The black glass of the phone glows like a demon’s eye inside the dark.
I’m hunting for a reason to spark a bitter spark.
I watch the images of men who own the world and all its gold
while I’m sitting in the wreckage of a record getting old.
Their women look like plastic saints with skin of polished cream.
I’m drowning in the gutter of a manufactured dream.
I see the marble floors and see the sunlight on the coast—
comparing every dollar to the things I wanted most.
My stomach turns to acid as I slide my thumb along
the sequence of a life that feels entirely loud and wrong.
I’m drinking down the envy and I’m choking on the spite,
a solitary cancer on a self-inflicted night.
Their success is the poison that I’m pouring in my veins,
I am lacing up the bitterness, pulling on the reins.
Every luxury they flaunt is a needle in my side,
drowning in the bile of a self-constructed tide.
I look around this rented room and see the peeling paint.
I am not a martyr and I’m surely not a saint—
just a man with a resentment that is growing like a weed,
ignoring every single thing I actually might need.
She’s posing on a yacht with a smile of perfect white,
I’m grinding down my molars while I’m cursing out the light.
I want to rip the silk away and see the rot beneath.
I’m smiling at the screen while I am clenching every teeth.
The algorithm feeds me every lack and every hole—
it’s siphoning the sanity and charging me the toll.
I am a predator of joy and I am a thief of my own peace,
waiting for the pressure in my skull to find a sharp release.
The sun arrives to show me all the dust upon the floor.
I’m still the same pathetic man I was the night before.
The pixels have no flavor but they left a bitter taste—
a thousand hours of my life have gone to total waste.
I drop the phone and listen to the engine of the day,
watching all the gratitude begin to rot away.
I’ll put the mask on for the world and pretend that I am fine
while I’m coveting the life that never was and isn’t mine.