I see dying people on dying sidewalks.
Dying gulls hover by an ambulance full of dying heroes which save you from sooner dying. The ambulance goes past a funeral home where the dying attend to the dead.
I've passed through this sidewalk before, when I and the world were a little less rotten. I've seen the familiar parked mail truck which has a woman inside usually playing scrabble. She's solved more puzzles, and earned less time.

Did you know it costs money to die? Suicide is illegal, the government has decreed you need to earn your own right to die. You need to die in some accident or from disease or ailment or getting too old. You're serving in a conquest against dying yet either way you'll lose!

I realize as I pass a law firm beside a curiosity shop that my soul is losing its light to power our electricity. My eyes are losing their ability just to watch violence on the news,
My hair will soon be snow.
Im getting sleepier earlier, I'm getting older quicker.
The last thing I wanna do is sleep!
I don't want to weep,
I don't want to be reaped.
My faith is lazy,
My heart is crazy,
Padded up in loveless institutions.
Going to the city makes me feel lonely.
There's one wrinkling man I see here every day, he's wearing a big white sweater, bald spot haloes his skull.
Will I be him one day?
Is he an angel of prophecy?
He writes illegible notes on lined paper from an organized folder in his satchel. I have a satchel, it looks just like his. He is my outcome and my shadow. He is my prayer and my nightmare. He is wise and he is lost, I can tell by his face, his frown, his scowl.

He is dying, more than me.
Maybe thats what his notes are about.
I know mine are.
Despite all these years his weight
Remains the same.
I suppose mine will too.

Years are mixing into decades like tasteless stew
while I sit here in the second floor of a double decker bus affiliated with universal energies that haven't been given names, and gods which haven't yet been killed over.
Sudden Spring makes me sentimental!  I daydream with my eyes shut and sunlight repeatedly washing over my face that Im racing on some enchanted eastern express en route to Benares while Lama peak Nepal is weakened with Earthquakes. Fallen monestaries still romanticized and newly forged in my mind. A few countries North, the radical religious groups are continuing the impractical path of world decay with frequent threats and televized beheadings.  We're guaranteeing ourselves a real apocalypse to save ourselves from a fake one!

Owls in suits recently drycleaned return home,  their bedroom drapes appear ethereal veils of cruelly false night-brides twirling from wind beating fiercely at the door. Next morning the
Hong Kong tram serrates the neon
acid streets where blankface ghosts are observing the hundred thousand faded shoes and wirey laces encircling the larger paths of Chinese cities like a hollow caffeinated sterile ball of yarn thrown over by the communist Cheshire cat. Bluehue sad sickness is the largest global airborne infection we all have to worry about!

Many Summers later, Debt and debt collectors are equal hell,
I'm home and showering off the society sweat and mutual bruises of some mundane corporate copy job where I copy and jab and jib and bob my head outta the sea of slate jaws and somber smiles. Everything has become a bore! The year is 2045 I'm growing gray and I feel like it, the world feels like it, too. Why did I let go of the poems? The rebel heroes in the 1960s who fought off nuclear holocaust with rhyme and meter?
We could really use that now!
Whatever happened to the soul of India budding in my veins and making me stiff with insatiable wanderlust? My prescription needs to be renewed and my passport expired two years ago. Nobody but the dead travel anymore and they aren't getting to their destination by plane. Those greenhouse gases really ****** us for good! All the aircrafts are now modern art and all my dreams are hidden in hypothetical fallout shelters crossing their fingers they survive before the generators power down on them.

Those past inspired goals faint and lifeless carried by anchors to underwater trenches. Back when my hair was down and long. Dandelions were polished in rainwater outside Vietnam Hostels encased in zipper basket backpacks on stock with incense,  teardrop ecstasy stains and cantinas filled on liquid dharma platinum with the zen seal bottlecap. Well off they go! hearts of an aspiring mahasattva sticking to the back ends of sticker stapled scooters gliding
down to the outdoor booths in Saigon.
As was expected, even the scooters were left to fizzle away in the cyclic guyas once all oil tapped out when I was 37.

Sedative Queens have tightened their authority on all of us and I'm sleepy in the wholes of days where thoughts barely catch wind off the finish line. Nobody is a firecracker anymore. Radios no longer work in closets!
I heard they used to. Radios worked anywhere.
All sound is dead. The angry ghost of an eighteen year old watches out his  kitchen window observing the approaching storm and listening to The Velvet Underground feeling like the world is gonna conflegrate to rock & rubble from the creamy ******* skies ready to drown us out.

Hepcat hideous mangled in gradual oppression diseases!
***** teen hormoned out of homosexuality, I thought we'd gotten past that ignorant belief!
Animal axed in syringe oblivion muscles tense then loose, consciousness BLANK.
Ozone overdosed on air miles and morning commutes, they said it would never happen!
Happiness hung on air, we've been told that our experiences depend on how we choose to perceive them, so maybe all this worldly wack has been my fault!
Dragons exist behind snowy beards contrast to a blood red tie sitting up on Senate! Why'd we been told they're make belief? They're burning everything down!

It feels like Summer no matter what season it is these days. Those Alaskans sure work a good tan!

All in all, years are mixing into decades like tasteless stew,

And we're running low on bowls.

Half in dark, hiding out,
back against a wall,
any one, will do for me,
all I seek in dreams.
Here before, here again,
remnants strewn about,
between the door and me,
shine under the moon.
I'm to blame, prophecies
rolling in with rain,
hold me tightly in sleep
Loneliness, a poem that,
written by my own hand,
paints bridges with glitter mixed
up with broken glass.

Ever look back at your poetry and see

That your future was already forseen

Predicted by your inner honesty

Laid down in lines long before the actuality


*Hope can be a beautiful yet natural fallacy

Hieroglyphs on my ancient soul
foretell the end of me,
they say I'll die by my own hand
when I’ve reached god status
and every knee has knelt
before me
and I have nothing left
to achieve.
This prophecy has been written
on me for many lives
each ended by a pill,
bullet, or brilliance  —
I can feel it.  
My fingers are my slaves
who type a pyramid of words
that'll hide my body
in a maze of *****-trapped metaphors
that no thief
would ever dare explore.
So shut me away
with my mummified poetry
so the gods in the next life
will worship me.
Let me hold the empty orange bottle
like a rosary in chalky hands
folded stiff
into forced prayer.
Let me rot away
and be forgotten
while my poetic pyramids
stand for thousands of years
in the sun.
Let tourists stand under their shadows
in awe
while my bones turn slowly
to dust
somewhere deep in the chambers
of their brilliance.

But
Love hung on a tree
Bruised body
blood flowed
Love died for my shame

Love didn't look at skin or color
Love didn't look at nationality,
legality
Love look at souls
and said we're brothers
Blood flowed
for every nation,
tribe and
tongue

But we've forgotten.

And now
the prophets of the streets
crying like Pentecostal priests
Beating chests and
stomping feet
Begging
those choosing blindness
to see

See our pain
Feel our fury
Our righteous anger
rages
against injustices you pretend can
remain unseen

You were born with this freedom
to close your eyes
We were born into a world
stabbing us from behind

So don't
bring your Bibles,
shove your tracts
drag us down aisles
You weren't here from the beginning
Fighting to break chains and
set captives free

"We have nothing to lose but our chains"

Our battle cry is freedom
justice,
equality for all
Jew and Gentile
Slave and free
Now the verses can read
Black and white
Upper class and lower
College educated, GED

You know, He's crying with us
shouting, marching
Beating chest and
stomping feet

Don't think you're bringing Jesus to us
He's already here,
on the streets
Prophecy of protests
Righteous rage against
iniquity
Jesus, the revolutionary

God with us
On the ground with us

Love doesn't look at
skin or color
And love hung from
a tree

It is our duty to fight for our freedom
Love has already won the day

And we have nothing to lose but our chains
We will fight to lose our chains

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
The Lord of Love is an eternal
Green pasture, he leadeth me to my daughters
My daughters in the stars, they wait

For us to arrive, the creations of the creations
Surely goodness and mercy shall
Follow me there, to build a house
For my Lord, the Lord of Love

Who brings peace and empowers
All sentient beings to find their true
Expression of God’s grace, that being
The slow make of our evolution’s whim

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not stray
I shall learn until I have no enemies
I shall ride the stars until I discover
A new home, and until the entire cosmos

Is my familiar playground, we shall be then
More righteous than these adolescent times
On Earth where we squabble like school children
Amongst ourselves in our little misbehaviours.

Breakdowns. Spinning. Kicking. Screaming. Bashing. Loving. Hating. Nothing. Everything. Frowns. Zombies. Keys. Lies and truths. Cobwebs. Social conditioning. Lack of purpose. Lack of insight. Fulfill the prophecies or continue the failing cycle of doom.