I have reached the end of my rope.
Snap!
I’m fortunate given two lives to live.
In the first one, I had a childhood, traumatizing as it was.
Verbal, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.
Still, I was a happy guy.
I could walk the streets in safety, laugh at stupid jokes.
Everyone was a neighbor—the unwritten rule of community.
Across the land, I traveled, a tourist with his thumb out.
Met many fellow travelers on the road.
A tree climber by nature, the forest was my home.
I cried when I saw my first clear-cut.
Atlantic and Pacific, I swam in them both.
I’ve also seen garbage washed up on the shore.
But sunsets I’ve witnessed plenty, marveled at the moon and stars.
Walked this earth with my head held high,
sipping the juice of freedom.
Now, the juice stings my throat.
My nostrils explode, flooded with the smoke of tyranny.
My second life began with a lurch as I watched the banners fall.
Night calls on silence, but arsenic in the air reeks of subjugation.
The bloody scheme afoot, a fist in the face of liberty.
Down city streets, the ICEman rolls.
His blind eye of misery, tangled in a web of lies.
Conscience has no grounding
Morals out the door.
Two sets of rules: my set and no rules.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Gone goes accountability, compassion, and self-discipline.
Pepper spray and bullets, indiscriminate in their aim.
Fingers of the despot strangling my voice.
My blood sizzles—the gaslighting is unprecedented.
Call me old-fashioned, but I was born to be alive.
Not fettered with the chains of disillusion.
This country is now homeless.
Life has become an endless stream of atrocities.
Reality is what the Party decrees.
But I reject that premise.
So, I start my third life, a life of staunch resistance.
The rope has snapped, and I’m standing on Mother Earth.
My second life of gloom and futility, rendered obsolete.
As I peel the veil of cacophony, the music rings clear.
Once again, I see neighbors rising to the cause.
I believe the sea of humanity will break on these shores.
So I pull out my pen, write this poem.
The ash-cloud of illusion dissipates.
In its place, a formidable expression of art.
