brief mortality

 

We walk through endless intersecting deserts
observing strangers pass us through windows
speeding in their vehicles,
for the sake of easy living.

We watch our cities decaying
more like fruits that are rotting
as we maintain the outsides clean
with power washing off the cigarettes.

This is the reality we have adopted
left to us like gift wrap
on christmas, with morals about knowing
what is good and what is foolish evil.

The young adopt a starving city,
observing the freedom as time keeps passing
causing profit into spoiled drugs and drinking,
the young adopt into wealthy inheritance.

So follows after, further ego boasting,
time left for working, music always hollering
about single dating, breakups, and brief love
baiting.

People wearing make up, artificial piercings,
markings etched onto their skin so proudly,
all to cover over beauty, who they are, truly.

People talk on smart phones, tablets, keyboards,
attempting to be so close in a world
that isn't worth going outdoors anymore.

You know, A lack of leadership leads into corruption,
and poverty is a man made error in society,
and fantasy is a lot more stable than profit working.

All this because we await a hero rather than
learning from a heros footing.

The next Great President, the wealthy CEO job maker,
the missing Mr. Rogers educating etiquette.

So goes humanity, a collapsing sand form in failure
little by little learning to be stable, to know love,
to appreciate what is life, and brief mortality.

Poem for the loveless

I write poems for the loveless likewise
never to be fated, in this existence,
chasing shadows like phantoms
disappearing from our reach.

Just like shadows walking inside cities
observing surely the beautiful
and distant in soul matching.

What will suffice the reason
to see if we can be together?

No one talks. No one talks.

In this world we pretend to be so far,
the young suffer heart problems
in a fleeting courtship chorus
the verse is only the pause,
society moves on, onto jobs,
onto mindless cowards wanting more,
onto seeing only the markets fall,
and what of this nuclear romance
appearing only in our spatial movies?

Our love life contains false actors portraying
how ideal life is so connected for a family.

Outside movie tickets is the wind,
the chilling air of single ghosts,
all hovering into twilights,
wanting something else.

So too is this world, prioritizing,
a product before a thought,
an idea that we could find love
before we're rich enough.

07.15.23

The War on Simple Living

I want you to stand here where I was
overlooking the city
pockets full of cash holding onto
full time jobs and a caffeine fever
that I loved.

Stand and notice this is when you are
most beloved, accepted by the cashiers
in the mall, treated like a brother in a
diner stall, greeted like a friend
to college admissions.

This is the life you so praise pleasure
boasting all about new skills, and stocks,
and side hustles;
Until,

you find yourself laid off
having payments on the call
having no one to lean on
when you're roadstuck in your car.

Watch
how all your income drops
like gas
sinking until its gone.

This life, you so much praise,
has placed you at its end
and dropped you when you left.

You'll notice then like me
the world around you suffering.

The weak that can not work,
and the old whom work into the bone,

the women with their child at home,
and the young that live in hunger woes,

the sweatshops when you make a store,
the jobs for only making dough in molds,

the empty lots paved over daily jobs,
the resources all towards profit growth,

all here beside you when you did not know
out of ignorance, out of comfort,
out of living in social norms

in an exclusive money centered world
where people aim for richness
over simply working to go home.

A society that moves on when you're broke
when you cant afford to travel anymore
when you notice everything contains barcodes.

Where will you now go
to pretend
that you didn't see the poor?

The people you disown
the moment you return
back into the stores, the apartments,
the only served, the valued pursed,
everywhere behind the line

that shields the human worth.


I tell you, when you leave,
do not forget us
when you're spending green.

07.10.23

Fighting over freedom we don't even give ourselves

 I write poems on old paper reminiscing
how I use to love writing on new paper
reminding myself that I was always spoiled.

In this living, we never cherish anything.
Our shoes, about six months are thrown out
somewhere in the ghetto sidewalks.
Our clothes, smell of only asphalt
where we were last sitting outside
watching satellite stars.

I tell you
living here too long has me far gone
from the earth, and what is freedom.
I ask you
how much is your love worth
and can I buy myself into happiness.

You say
if I need a price then it is what is
killing me, tainting my thoughts
into thinking it is what I need now.

How strange,
that most things have left me
when I grew up out of teenage dreaming.

In this poverty, the importance remains
the simple everyday, the knowing who I am,
the moments that we share without spending.

If we need a three course meal, a gift,
an expensive gas trip on mother's day,
are we satisfying our mothers or corporations?

I tell you, this living has us thinking we are
two the same depending on spending to be
beloved.

I can only see us growing in this insanity
watching mirrored reflections and yet
feeling like were missing something
before we feel this beautiful.

So I am in this living room, amidst the calm
of piano notes and the static radio
while others enter screaming, always in a hurry,

and the city outside approaching placing more
pricetags in this monthly freedom
just for me to repeat and ask you

how much will it cost to be left alone
to be writing novels while the cities go to war.