Roaming the rolling sapphire,
Thoughts of home & the bereaved.
Under tide they sink.
Spit back into that grand basin,
Give a good greeting to Poseidon,
Lift up your cup & drink;
To the fathoms we eclipsed,
The journey facing.
** & heave,
Waves crash against the hull
Letting on water;
I've never much cared for
Admitting defeat in the presence
Of overwhelming odds,
I'd rather die on my feet
Bravely meeting the Gods

Are the British braver than us?
That they police their streets with no firearms?
Or simply more humane & competent
That they feel no need to threaten to ****** their fellow citizens?
Failure to comply
With law and order
With our militarized police
Means you risk your life.
Even if you are collecting trash,
Even if you are sleeping,
Even if you are exercising inalienable rights.

Here I had thought
Generally, each of our governments
Loved to issue & execute warrants-
Or is that merely applicable
To the poor, those with no status
Who carry no political weight
Besides their life of work?

Verdicts down on from
Supposedly the highest body
In the arbitration for justice

It's seeds of gunpowder,
To produce a foul fruit
Which kills the vine.
Bunch of psychos,
And the thoughts are dark
Because it's an empty mind.

If it's not something others will do,
If their governments will not hold their leaders accountable,
Then we need the Paddys, the Svens, the Pablos to;
You cannot wait for a criminal
To turn themselves in,
For they never shall.
At their level,
They will avoid prosecution
Till they swim in the lakes of hell.
And meanwhile, how many
Will they facilitate in the deaths of?
How many innocents murdered?
How many must be "martyred?"

What difference does a **** make to me?
None.
Fools running a country
In the desert, into the ground.
Another on-stage for the EU.
What difference does it make
What name you take?
It's the same **** you spew
From a *****'s mouth
Sold to the most secretive
Or those just as ignorant,
Whether in the same or different ways.

Breathless, when I met her-
Pains me she never recovered

Weaponize your loneliness,
As your rose takes on thorns
Till it hurts in that hand
Crushing the stem in your own

The best way to goad a lie?
Believe it yourself.
But it's even easier
To convince others of the truth
Being false itself

The contrast between truth and falsehood
Lie in the whether
The inquiring party
Believe, or not;

Sufficiently convinced enough?

I rush to speak
When I should be quicker
To pause and think,
Parsing each phrase.
How my words will and could
Be interpreted or construed
And of that, whatever resulting.
Of the checks & balances
We put ourselves through,
What is the material from which
The weights of judgement
Have been constructed?
Pig iron, sterling silver, stainless steel?
And of our choice of counterweights,
What is revealed?

Not a kiss to tell of,
Just hot lust;
Aching to feel her
Lips, around-the-clock

From cosmopolitan, to nationalism;
For the world, for country.
For what is the world today
But a conglomerate of nations,
For what is a nation but apart of a world?
On a mish-mash, adrift through a vast nothing;
What a ride, what a whirl-
A mess of tribes infighting.

I'm sure the phenomenon is
Far wider-spread than
At any other time throughout history.
The want to have been born,
Decades or years before,
And I think it's easily attributable.
Inundated with knowledge
It is hard to come to some consensus
Among peers,
Likewise it is difficult
To be in a situation you'd rather not
Able not only to conceive
But receive, every scenario you could think of.
Many of which would be the least bit better than the reality currently ascribed

Sweat grips,
My teeth grit,
A symphony of groans.
Hot is the breath
That escaped my lungs.
Loud was the noise;
Rustles, creaks, moans.
Long did the hours draw,
Still coming to dawn.

When they offer you olives,
Rip the branch from their hands
And beat the fruit off.
The soil is ripe,
Right is might;
Who cares for leaves & petals to fall?

Anonymous, oblivious
To the person kneeling before me.
My head spinning,
Throbbing,
Weakness in the knees.
My heart racing,
Trembling,
Color flushing cheeks.
Darkness, heavy scents
Intoxicating.
Gripping the sheets

Hot ***** served up,
The rattlings and ramblings of lust.
Of poets helplessly in love,
Of writers ***** to ****.
What sad silences they can elapse to,
What pleasant rows they can get in
Feeling no need to record them
Free from needing any interpretation.
Quiet are the stanzas & verses
Of true lovers,
Their words now reserved for each other

Listening to the great leader
And he promises better wages,
A better economy,
Safer streets,
Domestic manufacturing for national autonomy.
Just wondering when it's supposed to begin,
So far as I can see
The politicians taking the stage
Are long bought before they address the Republic.
40 years of presidents like pages,
Each turning over to new additions to a chapter
This awful period befallen our nation.
Another ink blotch, intelligible stains,
On the history of America

Like a nereid,
Acutely aware of how to cause a flow.
But I was mistaken,
Sprawled across the ground as
Dianthus grows.
She thought herself a hunter.

I wish I were prey.

Do bullys ever tire?
How is it
Some are men, but still just boys?
Truly, their fathers failed them
And mothers weened each too long.
Vice versa?
In the motive of their choices
It oftentimes reflects the outcome;
Failure they do not understand,
Sometimes mistaken for a resolution
And not just the consequences of their actions.

If decency demanded
A pound of your flesh
Would you grab a blade
And hock it off?
Laid on the scales in perpetuity,
The insignificant life does not even register a blip on radar
Yet we still cherish and protect it.
If your life came at a cost,
How many would need die before you were indebted?

Should I be rendered deaf and blind again,
For it would be too late.
I came, I saw, I conquered;
Of the grapes of wrath,
I fermented victory.

Turn your nose up,
How trite it is to be pretentious
Doing nothing but showing
Your arrogance and likely
Ignorance, often
Resulting in loneliness.
Riding a high horse in despair

Bygone halcyon,
In the waters of rain, wash away.
Dams burst and levees break,
Succumbing to the weight
That stands tall today, contemporarily.
Currents swell with all old & well,
Newly made is the way
The path now flowering.
Personified in ideal & representation;
Tradition is upheld, yet progress is not stalled
For the options are plenty
Beyond elders simply floundering

If I speak honestly,
What resentment should I harbor
For how words are received;
So long as you, too
Speak the truth, earnestly?
My commitment to honesty dies
At the prospect of a lie.
Brought as like a cat,
Planting at your feet
Dead mice

Doves flown off a high-rise,
Expectantly eager
To show how much they know
And how great they are;
People today have such a need to prove themselves.
For whom, and to what?
Such fruitless times,
When new growth
Rots on the vine.

Music is a momentary salvation
Through the ailings we suffer.
A thin buffer,
Between the painful past and
Future troubles.

I like ****** the most
When they're quiet and know their worth.
Them being the only ones
To sell themselves out;
Set the rate yourself.
It'd be a shame
Living on your back
For but paltry wealth.
Small penance too,
For fleeting looks and fading health.
Not a profession with a pension,
Not a career with a penchant for happiness;
But if *******'s your passion
It's shorter lived in-person than on camera.

What peace is spoken of?
What normalcy?
More war? Further widening the gap
Between the rich & the poor?
Another mean-nothing speech,
Full of thoughts and prayers
Never to be carried to term?
Bills brought to the floor
Only to be stalled by their authors?
Flirting with failure
From manufactured crisis, and with
Pointless battles over culture.
Never have the oppressive been more direct
In their inability to lead
Views, values, beliefs;
Scavenging their remains
Akin to common vultures.

Concern of income as status
And popularity as a moral metric
Among peers just as vain.
What is it that fools compete for?
Simpler lives, duller & plain?
Over complicated, gaudy & cliché?
Playing with themselves like
Dogs with their ***** splayed.

Dreams that torment -
Between my chest
Is still her lance,
Driven squarely through my heart.
That circumstances were unfortunate,
I should wish for death absent my love.

Nihilism, because I
Have no option but
To feel. What
Comes from
Broken relations & perspectives
But seeing clear? When
Glass cracks
Do you grab a mirror?
Or do you only forsake
Warm love turned cold?
Do you line with gold
And rebuild what breaks,
Or only grieve the remains?

I have never met a more complacent lot,
Than those of my compatriots;
Never have citizens been more obedient,
Than those of my immediates.
Forget spilled tea, today it's
Watered down coffee.
Biscuits cut with sawdust
Out from smaller & smaller molds,
Eating whatever fed us.
Cause we all know hunger

Believing any narrative pushed so long as it's prevailing;
The populace obsessed with popularity.

It's a headache & a headrush in the states,
Cool if you make the breaks
But that's like hitting the ******* lottery.
You gotta ask, what gives?
What does it take
To get a fair chance to stake a claim
In a country full of people who don't give a ****?
What sense does it even make
To try,
When no one in charge does?

For my own lot, & life -
Whether tis here or afar

Painful truths -
That those you love are broken,
Misused and abused,
Having let only pain
Shape who they are.
What they have grown to become
Is in turn the abuser
Having never freed themselves
Of all of the trauma.
As response is triggered-
Healing is hard

Roll your eyes,
What emptiness resides
Within the vacant cavity behind?
Search inside,
Roll them toward yourself and never
Again, outward.
Those who cannot stomach themselves
Have no place to judge another;
When all is law and each thought verdict
Passed upon others, save for the trouble,
Of living up to your word proper.
When someone hates themselves just as much as they hate you;
When it's a life of lies, the truth is
Misery takes no sides but to dishonesty.
What defense can be mounted
In courts with no deliberation?
Where fact is mourned over the exalted opinion
And partisanship is par for course,
Where being objective and without bias is common treachery
And only shows how little you understand of the situation at hand
One likely having little recourse for discourse
Room only for more, escalatory rhetoric & action
As hatred only knows hatred;
Breeding further contempt and confusion  
For the ailings of the world

Vanity, take your measurements -
Tailor me a suit to cover all character.
Take all discretion, only
As to whether I'm dressed pleasant
And wear a guise that's hygienic.
It's all very copacetic,
A couple of sweet words
More akin to syrup than cane;
Unnatural and fake.

Old man stroked his chin,
Rubbed his forehead
And ran his hands through his hair.
He cleared his throat,
Tightening the slack in his line,
He was a regular killick in his time -
Youth was short, but was it fair.
These days it's just a simple trolling boat,
And he casts his rod overboard
But he's not been bringing up a lot.
Waitin' on that change in the wind.

Never was water more refreshing,
Than when I thought I would die of thirst.
Fire never felt so warm as
The moments before I was burned,
And never looked as beautiful
As before it was consumed.
Light split like memories,
When I look up into the night sky;
Things gone, things refracted,
All that's there that eclipses the eye.
I never knew what it was to be *****,
Acting like I was always clean.
Never knew how wrong I was
Thinking I was always right, ignorantly
Hurting those around me
As they've hurt me.
Stagnant puddle reflecting,
Wading against the stream;
Swimming but drowning

You can play like a big cat but
That's still just a kitty,
And I hear you roaring yet
They sound like meows to me.
Other felines especially like fish,
You purr at the taste of meat.
Blood dye whiskers,
Fresh enough when pulse still beats
And colors tread in cheeks;
She was just a thirsty drunk
And I, a glass of whiskey.

The banality of only craving to capture,
Never to create.
Aperture into life behind the lens
The misery of the photographer
Is always being on the out
And only being a device when let in.
To be an archiver of the moment,
Truly embodying it in a single shot,
Is the greatest achievement;
For cameras can hope

Stars - gas all exhausted -
Under their own weight, collapse:
A lighthouse, crumbling

The splices of life, cabled webbing -
Had you everything you ever reasonably need,
And before you the ability to facilitate
The creation of artificial imitation
Near indistinguishable from reality,
Would you venture outside the confines
From control to chaos, and knowledge to mystery?
Or would you just enjoy plastic scenery?

Hold me,
In an embrace of thorns.
Hold me with a metallic feel,
Masticated love,
Votives made up of us
Rejected in full stead
To what appeal?
Wealth?
Life paid at the expense of ***,
******* yourself.

So much to say, which means so little;
So little to say, what that means much.
These ends we face, often,
Come on fast and taper out just as such.
What that remains: naught but thought.
Loose and multiplicitous as strands,
Hair of the artist's brush,
Colors as the richest palette -
Bold & bright, deep & dark

Why I would ever
Knowing it would only
Prove a disaster, & cause only pain.
No sparks to be rekindled,
Only fumes remain of suffocated flames;
As alcohol on water
When all fuel has been spent -
Lamenting the sea

When the rains fall away,
We move on with things and
Think nothing of the water which percolates
Seeping into the water table
No thought as it saturates
As cycles repeat
And liquid evaporates, condensates,
And it falls once more;
When rains end

Ah, how quickly do
Nights age & shatter - like old glass.
How short lived, the stars

Roses fall, silent;
In moonlight, like pouring rain.
On the leaves, dew hangs

If comparison were forced,
No flower would match your beauty.
Every rose would pale
Trying to meet the measure
Of that which I see,
Of how much you mean to me

There is no greater pleasure,
Than pressure,
When our two bodies meet

Singing your praise

In my ocean, you are the tides
The only thing to stir to life
Rivers of crimson within,
Areas grey & white
Were I the fish, you could eat
Forgo a day, for an eternity
You could cast from my soul,
Wade my streams

Better men have fallen before,
By word alone. Take these
Phrases in utter that matter not
To action, what man can judge
He who does, when he does nothing?
Mark the words of youth still young.
Tell me, when I have aged,
Have my thoughts & views really changed?
Have I any measurable way, what would the depth gauge read?
On the core of my character - my values & beliefs?
Field the breadth of life, would there be anything left in me deep?
Will there only be cold hard surface,
With nothing underneath?

I like hair enough to whip it,
To have the wind pull it
And muss about my face.
It's reminiscent of living,
Makes me feel grounded.
Enough hair on my chin
That I can stroke it when I think,
Weather it with whiskey
And plenty of smoke.
I'd like to say it's for joy,
But lately it's for the nerves.