yesterday, my mind was a landslide,
an earthquake instigated
by platonic fates.
i nursed a headache, reeling
from the repercussions
of unrequited affection
and a planet spiraling
towards complete annihilation.

today, my heart is leaking uranium,
a radioactive time-bomb,
primed to explode.
the nuclear codes
have been plugged in,
the key has been turned
in the ignition.
Houston, we have lift off.

tomorrow is far too late. the warheads
are already en route to their destination.
now nothing can stop our obsessive compulsive
disorder, our pining for the sixth extinction.
from the horizon, i watch the nukes eclipse the sun
and i rage, furious on the precipice of the abyss,
desperate for death's sweet kiss
and the utter bliss of oblivion.

existence is the dream from which we cannot wake,
the entropy that saps our strength,
the antipathy that stokes our hate.

existence is suffering.
this is the first truth
and also the last.

existence is a terminal illness:
i suffer, therefore i exist.
the beauty of life is that it ends.

we are not
who we are
at our best
anymore
than we are
the sum
of our worst
aspects.
we are
what we pretend to be:
misanthropes
possessed of empathy.
walking paradoxes.
amalgamations.
spectrums
in multicolor.

bludgeon our minds
addled by apathy.
cudgel us into comatose.
the sixth extinction
we couldn't be bothered
to prevent.
blind submission
to the tradition
of the truncheon.

throw our bodies
in the trenches,
the mass grave
we dug
with our own hands.
dirt still clinging
beneath the nails
of fingers raking
our psyches.
buried beneath ennui.

cover our corpses,
naked and exposed,
with ten tons of soot
and ash. strike
from the pages
of history
the utter depravity
of the world's
cruelest creature:
humanity.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods
and gave it to us: clumsy humanity,
fumbling fools trapped in our own darkness.

for his crimes against Olympus, Zeus
had the titan bound to a rock, cursed
to suffer daily anguish.

•••

the celosia plant burnt bright orange
in the porcelain fist on my windowsill, fragile and stalwart
all at once: a brilliant symbol of our resistance.

now its leaves fade to a dull pallor, sick
from a lack of oxygen, wilting in absence
of the sun's warmth, starved for photosynthesis.

•••

i used to watch Bob Ross to fall asleep.
but now every stroke of his paintbrush
reminds me of your magenta aura—

an enigmatic glow that permeates your presence.
now i read The Sandman: Omnibus to stave off insomnia,
wondering when and where i first ****** up.

they say god is perfect.
that holds true for me, too.
no concept contains me in totality.
Stirner wrestled with the undefinable:
an indefatigable Unique,
anarchic,
lacking category.
Camus perhaps said it best,
"i rebel, therefore i exist."
i strive to personify resistance.

i find the answers
in harmony with Counterparts,
defining The Difference
Between Hell
and Home:
"i am what i am
and i am an outcast."

an outlaw,
a nobody
akin to Nietzsche,
returning infinitely—
stretched like so many grains of sand
on time's flat surface, orbiting
eternally around the creative Nothing
at half-past 3:00 in the morning.
a singularity,
deconstructing
Derrida's Différance.

a nomad on the margins,
wandering aimlessly,
roaming perpetually
with Deleuze and Foucault,
an astronaut arranged
along the endless frontiers
of an ever-expanding cosmos.

Vonnegut recognized
the periphery affords
a radical view
to the few who choose
to embrace that which cannot be Known.
a zero-sum game
between Death and me,
staving off manic-depressive ennui
if only momentarily.

Death and i converse in the midst
of 3:00am's darkness: the witching hour,
when the veil between this world
and the Abyss grows thinnest.

the Endless approach, swift as quicksand
in an hourglass, silent as a shade
on a moonless eve. they whisper
in tongues mortals cannot speak.

Insomnia's embrace is cold as hoarfrost,
a lost soul looking over my shoulder.
Time wonders, "when you lie alone,
do you hope you don't wake up?"

Morpheus leaps
from the pages of the Sandman,
a phantom from my nightmares,
cloaked in flame and shadow.

"rest easy, friend,"
the King of Dreams
says to me.
"there would be no hell without Hope."