Almost Nothing

I grew up on the fringes of civilized society

In gang infested neighborhoods

Amongst your unloved children

Precarious on the razor’s edge

=

Poverty is pervasive emptiness

Starvation in every sense

Some fill the void

With addiction

Or violence

I, chose to dream

Virulence pressed against the panes of my windows

And threatened to destroy

My home from within

But on and on I slept

Through every imaginable form of abuse

(Even unimaginable cruelty)

Breaking down

In every waking moment

=

I am not that strong

And I am not impervious

All these scars

Have worn me down

Down to

Almost

Nothing

=

(I think this is the last of them. I’ve been preoccupied with the move lately so if I have forgotten something remind me)

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Autocracy

Autocracy

Merciless, Extortionate

Stalking, Castigating, Diminishing

Working class penitentiary

Oppression

Warfare

I traced the distress

In your brow, trying to stay

Our expectations

*

Unhappy, we sought

In each other a depth

Not privately seized

*

Our failures exchanged

Lips but not hearts, spiteful

We cursed each other

*

Trauma lends to scars

To recurrent behaviors

Which favor bloodshed

*

Over rusted tears

Which belie a frailty

Atrocious to pride

*

We were two soldiers

Scarred so deeply we became

The  battle itself

Venom and Vice

The hourglass passes sideways

Through my esophagus

Time is horizontal like a trip wire

That’s why we can only

Ascend or descend

*

I am afraid of life and death equally

Seeing as energy can neither be created nor destroyed

I suspect that contrast is a form of hypnotism

Like the revolutions of a monochromatic wheel

*

There is something sympathetic about vice

The way is slides over a wooly exterior

And extinguishes all momentary threat

Vice is patient, it exceeds abstinence in resolve

*

Any step taken along a longitudinal axis

Will lead me indefensibly to addiction

My neurons have exhausted all ingenuity

They are too fastidious in their ventures

The occasional aberration does not

Expedite sobriety, recovery it seems,

Is the only true immortal

*

fictional

Idols

The city breeds

Disease

These lonely streets crowded with strangers

The noise of technology

Deafening

=

I have peered into every shop window

Starving, admiring

Lingering and counting my desperate budget

My bags always empty

On return

=

I measure greed by necessity

I am a collector of idols

Nowhere in my closest is my identity exposed

My soul is not scattered across my possessions either

(Perhaps in my books)

They are but a black hole

Drawing in more, revealing nothing

Cheap Prophet

We used to loiter

In the alleys of our minds

Disinterring our secrets

Like grave robbers

Scavenging for wealth

*

We marveled at our memories

As if each grotesque contour

Held some great revelation

As if we were dark heroes

Whose cabalistic afterimage

Would deter all nefarious intent

*

Therapy was for people

With weaker constitutions

We kept rusty scalpels

In our back pockets

Like dog-erred copies of

Bukowski’s “Ham on Rye”

Ready to bleed for any cause

*

Seduced by taphonomy

We concealed bottles in paper bags

Drinking from untasted philosophies

We were rank with inexperience

Intoxicated by our own inhumanity

And hazardously arrogant

The irony that we had become

Our own nemeses wasn’t lost

But youth entitled us to indiscretion

Hate

Hate

Dissonant, Edacious

Echoing, Seething, Unyielding

Progenitor of violence

Fear