I close my two eyes
I can’t see anything
I need a hand
from my pineal gland
to give me some vision
projections hit the back of my eyelids
showing me images conjured by myself
I am the artist and the audience
finally a filmmaker
but I have no editor
every edition is a suicide cut
the assembly footage with no assembly
different stories with the same outcome
being stuck in a homicide rut
different possibilities creating a medley
of my own creations hunting me
with the faces of others plastered on
in this world my mind is God
isolating flaws and fears
always feeling the end is near
when there was no beginning
to moving pictures with no plot
just mapping out my mind rot
showing me my insecurities and anxieties
leaving me insecure and anxious
I’m starting to hate the author of these stories
but the more I hate him the more they get gory.

I've spent the last ten years on repetitive tasks
ten years you've ****** my uncredited ***
just let me know how long the sedatives last
until your ridiculous reign is embedded in past
once I'm no longer called an iconoclast
just for avoiding your rhino blast.

Don't lecture me on my attitude
with your ******* platitudes
saying I should show gratitude
like I should be a happy dude
while you slap me blue
then call me rude.

Because I'm not trusted I'm paid by the hour
don't hand me a **** and call it a flower
don't praise my trailer from inside your tower
or scowl at my failure like Bill Cowher
let's just call all the resources ours
and watch you get devoured
by workers who've been soured
by deeds of the dour.

I don't know anyone with a nine-to-five
that doesn't cut them down to size
just don't present that as a prize
to fill the bags below my eyes
you're the lord of flies
tortuous guy
to which I applied
and you accepted
because numbers projected
I'd need to be there
in your carnivorous care.

Until the death of my soul do we depart
trying to maintain the hole in my heart
was your malevolent goal from the start
so I could be a robot part
for a machine
printing green
reasons to bleed
to get what I need.

You say you have a coalition of the willing
being obtuse about their need for shillings
and then close down their building
while your pockets are spilling
into the ocean of an offshore bank
expecting me to say "gee thanks"
while your greed breaks
the ends I make.

So even though I accepted your invitation
I'm having a tough time with assimilation
like your wages falling behind inflation
so please accept my insubordination.

There was a light I was trying to find
in the darkness to which I was consigned
when I saw your candle floating in the nether
until then I thought I might be blind
succumbing to a manic mind
once we got together
a most glorious endeavor
for a bit of time
things couldn't get better
then everything died.

I saw a soul in a machine
I saw more than you'd believe
just from your candle glow
just before the wind would blow
I'd see you twisting
in gusts blistering
before taking off like a kite
flying into the perilous night.

You left me hanging
like the voluminous
cumulus
clouds above me
looking so lovely
thunder banging
becoming a sun screen
and it won't stop raining
inching into the umpteens
with no way of draining
and me still looking for something.

I guess I shouldn't be so easily triggered
knowing the time we spent
was just for rent
my text no longer says sent but delivered
so I wonder where you went
leaving me here to wither
I thought you were a giver
but now I lie alone to shiver
in the cold draft of my bedroom
your presence in my head looms
like an undead's tomb
living without life
just dread and doom
without you
just maybe mights
through Hades nights
with heavy gloom
under a shady kite
for which I've lost the handle
I was looking for light
and you gave me just a candle.

We are surrounded by the lifeless
whether it's the corpses in red
or the horde of feeding undead
we don't see any niceness
in all the ways we have bled
so an idea pops in our head
to leech the likeness
of the zombies instead
of what's righteous.

A possum parades
around in the trash
it's called young and brash
by those it evades
through darkened paths
that harken back
to wild ways
we should've passed.

The possum pals with predators
to avoid the hunters
then those gun toting meddlers
have the gall to wonder
why they got themselves a runner
when everything is a red alert
then The Battle of Fort Sumter.

We track the terrified critter and stone it
a warning from a Kentucky poet:
when society is at its lowest
we'll pray for atonement
not for original sin
but being given a life to give
instead we fight with shivs
this how the lifeless live.

When I was younger
drugs were something I wanted to do
and as I grew older
drugs became something to do
and as I grew even older
drugs became something I had to do
and now
drugs are something I used to do.

Some things are just meant to be
but they’re also meant to have been.

Russian oligarchs
are the mark
targeted to defend Ukraine
through economic pain.

We seize their yachts
that are ill got
a capitalist plot
to lower the tides of war
through boats on the shore.

When I’m feeling my highest
I want to take all your pain away
and when I’m at my lowest
I want you to take all my pain away.

All that pain we take from each other
is worth the time we spend in the middle.