The Future

In the deepest depths of my perception,

I find myself lost in the alcoves of misguided intensions. 

Buried beneath the cobbled streets

The war of decimals and percentiles rages

While the jester smiles with a faint grin.

The chill of the damp venom burns the nostrils

Like the ashy room in the back of an old saloon. 

Railroad tracks that have no end.

In the black abyss

With its ivory keys stretching across the imagination. 

Winter’s chill splashing against the nakedness,

Lost but found. 

Rattling and the hum of a bruised engine,

Caressing the lips of the fallen soldier,

Crashing upon the precipice of some untold virtue.

At peace, at the final rest,

Fire encompasses the soul and becomes one. 

Remembering

I haven’t traveled all that much, but I’ve been just about everywhere.

I’ve been down the back roads and in the dark alleyways with their smoke filled lamps and their musty stoops and porches,

filled their jesters and clowns and hipsters and smokers, plotting and philosophizing the end.

I’ve seen a lot of things, but I don’t really remember all that much.

Contemplating civil disobedience with the alter boys and the jocks and the stoners in the back stairwells with the fresh sea breeze tickling the nostrils.

I haven’t said a lot of things, but I have had a lot to say.

With the cutters and the goths and the depressed behind closed doors with a tear, talking about nothing at all, nothing really good anyway.

I went to prison once or at least that’s what it seamed like.

I went to prison once behind lock and key,

Dull uniforms and set schedules, and guards,

Visitors, and crooks and thieves,

Fighters and tweekers,

Bikers, the insane, the crazy, the sad, the lonely, and the silence.

I went to prison once and I saw death’s eyes.

I went to prison once and I left a new man.

I never noticed the world until I was on the inside looking out.

I never saw beauty until I couldn’t see it at all.

I didn’t notice nature until all that was left of it was hanging on a wall.

I didn’t notice life until I left it.

I didn’t really notice anything, until I wanted it all.

Truth

The black marauding figures in their much maligned coats walk around pave less streets in the moonlit emptiness.   

Rising smoke rings of question marks dance upon the faint tree tops and the windowless shacks stacked together forming a capitalist percentile.

Transfixed on the eyes of ageless wonder, but upon the birthing breast is where the animal hunger lays deeply rooted.

Wrapped in nakedness and swine, ink splotched rags cover more than the shroud of a warm blanket.

Literate nothingness and sensible gibberish mask the foul stench of sweet irony. 

Chaos cracks the concrete in the depths of the facade, leaking through like Pandora’s box.

Fire torches the swift feather as the absence of light turns to the burnt embers of love’s tender place.

The mystical fantasy sucks in the black hole of daze past, swirling faster into the cold spring brook. 

The door shakes upon its rusty hinges crying out at me, yelling and tears flowing, crashing against the tyranny and misguided virtue. 

Shaking like the chill of morning, a dove sweeps to the crossroads of abandoned tracks, left behind for the blind wishers to use.

The quiet hum of incessant conformity gives birth to ageless brutality with a cheerful grin.

The mountaintops dethroned with fear in their hearts, cursing quietly with the dead.

Buried bones sit in majestic palaces upon our feet, listening to the beat of rather tragic tunes while the candle lit is but a faint memory placed in their tombs.   

Old Man

Loose change, a young pup on a chain,

Empty doorways with no name.

Nonconformity with a broken frame,

Youthful ingenuity looking all the same.

Those at a higher table sit and stare,

Scowling with every seething glare.

An epitaph placed and marked,

Doomsday blamed for some generational spark.

The fault is not ours for such a decay,

Look only at yourselves and your display.

To say I stand for nothing is a lie,

You just don’t want to hear the truth that will dethrone you from your perch in the sky.

Call me anything but a fraud,

Originality is my virtue, of which you should applaud.

Maybe thirty years from now I will share your view,

But, to be honest, I hate everything about you.