If I ever make it
these books will burn
I don’t want anyone to know
how I suffered to make
the good stuff glow
like a photographer
shooting a thousand frames
for a keeper
I want people to think
it flowed
here to entertain
not the sympathy vote

Alone. Between lonely hearts
understanding misunderstood others
with attention, my password
the master key in my genes

Kicking I already did it
not yet capable of anything else
as a baby, as a grownup
no one should unlearn it

no one should claim it
when he feels hurt
by hurt people, wronged
by the world

of sham adults
Come, I'm coming, just swallow
your reproaches
for a kiss

Without any tears,

her eyes are crying sorrow --


and love into me.

It's the old story:
Everything Becomes New
Everything Becomes Young, so cruel
is the beauty of life

which sacrifices adults
to their fault
their most grievous fault
of ageing

They still can stay, wise
and competent or not
if they give up their place
earlier than they are ready

Maybe they will then understand
that they also have jockeyed for
position in the past, and even worse
that nobody has benefited from it

so that sacrifices to youth do not exist
There are only real needs to sacrifice
the wasting ego to, and let's hope
there will be hospitable compassion

Agitation, despair and its winged variations, you name it
all repressed but still rise to test me

What is my recourse?
I tread lightly on this Escheresque concourse
It’s repeated often, I know
but the pen and keys are my most cathartic release
they’re magma to emerging flames
they’re sedatives for demons and angels alike
that reside on corners of this clavicle

How many steps could you take through my lens, my concave mirror?
Have you felt what I felt?
The brimming, cerebral cauldron bursting, putting volcanic geysers to shame
the questions outnumbering seconds spent since Earth’s nativity
the emotions ripping a rift through which rationality deep dives
it becomes Phelps in unknown depths
your body becomes both a Vatican and a Colosseum,
place of worship and place of war
and you walk the tightropes your vocal chords have morphed into
careful to seem like another replica, don’t wanna upset the blades they all balance on
don’t wanna scare the rest hollow, no,
best to follow and best to follow the regimen:

coffee beans and spice of delusion in the hazelnut syrup,
sip slow
follow the same cycle because change is a cocoon and cocoons ache like the past
keep on pretending to love the workplace
love the norms held over you
puppet strings bring warmth after all
in this solitary world cold as winter missile silos
and just as destructive

So I ask again, have you felt what I felt?

Do the few days in utopia offset the majority on rodent wheels?
Have you risen so high, to satellite peaks, to the best you’ve ever been
only to have the worst waiting on the coin’s parallel?

We flip like saltwater fins and backstroke till a back is left broke
I’m learning to discard hope but breathe in the alternative
I believe in better days, I will carve them from local stone
and build a home upon their surfaces
I now know paradise is a set of blueprints
happiness is no state of mind, it’s a direction to me
you may not notice when you arrive
but you keep going

and that’s the beauty of it
you let it be the wind
It’ll find you on your journey

Tell me again,
have you felt what I felt?

So many lives I've lived
intertwined with what I did
and said to the people
I could touch

I kissed men
without kissing them
I've been abandoned
betrayed and beaten

as if it were real
and in my fantasy I slept
with friends I hugged
every now and then

My life is more
I am more
sympathy than blood and sweat
but all tears are real

Though powerlessly, I love
the people I look in the eye
through glasses of chance
glasses of words

or a camera, and
I love my neighbours
though it is routine
and falling short

You should find you and nobody else but you.
Nobody can understand what you've been through and why you did what you did.
Because at the end of the day, you only have yourself.
You can only understand, you.