If you looked into a human face, you would see them slowly dying.
Hair turning grey, wrinkles etching deeper.
The body's shell frailer day by day.
A bag of dead and dying cells.
A body doomed to die.
A meat bag held together by bones,
frail, brittle, breakable bones, bone china skeleton.
You would also see a human trying to defy death's clock.
Botox, facelift, eye tuck, tummy tuck, implants.
Makeup and perfume to mask the stench of death.
Shame.
Why fight the inevitable?
Dying to look young.

I'm one of the ones you call insane,
Because I can't play along with this rigged game.
The odds are stacked, and not in our favor,
But instead for the Bankers with money, they create more.
I look and I see the strife all around,
And know the potential for human life has no bounds.
And when I make a sound,
It's like the words are all drowned,
Or at least lost at sea.
Message in a Bottle from Humanity.
A Human who knows the scale of her insignificance -
While knowing the magnitude of what is at risk -
The disposal of this awesome gift.

I'm one of the ones you call insane,
Because I can't play along with this rigged game.
I know my role, and I know how the story goes.
I should vote in vain and be told my Heroes.
But no, I dance to my own rhythm,
I tell myself it's internally driven,
To improve myself, and the world around,
The world at large, and earthworms in the ground.
So I rejected my spoon-fed medicine,
Of this culture, man-made incentives,
Long before you inject me with antipsychotics.
Internally, Mentally, I chant the mantra of "Stop This."

It can drive a person insane,
Pretending to play this rigged game.

Mading relieves Manute from guard duty.
They share a meagre meal of millet porridge before
Manute returns to the refugee nation of southern Sudan.
The noon sun is a harsh sentence for a parched tongue but
they talk not of coffee or juice-laden fruit and
rice and lentils are mountain memories their stomachs can ill afford.
Instead they curse the clear skies that rain only strafing jets and
pray for their dry-breasted wives on pilgrimage to the aid station
carrying children swollen with the promise of death.
They snarl rumours about al-Bashir’s lapdogs
in Khartoum growing fat on food intended for them.

Jason waits, informed by cell phone of Laurie's imminent arrival.
He orders a wheat beer, its earth tone inviting on a silver tray and
its musky sweetness washing away a morning of phone business.
The noon sun is a warm blessing through the picture window but
they talk not of haloed hills or the light-laden river and
recession and retrenchment are market memories their ulcers can ill afford.
Instead they debate '63 cabernet versus '74 chablis and
moan about their reconstructed wives driving halfway across town
carrying children swollen with the promise of private schooling.
They snarl rumours about Key's cabinet
in Wellington while wolfing crayfish and Steak Diane.

I strip
To rip
Myself from
Myself
Major labels
Silly slogans
Dry wash only
Made to define me
Walking billboard
Corporate *****
I take off the hat
For the team I support
Put down all the digital devices
Cause they replaced my old vices
Remove the faded Levis
The Nikes, and super hero shirt
Disposed of the whole disguise
Got rid of the old lies
To find what really lyes
Behind my hazel eyes
Naked to find
Who am I beyond my
Consumer style consumption

Let's ban poetry because it
Heals wounds without prescription,
Break borders without permission,
Adds beauty without makeup,
With words all so made up!

We shift
Shuffling deadbeats
Wind south
Wind north

Biting to be
Filter the lungs
Breathe in the smoke
Fill in the guts

Consume me, consume me
Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw
Salivate static
Want, want, want

It’s no wonder we’ve grown endless teeth
Beneath our loveless grins

Can we even
Part the crowd
Anymore?

Shoals of salmon on an upstream rush,
a frenzy propelled by an instinctual wish,
the milling evening crowd does siege the street,
one'd think it is a riot, all hopes to be sane is already lost.

Not soldiers on march, they are,  but within each
rages a war, not exactly knowing what they want to search,
this street has it all, hence all blindly flow along the stream
greedy green eyes hunt, splurge, conquer,vent steam.

Look for the labels, brand is sacrosanct,the only pointer
once the libels are spotted, in to the brain enter, the deal is done
smile, be contended, evade every other thought,
why waste time on value judgement,pointers assure delight.

Salmon on the stream never look for happiness,
a clock work motion that culminates in nature's prompt.
nowhere in this broad street you'd find a shop that sells-
happiness; but all search for it, without even aware.Fail.

I wish we lived in a world
where we were bombarded with messages of hope
that encourage us to grow

instead of being bombarded with messages of futility
that our worth lies in meaningless products
and how and what we consume
we are told to conform

I am more than my material possessions
and how much I get on my paycheck

everywhere i look
i stare through my surroundings
in this lovely little market
with hand drawn laminated signs
and a somewhat not
miserable work force
i feel almost happy

but it is like my eyes
my eyes
have gone numb
and i wander
sample and gaze blank

i do not know what
shook me out of it
but i want
i really want to go back
to that fluorescent purity
of fair trade peace of mind
a non GMO existence
among the antioxidants
and coffee samples
and those hawaiian shirts
oh wow those hawaiian shirts

my eyes like shattered glass
refracting all this light
inside and my mind going blank
where did this goofy smile
come from?
but it's gone and
all i am left with
is the euphoria
the wonder
of missing something

A human habit universal,
our measure of success by possessions to envy.
An infernal curse—commercial purveyors, trinkets
of gold and gem,
shining blinking, fabrics glistening;
the value of thing manipulated by
them insect kings.

By lion's fang and butterfly guise they rule,
a hubris deceiver upon their shoulder
obscuring their likeness to those
serfs upon whom they
cunningly demand servitude, otherwise
be starved, put out, forced to watch their
future falter—sons and daughters
failing in flight, their
wings clipped prior first spanning.

Locust clans spurred to fight over resources, who
sell and buy back nature's bounty once
formed anew into advertisement's subject.
Oceans emptied of fish, forests becoming myth,
uplands turned to wastelands,
abomination fog a spherical prison choking
earth's inhabitants—the marketer's dowry
paid for marriage to a precarious economy.
Royalty made rich at cost of labouring spine,
but worse—
our home and thereby our hope we consign.

By their futile attempt to survive,
the locust instinct to consume,
until all is gone we contrive,
the inevitable a meet with our doom—kings
with stained glass wings to follow soon.
So small are we amidst this vast existence;
the ambitions of men
barely bigger than an insect's significance.