Don’t be afraid
To show yourself —
Your quirks amuse me.

I am a
Forty-something teen
Pushing fifty,
Still chasing the dream.

You may wonder
Why I'd care,
For either way
I won't be there.
It's the principle
Of honest emotion.

Even stagnant —
Life is motion.

Recognise the pain?
What for?
Blinders on —
Ignore, ignore.

I see birds
Watching me, braving the cold,
Exposed in leafless trees,
Perhaps wondering
Why I'm out —
As do I,
But I
Am going
Home.

Veiled,
Attention the addiction.
See us, hear us, validate us.
No one listens.
No one watches.
No one cares —
Not for others.

Henceforth,
You'll walk alone —
I can't follow,
Even though I know
Without a doubt
That you'll get lost.
It's not my path any longer.

Naught less helpful than
Words of obvious wisdom,
Haulered from the sidelines —
When given bitter,
Add the sweet yourself.

Gradients —
Life shaded
By the ashes
Of a dream
Once meant
To paint it.

They make it hard
Not to be a bastard,
To keep giving
Undeserved damns.

I loved you
With all the shards
Of my heart,
And I guess
I'll have to love
The next
With many more.

Art stops
Striving for beauty
When reflecting
The dark that is
Our immortal soul.

There's her and her needs,
Then there's us
And what we can do
To please her —
By her grace,
That's her world
We live in.
At least,
That's how she sees it.

Maintaining contingencies,
Just in case
The worst takes place,
At the cost of living
All the time we waste this way.

Beaten by life,
Broken by the living —
Ever taking, never giving.

It was never about us —
Spotlights on the stage
To keep the audience
In darkness.

Evicted from my comfort zone,
Forced to turn the wheels of change —
Mournful, yet excited
What adventure comes my way.

History selective,
Cultural memory defective —
Ancestry, legacy, and heritage
Buried under edit black
Retconned to support
The forward thinking few.

Is there such a thing
As etiquette
Of letting go,
Of breaking up
Of moving on,
Treading on the shards
Of a once shared
And treasured past
Now dead and gone?