Mercurial

I’m somewhat mercurial,
A revenant of flesh,
I drift about as if on a breeze,
Missed calls and messages on read,
I’m a periphery person,
Never in true focus,
Ever on the outside,
I’ll be a stranger to a friend one moment,
And a friend to a stranger the next,

My whims deviate on a dime,
I’m not duplicitous,
Not double-dealing,
No ill will do I intend,
My mood and soul are just pulled all over,
Dragged as if by shifting tides,
To each cardinal direction,
Wishing for solitude in one breath,
And longing for companionship the next.

In The Back

We’ve all been stabbed in the back,
Either by our own mind or by another,
Either by past or personage,
The heat is the same,

It changes you,
Mutates you,
It turns your blood to acid,
In turn calcifying you to the outside,

It will influence you before you know it,
As if a dark spirit was bestowed on you,
Inevitably it leads you to pay it forward,
Malice is an universal human trait after all,

My friends,
I sympathize of course,
Betrayal is a hell of a narcotic,
And spite is the chaser.

Pall of Wrong

A rather foul pall has fallen,
On my mind and mood,
A fog over every facet of my life,
Something just feels wrong,
Like everything out of focus,
An insidious change of perception,
With no explanation,

The skies seem ever more grey,
Even as they glow blue,
Ambrosia and champagne in my mouth,
Tastes as bland as dust,
Social plans are as hounds,
Pursuing me as frightened prey,
The best things in life going somehow incorrect,

In the lukewarm winds of time,
I hope this pall shall blow away,
For it’s no way to exist,
To feel innately wrong.

Poor Fool

There once was a rather quaint man,
Who was something of a fool,
Not of the royal court variety you understand,
But a fool of innocent folly,
A little touched perhaps,
Clumsy in the extreme,
Yet this clumsiness was somehow blessed by Plutus,
Received of some idiotic luck,

He would trip into the best outcomes,
Face-first into free change and treasure,
He’d bump his head and always recall the way,
Fumble words in just the right manner,
The tears in his suit would flaunt his best features,
A simple jester of modern life,
An honest dunce he was,
It was a pity what befell him,

Luck always runs out.

Crystalline Sky

That time at the lake,
As the mist looked on expectedly,
When I cried sad crystals,
And they flew skyward,
Joining hands with constellations,
It was then that I knew,
As my eyes still spilled celestial ink,
That the night sky was built on hurt lovers,
Cosmic beauty derived from pain,
The night was an anthology of romantic tragedies,
A sky of stories,
A landscape painting of bloodily cut diamonds,
Bled on to the firmament by the brush of our tears.

Espionage

Let me tell you a story,
A yarn of spies and the spied upon,
Of a world under our own,
A world of shadow and masks,
A world we are not privy to,
For the better,

She is a woman,
But also an agent,
A clandestine weapon with fake lashes,
All false wigs and suppressors,
A dame of deception,
She had slain tyrants while wearing unfamiliar faces,
She once had a lover,
But the flag stole him under its yolk,

He is a man,
But also a tool,
An extension of his nations left hand,
All handguns and sabotage,
An artist of wetwork,
No foreign dossier is safe from his gloves,
He longed for a normal life once,
But the flag kept drawing him back,

It’s a tale of two nations,
A love story spelled out in gunshots and dead drops,
Of two souls under opposing masters,
Once brought together by their humanity,
But rent asunder by the flags inhumanity,
Forced in future to kiss via crosshairs.

Rotten Vulture

Atop a statue once depicting liberty,
Perches a foul creature,
An avian actor,
Decaying piece by ruinous piece,
A scavenger feigning regality,
A vulture wearing the feathers of an eagle,
Mould and droppings falling upon a flag,

Nonetheless this animal is loved and reviled both,
Regarded in both sycophantic and tyrannical aviaries,
It wants not for fodder,
The carcass of a republic lies below,
So it rends at putrid meat no longer protected,
Picking at the scraps of the citizenry,
The flesh of a populace with potential,

Each wing of this beast is dyed an opposing shade,
One crimson,
The other a dull blue,
Battling over which part to gnaw at,
Even as they rot and fester,
But make no mistake,
Both factions are wings of the same rotten vulture.

Bassline

Do you feel that bass?
That tone in the atmosphere,
A low hum in sequence,
Pounding like artillery,
You begin to sway at the sound,
Intoxicating as it is,
It’s a legal high,
A sonic assault upon your composure,
A hysteria of the limbs,
It threatens to shatter your shell,
Make you move against your judgement,

It’s only a matter of time,
The beat continues unabated,
You’ll dance to this bassline,
With a grin that’d make the joker blush.

Abyssal

The waves are the embodiment of mystery,
An oblivion of crushing weight and shadow,
More unknown than the dark side of the moon,
Though its wane and wax has a rhythmic aria to it,
The abyss has a song all its own,
A dread tune,
Like tentacles licking at your eardrums,
Distorted static of whalesong,
The crunch of crabshell underfoot,
Its lyrics manifest as thalassophobia,
A warning in the mind,
Sharks teeth and squid beaks upon your nape,
Salt and brine on your tongue,
The knowledge that man is not welcome.

The Screen

I know that monitor is not just a device,
I know what it means to you,
It’s your social safe space,
The real world was always too bitter,
You met these souls without seeing their faces,
Side by side exploring myriad galaxies,
Across battlefields rendered in digital space,
Amicable rivalries upon podiums that never were,
They were and are real,
They are not mere pixels and handles,
They are friends,
Past and present,
And perhaps future also,
People not profiles,
Place a hand upon the screen,
You can feel their palms against yours.