Down on knees tying to clean up
last night brought the endless cycle
of breaking everything inside
I don't care enough to not care
I'm over it I think to myself
As though those words mean anything anymore
Sitting white knuckled jaw clenched
I want to give up every time you leave
But I put everything back in place
For everything to look like we're starting over
For when you come back it'll be okay
You can play house with my feelings
And I'll put a smile on
Hiding how tired I am to not mean more
Or worth being better for

There's all this talk around me about some profound we that's never found me
They talking a collective we?
One agreed on collectively but conveniently and continuously minus me
Is it the me, myself and I type we? Cause defining a trinity might not unveil anything holy
Or could they be referring to the we that turns to just me when things get a little bit heavy?
That kind of we?
Maybe they mean the we I'm supposed to automatically call family
Even though history will show them as a two faced enemy
Both ones I've picked or have befriended me, eventually it's contempathy from a frienemy
An uninterested we that hardly reciprocates the love that's expected to freely flow from me blindly
What baffles me still is this bloodline we that aren't even aware of me
Or they are aware just unwilling to add me to their we
Coldly my psyche reminds me, "you're nobody's somebody buddy, sorry."
Personally, I say let 'em swing from their positions above and beside me on the family tree
Unfortunately they will always be a part of the conversation when discussing this we
The good, the bad and the ugly represented by said we but projected on me
Now listen closely, I claim to have came to this conclusion organically

There is no we, only me

Nonsense spewed when angry but the me I try to hide visually, the one projecting he doesn't need a we
Cries out for somebody when times get lonely, lies and said I'm my only company
Cause I can not see the we that is meant to be, the we I thought was only a dream of a faded childhood memory
It's not only right in front of me but all around me and already a part of me
I had no idea this door even had a handle for entry with a keyhole much less a key
Apparently it was the skeleton type and had to be pulled out of me
Reality blends with fantasy in the best way, what else is there to say? I've found my we and another reason to be happy

©2023

502 Bad Gateway
(a work in process)
~~~

poetry
is to be found easiest, lying fatal-fetal amidst
the sewage of the blessed daily profane~mundane,
enslaved within the tyranny of everyday indignities,
encrusted within the indignities of diurnal tyrannies,
in the catch basin of sew-aged treatment  pools,
living as a perpetual unpublished draft,
locked behind Five Hundred and Two
Bad Gateways,
Emma Lazarus-yearning
to be free…

502 is an even number, the internet sages confirm,
equitably distributed with no regard to
pronouns,
disrespectful of any age, all creepy~seedy known gods,
equally unconcerned by the laws of **** poetica,
succinctly informing you to f*k off  with the elegant
sparseness of technical brevity,
a la vie moderne boulder,
repeatedly *****-fussy pushing back on you,
as we push a poem uphill

<?>

The road to good poetic intentions is human-paved;
a utile fact,  so continue to insure-shod be thy feet,
when shedding writings of poesy, lest the hot asphalt of
low inspiration yet get the better of ye…or the gates
or the bad gateways,
502 in their number, lock you out,
and carry the day, have their way, and
fracture well honed words
into bits & pieces of letters, scraps of scrap,
“pebbles and ******* and broken matches and bits of glass”^

that all the king's servers and all the king's technicians couldn’t put together again coherently, your words but conscripts in a
vast wasteland of eternal drafts^^

      <?>

well you know this story, that one that has being asking
you to writ it/get rid of it/tell it finally,
a couple of times daily,
that poem, this be that one,
an amorality tale of rejections,
a precision guided
error message,
a HIMARS missive miserly
missilery projectile
rife with hidden %#&”postulations,
of the “what’s wrong with me”
garden variety

think of life as a series of serious, independently linked moments, cherish-able, composting  usurping cursing phrases
distinctly worthy
of re-sharing unto the befouled upper atmosphere,
directly communicating the texture of your experience^^^

Ah Goodbye
Hello Poetry,
rejection is thy middle fingered name!*

this befouled poem
was
begun: many years ago
completed: Jan 4, 2023 @2:11AM