Out of bounds
Within expectations,
Sliding scales of
Acceptable deviation —
Outliers became
The new normal, somehow.

Clashing fates,
To hate and be hated,
To hurt and be hurt,
To lose and get lost —
Costs be damned,
We’ll see this through
Our way.
Righteous or not.

Scream into the silence,
That the pain we drag behind us,
The hardship that defined us,
May never rise again.

Due diligence
Neglected —
Opinions, perspectives,
Cemented
In the absence of facts.

Diversity,
Our segregation,
Placing weight
On all we're not —
Celebrate all we share,
Not what sets us apart.

Consciousness, a fantasy
Projected on the haze —
Illusions sent to navigate,
Aided to abide our days
Traveling
The mortal maze.

All ducks aligned,
All stories straight —
All of it mine,
None of it fate.

Willful sink
The bleakest truths
To depths ignored,
But not forgotten.

Tomorrow, close enough
To make us believe
That we can plan as far
As we think we can see.

Gimme heart,
Soul music,
Life's rhythm
Hiding from the algorithm,
Out of spotlight
On the B-side of Spotify —
Tunes that make even
Time itself stop and listen
For a minute or
Two, three, four,
Before dancing us by.

Once upon a time
We’d thought it
Signs heralding
The end times —
A comet,
A second moon,
Global northern lights.
Now,
We just look up,
And smile each night.

Arrogant and ignorant
Reaching for the light,
We merely cracked the clouds
Trying to break the sky.

Uncharted,
Spores sprouting
Into the unfamiliar —
The past a map
Obsolete
For what lies ahead.

A character, an outlier,
A truth too far removed
From comfortable —
Call it what you will,
The problem
Isn't me.

Doubt, the entropy,
Our pillar of uncertainty,
Always there to remind us —
Nothing ever stays the same.

Altars to
The things we lost,
The things we hate,
The things we fear —
Our thoughts, a testament
To the weight
We’ve learned to bear.

Still here,
Not because I
Chose to stay —
I am the one
That never got away.

Learning everything
I found out
Hardly anything is
Worth the paper
The lesson’s written on.
Pride and arrogance,
We follow
Self-centered men and women,
Desperate to make their mark
Before they move on.

Ignorant,
Laughing, playing,
Dancing with
The end among us,
Weaving lives
In knots and ties,
Round and round the start.

To find myself again,
In what's suppressed
And what's forgotten,
What got left behind
And flattened
Under a lifetime of desire
In the little things that haunt me,
In the dreams that slip away
Upon waking
Into who I've never been.