That hot-blooded youth
Expired at last
Cold grease-fire ashes
Just soot on the soul.

Where are the children
And where are the wives
Where are the stocked-up answers
For the rest of his life?

Here is the bourbon
Here is the wine
There the eyes sparkle
But the limbs have all declined.

His speech is fiery
His decisions forthright
But where there was once a cuff to the cheek
There is grasping for a cane.

I respect the man
I acknowledge his might
It's death I despise
And its sapping of rights.

Created to destroy us there deadly poisonous, you pay for it, you pray to quit, but truth be told, you cant kick it. ******* these cancer sticks, that are sold through out our nation. Purposely designed for the decline of our population.  

I'm just another victim with the sickness, no stoping now addiction. This poem is called addicted, for those who smoke the death sticks, of tobacco but try to quit.

Its a habit you cant lift, and even packaged like a gift. Just try one have it, light another with matches. I started smoking to fit in, then it developed into a habit. These demons in a pack of 20, constrict my lungs and turn them black. I know the risks yet still I smoke, why must I buy this pack.

The illusion of freedom
in a democratic republic in decline

Can't* is a word I refuse to comprehend.

Can't does not exist in my vocabulary.
Not if I intend to live fearlessly.

Can't and Fear feed off each other like fire and air.
The two will dance and expand,
Spread to the last corner and inches of my land.

Can and Faith are the words I will invest into my mind, body, and soul.

Can't will not enter into my mind,
For it might sit in my mouth,
And slip off my tongue.

Can't is a poison;
The everlasting **** to my garden.

Can't will destroy every blossom created,
And seize the seeds yet to sprout.

Can't has the power to end the action of planting.
I will never again see a flower, if I let Can't grow.

Can is the remedy to imagination and ingenuity.

Whereas,
Can't impedes and blocks creativity.

Can't eliminates possibilities,
It drains and empties.

Even the most tenacious sea
Could not withstand the
Dehydration of Can’t

Can't ignites negativity, creating an immobilization and inability to try.

Can't creates an ending before there was a chance for beginning.

Can't breeds the misbelief of failure, even if there was never to be a winner.

In many ways,
Can't is the biggest lie created from out mind.

Mis-be-LIE-f



But if I were to look on the inside,

I'd rather give myself a fighting chance,
Then quit before I start
because of the word Can’t


We will be faced with new challenges each day,
New obstacles will arise and come into play

Life has an abundance of what we must overcome,
I would hate to make myself the enemy,
Be the one standing in front of a self-created machine gun.

If I were to approach the word for all that it is
It is after all,
Just a word.

I would let a word dictate and decide
The choices, risks, and chances taken in life.


Seems unbalanced
That one word can have full access
To my thoughts and actions.

There
The infinite possibilities
in the World and Me.

If the only difference between Can and Can’t
Stands an Apostrophe and T,
Then I choose to remove
The contraction entirely.

If you still don’t believe
How destructive Can’t can be
Here are a few synonyms for contraction as taken from Wiki:
“shrinkage, decline, diminution, decrease”.

None of those words seems appealing to me.
All of those words will devour my dreams.

Which is why Can’t is a word
I refuse to comprehend.

All these stanzas look alike
they talk about the same things
with the same words, the same poem

written over and over again
like voices, whispers, copying each other
unable to feel and trust experience
differently, socialized for homogeneity

unified but dull, strong but obedient
their writing seemed the narratives
of machines unable to innovate

plagiarizing voices they believed were
their own, authentic, pure
their literary journals were a politics
of masters of arts and agendas of contests

like car commercials without a proper
enjoyment of speed, or our favorite writers
whose names we only knew because

they were the ones who died at the right time
while somebody was looking, reading them
but the bookstores didn’t know their
metaphors were weak, or their life’s work

was merely symbolic, that’s the thing isn’t it
poets are only symbols, as poems are only
fluff, paper, the labor of writers-in-residence

while the rest of the world are more
interested in serial killers and which stocks
might be worth getting into, and when to sell out
investing in words seemed silly to them

and, in my selected works there was nothing
of how to be a Poet Laureate or how to win prizes
exceptional or not, publication was left to amazon

state grants, fellowships, visiting writers
academics who never felt truly how to write
poetry at its heart was a colonization of artists
few could share what that meant, we were

the first illiterate generation, spending more time
with the internet than with books.

Her mind is a thicket, never once pruned,
her heart is in turmoil, weeping blood
she puts on thick makeup, artfully smiles
her mirror image laments,"Are you relevant?"

i roamed into darkness
as the moonlight shed its light
in the dusty panes of the old
temple.

were the tombs of a thousand
pages unmoved,
of unseen things,
of obscure meanings
from his little grey cells.

and caressing the yellow plates,
fingers ran into deep vacuums to glean
the transcendent thoughts,
the laws of common sense
that he often uttered  
in this temple

a perpendicular impulse
hovering in the shadows,
laid still, holding on to his
immovable  designs,
unmoved.