Rule #1 of life:

No one cares.

Rule #2 of life:

There’s nothing you can do to make anyone care.

There is no mercy for the broken hearted

Only darts aimed at your shards

You’re a moving target

The loneliest are the most disregarded.

Don’t look for comfort,

Don’t even fathom a bond.

And don’t bother wonder

What you ever did so wrong.

This is the life you must accept.

This is the lot you must respect.

Your heart could break a million times,

The world will go on, filled with smiles.

Choose if you will, this truth to neglect

But you will still be the one they all reject.

You are the one they will reject.

This is the life you must accept.

For you are the loneliest of them all.


...The words spoken by the mirror on the wall.

Have you ever realized ... that there are people who die alone?
Precious humans who pass just as they lived: mere decaying flesh and bone.
While we hope to die with things we own
A precious human dies unknown.

Unknown.
Unknown.

We study to create clones,
Then eliminate the original with drones.
We never find those who roam;
Our searching’s only done on phones.

Today they die alone.
Today they die unknown.

A girl, downtrodden and somber,
War-torn, no mother or father,
Tread the desert to wander
And find a drop of water...

Collapsed along the way,
Abject misery on display.
Such pain her soul fled away.
A vulture’s meal her life served to lay.

Today she dies alone.
Today she dies unknown.

With trembling hand and speech that’s terse,
I’m sorry that I could not reverse
Your horrid plight—or perhaps a curse—
With a pen or pathetic verse.

Today they die alone.

I trekked a trail in a grimy wood,
Pursuing destiny, fate behind me stood

I hummed a tune of great remorse
And ruminated a late divorce

Then

I found a man in a half-burned astronaut suit
The lining was charred, he only had one boot

No ship near, no crew—a sole soul
Lying in the middle of a crater; a grain of rice in a salad bowl

He spoke to me through strained speech,
Telling secrets geniuses wish to teach
He said the stars of dreams were within his reach
But the bounds of worlds are ones men cannot breach

This astronaut
Had his suit tied with barely an Ashley knot
I’d just shipwrecked, floated ashore at half a knot
I asked him to tell of his ship, he said “I’d rather not”

But his tongue had no fetter
To quell his grand eloquence, for worse or for better

Nebulas in the wind,
Spires on the moon,
Galaxies in the horizon...

He muttered of such as though humming a tune

As I sighed a breath of great remorse
And contemplated the great divorce

He pulled a smile then grabbed my hand
And said, “The future is the greatest land.”

I tried,
I tried to stay by his side,
But my every insistence was denied

He commanded to be left to roam
The lands and worlds that he called “home”

But never has it left my mind;
My only encounter of this kind

To this day I don’t know if they were things he’d seen
Or fancy thrills he had dreamed
But I’ve never known a mind so keen
To make fables real as his words seemed

And since that day I’ve sought to find
The experiential treasures he had mined

See, never has it left my mind,
That day my near-death was left behind

Yes, never has it left my mind
Because he illumined the darkened eyes of mine

Or perhaps it has never left my mind
Because when I found him


He was blind.

I’ll never forget that day

When she lifted her head from the bed in which it was buried

And with bloodshot eyes reaching through 2 black holes

She asked, “Why’d they have to **** my brother?”

That exact question was already in my mind.

Happy Easter

It is the 23rd century,
The other rebels are showcased in the penitentiary
In the city’s center street
To gratify the remnants of the sensory.

They’re beheld through double-paned hybrid walls of palladium, aluminum oxide and diamond;
In each cell their own reflection’s seen

Endlessly.

There is no blue sky, no scent of trees;
The cells’ sounds rebound and resound

To promote censoring.

It all began in the 21st century;
Now, ancient relics are kept in a technological cemetery,
Guarded by a sophisticated sentry.

Unbound knowledge damaged our brains,
Progress became our shackle and chains.
We—humanity—became dependent like a candle and flame
And gradually, drastically, society managed to change.
All who resisted were banished in shame,
Then our history was lost; I’m lucky to even know my family name.

I am the last rebel.
I know of tambourines, timbre and treble.
I know of beauty that once made men tremble.
I know of the past gods;

Before we made the last devil.

Now we are the drones.
We mass-produced their bodies, now we are the clones.
Now they think, speak and feel for us—we are just bones.
We built our father’s house upon these rocks:

We are the stones.

If any should read this before the ripples of time dwindle,
I’ll be plain: we surrendered human expression to digital signals and symbols.
We once made music from thimbles and cymbals,
Praised the Lord on the timbrels,
Shouted aloud atop the shingles.
It was all so profound, because it was so simple.
Eventually what the experts, geniuses and pros found
Was a way to hose down

A waterfall.

Now, propriety is: No psaltry, poetry or piety.
The cemetery holds the devices which ushered the end of society.
But I have seen them;
I devised a scheme to sneak in silently
And study the history privately.

I was stunned. Stricken, as with fear,
And for the first time in years
My eyes leaked with tears.

If I could talk to them,
If I could ask a question,
If I could somehow call,
I’d ask why—just why did you allow it all?!
How could you not foresee the downfall?!
Why did not some societal siren sound off?

Speaking of sirens...
Oh, no...
They’ve found my lair...
See, this is why I’ve found fault!

Now I am a rebel—a renegade—forced to live like a groundhog

Simply because I seek to enlighten and warn all,
Like one who foresaw
The siege of Warsaw.

If this is ever found, preserve my last words:
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION

Signed,

The Last Outlaw

Reed Jobs X

There is a phantom man
With a crimson hand,
Breathes the chill of doom,
And carries a bag
Shaped like the crescent moon.

The living never feel the bite of his breaths
Their own breaths continue when he causes their deaths
His maneuver goes unseen, as it affects
Us who frown often,
But we feel the effects.

I noticed as a child
How he snatched the verve of adults who'd smiled.
They betrayed in their knitted brows
The years of attrition
From being smitten down.

With these tasks to accomplish,
He employs an accomplice
Or several he'll send
—Whether friend or stranger—
Till the task meets its end.

One once came then flew on the run,
Just went I thought her job was done,
He went and sent another to claim,
The remnants and dregs
Of what might remain.

This world keeps beating and pounding my soul,
Seems I alone know this phantom man's goal,
But why others support his cause I don't know;
Now his bag drips with blood,

Because I lost my smile many years ago.