Our humanity has nothing
To do with your ego...*


@pax

Weather your gold crown
Rotten down to copper, your
Hail of sustenance.

Despite your new crown
You’re light as a feather, you
Try to get better.

Halo represents
A mirage of purity,
Hemorrhage of love.

Bitter and toxic,
Alchemy of illusions.
You don’t try so hard.

****** Bag in sunglasses
donned indoors where
fluorescent sunlight cannot justify
the obfuscation of haughty eyes
so the visage is one
of pure pretension
and cockiness,
dichotomized
as self-assuredness
and the colloquial term for the phallus,
a literal ****.

(I see him strongly in the memory of a high school field trip returning home school bus late night he sits sideways back to the window head leaning back sunglasses donned smug grin I rendered him the vessel and the scape goat bearing my burning hatred for the inflated ego wrapped in an undesirable chic I deem deplorable, hate hate hate)

Smug grin,
I wrote this poem from a bean bag
in the corner of the library third floor
whilst wearing sunglasses and
a taste of irony
on callous lips
twisted in an invisible sneer.

We live in a world of egocentric maniacs
Whose only desire is to shout the loudest
Point the large foam finger at themselves
LOOK AT ME, LOOK WHAT I HAVE

I see it between friends, sharing exploits
How ***** their girlfriends are...
How much money they have...
What car they drive...

*I wonder what it's like having those things

I’m in a sleeping dream again:
Some bloke takes me into a nearby empty room
And asks me why I’ve done what I’ve done.
I’m so surprised.
A colleague says she had to tell him
What I’d done.
Another shock
Before I awake.

Now I see this dream is rooted in memory, real.
Yet how could my Id surprise me yet again?
Did I tap into a source
External?
Was it God
Or Aliens
Or someone or something
Else
Who sprang these shocks on me?

Am I two people
Rolled into one?
Or but a radio receiver
Picking up some telepathic waves?

I cannot help but ask these things.
For, when I die, will I
Fall
To
Deeper
Sleep
And Dream.

Paul Butters

I am as delicate as a flower
made of ice
fine petals
gleaming in the sun
face turned
not knowing the fate ahead
I smile and shine and reflect
and just as the sun illuminates my face
I disappear without a trace