Learn to naysay your friends in the event of questioning.
It would be impossible for them to know more than you,
It’s your life.

Or at least, that’s what I had been taught.
To ravage, to scream, to have fought
The veriest foes whose faces ring familiar at night.
Those faces I had never thought to fight.

Or perhaps, the face I seek is mine.
In glorying self-help haikus–no rhythm, no rhyme,
I’m fine, I’m alright, I’m fine.
There’s really something wrong this time.

Already so old so young.
Teaching others to bite words on their tongues.
Black water flooding up my lungs,
Is telling me I’ve “hammered in the bung”.

And I swear, like traffic signs,
We yield to slow children.
My children, my kind.
Horizon of loneliness, small cats, the grapevine.
And wine…to guzzle down regrets and opine
An operetta of slime.