I drive down the slippery road of life
Where constant sliding is my plight
As rain pours onto the road at night
Encouraging my car to take flight
To extinguish my headlights

I can’t see through the rain
Hitting my windshield pane
Becoming my banal bane
Inside my flooded lane
Causing a sedative strain
Until only the vigilant remain

Eventually the tread wears off my tires
In this slippery mire
My situation dire
I want to retire
But can’t find a buyer
Who can help me get drier

I start violently hydroplaning
Forgetting my entire training
When my tires are skating
My white knuckles aching
As every moment is taking
An eternity of shaking

I still think I’m driving
But really I’m sliding
Chaos abiding
Uncontrollably riding
Through God’s designing
While never arriving
To the place I’m pining
Before I started finding
This road to be so winding

I live in the drain
With runoff rain
That unlocked pain
Inside of my brain
That’s a dying flame
From mighty shame

This life is draining
Never obtaining
The proper training
Or someone explaining
Something worth retaining
As time continues waning

I live life in the gutter
When my relation to others
Is either finding a lover
Or running for cover
No middle ground under
My path quaking asunder

My life is leeched
And washed in bleach
As I drain what I preach
Focusing on what others teach
So I may one day reach
A tranquil beach

They drained my spirit
Because they fear it
But now can’t hear it
Or see its appearance
Since its draining clearance
After outside interference

My energy sapped
From their attack
I join the pack
Not looking back
Down the swirling drain
Used to put me in chains
Becoming my barrier bane
That carries the pain
Of having nothing to gain
For I can’t handle the strain
Of living life in the drain

I live in a berserk moor
During a nasty dirt war
Life now the worst chore
So I enter church doors
But somehow hurt more
Once I’m alone on the floor

I sit in a pew
With nothing to do
For I’m one of the few
Not up on the news
Or part of the stew
So I sit there and lose

Should I just give in
Because I don’t fit in?
Or is that I sin?
It seems I can’t win
With my glass chin
And mask of skin

The church is a microcosm of society
And my acceptance a sign of propriety
But I feel anxiety and paranoia biting me
While everyone else gets along delightfully
I sit in the corner
Like a silent mourner
Or Christopher Dorner
An unwanted reformer

I get so nervous
During the service
Did God serve this?
Do I deserve this?
Or can I swerve this
Feeling I’m worthless?

If I could just be myself
They could probably help
But remembering pain I felt
I put my personality on the shelf
Avoiding similar welts
To the ones I’ve been dealt

The concrete jungle
Isn’t what God’s Son sold
Where injustices are untold
And senseless violence unfolds
Yet the homeless are trapped
In the cynical stone maze
Which might be mapped
But they’re caught in the ways
Of the trail they’ve blazed

They wander the streets
Looking for something to eat
Or at least drugs to defeat
All the ways they’ve been beat
They adapt to their environment
Their environment adapts to them
Never finding retirement
In ****** dens
But developing zen
So their mind can defend
What they see again and again

Some start infecting the city
With a mentality gritty
And an appeal to my pity
Doing drug dealer’s bidding
Rejecting society’s fitting
For their own personal living
Yet others bless the towns
With their communal sounds
Of philosophies they’ve found
After going round and round

They can hold pearls of wisdom
Or knives that cause incisions
They can help make bad decisions
Or tell you what not to do with precision
So they probably shouldn’t be treated uniformly
But then how should they be treated normally?

I come across two vagrants
One pulls themselves up by their bootstraps
Becoming someone fragrant
After falling into doom traps
The other offers to **** my ****
And make it quick
Or bust my lip
With a brick
To get their fix
These two must not be treated the same
And neither should be treated with shame
But we must resist playing their game
Of not cleaning stains and becoming lame

So I wonder where the kind treatment
From the compassionate elite went
When the fortunate used to act decent
For their memory of poverty was recent
But children don’t inherit memories
Only money and assets
So they feel wealth is their destiny
Ignoring negative facets

Vagabonds sleep near the intersection of my mind
Where fear and compassion combine
Creating a blurred line
So I can’t decide
Considering both sides
Of the personality divide
So I lazily imply
They’re both the same guy

I write them all off as evil
Saying they’re not even people
Unworthy to be inside a steeple
With the value of a benign beetle
I view them all as losers
And ******* drug users
And insane spousal abusers
And myself as supreme chooser

Not understanding the stakes
I joke let them eat cake
Suddenly emotions awake
They eat my head off a plate
I didn’t learn from history
Now I’m doomed to repeat it
So there will be no mystery
Once I’m eventually defeated

Metallica is my friend’s favorite band
I had always dismissed them as generic and repetitive
But that arrogance and indifference eventually faded
And recently I started going through their music
Discovering there was a lot I missed out on
Adding new songs to my life’s soundtrack
While teaching me a lesson of humility and empathy
Conversations with my friend have grown deeper and more specific
Helping me relate to him
Strengthening our friendship
Through the vast and surprising benefits of consuming art

Through the trees
I hear the screams
From killing sprees
Where critters feed
And their prey bleeds
In dire need
Of a savior steed
To come running from the hills
But all I see are landfills
Made from man’s will
In this selfish standstill
Trying to band bills
For canned thrills

I hear the screams of animals
They can’t be examined though
I must deal with cannibals
That are shooting cannonballs
While the innocence of man falls
And only the vicious stand tall
In the forests and town halls
The killers control it all

I must watch my own back
For a predatory attack
So I run through the forest
Staying on my own track
Until I’ve become the sorest
Making my vision black
So I join the vicious pack
Of wolves that eviscerate
Less fortunate creatures
Accepting my vicious fate
In this dismal feature

The animals I had to defeat
Now hang from my teeth
Like a sword in its sheath
Their life I deplete
For a night’s sleep
Of the mighty elite
By joining the feet
That trample and beat

I’m an evil force
Until I see the horse
That’ll change the course
Advising us to avoid the source
Of that which causes pain
Yet that’s my vicious game
So I feel the richest shame
But I’m ignored all the same
Yearning for fields of grain
Growing outside of my lane
Nourishing the timid and tame
Who I convinced myself were lame
Who’ve now broken the chains
Of hell’s flames

I drew from the vicious well
Now I live in a parallel
Spare hell
Blocking the stairwell
To the place the mare sells
Of refreshing fair smells
Instead of the death in this abyss
I should’ve uncurled my fist
To make the steed’s list
So I might’ve found bliss
Now I must fulfill my wish
Of viciousness

While I am innocently driving
Headlights approach behind me
That are totally blinding
Here nobody will find me
So I have to keep riding

I can barely see the road
Because the scary glow
Only seems to grow
As it gets closer
To bringing me closure
In what could be a bull dozer

Sweat falls down my cheek
Because times are bleak
When I can’t see the street
The lights and my car meet
Yet I continue moving
As the lights go through me
They illuminate my cabin
Like a luminescent dragon
Disorienting my brain
With blinding pain
On this winding lane
During hazardous rain

The headlights float through my car
While shining like an exploding star
I’m having difficulty seeing very far
The headlights are my vision’s guard
Because my eyes start burning
While my wheels keep turning
I reluctantly resume learning
Shining pain on this journey

Well this isn’t good
The lights went through my hood
Violently twisting metal
But not the gas pedal
So my car won’t settle
As the blinding lights replace my own
Now blinding others feels like home
For I want the light’s pain to be known
So I won’t feel so alone
In this blinding zone