We, the people of this country, in your eyes are:

babblers, bachelors, bafflers, baiters, barkers,
beakers, beaters, brawlers, blamers, beggars,
bloaters, bloopers, bombers, boozers, blunders,
bruisers, bafflers, bluffers, burglars and burners.

That's why you feel compelled to keep your foot on our heads
keep us down, put us down, push us down
subjugate us, belittle us, berate us.

We, the people of this country, in our eyes are:

butlers, bouncers, bakers, buyers, barbers,
cake-makers, delivery-takers, cocktail-shakers,
taxi drivers, cancer survivors, employers and hirers,
music makers, entertainers, window washers, foster takers,
plasterers, carpenters, scaffolders, sparks and builders,
boxers, carers, coaches, tailors, shoe makers,
designers, illustrators, multi-language facilitators,
dog walkers, dog trainers, bikers and cycle couriers,
doctors and nurses and all the emergency services.

We are the People, the reason you are where you are now
you sometimes forget that we exist as people, somehow
locked in your ivory towers with gold plated showers
and MP expenses and investment banker pretenses
this is not theater, its real life drama, its not just a bluff
its time to stand up
and say enough is enough.

Perhaps I have stumbled upon the root of insecurity
Of why we judge ourselves so shapely
And shame ourselves into uncertainty
I think that every day we walk around
Comparing ourselves to other people’s performances
We are not granted back stage passes to their behind the scenes
We only see their highlight reel
The cut and pasted snapshots of themselves
That they have chosen to present to the outside world
All of the bloopers and uncut scenes we are only capable of seeing
In ourselves -are in other people, invisible.
It’s not fair.
To compare a perfectly edited version of a person
To another whose flaws are all too visible.
This is why we feel inadequate.

I got high by myself
and thought about my father.
I wonder whom or what he thinks about before
he does disappointing things.

I thought about how I’m scared to lose
my mother, If when she’s gone
I’ll remember what she smells like,
the sound of her laugh.

I called you over, hoping you’d accidentally
fall asleep on my couch.
I’ve been having those dreams about trains again,
and you know how much I hate thinking about being on time.

We watched news bloopers
and laughed until our bellies hurt.

I was surprised when you told me
that my presence made you feel calm;

my mind had been screaming for so long
that I forgot I had a presence to begin with.

I have an obsession with flaws.

It’s strange to see what
complete opposite
ends of the spectrum
we stand relevant
to this statement though.

I am the auto-tuned movie track
You're the acoustic.

With myself
my obsession with flaws means
they’re always on my mind,
and I'm at all times thinking
about what I'm doing
to make sure that I am presenting
only my highlight reel.

But with you,
I see your intro to ending to bloopers and behind the scenes
and although
there are faults woven
throughout every scene,
they just make you all the more lovely.

How is it possible to love
every bit of imperfections in the person
you chose to get to know the best,
but with the person you know
inside and out without trying,
every imperfection sticks you more
into a spiderweb of hatred?

I have an obsession with flaws.

As soon as you are gone, my body cries for you to begin again.
My bones remember your weight,
crushing bliss.
Half-spun moments free from thought or care or existing
I am lost, in you.
I am found.

Lover, I do not know whether you are spinning our tale
or unraveling it.
Never has love felt so fragile or unbreakable,
your skillful hands twisting my wishes into ribbons,
leaving them scattered on the floor
next to the denim husks of our discarded selves.

I fear this mistake.
I fear that we will not make it often enough.
Memorizing your outline, I make my provisions for your eventual leave-taking.
Everything must go.

I carry you with me,
escaping into the strange sweetness of your smile.
Poetry is your broad shoulders
turned away from me and feigning sleep.
I do not weep.

Perhaps this is the ending,
slowly fading, credits rolling, riddled with bloopers a casual audience will never see.
Maybe the sum-total of my love for you will be told
in bleary-eyed mornings, wordless hugs on my way out the door.
But Lover, you have forgotten the heart of the one who loves you,
one who knew your soul before your body.
I am gracelessly, unremittingly hopeful
and perhaps this is the darkness that falls just before the phoenix sings,
raising the dawn.

If love and marriage were destined to exist with stipulations and self made complications, maybe  someone should have posted the rules. How is it you fall in love with someone knowing their ways but your comfort settles, now you want them to change. I have to wonder as this doesn't make sense, you were attracted to me because I wasn't fake, yet now you want me to transform into something and someone else? We use to have discussions about each other's opinions , now it's your way or no way, we can't agree to disagree because you have to be right , I told you when I met you I would rather use my energy in the bedroom with you than exert it on a useless fight .. Relationships should be one of the easier things in life . If you aim to please the one that you love and put  them first and your partner do the same in return, how could this go wrong? Stop spitting the vinum from your tongue contrary to what you believe , there will come a day when you find yourself having to swallow your own vinum and I can assure you it won't taste as good going down as it did when you were spitting it out.  Stop saying your childish words if you only knew how they made you look , "if I believe it to be true then it is" what does that even mean? A man with no conscience can't have a soul and with no soul , you can't love because love is a commitment based on loyalty and trust and without having a conscience there would be no consequences or feeling of remorse for your choices. Everyone deserves to be who they are and treated with respect. One more thing before my closing thought. Tell me why it is if your woman dresses up for you in a more revealing attire, you  criticise every little thing but yet we can be out in public and a woman walk by with the same attire and your eyes pop out of your head.

our lives twist and turn
ebb and flow

our past
the knuckles of twigs to branches
the snake of a meandering river
creating lakes,
a hand and a reflection of
current state

there was beauty there -
nervous bodies collapsing
on each other, peacetime
handsaws dividing time
like honorary saints

we harpooned chaotic hopes
and dreams, orphaned our logic,
made love in a tree under glittering
moons

if only it was
so poetic

really, just cannibalistic
lonesome ******
looking for an angry fix
vultures aflutter for a carcass

perhaps that was me
not you, no matter

our magnetic climaxes
of mind and flesh only
bloopers of lives just
begun

now
holding my daughters in these
hands, my hands, smugglers of
truth and lies, i hold blind hope,
whisper conspiracies in their ears:

“the only way to win is forgiveness and love,
religion is a man’s fairytale they’d like you to believe,
the apocalypse will be man’s not god's,
politics is a man’s excuse for action,
love is a man’s lie for ***,
poverty is a man’s idea of justice,
war is a deformity of man’s making,
thank god you’re a woman!”

our disfigured past has
changed the genetic genome
of unimportant history, given me voice
and perspective

i can’t be sorry,
for the lies i’ve told,
the love and hate i’ve wrought,
its the greasy yarn of my soul
i weave in a simple shack of promise,
that, they’ll be better than me

i can’t be sorry

I need a computer, I can not type
Backspace to eliminate mistakes I make
To correct a defect I might have made
So I can drop more lines, more Good or Bad Vibes

I need a pencil, I can not write
erasers to remove bloopers I missed at first sight
To fix any disasters after my hand wrote backward
So I can forget before, and think of what comes after.

At 12:32 am,
When my phone is at 19%,
And my teeth hurt,
And I feel proud because I made a
Somewhat-not so-healthy smoothie,
I will remember you.
I will go through the bloopers from our
Old school films;
Don’t worry,
It’s hard to forget memories that make you feel.
It is hard to forget the soreness of laughter
It is hard,
To forget,
The stinging of tears
And as those salty drops roll down my face
I will remember you.
I will pluck each grain of sand
From the hourglass that is me and
I
Will
Watch.
I will listen
to the ghost of gossip
And I will see
the basketball boys again
And I will smell the sweet shampoo of you’re hair
Or maybe it was her hair;
I don’t remember.
It all blends in...
And I will feel the pounding of my steps
As you chase after me up the school stairs.
And we hide in a long lost game of tag
That was so important at the time.
But even as I remember you,
I will forget you.
I won’t quite know,
Which is which anymore.
In 10 years,
Our friendships will be lost.
And the videos I have
Of us being ourselves,
I will not recognize.
Because I am not that person anymore
And I won’t remember,
Why this was so important to me.
Because it won’t be.
“You are too far from perfect to be beautiful,”
You said to me once.
But aren’t we all?

Market street
Bloopers in blue uniforms
Flat tops and red noses
Pontificate from soapboxes
To cantankerous clowns inciting protest
Bar brawling streets ignite a haversack generation
Of tattoos and hypocrites
That feast on double shots and cigarettes
Trying to control the uncontrollable
Nowhere man struts alone through Jonestown
Tripping over his tongue
While smoking his mind
Through yesterday's glass pipe of sorrows
Television, coffee bean synergy
Reluctant paraphernalia
Intravenous meat living to the beat
Of an empty drum
Raz a ma tazz
Reactive
Inactive
Suffering serene serfs
***** by the hunger of a lost youth
The sequencer of the sequential runs wild
The freedom bird flies
Sings songs for the senseless
The senseless sing along
Presidents and prisoners have *******
Equal in the void
The ******* queen whets her lips
Seven against Thebes
Rorschach tests refute Walt Whitman
Festivals for the oppressed
Youthful vigor gives way to Korsakoff’s syndrome
A diseased reality of horned rabbits
Whim wham whining
The universal ******* takes refuge
In the autonomy of the city
And I am the rangefinder
The random man
A teary eyed son of the Buddha lands
Looking for a cheap peep show