Expectations
Make fantasy
A weakness.

Buried under feeds
Filled with mediocre
Gold-lined shite —
Creativity cannot thrive
In a pay-per-spotlight world.

Remnants of
A thousand chances —
Dead promises,
Kept in vain.

Monuments to
A thousand moments —
Crucibles
Of love and pain.

Mosaics of
A thousand pieces —
Broken
To be remade.

Capable in thought nor deed —
My handicaps, internal.

Letting go
Is trust and fear —
Gone, but you're still here.

Scared we vent
And insecure
We scar.

Failing grip, the physical
Slipping, slipping, gone.
Tell me,
Who is it that falls?
Trembling hands, fingers slick
Left to hold
Not a twitch of sanity —
Not one bit,
No, naught at all.

Envy and jealousy,
Games of have-nots
And should-not-haves —
Unaware the parts they play.

Truth hits hard where faith is weak,
Pulling at the brittle branches
Of the trembling family tree —
Father, should we
Set our children free?

Multitudes with single shadows,
Moving on a single sign —
Written, spoken, or implied.

More deadly than durable,
These fragile ideologies —
Like little soldiers
Made of mud,
Marching through the rain.

Charlatans since dawn of time —
I'll take your tale, and make it mine,
Painting over history
With holy words and blood.

Soothing slumber,
Consciousness rebooting,
Auto-saved for a new day —
Erase my faults,
Update me.

Plan everything
Meticulously,
Then hinge it
On a whim.

Raised in the land
Of silent nos and maybe laters,
Affirmation is the monster
That hides under the bed.

Absent gods, failed icons,
Teachers, parents, preachers, heroes —
Friend or foe,
I let them go
And worship me.

Differentiation,
Excused discrimination —
Not only privilege separates
Achievement from choice.

Hate upon hate —
Blackening the world
With layer upon layer
Of dark, red paint.