This is not an artistic statement; these are not formulaic opinions that I intend to posit and project into the consciousness of others in an attempt to either persuade for or dissuade from; but rather, a crude, poetic rendering of my own psychological, emotional, and spiritual self-image, as is reflected through a personal, existential dilemma, and at once, despair at mere being. I present these long-lamented trifles and blunders of my former life and self with many regrets and a very broken heart, to perhaps gain some recognition, not for achievement or any measure of celebrity, but for an intellectual contact with those who might see a bit of their own struggle through what I've created, so that I might not be alone with all that has been destroyed and all that is lost, so that I may need not die in the posthumous ruins of a societal vanity-so in denial of its own anxiety, rage and depression-that it would deny my humanity and cast me as alien, to void not only my inherent birthright but also-a last rite. These poems were each written while in some terrible throes and awful crises. I have, with each one, spoken the unspeakable, and with every other, dispensed with my soul. I now seek some level of rebirth or salvation, not at the mercy of God or mankind, but at our collective and respective recognition of doom. This is not a projection but a reflection; these are a collection but for inflection, for those in strife and mired insurrection, for those of whom life required resurrection.