Simple

 Being inclined to the over active mind 

makes you vulnerable

in ways unimaginable

to folk who’ve never been waifs or strays.

Every step on the back foot, 

drawing predatory thoughts and hungry looks

to scurrying attempts at connection.

This world seems so simple,

to those who find it simple.

The stacked deck favours the dealer.

Beg, borrow, steal 

mimic, mask. Never reveal

the hollow homunculus you feel,

or worse! Intensely solipsistic;

the only real person in a sea holographic

and loneliness becomes it's own sad satisfaction.

A “rebellion is better than tears” reaction

that eats at your happiness and interactions

until you're accustomed to numb.

You watch others’ battles won,

disaffected, trying to work out how it's done

or at least avoid pitfalls in the future.

And with time an illusory feature 

of other people's lives, who can plan anyway?

Why strive to do more than survive

when that's all you can manage most days?

And that's pushing it.

The path out of the shit is too well disguised

and buried behind the sharks’ smiling lies.

Societal standards seem illogically unwise

and they play the games with loaded dice

and rules they won't explain.

Every minute gain is minimised

by mistaken intentions. Subtle knives

and not so subtle, wasted time 

of trauma born. Mistrustful eyes

turn away from the world.

and back to the half life of disconnection.

That way is safer.

This world is simple

to those who find it simple.

By all means, take advantage of your advantages,

but notice the disadvantaged are taken advantage of

by systems they can't get a purchase on,

and people they dared to rely upon.

And every dismissive assumption you hold

in hands that have never been burned by the cold

is a nail on the bed you told

 us we made on our own.

So we'd better lie in it.

I'm not buying it.

This dance of the butterflies 

is so despised despite it's beauty.

Our average age on day of death is only 12 plus 40.

Disparities so distant instances of juxtaposition jarr intensely out of rhythm and with lyrical precision present suffering as noble when it's not.

It's not.

Applauding us for overcoming obstacles you placed

as if adjudicators in some Ninja Warrior race

feels disingenuous at best.

Gladiators, ready?!

Potential lost is our Roman empire.

No one here dreams of paradise.

This world is simple

 to those who find it simple.

Not the ones you label simple.

They're the most complex of all.

Annie Ziyah Attacks

Annie Ziyah would drink tea

but wrings her hands incessantly.

Hunched and bunched and bundled in her cardigan

she is the plague of panicked whispers behind pleasant conversation.

She is “what if?”; “what then?”; “this could go wrong!”

She is the worst conclusion jumped to

with a wheedle extra strong.

Eyebrows arcing over horn-rimmed lenses

Salt and pepper ‘do resembling avian garden fences

This sorceress of scandal wields her spells with devastating zeal:

Raising pulses, stealing breath,

 clothing stained by seeping sweat,

memories wiped, voices silenced

over-ridden by ‘boom-boom-boom’.

her gristly grip gets hold.

You feel the suffocating room

close in around you and as the blackness swells-

you’re overwhelmed

Annie Ziyah sips her tea,

dips eyebrows momentarily

then raises them, a new disaster hatched.

She’s ready to fight the next match.

Comprehensive Revelation

They’ve worked out I’m a cyclist, but not a pedaled clown.

I don’t take ‘roids to speed me up, I use yellows to slow me down

and I need stabilizers still, or I can’t get ‘round corners

without gaining either enemies or self-destructive fawners.

I sashay a land of sinkholes, of glorious gushing geysers;

of embarrassment and excellence in equally enormous sizes.

Every other diag-nonsense has appeared to be just that

but this one fits as snugly as sub-cutaneous fat.

Visceral rage throttles rational thought.

No focus. Too many ideas cavorting.

Spitting out flows to fight my fate.

Racing up and down with no baseline break.

I know it’s medicatable, I know that there is therapy

but redefining thought processes doesn’t seem to work for me.

All this linguistic trickery is far too far innate to me

for all their forms of CBT to make a difference you can see.

I’ll give it another go, you know?

God knows, since the closure of the floatation tank

I’m irrationally rankle-able at an elevated pace.

I’ll go back to star jumps, routines and early starts

to fight off the fidgets, the doldrums and broken hearts.

The mechanics of coping shook their heads in despair

when they saw my brakes in such disrepair

but what state would you be turning up to work in

if your life felt like bungee jumping in a whirlwind?

Nihilistic hedonist, life and soul;

or following the wind up bird into the endless hole.