There's a contentious subsection
Of the homosexual community
That go in a different direction
Hoping to find social immunity
The word masculine
Is the mask they're in
To live life saccharine
Wearing a plastic grin
From the sensation
Of over-compensation
Actuating placation
To differentiate
From the effeminate
They say they're separate
But really they're just desperate
To be accepted
By their own dejectors
To not be rejected
They become defectors

To avoid ridicule
They stack their deck with nothing but physicality
Their mind minuscule
The albatross on their neck is a lack of personality
To please those that compare them to *******
Internalizing their homophobia
An infernal mighty cornucopia
Creating an over abundance of rules
One must follow to be a proper male
But we should jump out of the pool
If being miserable is what that entails

The more genuine version we see
The happier we all should be
Then we might all be free
But if I were to show glee
Someone might call me a ******
And I don't think I could hack it
When the rest of society backs it
With an approval that is tacit
So I convince myself I'm avoiding identity politics
Using total discretion
To make no impression
But my friends and family would know that's not what I'm doing
So why not tell them?
I haw and I hem
Because the underlying ghostly shame
Is the true nature of this social game
When you have the fame of the flame
You're told to get in a lane of the same

Erase my ******* sin
With the title masculine
There are practical reasons to hide it
But how much time will be bided?
Will my life be derided
Until the evil are delighted?

You're an inspirational exciting jolt
Like an invitational lightning bolt
I'm suddenly shocked by the results
When I am blocked by your revolt

You have my beating heart in your hand
Holding me hostage where I silently stand
Staring at your ****** butcher's cleaver
That morphs me into a landlocked ******

You're a two-hander
Like a sledgehammer
Or a radar jammer
I start to stutter and stammer
When I see your weekly planner
And the lack of my presence
Because I'm incessant
You hold a pencil and an eraser
You delete when I become a tracer
And start to draw a better replacer

You hold the scales of justice
Though I claim you're unfit
You say add that to the list
From the throne where you sit
And there's no avenue for any recourse
When your other hand holds so much force
I must deal with your actions
So I can stay in your faction
For my heart's attraction

I am never right
So we never fight
And we never might
Understand each other
When we're taking cover
From exposing vulnerability
An exploding soul is filling me
Because the cold mist killing steam
Between us until you are only a dream
And my mind starts bursting at the seams
Until there's a monster barely mentally caged
But the bars shake when it is constantly enraged
When your saccharine emotions are cynically staged
My bustling brain will unfortunately always be plagued
By your neutral reactions which I'll never be able to gauge

You hold two hands behind your back
Will it be an attack?
Our two hands should meet
Instead I'm trampled by feet

Society moves like a bullet
And there's no way to cool it
We're not big fans of reflection
So we become slaves to deflection
Bouncing off of hard surfaces
Like limiting gun purchases
Constriction isn't part of or vocabulary
Proliferation is all we know
Watching weapon supplies grow

I live in a country
Riddled by bullets
Bullets that blast through our ****** body
Though the holes in our mind are bigger
When we can **** those we think are naughty
We become judges when we pull the trigger
But the media makes mountains out of molehills
And it is for those exaggerated reasons we ****

We are stuck in a bullet storm
When TV advertises bullet ****
This helps make bullets the norm
So we treat mass shootings with a familiarity
Because we can't acknowledge the only similarity
Is obviously the gun
We're blinded by the sun
Of defense contractors
They're negative reactors
When we purpose a change
The conversation they rearrange
By firing in every possible direction
This is the aforementioned deflection
And it works
You can tell because people are dying
Or standing in the street crying
Or watching the news sighing

Bullet time has wooed us
Bullet crimes have moved us
There are people who gain wealth
From our diminishing health
They hold society on their rope
And the only way we can cope
Is to ****** that rope from their greedy grasp and pull it
But that's hard to do while being punctured by bullets

I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of
but I can't be tied to those forever
so people forgive and forget
I try to forget but still feel bad
and I know there are still sore subjects
that I should be sensitive about.

Scrolling through Reddit I see a post
of Māori students at an airport
greeting their returning teacher
with a traditional Māori war dance
which was an admittedly sweet gesture
but something didn't sit right with me.

I wondered why the students greeting their teacher
had to do so through a display of militaristic nationalism
I wondered if that was the last dance the Moriori people saw
before the Māori genocided them for their resources
I wondered if the Māori danced like that
as they *****, murdered, and cannibalized the Moriori.

Wondering all of this made me ask myself:
Why did they have to greet their teacher like that?
The students wanted to make a big gesture
which dancing is perfect for
but dancing can also be vulnerable and embarrassing
because people may mock how you express yourself

but strangers at the airport are less likely to laugh at you
if you're doing a synchronized dance with a group of people
and the dancing is recognizably tied to national identity
because then it's a culturally rich dance
you're a xenophobe for laughing at
and that's what nationalism is:
strength in numbers and a readymade identity
in lieu of an individual personality
oftentimes for the sake of pistanthrophobia.

So as I read the circlejerking comments on the post
I wondered what the difference is between
a Māori war dance and a **** salute
I guess the Māori people have experienced
more oppression than Nazis
but nationalism is nationalism
and those who have oppressed are oppressors
and many who are oppressed would gladly
be oppressors given the chance.

Nationalism isn't healthy for culture
and often isolates people from other cultures
that are all combining due to globalization
which people fight to preserve their little dances and costumes
so we can stay in eternal conflict over delusions of supremacy
when the only nationality should be a global one.

Pizza is my life
I started out as dough with doughy eyes
Mother picks me up
Mother molds me
After no time at all I'm sent down the line
Toppings...
Things other people want but I get
By the end the toppings are as important as the dough
Sometimes I wonder if there was any dough to begin with
Because the foundation is changed so much by the fires of the oven
The chaos makes me steam, bubble, and boil
Once I simmer down I'm recognizable as what I should be but not what I once was
Now that I'm developed it's time to be delivered into the world
And find my own home
But what will I find when I get there?
Will it be love?
Or will I be ate up and shat out?
Or is there a difference?

I see the rabbits feeding on the grass
My heart is filled with joy
Their life is precious
I see the vultures feeding on the rabbits
My heart is filled with joy
Their life is precious

That's what I never understood about coffins
Life is about expanding your prison cell as much as you can
There's no requirement to be contained once it's over
Our nutriance to the Earth
Is our nutrients into Earth
All creatures that die on this planet
Become a part of it
The Debt they paid to the future
The Debt that is always collected on
We travel nonchalantly on their corpses
Wishing they could appreciate
That each and every one of them
Was one step closer to sentience
This planet's passion project

Could the first single-celled organism
Comprehend my humiliation?
When the first creature walked on land
Was it anticipating my shame?
Did it sprout wings
To give me nightmares of dying in an airplane?
Did ancient Neanderthals dance around a fire
To reenact my adolescence?
Could mystic voodoo shaman
Cure my lack of agency?
Or did lost American tribesmen
Prophesize the complexities of my love?
I can feel all these ******* looking up at me from the ground
And it's just me
As I accidentally burn my notebook with a cigarette

Oh, what a horrible night
Definitely not late December back in '63
These are the Frankie valleys of my days

Night is always black
Night always comes back
Night envelopes us in the abyss
And makes us cherish light
Heightening our senses
To help us handle the unknown

When my days are filled with stimulation
The stillness of night sinks me
Into quicksand mixed by
The current of my mind
Overflowing into the sands of time
And reminds me
Of the stillness of my eyes locked on you
Or the stillness of my actions as you walk by
Or the stillness of my heart when you call me a ******

My frustration boiled
Night's black tar
So I bottled it up
Placed it in a syringe
And medicated my love with darkness

I worked my first job at the local Kroger's
People would leave with everything they wanted
And I'd push their empty carts back into the store
The artificial lights of the street lamps
Lacked warmth
Their hypnotic buzz highlighted
The stillness of night
Making me wonder if there was any way I could be happy
Similar to when activity would die down in rehab
A pitiful wretch left to his faculties
I'd stare out the window
Into the concrete chasm
And wonder if happiness could be found by someone like me

Night continues
Night confines
Day comes
And goes
Night returns
Night reburns
Night relearned
I really hate to see the day come to an end
It'd be alright if I was on the bay with a pen
But I live near sulfur vents
Inside a searing tent
Where the hellacious temperature rises rapidly
Despite the absence of the sun's warmth

The hellfire of night
Reminisces of those
I have thoroughly failed
And my overwhelming remorse
As I stare out my window
Into the bramble ravine
I wonder about the possibility of contentment
The stillness of night answers me
But at least now I can open the door
And charge into the night headstrong
To search frantically
For someone who
Erases my history
And writes my future
And makes me wonder if I could ever be happier

I quivered in the arena
As thousands of people screamed at me
All because I wanted to touch the *****
I guess I play a different football

Those Hartford wailers weren't there
When I was on the ice
Trying to play goalie to the problematic pucks
All I had was my blocker
And all I could do was deflect

Yet those same people
Try to convict me in the tennis court of public opinion
Just because I wanted to make my own racket for a change
Is that really my fault?
Why should I listen to these people
When zero and love have the same meaning?

Am I beholden to those
That wanted me to kneel in the endzone?
They're the people who separated me from myself
Now that I'm running back
They're claiming they were my safety
But there was never a decent referee
Only people that wanted to see me in stripes
But here's the kicker
I'd forgive them all their past interference
If they'd just stop challenging my plays now

Donald Trump's presidency
Is one of the greatest achievements in art I have ever experienced
And Trump is a true artist
He takes words from the page
Like corruption, disenfranchisement, xenophobia
And brings them to life
Highlighting fear and paranoia so clearly
Contrasting the blacks and whites
Emphasizing anger
While reminding us we're mere infants
In the digital age
And warning us of our seniority
And capitalism's

We all like to think life has meaning
Until we hit an animal with our car
Then that's just the way things are
And I'm staring at an absurdist painting
Of a child driving a car
Through a herd of sheep
As I watch a heist film
Where the robbers turn their guns over
To the mentally unstable guy in the group

Trump is a national artist
Placing riots on the map
And drawing infernos on the Internet
His art forces an opinion
Everybody has something to say about him
And it's all true
Even the pages he ripped from his own cabinet
Tried to villainize him in their script
But he was already an anti-hero
The humor is that the mud slung onto him
Is dirt kicked up from his own tires
I guess if you surround yourself with hateful people
You're surrounding yourself with people who probably hate you

Trump's art is deeply conflicting
He reminds me of the people who want me to live in shame
Yet he embodies the individuality that separates me from that shame
His insecurities remind me of myself
High school is the White House in the eyes of a kid
And I had secrets I wanted to share
But felt I couldn't
I learned things
That changed my entire perspective
And didn't think people would understand
Afraid of being assaulted for my indiscretions
I hid behind a boisterous personality
And a nonchalant attitude
Trump's art evokes sympathy and hatred that feels so strong
When he holds a mirror defining our worst qualities
To a man viscerally opposed to his own reflection
The confliction of emotions
Is the hallmark of great art

We are all artists
The lines we write or the strokes we brush
Are in our actions
And Trump's canvas displays
A life filled with accomplishment
Inspiring me to live my own life
But I still wake up in cold sweats
From the American dream
That anybody can be president

You make me feel so stupid
When we play chess
The way you en passant all nonchalant
You chase me into castle
From there I watch you intently
The way the Russians watched Bobby Fischer
In his hotel room
But while I wait for a move to develop
I become the Boredest Spazsky
My mind in a stalemate
As I try to crush your Sicilian defenses
As much as I harangue
You leave me in zugzwang
Which confuses my feeble mind
For I may be a pawn
But I'm the king pawn
Which means the board usually revolves around me
But your queen takes that instantly
And I'm left in a fool's checkmate

I wish you could see things from my side of the board
You'd see how desperately I wanted the king
All the complex and unique obstacles in the way
But instead you just sit there
And laugh at me losing all my pieces trying to reach you

A child wanders the hall before school starts
The emptiness and loneliness are his education
New children enter the school
As they exit the bus
Light shines on the school
As it exits the Sun
Yet the wandering child's eyes must adjust
To colors he's starting to see
Colors like jealousy and frustration
The wandering child is powerless to the explosive light
And searches for ways to extinguish it
He finds his solution in the room where we keep our guns
The room sits in the dark center of the building
Across the hall from where we keep our children

Kids have been playing with guns for a while now
Everyone my age that I know
Imagined shooting up their school
These are well adjusted people
It's just the times we live in
And what it takes to adjust

There are some things that will remain true
Killing is wrong
And murdering a murderer is ******
The executioner hides his face in shame
He's ashamed of the enjoyment he feels
From the power he holds over other people's lives
Unaware the power he holds
Is meant to come from love
Love that has been buried
For the temporary thrill of death

It seems like a dark joke
Giving a child a gun
And then asking them to go through high school
Because kids are ******* stupid
And some people never grow up
And high school never ends

The wandering child takes his newly found arsenal
To the densely populated cafeteria
Only to realize the other children are just as well armed
They drown in tension
When their actions have megaton weight
Before anyone can say anything
Everyone starts shooting
They grade each other in their minds
And their test comes at the end of the barrel
They find validation
In blood splattered on the wall
And bodies that once stood now lying
The gunshots deafened the wandering child
And the smoke blinded him
Reminiscent of the emptiness and loneliness before school started
This was his education

Today I watched a bunch of ants eating one another
Their ant hill collapsed as rain started pouring
Yet they continued killing each other as they drowned
They all seemed to be the same size
But their problems seemed so much bigger
So they found comfort in killing one another instead

Surveillance is the cornerstone to my dictatorship
Over your life
I hold you firmly with my invader's grip
To create strife
To spread fear among the vigilant citizens
And make you feel like you're not fitting in
It's all part of my devious plan
To trap you in my surveillance van

I've got owls perched in trees
And satellites floating in space
Pictures make the world freeze
So I can see your pretty face
I start to drone on and on
Your indifferent mouth yawns
You spy on the clock
Waiting for me to stop

You stare through me
The way I stare into your house
Hell is 200 degrees
When you find your lovely spouse
She doesn't have my pictures
She hasn't read your scripture
I must've gotten my information wrong
I thought my surveillance was strong

My mistakes rule me with an iron fist
And they throw me in prison
I thought I could live in surveillance bliss
But this isn't the life I envisioned

For forty days and forty nights
We had no reasons to fight
So the planet was flooded
By the warm blooded

******* soaked
Visible ******
No more cloaks
No more loners
For everyone there was a match
But here's the insidious catch
It didn't take long for people to get bored
And start cutting and crossing cords
Until we resembled a chaotic horde

For forty days and forty nights
The Earth was flooding
Until things got muddy
And clouded transcendence
In the form of independence

Our lives keep knotting together
Our lives are rotting endeavors
We were completely happy
But felt that was too sappy
We sought edgy darkness
In a world that was shark-less
We made the world we live in
By putting on shark fins
And eating those that fall overboard
Out of their relationship
We try to be their overlord
Or add them to our list
Love grants a clenched fist
When there is value to a kiss

For forty days and forty nights
We turned on Earth's floodlights
And the world was flooded by love
Until we decided to try to look above
To see nothing there
Just the empty air

There was a time when there was love
Now there is none
Only a gun
And the number one

Every night I die in an airplane
Beads of sweat fall like rain
Every night I die in a plane crash
I wake up feeling like plain trash
Because every night my plane dives into the ocean
I can't believe the virtual reality of the motion
All my friends and family are there
I watch them drown
Leaving me marooned at sea
The river Styx of my dreams
I wake up marooned at bed
Swimming in a sea of sweat
None of my friends and family are there
And my adrenaline nightmares keep me scared
Because if I fall asleep
It's a nosedive I reap

Every night I die in an airplane
Why is this image so ingrained?
Every night I die in a plane crash
Pressure crushes me to plain ash
Because every night my plane flies into a mountain
The passenger's blood fills my eyes like fountains
All my friends and family are there
I watch them burn
Leaving me stranded in the hills of hell
Until I understand the pills too well
I wake up stranded in bed
Buried in an avalanche of sweat
None of my friends and family are there
And my reality has begun to tear
When I keep dying in my dreams
My mentality rips at the seams

Every night I die in an airplane
Why must my mind be so untame?
Every night I die in a plane crash
And my life becomes a plain flash
Because every night my plane flips upside down
As my useless body is tossed round and round
All my friends and family are there
I watch them get mangled
Leaving me to die at high speeds
With corpses that profusely bleed
I wake up dying in bed
Flipped face down in a pool of sweat
None of my friends and family are there
I begin to wonder if they even care
Because I watch them die every night
It makes me love them more
Because I watch them die every night
My life becomes a chore
But there's nothing for death to reclaim
When I'd just cross over to another plane

I have secret skeletons
That haven't seen the Sun
From things supposedly fun
Now all they do is make me run

Skeletons exit my closet
And enter my jury box
All of whom I've met
Then put behind locks
Now they throw rocks
Or find ways to mock
They are ruthless
Until I'm toothless

I face a skeleton jury
I face the skeletons' fury
They seek vengeance
Or perhaps repentance
I play lawyer in my mind
This job has become full time
And I must laboriously linger
Through skeleton stingers
Until my mind is rattled
By skeleton saddles

They come from my past
To shatter my glass
The skeletons are attacking
My bones are cracking
Under their weight
They are my freight
They judge me
And begrudge me

I made many moronic mistakes
I left laying at the bottom of lakes
Now they are at the surface
Of my fruitless furnace
Skeletons remain
Like a stain
I look across the plain
To see skeletal rain
Precipitated by my dumb decisions
Droplets make numerous incisions
Each one callously cutting me to the bone
Until the skeleton jury is my humble home

You float through air that doesn't care
The air you share that isn't fair
The air that makes me think we're a pair
I wound up in your wind tunnel
Not understanding it's singular funnel
When you were there
I glided through air
But then you had to fly
As I fell from the sky
Cursing your absent kind

You swept me off my feet
With your tornado broom
Until you were complete
In sealing my doom

Your wind carries loneliness
With a scent of love
I recognized the phoniness
In the flight of doves

Your hypnotic breeze
Put my mind at ease
Until you began to tease
Whispering wild winds into my ears
My hurricane head hammered with fears
Of the intensity of the high velocity
Of your elemental wind monstrosity
For it brings powerful gusts of sorrow
When it's your oxygen I must borrow
If I hope to see tomorrow

Your air is cold
My heart's not bold
And begins to fold
Under the weight of your wind
My mind is giving in
And my eyes start to make clouds form
When your absence creates a lonely storm

Just me
No entertainment
No stimulation
Just me
Then you came by
And installed a cable
Sports, politics, comedy, education
You had a very decent package
500 channels to show me the world
I figured I'd stay home for the rest of my life
And enjoy the romComcast upon me
By the advent of your cables

But there was a destructive storm
Power lines were snapped
And our cable went out
As I stood in the ruins
Of a house that once stood majestic
All I worried about was getting our cable re-installed
So I waited
On your ****** service
My age
Became a Time Warner
And severed strings
Were strewn on the steel scattered around me

Now that I've become a satellite in your life
I could provide you with all the same channels
If you'd just look up
But the cumulus clouds you conjure
Block our reception

As I drift out here in space
I can see everybody on Earth
Except for one man
Who's surrounded by a sea of swirling tsunamis
And a crowd of cut cords
And as I approach the chaos for a better view
I'm incinerated entering his atmosphere

I'm not special
I'm just one out of seven billion
And we're all interconnected
So why am I the only one driving down this road?
You don't have my address
Or my wifi password
Have you found the bat in your gazebo?
I found mine
And named him Bruce

The leaves that fall on my vehicle
Touch no other's
And the rain that pours onto me
Soaks into my skin
It becomes a part of me
That sets me apart
Subjectivity solidifies separation

Like Saturn's rings
A planetary population of particles
That create something beautiful together
Our species is special

The Sun shines on my computer
Creating a protective glare
But night comes like an intruder
At pictures I begin to stare

After I view their portrait online
I want to see their body on mine
We talk all night
Until I see the light
That they're not that bright
Or that they like to fight

Desperation swirls
I enter a world
Where the randomness of human interaction
Meets the randomness of my attraction
And the low visibility
Endears no civility
Will I spend infinity
In this digital city?

The creatures try to hide
They scatter in the distance
They're not hard to find
When their profiles leave imprints
But the parasites are quick
And the scavengers stick
Vultures fly from iPad to iPhone
Leeches try to make my pad their home
Devouring me until I'm bad to the bone
Like the solicitous predators
Who act like creditors
And the sly foxes
Who claim they're locksmiths
They all have claws and fangs
They're all just jaws with brains
I play possum
Until I've lost them

When monsters are made from loneliness
They try to trick me with phoniness
They feel I wouldn't want us to be together
And they're probably right
Because all I want is to spend forever
In love's divine light
Nocturnal animals just want the meal
Of my motion
They don't want to honestly feel
My devotion

In the wild
I am a child
The creatures cut deep
They make me weep
Until I choose to sleep
But when I avoid their glance
I avoid love's chance

I scoffed at my minor cough
Until I was immobile as a sloth
I had to press pause on my life's tale
After I became a beached whale
And my body turned frail
In my illness jail

My stoic resolve tested
My pain threshold crested
The way I act is antisocial
The way I feel is anti-hopeful
For I treat others poorly
When I'm hurting sorely

In sickness for health
I give away my wealth
To feel one hundred percent
That's the physician's intent
To make me experience drainage
But I need the healing medicine
So I can practice the discipline
Of removing my diseased shark's fin

Ramses II, known as Ramesses the Great
Had a permanently fractured finger
And his teeth were significantly rotten
The pharaoh's excruciating pain
Must have effected his reign
A massive amount of men slain
Is discomfort what's to blame?

When there's no pain relief
We give each other grief
And there's a lion with a thorn stuck in its paw
Eventually that simple thorn becomes a claw

I hear a calling
But I prefer falling
So I practice avoidance
It's a void dance
To an annoyed trance
To avoid a glance
Or taking a chance

People take pieces they don't plan on returning
The only replacement is the sensation of burning
In this hell
With no one to tell
Because I locked my heart
Which felt like a good start
Until loneliness pervaded my soul
And I can't climb out of this hole

I create isolation
When there's no inspiration
I discontinue integration
And go on permanent vacation
I watch movies
To feel groovy
I write
Out of sight
I play video games
To avoid shame
I decide to act lame
So no one asks my name

I begin to feel sour
In my lonely tower
I used to think independence was power
Until I found myself in my darkest hour
With only friends to help
The same friends I put on a shelf
That are now mythical like an elf

Is life just giving all my pieces away?
Disconnection leaves my life grey
But if I decide to stay
My love they will slay
They will toy with my emotions
Until I feel their encroachment
But I'd rather have a toy's chance
Than live my life in a void dance

There's a line drawn in the sand
It's a line drawn by the man
It's a line drawn by the hand
That feeds
Our breed
Misery

There are lines drawn on our faces
As sand hits the ground
These fault lines are from the races
Our lives have found
The lines get deeper
Like cuts on our skin
The lines get steeper
Like our chance to win

We're thrown into a landslide
We see the ground collapsing
For all the silly things we lie
And the things we say in passing
The momentum of this earthquake
Will never cease, only take
And these tectonic plates shift
When we live a hectic hate rift

I need safety
To embrace me
And save me from my world imploding
Before anyone can say they know me
But the planet is shaking
My mangled mind aching
I trap myself inside a steel vault
Never forgetting this is my fault

These optical illusions
Create an optimal confusion
When eyes are a welcome intrusion
To the brain's inevitable conclusion

We stared into the mystic mirror
I witnessed everything I ever wanted in life
All you witnessed was just two people standing there
The transparency you cast upon me
Reminded me of how the plumes of **** smoke
Were never as thick as my problems
And as those clouds left my mouth and dispersed into the air
I saw your image
Preserved in briefness

It's a shame how my magician's mind
Summons smoke and mirrors
Nobody else believes me
But magic is the only way to explain you
The way you turned me invisible
Was spectacular
Your methods of sawing me in half
Certainly weren't natural
And your teleportation demonstration
Left me suspended in ice
So I guess I'm to Blaine
For the mirrors I erected
And the truth they reflected
Because now I'm lost
In what I refuse to call a funhouse
As I search frantically for some ancient tomb
That might reveal your brilliant incantations
Attempting to ignore the horrid revelation
That every spell I learned
Had been based in your arcane aura
And all the power I had gained
Had been based in your enchantment

I want a magician
Not an illusionist
So what does it mean when your illusions are so magical?

We think in money patterns
No peace from here to Saturn
When we live in money caverns
Tranquility lies in the clatter
Of echoes bouncing off walls
Traveling down darkened halls
Yet to be seriously explored
Where knowledge is stored
But the paths are abyssal
Leading to our dismissal
We cower next to the fire
It once provided light and warmth
Now we're just fascinated by it's chaos

I know I'm right
Eventually humanity will evolve
And if humanity doesn't reach that point
I'd be more correct than I'd like to have been

We need to withdraw from this system
And buy stock in each other
Whether you're Muslim or Christian
We should still be brothers
For we pursue freedom
As they purchase kingdoms
We wither in the waters of their wealth
We can see this isn't good for our health
When our species' main asset is empathy
And understanding
Now reaches no longer than the interest fee
And we're damning
Ourselves to a life in the furnace
With no humanity to be purchased

All comforts we create
Can't compare to the womb
All our fears of fate
Drive us toward the tomb
They cut the umbilical cord
They way I cut my phone cord
Leaving me alone and torn
Wishing I could curl up in a curl
And experience comfort from the world
Where people pay with change
Because they have no money
And people pay with rain
Because they have no honey

I've seen the chaos of fire
And the serenity of water
And the steam that rises when they're combined
The wet ashes of love mix into a thick cement
And become the heart's hardened womb
The heart's hellish hatred blooms
From within the darkness
Bringing us hardships

When my brain is in my eyes
It brings discomfort in disguise
Like the discomfort when I lie
And say I don't give a **** about what others think
Mentally I have become fetal
Yet I'm trying to sound regal
The illusion of indifference
Protects me from conversation
Like the womb or the tomb
And the broom is the tool
That sweeps dirt up under the rug
When my heartstrings begin to tug
The womb is the only place clean and snug

In a world where people become mindless weapons
The womb becomes a pistol
Blasting bullets into the Earth
We save our solidarity
For the moments when massive amounts of people die
And the bar seems to keep rising
And we forget the importance of one
Until we are hit personally
And look down to see blood from multiple wounds
The result of gunshots fired by multiple wombs

The ungrateful people here
Don't seem to appreciate deer
They tell me deer are giant rats with hooves
And I always think to myself
If deer didn't exist
And I told you there was a giant rat with hooves
You wouldn't want to see that ****?

Humanity is a knot
And humans are the strings
We are connected by our actions
Until we choose to disconnect
By plucking our own individual strings
And start unraveling ourselves from the knot
Once enough strings are removed
The knot is untied
As we've lost connection
Strings are now subject to the wind
And begin to wither without the knot
And without the strings
The knot is nothing
What brings the knot back
Is war
Fueled by famine
We tangle each other in terror
Where the strings must be maneuvered with precision
So we may form a knot

The shroud of strings blinds itself
As war wraps us in calamity
But after all the wars we've fought
Is this the connection we've got?
Humanity is a knot

Somebody call Ben Affleck
We got phantoms in this *****
This endless haunted mansion
Their presence pervades
No company
In this lonely labyrinth
Only phantoms
The only figures resembling humanity
Are the corpses of those before
Who couldn't navigate this torturous structure
And of course, the masquerading phantoms
My soul they aim to puncture

I tried closing my eyes
But I just kept running into walls
I tried sleeping through it
But I just sank deeper into the basement
When I attempted to join the phantoms
You were there
You waited until I was hanging there
On the rope
And eviscerated everything
Lycanthrope
The rope in shreds
Your heart then fled
Leaving me alone again
Lying in my exhausted blood
The phantoms sensed my desperation
And took advantage of my disorientation
So I ran to the darkest recesses of the basement
To retrieve my blindfold and sledgehammer
But is my hammer powerful enough?
Will visual impairment abstain the trickery of ghosts?

I put Sisyphus to shame
With the determination I utilize to demolish these walls
But the phantoms are devious
They ***** new facades
Thicker, sturdier, with odder textures
I destroy them all the same
It just takes a bit more time
And time means nothing
To a man who's sole purpose is knocking down walls
And cowering from apparitions
Yet a man means nothing
To a time ruled by phantoms

I live in a world
Where we pet deer with cars
So we set our emotions in jars
The cops drive with broken headlights
And nobody knows what's right
Yet we're not allowed to fuss
Because we're on a prison bus
So I dream of the days
I'll get to see the freeway

You got in my car
That didn't go far
You decided to call a taxi
Because I was so taxing
I got under your skin like a cyst
And I became your taxidermist

You jumped in my town car
That became a clown car
You made me feel like a star
And then left me on Mars
Where I lived out the back of my hearse
Patiently waiting for a compatible nurse

I found myself in an ambulance
Withdrawing from all your medicine
I couldn't get out of the trance
Your bulldozer left me embedded in
After being rolled in the muck
I became a monster truck

I wish you were a convertible
So I could at least get a nibble
For you handle a road of ugliness with grace
It's the same daunting road I cowardly face
We just can't travel together
That's how we'll travel forever
I just wish you could know
The places my car will go

She may be our metronome mother
But when was rhythm first discovered?
Did ancient nomads hear it in the sounds of walking?
Did they like how it sounded over them talking?
Did they view the melody
As a felony?
And start to sway their hips
To the crack of whips?
Maybe that wasn't good enough
Maybe we needed more stuff
So we started crossing swords
To create more violent chords
That interested us more

Violence has a catchy hook
That can't be found in a book
But started with a ***** look
Until our brain begins to cook
And we learn to love the beat
As the harmony depletes
We take concert seats
At a darkness feast

There's an iambic pentameter
In the middle eastern theater
That sounds all too familiar
The troubling treble
Of mothers screaming
While superpowers meddle
And innocence is leaving
The reaper is reaping
To a situation heating
Empathy fleeting
Fascist seating
Rhythm beating

Our soundproof homes
Create acoustic cones
That our cries can't escape
Taking the container's shape
Filling our mind
Until we're blind
And only see political teams
Instead of childhood dreams

We fall into a rhythm
Based on deadly decisions
With lethal precision
Like surgical incisions
That don't make us healthy
But support the wealthy
Who whistle a different tune
That will **** us all soon
And as the world crumbles
Their bellies still rumble
Creating a disruptive bass
Their music we must face
With an impossible grace
Or else we'll be replaced

I hear instruments of percussion
Causing concussions
Deflecting discussions
Making us harmfully dance
So we'll have a fair chance
Which seems wrong at first glance
But it's actually a pragmatic trance
Provided by Mister Rhythm
Who carries misery with him

You're a solar flare
Without a care
The sun is your lair
So we can't be a pair
Which I felt was unfair
So I starred down the barrel of a gun
Into the shining sun
To have my tears evaporate
But all that did was exacerbate
The eventual solar eclipse
From the sound of your lips
Telling me it's over
But it didn't start
I get in my lunar rover
And sadly depart

Your supernova
Put me in a loser's coma
From a subtle sun kiss
With a trillion ton fist
That left me loveless
Seeing the sun less

Stuck inside my tower
My eyes are a shower
I'm holding a sun powered
Drug flower
While I cower
In the midnight hour
During the solar absence
I await a sunrise advent
Like a cosmic abscess
After being denied access
Added to your black list
I become dark matter
When my dreams shatter
I am indeed sadder
Wishing my world was flatter

Yet the sun still shines
Even when I'm blind
Rays of light still come out
Causing a seed to sprout
Like a heroic water spout
After a hundred year drought
But I can only see the sunset
As the future I've met
And I begin to fret
Over my daytime debt
When I spend time but never give it
I make a mistake and then I relive it
The sun is scorching hot I can't grip it
So when I get the upper hand I flip it
And live under the sun
This life is a lonely one

Oh, what I would give to be nine and benign
Because as I grow older the flow of concepts grows heavier
And swirls around me rapidly
Creating a whirlpool
I can feel the world pull
In the gravity of ideas
Given weight by words
That brings down birds

We look up only to see Jupiter
And we live on the Earth's back
Weighed down like mules by it's presence
Carrying conflicting considerations
Ideas inflicting incineration

The rain precipitating from the clouds in our minds
Develops a lofty humidity within humanity
And the leaves on the trees point downward
Erecting walls
To trap us in our gravity garrison
Plotting ways to crush each other
Time becomes the most effective method
As we wait to weigh down wanderers
With a point of view
In our gravitational pull
To make them our mule
Carrying our concepts
To strengthen our impact on the maelstrom

As our brain gets bolder
The water gets colder
But this ocean keeps spinning
Keeping the frigid water from freezing
And the gravity of what we think
Is the gravity that makes us sink

From concept cradle to gravity grave
Tranquil transcendence is what we crave

A challenge to dating men
Is I don't want to insult them by calling them gay
Yet there's no way of knowing
Unless I ask
But I never know how they'll react to the possibility
Which is fair
Because the possibility of their wrath
Keeps me from saying anything
So I can live in a fantasy of possibilities

You may write it off as internalized homophobia
Or say that these are problems everyone faces
But the more I see the more I know
And I've seen an aura of toxicity
And the possibility of it's removal

The clock struck midnight
With an informative pang
I couldn't face it's music
So I turned counterclockwise
But time kept moving forward
As my wisdom dissipated
Bad times I anticipated

As I wandered through life
Burdens grew
Weight added with each step
My feet started to sink into the ground
So I got in my car
And drove
And kept driving
The more I traveled
The more I witnessed
The less I talked
As I grappled with the futility and necessity of communication

The clock warned of night's approach
I decided to continue driving
Luminous fireflies pelted my vessel
Their lamps exploding upon impact against my vehicle
The ability to destroy light
Exhilarated me
And I became addicted
To extinguishing that which shines
Until darkness flooded my engine
And an abysmal order was made by my abyssal odor

I had to exit my vehicle
And consult a mechanic
He explained my engine wouldn't work
Unless my windows were down
Which solved my darkness problem
But those ****** pests pervaded my car
Their locust glow disoriented me
The slight variations of their unique displays
Manufactured chaos within the light

My eyes grew accustomed to entropy
My brain grew accustomed to impairment
Commuters noticed my erratic driving
And offered to assist me
By attempting to ram me off the road
But the impenetrable light created a force field
Impalas couldn't run through
For my light bugs too much
Buffering me from others
And driving others from me
Leaving me alone
As a giant pulsating light that never stops moving
Is this how a star is born?

We were equally matched
Until a plan was hatched
You became the subtle aggressor
By making appearances lesser
Using your passion aggression
To steer a passive direction

You perform a vanishing act
By canvassing flak
Balancing black
Against a sky so blue
Teaching me that which is true
Is different from what I knew
So my anxiety naturally grew

You launch a resistance
By remaining silent
On this plane of existence
Where you're the pilot
Not taking the right angle
Into the Bermuda Triangle
That is your social sphere
Where you disappear
From committal fear
Of love being near

So I throw a search party
But your presence is tardy
Because you're departing
On the journey you're starting
Without me
Slouching
From my submission
To your anti-admission
Splitting our position
Like nuclear fission

The air has become radioactive
Through light that is refractive
Through ways which are retractive
Living this ugly way to live
Sharpening my shiv
To escape this cell of decay
Where flowers bloom and fray
But can't see the light of day
Not one ray

Stuck in the marked moor
Of this dark war
I use parkour
To avoid aggressor attacks
Never cutting me any slack
Bringing pain back
Until I crack

Lost in your blank expression
I make a grave concession
Enslaved to your impression
Yet afraid of your aggression
Caught between
Taking heed
And fulfilling needs
Born from greed
I'll only impede

You scream aggressively
Like you're ******* me
Just by addressing me
After making a mess of me
With deafening quiet
You attack with a diet
Of a steady riot
And I won't buy it

You left when you were here
But stayed once you weren't near
You switched to a guillotine gear
Based on how you wanted to appear
Striking me from the equation
By utilizing deflation
For a sinister elation
You removed our relation

I cannot mitigate his momentum in my mind
He charges through me like I charge through time
He is the rhino in my brain
A powerful unstoppable train
When I am weak
Survival is bleak
And there's a horned stampede
I'm unable to impede
Until I'm trampled
Into a stamped hole
By a giant rhinoceros
Who's power is preposterous
His herd is deafening
But he's my reckoning
When his rhino's roar
Echoes through my plains
He's my dino sore
In this uneasy terrain
His hooves thunder through my Serengeti
Sand flies in the air like confetti
Obstructing my view of his breed
I'm being ripped apart at the seams
By the vultures who sensed my loneliness
And made my body their ****** nest
I lay there broken and praying
For the mercy of a rhino straying

I take flight
With all my might
To be your kite
Following you wherever you go
To be part of your ebb and flow
People think I ingested the wrong pill
Because up here I can't see the roadkill
And float over the pitch black oil spills
From the end of your string
I become king

There is an approaching storm
As you deviate from the norm
And discontinue acting warm
Your lightning strikes
My metal pike
Electricity tears through my thin fabric
As I dream of a tranquil casket
And you want to grant me my death wish
I guess that's why they call me Icarish
For flying to close to the rain
Only to constantly feel pain
To distract me from the shame
From those with unknown names
But familiar bigoted flames
To me you both are the same
Once I go against the grain
You tell me to stay in my lane
High above the gravelly ground
Where you can't hear my sounds
Of impaling wailing
Because you're bailing
Letting go of the string
You become king

I am a kite floating
Spending night noting
All my many mistakes
That caused these breaks
But despite trying my very best
The wind provides a difficult test
After I am battered into tatters
My hopes couldn't be flatter
So I start to feel it doesn't matter
When my dreams came true then shattered
The wind solemnly sings
Of distant powerful kings
But I cannot fly anymore
In my broken kite form

I'm a fan of Vontaze Burfict
Though he may not be perfect
For he gives players concussions
To continue the daily discussions
Of the power of his percussion
To receive a hall of fame induction
That is where his value is derived
So what do these penalties imply?
That the referees have a preconceived notion of him
And are preemptively looking to treat him grim
Which gives his team a lesser chance to win
Which makes the biased referees grin

We are a country that idolizes quarterbacks
Every other position we're quick to attack
We only care about who has the ball
And laughing at others when they fall
We worship that which is shiny
And view everything else as grimy
Quarterbacks become celebrities incredulously
While everyone else is treated impetuously

The NFL is like America
Politics makes it harder to watch
The Patriots are boring and plain
They win constantly
The Bengals are entertaining and rough around the edges
They show promise and potential that is never realized
In a nation
Of provocation
I'd rather proudly call myself a bengal
I know that seems an idealistic angle
But Cincinnati provides no coziness or protection
You must always avoid discriminate detection
Of those that call themselves patriots
That drive blue and white chariots
And penalize players unnecessarily
For African Americanning

We really fumbled the ball
Because of the ref's call
That treats us unequally
How they have fun evilly
They can arbitrarily treat whoever however
But a concussion will make them less clever

I am perching
I am searching
Sitting still
My mind filled
With the vigilance
Of a militant
Looking to invade
By throwing grenades
And committing atrocities
At a high velocity
Yet I'm made to lay and wait
My love feels like hate
Stuck in this crate
It's getting late
My feral fate
Makes me shake
Like the love intake
That makes me break
When you're raising the stakes

I see your fin in the water
Moving in for the slaughter
Acting like a shark
You go dark
Like a silent submarine
You float near the bottom
Your gun is submachine
That's how you caught them
Now it's my turn
For a bullet burn

Treat me like a ***** distractor
You're a fractured compactor
Leaving me partially intact
But most of me I lack
After your attack
I should thank you for taking out the trash
But I could've done without the clash
Because now I'm just a pile of ash
Stuck in a bird cage
At an increased age
If I become a phoenix and rise
It'll be an imprisoned surprise

I thought I had prepared
Yet now I need repairs
When it's my love I share
And it's casually broken
To be used as a token
You must be joking
There's no way I could've ever prepared
For the fact that no one ever cared

Here comes The Change
That has the range
Of emotions
And demotions
And devotions
Of a perilous populous
That likes to raise a fuss
When they eventually learn who I am
And treat me like I'm the Son of Sam

To be specific
They discover I'm gay
And begin to filet
My mentality
In totality
For fatality
Merely by acting differently

If my sexuality isn't the first thing people know about me
I get to witness The Change
Like a dog with mange
I am shedding my hair
While screaming no fair
Because of the shift I see
Because of the **** I need
To make my heart bleed

There is a steady bellowing burdensome baggage
From those that want to ****** some *******
So I search for weight lifters
But only find shapeshifters
That become great grifters
When The Change occurs
And The Change burns
So The Change turned
Me into an interdimensional changeling
And an unintentional rage king
After they use words like flaming
Because the results are so draining
It becomes hard not to hate people
Who are inspired by hate steeples

They say I'm going to Hell
While I notice the smell
Of being buried in their banal ****
While they play their greatest hits
That are as unoriginal
As they are cynical
They say I'm a degenerate
An embarrassment
A parent's lament

I want to change into a carefree bird
Instead I stay in Hell with the herd
Wanting to escape like Lupin the Third
Rather than be oppressed like the Kurds
But there is no relief
Only re-grief
When changes aren't permanent
But The Change is

There's an illustration of my life
That will change your perspective
The picture is in my words
When the painting is what I choose to say
And the canvas is your mind
Whose textures I could never imagine
So I jump off a cliff blindfolded
Expecting to be changed once I land

You struck me in mid-flight
With a face lit by dim light
Your hair that didn't care
Flowed like the time we shared
But we fell prey to accidental accidents
Because of your taxing mental acumen
Yet I chose to see through a cute lens
When you spat acid like aliens
More specifically xenomorphs
For a career course
That endeared divorce

Everything was an accident
A train wreck to be precise
Take to the extreme extent
When you saw love in my eyes

Your rapid fire
Heart's desire
Is a high octane
Bullet train
Bouncing between destinations
At widely varying elevations
Stopping at mysterious stations
Where I experience deflation
In between these stops is a track
Where everything is black
And you attack
Until the merciful sun finally shines
You then say you'll always be mine

There are quick flashes of light
But also sick gasps of fright
And it's a big task of might
So the trick is to grasp right
When the speed of your movement
You claim to be an improvement
Creates fire extinguishing wind
So the flame you lit you rescind

Your ride was aridly adrenalized
Which is why I was penalized
In a poison prison incentivized
By your many mental lies
Eluding my sentinel kind
No love I find
Only tire marks
In entire dark
That lead to nowhere
While I scream no fair

You were an explosion of pleasure
Whose interest I tried to measure
Instead of being happy
I saw your train lapping
Familiar phantom spots
When emotions ran hot
Through my heart you shot
At a velocity I once thought
To be completely impossible
Proven wrong by bullet holes
And only lonely bullets know
What's inside my heart
They take those contents
To make me repent
Your speedy intent

That was fast
Smoking past
Things that last
Into broken glass
Until we were cut
By our rushing rut
I couldn't take anymore
So I sped to the door

I'm born
Airborne
Forlorn
In war torn
Discord
My ripcord
I pull for liberation
Alienation aviation
Away from a station
Of no relation
Where their elation
Lies in degeneration

The fright fair
Nightmare
In sight there
Is a right scare
But light flares
From an illuminated theater
I dive into art
To fill my meter

I consume
Darkened tomb
Screen in room
Is where I loom
Inspiration blooms
From a sense of doom
My separation reparation
That will lead to veneration

My artistic fervor
Drifted further
Drifter's murmurs
Lifted learners
But gifted murderers
Shifted girders
Of shame and honesty
To my grave of modesty
Where they prey upon me

This plagiarism
Layered schism
Cratered rhythm
Of great decisions
Now I make incisions
With repetition
And the definition
Of words stolen from me
They're all I can see
And I can't get free
Or just let it be

Consumption disruption
At this junction
I can't function
A plagiarist
****** mist
Grips my fist
Makes me wish
I don't exist
I must resist
Before I miss
My chance at bliss

They're ****** me
By aping me
Making me
Shaking trees
Of bumblebees
With rumble pleas
On humble knees
Drinking antifreeze

Nobody cares
What's fair
They bear
And share
Blank stares
Up stairs
Of artistic compromise
Integrity lost in lies
They're not that wise
I hypothesize

My baby
Caught rabies
From Hades
Now ladies
Flock to a thief
Giving me grief
Beyond belief
In my coral reef
Sword in sheath
I drown discreet

My philosophy as I drive down the road
I don't feel bad if I don't feel it under my tires
That means I step on spiders
Swat mosquitoes
Take antibiotics
Life is not created equal
When we live atop an ever shifting puzzle
Where the value of life
Is dependent on the ability to take life
A virus's sole purpose is to attack host cells and reproduce
So is our's
I guess we'll see who kills who first

Trees get larger trunks
Animals get larger teeth
Humans get larger guns
And as those guns hold our hopes
Humanity holds the hopes for all organisms
To one day transcend competition
But in the meantime
I'm worried about the cracks in the road
Because I can feel them shifting under my tires
But there is cement on my wheels
And on the vehicles around me
We pave this road we travel on
Until the cement runs dry
And our vessel dies
For newer improved cars to continue
On the freeway to transcendence

When cops aren't held accountable
We're bound to fall
To unanswered calls
And free for alls
In project halls
With narrow walls

Fear gets the best of judgement
A cop shoots a suspect
He gives an explanation
Which doesn't pass examination
Only exacerbates inflammation
Stemming from the police station
When they go on patrol
To show who's in control
And act as rough terrorists
As the cuffs tear our wrists

The blood ceases to be red
As it gushes from our head
It becomes black or white
The difference day and night
The impulse is to fight
But is that right?
Will we lose sight
And become wrong
And sing their song?

Their favorite method for oppression
Is unbridled aggression
With discriminate discretion
Yet we're supposed to be nonviolent?
Even when the media has gone silent?
Even when a loved one has been maimed?
Or framed?
They depend on our inaction
To continue painful interactions
As we look for distractions
We build a mental immunity
Which gives the cops impunity
They think they're getting through to me
I just don't want them to shoot so I'll be free
I'll tell them what they want to hear
When they know violence is my fear
They use the mystery of suffering
And their long history of cuffing me
To manipulate me and get what they want
Then on the way to jail they tease and taunt
They've numbed themselves to my plight
And blinded themselves from my light
They hope they'll never see me again
After sending me to the state pen

The police get a thrill
Out of taking away our agency
The police get to ****
Despite how much we beg and plead
The cops keep making us needlessly bleed
Our supposed rights they needlessly read
A government system they needlessly feed

I feel rage and impotence
In this cage of hypocrites
The cops
Run a shop
Where hammers always look for nails
Even if they're minor fails
When employment depends on success
And ambitions rely on arrests
We better wear a vest
Because they'll terrorize the public
Then open their arms
For therein lies the musket
That does us harm

The police brutalize
While we rue their lies
But stay in disguise
Because they have the power to destroy us
People won't employ us
People won't enjoy us
Once we're trapped in a lonely cell
The police then toy with us
Making us feel like we're alone in hell

The police engender a vicious fear
Especially when they smell like beer
To cover up their tears
From what they do to their peers
They terrorize
We're paralyzed
We must teach them to be decent
When evidence of their hate is recent
The law must be followed
But the enforcers are hollow
And they bend the law
To twist our screws
We're stuck in their claws
Destined to lose

I am me
Until I am not
In the eyes of those who aren't me
Their perception of my ulterior motives pierces
every joke, compliment and remark
I attempt to burrow out of my chamber and into their's
But I find only confusion
Did anybody notice or care?
And if they did
Did they care about me?
Or the facade I built to buffer honesty?
Disgust is spelled on the faces of those forced into proximity
They view me as the canary in the coal mine of their life
Their contempt shocks stillness into me
Could we go back to pretending I'm human?
Are they putting salt in the wound to preserve it?
Or am I the remnants of a wasted youth?
Or a constant reminder of failure?
Do I help lower the bar to their own self worth?
Maybe I'm just paranoid
Is what I tell myself
To feel better
And I can drive down back roads all my life
But that won't erase the shame I feel of the car I drive
People sense my deviations and act accordingly
Their words spray like a flamethrower
Scorching my defenseless heart
And although my sympathy goes out to the innocent civilians
who were also hurt
I was mortally wounded
The well just continued to get deeper
I am haunted by what lies underneath
Afraid any passing archaeologist will dig it up
And share his discovery with the world
Then where will I hide?

The weak inherit the Earth
The meek inherit their lead
Unaware of their life's worth
Until after they're dead

We are hopelessly trampled by a bullet stampede
Inflicted upon us for the wealthy man's greed
They sell us death as a commodity
While we can only mourn solemnly

They are arms dealers
We are harm feelers
They are life stealers
When we can't find healers
For the fatal wounds that end our lives so abruptly
And the man with the gun has no need to trust me
He has placed his faith in Ares
His humanity he failed to carry
He sold it urgently to feel secure
But then his thoughts became impure
For whatever reason he cast a death sentence
He felt injustice and wanted to get vengeance
But to the merchants of wrath
He is just math
Numbers on a graph
They must minimize
With blatant lies

Businessmen will try to create a need for their product
But engendering fear for profit seems like misconduct
Because as the bullets are raining
And the militants are training
Their money is stacking
While terrorists are attacking
Their nature seems callous
When they rely on our malice
They see us as a body count
They see us as simple trout
Swimming upstream to die
So they can eat us
Convincing us we'll fly
With minds of a fetus

The bullet burns as it punctures our civilization
It fuels our bitter spiteful incubation
We sit in the chamber
As they utilize our anger
The rich get richer
We don't see the picture
When gunshots scatter crowds
And the echoes scatter our thoughts
They want the volume to be loud
So we'll forget what we're taught
That our lives are the price of a gun and a bullet
Our paranoid lives become hard to live to the fullest

I’m afraid of heights
not because I fear falling
but because I fear jumping.

I can hear the lonely air whistle
As we fly on this time missile
The wind chimes
As it carries time
A time that is quickly fleeting
When it's death we'll be meeting
So as time keeps flowing
My anxiety keeps growing
Like the Reaper's scythe
It used to be a knife
But now it is my crescent moon
That will take me to my tomb

Time keeps passing
Time keeps thrashing
My skin is hardened
As my mind is smartened
I gain my impurity
From my seniority
But time slows when I'm with you
And you can erase the color blue
Please pluck me from your fandom
So we can tackle time in tandem

The clock keeps ticking
The clock is tricking
Me into thinking I have time
And so I begin to climb
The sands of my daunting hourglass
Sand hits the ground becoming my past
Your absence makes sand fall faster
My life becomes a natural disaster
I'm stuck in a sandstorm
Only you can reform
For the power of time
Covers me in grime

Time's gavel
Is my calling
Time travels
As I'm falling
The minutes feel infinite
Until they're gone forever
If we could be intimate
Time would be pleasure

I am missing seconds
As your kissing beckons
I start to float through time and space
Whenever I witness your lovely face
But that's time I'll never get back
So I must get my life on it's tracks
And reset my clock
And reset my ****
So I can see time clearly
And watch it float near me
Because in a life without your love
The passing of time fits like a glove

My tires went over the cracks in the road
As I drove by people standing on the sidewalk
Exchanging words, emotions, dreams
I passed them on my way to the cul-de-sac
To exchange money, drugs, humanity
The pedestrians penetrated me
With piercing eyes of persecution
They thought they hated me for being there
But their hatred is what led me there
They injected hatred into my life
The way I injected ****** into my arm
They injected banality into my life
The way I injected ****** into my brain
They injected austerity into my life
The way I injected ****** into my heart
They prayed that my sedation was of a more permanent nature
Before that they prayed for the permanent sedation
of my ****** nature
Wanting me to be fully awake
But not fully alive
They snuck into my mind
And exchanged emotions with emptiness
I snuck into their house
And exchanged furniture with emptiness
They exchanged words with the police
Who exchanged my freedom
For everyone else's peace of mind
But the exchange between the excommunicated
Exacerbated my exiled existence
The steel bars placed before me
Paled in comparison
To the bars that surrounded my heart
And faded from memory
When the Xanax bars entered my system
Until I couldn't walk anymore
Making me Professor X
Hiding out with the other mutants
Trying to lecture the world
That zombies turn to demons
If the exchange isn't examined
When they exit their enclosure
Sidewalk standers turn to explanations more elementary
Eliminating empathy
While elevating themselves above us
This is the epitome of our exchange