I do not make it easy,
I do not make it kind.
I do not travel breezy,
nor sing of earth and rhyme.

My words are thunderborn,
hatred, war, and pain;
politics for one and all,
social grief and game.

Entertainment's worth,
the value I extract;
a tale for twenty thus,
a tale for us and that:

Memories yet traveled,
roads not trod by us;
the voice of yet born trillions,
the journey that is love.

Your broken breath, half a sob - regret coiled, skin fevered.

Swallow
               it
                  down,
or don't

think on it:
Shame.

A most beautiful gift-
-to rise above.
-to rally against.
-to learn from.

This-
-a subject in need of dire discussion:

It has been argued the People are ever the aggressor;
unwieldy, illogical children.

Rioting without cause;
martyrs to treason.

A lie-
-the Lie.

Police brutality, senatorial banality,
the sting of verbalized hatred?

These too are political;
a violence driven by reigning powers:

Microcostic displays of decay,
condoned and arrayed:

Neat lines, neat numbers;
statistics, not People.

In the end, faced with such imposition-
-that a fist is made:

The cornered rat bites;
fights to survive, no matter the cost.

Aye,
cruelty.

We are as Athens and Athena,
mortal and divine,
entwined/inspiration:
libations made for love's drugged mind.

Romance is no thing of flame or wax;
it is the spark and starter,
and sometimes falls splat.

You need for fuel for endurance,
patience for warmth;
understanding of limits, and humour for more.

There is worth in choice, in holding firm,
in bending to whims,
in affection deserved.

By grace of Man,
by imagined God,
love is this and more unsought.

Let freedom ring from the highest mountaintops,
but first know:
You are a slave to the machine, stuck:

Consent was never given.
Capitalism conquered our vision
of right,
of wrong,
of things well beyond,
and all the air we breathe.

It shapes our thoughts,
acceptance the lot
given to US, you and me.

The children that mine,
the beggars that crawl,
the infants that starve,
a price for us all.

In this we are bound,
from this we might flee,
otherwise fight
with fury and glee.

Fires we'll set,
smoke we'll inhale,
chains will sunder,
freedom exhaled.

Or perhaps it best,
that we stay slaves of rest
ignorantly sipping our tea.

Loving the idealized version of another person.
What a terrible disservice to yourself and them.

We are not gods, we fleshly humans,
Ichorous and unfailing-

-our blood runs thin:
Hands on a clock.
See them-
-their truth,

and love.