The Pursuit and Sad Reality

The Pursuit and Sad Reality…

I broke bread with the sinners, had dinners with men,

Toast the dead with some liquor, had a sip for the land.

I spoke trends with dark figures, as to further the plans,

with the scope infrared, and the trigger finger to brand

I hoped then to consider of the much bigger demands

To cloak what I said and give the sinner’s remand

got choked up instead, let my inner killer rebrand,

Alone I re-wed with the sinners and killers at hand

But heavy is the crown, and I am too far from deserving

I already frown about the parts of this hurting

The levee had drowned in a sea of scars from these burdens

to let free the beacons I lifeguard for keen observing

From pennies, my reasons, with cigars huffed and burning

to grant the demons a sneak peek of their vanguard asserting

Buried and bleeding ‘til sundown, with these scars ever searching

And their chants profound, doublespeak like a key witness flirting

In nights where I bunked with my eyes glued wide open

the trigger is so cold like a cave denuded and frozen

Tight grip on the pump and I baptize a few chosen

with rigor to those who pose like graveyards still unbroken

How traffic lights to a drunk are viewed out of focus

The bigger picture unfolds and enslaves all the moments

If plights were mere speed bumps, reprised as crude omens

We could snigger at the hold or refrain at the notion

But life still happens, and this balance is reaction, so when

The strife taps in, to the chalice you drank from when life happened

As these knife atoms that caused malice for when you blacked out then,

Had your life flapping, in the silent breezes in the pact that I’m tight packed in.

In due time these dragons and cowards, were not in fact friends,

With their eyes hanging and calloused reaction when its smacks akin—

To how these skies blacken, the mind challenged, and the flashback wins

When that knife sharpens, the one in your back like a talon, impacted in.

But these friends you call friends have they made their amends

And the burden you call living, does it come with an end?

You try to ascend, contend, but will it pay dividends,

is the hurting still lifting if it can’t truly transcend

Does breaking bread with your friends mean your friends made amends?

Or is this version still shifting to numb and condemn?

But all that depends if your ends have the means to bookend

Depend on the learning for forgiving so that you may comprehend

That between these two temples lies a vast monastery

with these degrees to tease of these levels I cast and carry

And friendship to me is a vessel that’s at the least not arbitrary

Alone I proceed; with freedom the weapon, to at long last vary

Untethered needs, I seed for the mental, and although cautionary

This tale is a canteen dream for those who revel and die as a visionary

Though routine these life streams, my pencils rise as necessary

So I write rhyme schemes to mentally advise to the wary.

It’s kind of scary how these sinners and winners come back

And the lines that they carry at dinners just linger and lack

What blinds them will bury them with fingers to triggers intact

Behind all the berries and gingers and snifters of cognac

I’m consigned to the jury that mirrors and differs from that

To define out of blurry, the pictures that hinder our stacks

Then mainline the unwary to the dead ringers and spinners I track

On line at the commissary, where I tend her and weather her attacks

About how to react to complaints when reality reacts

How the lacquer and paint; paint a degree of the facts

And this art a fact with artifacts that won’t feint the ability to attract

In the abstract all tucked up and quaint, when your world from your heart detracts

when you can’t detect the sinners from the saints and see you’ve been left unbacked

You exact and retaliate, a man alone, the apogee of a life undergoing refraction

In the impact of change, when you paint, and the world really protracts

You realize the pact you made, to live every day in enquiry, to make up for what you lack.

Not everyone is perfect…but we can damn sure try to be.

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Paul Neglia

Proud father of 3. Part time writer of poetry and short stories. I want to paint the world in but a few words.

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