Indoctrination is performed by the men who wear dresses.
Parade up and down lighting candles, and tresses
of three-fold, of two men’n celeste
welcoming parishioners into their nest.

And when I say nest, I really mean lair,
inciting old women and inviting them prayer,
the men of the cloth
and to whom they are troth
confidence tricksters,
an un-virtuous mixture.

I can’t tell you when I lost faith in the church,
I imagine it when, for my sins, I did search
for the purpose of my life — and off-path did I stray,
against all his teaching, I concluded, I’m gay.

Loss is innate
it burrows inside us.
But, my dear,
there’s no need to fret:
as without sad
we wouldn’t know glad.

It really is hard to keep faith in the world,
when the motives of all of its people unfurl.
Their true aims seem, above all, to me,
to destroy hope that you have, to the highest degree.
Is it really a wonder my mind sheds debris?
An intensifying of feelings which led to conclusions
that this is indeed not a world of inclusion
for me and for those out there who are similar,
those whose experiences are so far from simpler.
Does an absence of dopamine make less of a being?
Does it give an excuse to degrade my wellbeing?
A reason to be told that your talents are less
despite the multitudinous gifts you possess?

Let me be clear,
please let me express,
my felonious transgression?

An imbalance.

D.E.P.R.E.S.S.I.O.N.

Old and frail,
a woman sits alone
tending to her crossword.

Eight letters;
eight letters.
No, it’s gone, it escaped her,
the persistent disorder of mental process.

She lives in this house alone
save a cat, a few mice
and some creaks and cracks.

A house once filled with
generations of horses, nurses
and hide-and-seek,
but they dissipate —
Faces fall behind the veil.

Marauding memories masked
by those things that came before,
coalescing the loss of cognate
of a previously sound mind.

n eight-letter word
from an octogenarian
doesn’t seem like much;
but as we live, exist in hope.
Past is faded anecdote.

A kerfuffle for a condom,
and inevitable dysrhythmia
greet the teenage couple.