I am afraid to go all in
Although I love you so much
Proud I have resisted succumbing
Hide my heart away from your touch

Locked inside a dark cool place
I will be kind but cautious too
Special for a little bit but not for long
Warm and soft glow soon will fall through

You make a perfect Prince Charming
Afraid it's all a game
A chance is the gift I'm giving you
Waiting for proof you're no longer the same

Sincerely I pledge my love to you
We are fated to break somewhere
Wanting to show you the depth of these feelings
With more than words sculpted from air

Fear forms a fence between us
Distance a familiar friend
Passion puts me in a prison cell
Losing power to pain and the impending end

Let me walk apart from love
Fantasies weaken away by the hour
Lets part ways while our love is still sweet
Rather than watch it slowly sour

Bitter tasting cynicism lingers from the past
Allow me to surrender to fear
Escape the possibility of getting bit or burned
Before goodbye has a chance to get near

Be inspired not from without
of those you imagined yourself desirous to be
but rather be inspired from within
from discovering the unique self you truly are
the one you and the world never knew
the mystery and the wonder the world awaits to see
and the reason that is truly your reason for being

But the world demands success
defined from templates of history
imposed without care for who you are
but only for what you count for them
you, seduced with morsels and crumbs,
freely choose to be slave for their profits

And so alas the world lost
the truly free alienated

becoming

one weary hungry step at a time
discovery drifts to disillusion
mystery remains mystery
wonder turns to ruin,
despair and cynicism
the flicker of reason
burns dim
if only
on hope
of

eternity

On a misty city morning
still resolved to early rising
I came upon a heap of corpses

They were child sacrifices
made to satisfy the fancy
of Christian capitalist and pagan
and a jolly old fat man
who lives at the North Pole

They might have been

growing tall
in a field or on a hill
drinking sunlight
breathing love songs
in answer to caress of wind

But the silent pines
didn't seem to mind
their broken bodies one last gift
filling my chest with fragrant air
and longings
for fields and hills
on a misty city morning

What's it take
These days

To write a poem

That makes the world go mad
That brings the crowds to their feet
That spreads like wildfire
Through a dry winter forest

Is it those excessively long words?
The ostentatiously loquacious
Platitudinous ramblings
Of an insecure mind aspiring
To authentic intellect?

Is it perhaps...
     the "creativity"
               of      varied      spacing
  or...    could it be..... the lack
                              of capitalization
               the loathsome little letters
               screaming out
                         hey, look at us!
         ... or maybe it's
               the punctuation marks,
     littered, haphazardly
          through the text
                    (whether used correctly)
               or, theyre not?!
     despite worrds mispeled
          and a grammar might is broken
   can these gimmicks increase interest
        though miswritten or misspoken?

Is the trick alliteration
Whose bite brightly bids us
To center on the snappy sounds?
Although all along
     unvoiced underneath
Ideas idle in the isles
   (or perhaps the aisles)
Of the mind
To meld and craft and bind
Our thorough thoughts
And worthy words
Into lines
Which
Heard by herds
Raise the
                  Praise for which we
                  Privately, desperately
                  Pray

Maybe it's a magical mix
Of splendid in-your-head rhythm
Marvelous meter that perfectly clicks
Flowing smoothly without schism

Well-spaced stanzas
Well-used time
Well-crafted phrases
Well-thought-out rhymes

Well, maybe not...
     those gems are often ignored
     cast-aside, unread, even abhorred

Why?

Because the modern world
doesn't need your rules
your restrictions
your regulations
your misguided boundaries
your oppression
your antiquated ideas
   of "the right way"
   to write
   to speak
   to act
   to live
   to (fill in the blank)

No, what the modern world needs
is
Negation!
Contradiction!
Resistance!
Revolt!

And poetry whose words
Say the same thing
Repeat the same meaning
Echo the same lyrics
Rephrase the same thoughts
But in an ever-so-slightly
Different
Varied
Altered
Adjusted
Changed up way

Line
After line
Of synonyms
          over
               and
                    over
                         and
                              over
                                   again

-----

What's it take
These days

To not give in
To narcissism's spiral?

But more importantly:
What's it take

To make my poem go viral?