my body.
That golden ball stares down at me
like a haughty goddess,
her duality shallow and hot.
She cares not for the freedoms of humans.
She's a two-faced coin,
purgatory masked by the promise
of freedom from pained brains
and scholarly shackles.
The sun laughs at her own trickery, gargling through melting teeth
as she collects suppressed confessions
from weakened teens.
When her crescent counterpart
offers solace from her torment,
the moonlit darkness
only serves to drown us
and we splutter in our own
self-taught
year-round
lies.
And the sun
rears her tattered, flaming mane
at daybreak,
belly-laughing at idle minds now unrefined,
gleefully adding her own scorch
to already inflamed brains.

Your price of niceties is too high for me
For I've been choking on spoon-fed complacency
Corporate crime blinding us to atrocity.
Dropping, down go the dissidents-
Incitors of an unknown breed
They're mutilated sheep,
Killing the tamers
of a tenacious nation-
Rallying me.

My son wants to draw a shark
He chooses yellow and orange
From the box of crayons
I decide not to correct him
Because the world needs more yellow sharks

I used to draw yellow sharks
All jaws, and teeth, with yellow skin
And wide, large eyes
That followed you as you walked
Through my mothers kitchen

I also used to draw street views
Three vehicles, all trucks
One in the middle, one arriving to the right
One, departing to the left
Going somewhere, even I didn’t know

“He always does that. Yellow sharks, hmmm…”
So said my mother to someone who asked
Where was the road going
Off to the left? To yellow sharks?
No. To a table, 5 decades later, where my son sits

Drawing a yellow shark, and the shape of his own face

In a different world,

A different mind a different body

Perhaps I'd be inclined to try and find the facts behind her fiction

But for now I'll buy in

Because this is too sweet to be reality and that's not what I need

I need a sign from up high before I'll jot my name on the dotted line

I don't need to know every little detail that lies behind her eyes

So tonight I'll take it slow I'll take it steady

We can share a drink and a long and contemplative passing of eyes, sharing of the deep thoughts inside our minds

If we find what we see to be of the proper tone, the proper texture

Perhaps into the wild blue yonder I'll venture...

I'll tell her what goes on inside the deep recesses of my mind

And in those dark spots she may decide my conclusions are nothing but pure conjecture

If she can find some inner part of her that longs for adventure than maybe I'll tell her

I think she's beautiful and she makes me weak in places I wish I was strong to begin with

But she makes me think that maybe I can flip this, fix this.

Put that part of me back together again

Just enough to pass close inspection

I'm this strange mix of a anti social quiet type of romantic who can't seem to find the courage he deserves

So I'll stick my chin up and tell her "Nothing" and something like, "Everything's fine"

Because a mind is a terrible thing to lose and I can't seem to find mine when I look into her eyes

She's got every color of the rainbow and at least fifty shades more

I'm torn

I know that I'm not the best for her, and she deserves that

I know that in my head but my heart can't seem to conserve that, steady flutter it means to burst out of my chest and fly

and I can't for the life of me figure out why

In a different time

I could just bring you flower and announce that you could be mine

And that would fine

But now days we have to dance around the issue because that's the socially correct thing to do

I can't help but feel cheated

I'm an old soul inside a young mind

I feel this way about eighty-five percent of the time

On a different day

In a different way

perhaps I'd say something that could make you stay

But your future awaits

So I'll surrender the very idea of us to the fates

And hope that one day

Things will be different