I don’t have the street smarts to survive.

To stay alive, my body aches with the living
fulfilling material angst.

To consume, and to thrive

we take our strides in fancy shoes

and waxed rides.

They say the sky is the limit
so they draw it at the cityscapes
pressing higher past the skyline

as men that reach for godliness

can't escape gravity.
They smother sunlight
and its tangible rays,
realer than monetary gains
illuminating days on the ground
brighter than casino signs
but the ads will always battle to shine.

Once I looked up, and saw the sky was empty.

I found the stars in the broken glass

on sidewalks under bus stops

sticking to my flip flops

staring back like cheap diamonds

beckoning, “make a wish.”

We narch in straight lines carved into stony paths.
Our breaths are just undulating
to the beat of ticking time and traffic signs.
We are separated in forests of chopped, sanded,
paint dripping trees marked with rosewood x's.
I've moved from enough houses to know
these were never our homes
but the memories nurse us
until our minds fade away
with the rusting of our bodies.

Obeying this fate is easy as falling,
but our species made planes
to cradle our bodies place to place
through the nitrogen atmosphere
in tin cans of liberation
of human calibration.
To and from, we wander,
scuffling off with jet lag into a foreign land
to zig zag along fate with passport in hand.

I'm afraid of the gears and cogs
growing in my heart -

oiled and plastic,

We paint the Earth with her blood

and I trample

on paradise with the masses.