Fortune

 “Fortune favours the brave” they say

in tones taut with untruth.

I'm cornered forcing

My face forward 

Hackles rising inside the fortress 

Of knives that I bought

With the battles I fought 

Just to get off my knees in the first place.

This misplaced faith reveals itself

a flasher in a dirty mac

Fangs cracked in grimace,

brown and beastly. 

I'm not easily broken.

Frustrated, choking

on unspoken fury, yes. 

Was I ever anything less?

With my back to three walls 

I'll chimney-crawl

Palms hot and slipping, knees burning, toes curling

Til I'm above it all.

I'm more than capable 

Your tricks pitiful, escapable.

Their hallmark unmistakable 

Little poison smirks and shirked responsibilities 

Leaving slickly silvered schistosomiasistic slithering ribbons of parasitic sleaze 

everywhere.

Like angel hair

 festoons in a Grimm fairytale forest

Leading not to freedom, but a furnace.

Adrift now on spinnerets deftly thrown threads

Money spiders claim me as their own.

 I dread

The battles ahead.

Despite my history of victory 

Complacency's amphigory

because 

The Future Belongs To Those Who Can See It Coming 

and I'm running towards it

My awestricken orbits

Entranced in the audit

Of plausible plaudits

Presented by Hope as possible pathways

To choose.

It's not a very cunning ruse, I'll admit that

But the patterns tell all, they love a bit of chit chat.

It's no mystery,

This cyclical long-form repetition 

of communal maladaptive dreams.

But Morpheus has forsaken me these past 30 years.

This sleepless lucidity is the blessing in the curse.

I'm well versed in the machinations and the misery.

You play chess 3D and I'm bored of games.

This hue and cry of shameful failures,

baying hounds on the heath 

“On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everything drops to zero”

Entropy and Apathy the anti-muses informing your decisions. 

Efforts at improvement abandoned, branded unrealistic by pessimism.

But pendulums swing by definition 

and your barbs of derision are blunted

By every ticking moment spent

In the prism of crystal vision.

Choose well.

Or perish.

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.