Vigilance of the Undesired

The institutions, they have labeled me.
Called me their wretched outcast
Their obsessed sloth
And I have not bartered a better deal

I have not asked to fit on your carousel
Or corralled to your tannery
My flesh, my ugly shell
Putrescible animal rawhide

I had not gone so willingly
Stripped of Hope
My psychotic love bottled
In a masonry jar for your analysis.

You’ve set laws making the
Births of unbreakable worlds
Unyielding wants
Punishable by death

I have been caught dreaming
And buried in fields of decaying annuals
Left to witness the theft of roses
Used up for statements
With clauses like, for now
Just for now.

Left sifting through garbage heaps
Filled with living wills
And the words “Do not Resuscitate”
Scratching at my brain
Trying to find some meaning in the irony.

You’ve laid your filthy list down on me
Spoken to all who encapsulate my
Attempted ghostings

Stifle his truth you command your cattle
For he will say to us
The normals,
The consumers, the thieves
The men that have killed
And prayed to the likeness
Of a corpse nailed to a tree
That asked not to be sacrificed
For someone’s absolution.

He will say,
I see it now
As I never have before
My tag sewn upon my flesh

And if I had not walked
A lifetime in graveyards
Amongst rotting animals
And bent to hear just a whimper
Just a clue to let me know
It has been worth the struggle
My knees would have remained flawless

Because I have put aside my need
To kneel at the altar with my
Bullet proof vest
Asking for forgiveness.

I make no apologies for being a human
I am the sand that rejected the tides
I live in cages with memories of death
Being a conspiracy by some unseen force
Leaving the world behind to
Swallow their inconsistencies.