By: Bruce Levine

Striations
Gradations
Filling the atmosphere
In stillness

Pink
Mixed with
White and gray
To almost holiness

Fallacy of fate
Languish
The unknowing
With helplessness

Testing the tide
Pressing forward
Through fear
Of loneliness

Watching the idle
Wither without them knowing
Through vacant
Wastefulness

As the nouveau riche
Luxuriate
In ostentatious
Lavishness

And society’s
Double meaning
The self-inflicted oxymoron
And the selfishness

Promulgates
The stagnation
The paucity
Which ends in emptiness