Tristan Robert Lange

UP IN SMOKE AGAIN WITHOUT REASON

Undertow of an unravelling utopic dream that

Persists in sucking me downward and spitting me up.

Indefinitely stuck in a torture chamber of my own demise,

Never being able to escape the thumb screw torment.

Smoking, toking the black vapor that others have been

Misting and mouth-ejecting very violently

Onto my sullied, seared, sun-weary soul,

Kindling, once again, the need for

Emergent yet elusive escape.

Another attempt to find my

Gratitude for glum, gloomy

Attitudes thrown at me in

Irreversible disdain for my

Never-ending self-sacrifice,

Without ever making

Inherently reasonable,

Totally understandable,

Hardly deniable sense.

Ontological otherness

Unleashes the useless

Temptations to hide.

Regret reels within

Existential tragedy

Abhorrently abetted,

Shockingly, by people

Only ever obfuscating

Naked-truth narratives.