Empty Barrels

Is most of your life spent

alone in the dark

Hiding from rainbows

in colorless spite

The sun waits a mistress

the evening a whore

That paid by the hour

exposes your blight

Professing in earnest

those things you don’t know

Whose pontification

a mask that conceals

What others see clearly

fate not to deceive

Delusion and bluster

—your folly revealed

(Dreamsleep: August, 2023)