A Sublime Delusion

The World was different before the stars fell and the sun went out like
a brilliant flower wilting away into the long night. I was young then,
everything had felt so warm and so very right.
Now the cold surrounds me as the snows drift soundlessly to and fro,
the silence is only broken by the sorrow from my soul.
The World was warmer once, as love was still a possibility, then the
hate spread forth from the wastes of our collective mortality.
Apathy takes the place of morality as the dregs of what is left fill the
spaces in between the places where my heart and life used to be.
the World was brighter once and the future seemed so very clear to me,
but now the fogs have come, the days are blurred beyond distinction
like the details lack definition and my focus fails stupendously.
The balance is gone, we fall in a constant backwards slide
down into oblivion, not knowing that the way out is always with us
our chosen ignorance like a sadly macabre sense of chance
a lasting doomed star crossed ideal of fatalistic insane romance,
the black humor, the ironic futility, the sardonic cruelty, the
idiocentric centrifuge of deniability spins out our destruction
as we plunge headlong into the abyss, eyes wide shut, lusting
for our own demise like ravenous dogs biting at the heels
of forgotten messiahs, reality and time itself stumbles and reels
as existence shatters away form the concept that everything
revolves in this place, as if our very lives were nothing more
than one single simple odd on a cosmic roulette wheel.

The cards have been dealt, the game has been played
I no longer can identify how bad I have felt, or whether I should
have held to my bluff and stayed.
The dance floor is empty, the dancers have left, this is the last
call, I am alone and bereft.
One light remains, spotlit on the floor, should I go stand in it
or just walk out like before?

Our words are like weapons, we always use them to fight,
Our words can heal all wounds, make the wrongs seem right.
This is my two bits, the soap box is still there.
the stars have gone out but I am still here.
I am as the maker made me, imperfect and plain.'
I am the poem and this is my refrain.
  

An Assassin reflects.

Life, thin strands of possibilities spun endlessly, easily cut, impossibly
tangled in the skein of the universe that surrounds me, I questioned little
since I had known no joy and the darkness and light were simply places in
which to hide. I never asked the right things so moral meant little until love
tore like a splinter into my flesh and the wound became infected as nothing
would remedy that sweet sickness.
Love, a word that has no meaning and yet still remains like blood stains
lingering like the last breathes of the dying man still clawing his way out
of certain death, hoping in vain, in need of that one last chance that none
of this all happened to him, that the whispers were just the winds in his ears,
not the sobs of the fallen, jilted girls that he left behind as if by departing
he could escape what his heart would not abandon.
Laughter, a foreign idea in a non-spoken tongue that speaks in dulcet tones
like the rasp of steel on stone yet echoes long after the silence was broken
in the alleys on my mind, I look behind, I look behind. Now the walls close
in and all this emotion wears thin, my time grows short as all my mistakes
and errors in judgement drown me in their cruel reminders that I should
have denied my very nature and defied all that I have believed in. That
a stolen moment had more meaning than all these small insignificant
deaths I have committed since the last time we kiss there in the
plaza square.

Writing in the Margins in the Annals of Life

I find it funny when people think that my humor is weird, since people are people no matter who they think they are trying to be...
wait, that sounds like depeche mode.
I find it kind of funny when those around me think that my humor is weird, since those people are not that dissimilar to faceless mobs that fill the spaces between the actual people I do know and the ones i feel looking on in the judgement that I know they must be giving me in the imagined haughtiness that I assign to those people.

Can you really not see that the irony here is that my own judgement and point of view colors my world conception with stereotypical templates for how all these human beings behave as they crawl around in their troughs of selfishness and greed? Am I the only one out there to notice that I am not part of this river of humanity and idiocracy?

Can it be possible that I am the fool here and it is only by my own need to stand apart that separates me from the teeming masses of morons that flow around me and as I seek to write out some sense that breaks away from the sense that I am me, an individual and not just some preconceived plot device in the book of life?

Did I really just write all that, did I just ask for light in the darkness and insist that we divide it from the night?
Did I not just say seven days and not six? Did I realize that talking to myself is not as funny as it sounds when I read this back to myself and then realize that it's lonely being the only one around that ever reads and rereads the footnotes that I have written
here in the margins surrounding my own sense of living?

Are the words that I write true or false or is the falseness of them really just and expression of some truth that I have not found yet?
Is there going to be someone out there eventually who will take notice that I stopped to ask why and not getting answer ask who was I to be the one to realize that I am- in fact, alone as the scribblings I have made here in the margins of this book?

I will now fade and forget until some other fool and wanderer finds this rag of literature out there amongst the stardust and motes of forgotten stars and picking it up assume that I created anything but the facsimile of living.

Letters from Space

Ours is a troubled world filled with torment and hope, often controlled by our fears
and desires and greed.  But in all this chaos and loss there remains the idea that we 
can be more than just the limits that we call the laws of science that once again we 
can step forth from this rock, the planetary vessel and stretch forth our arms and minds
out across the abyssal void between what we know and what we think we know to that
which is beyond our comprehension, a place where our fears and our need for limits 
end and the freedom comes like freefall as we are set adrift into the nothingness that 
is in fact everything in this place we call the universe.

Ours is a problematic race still huddling in our collective caves around our controllable
fires, telling our stories to contain what we want to know and understand, that we can 
call god and define as reality without letting go of all our doubts that there is not anything
tangible or classifiable about the greater being that we have limited to mortal bounds
and even those of us who deny that he or she or it exists still hide in our collectively 
scattered unbeliefs that God is dead or never lived even as parts of us don't understand
life or living in the first place yet we will force others to believe in unbelief as if atheism
is any less a religion as the most archaic of mythologies and as we offer up our proofs
to the invisible authorities that watch over us, we choose to forget that it is only our
anxiety at being locked into a living shell that defines what we think we really are and
can never appreciate that what we call life may just be the first step into a whole other 
realm of being.

Ours is tragically humorous fate, as we struggle with issues that are so immediate and
short term that even their unsolvability is solvable if we can look beyond the scope of our
100 years as humans upon the rocks of our world never comprehending that we are more 
than just the stardust from which we are made and less than the potential that being
stardust pretends us to become. Death is less an ending then the next step in evolution
and even as I write this I fervently hope that I will continue to believe that I will become
more than I am after I pass through this veil of evolution, this transfiguration of spirit into
that of another form of being as i leave behind all that I have known and think I have 
known to find the greater truths that remains beyond the grasp of what I am in my desire 
to reach back across the stars to my bones at home on this our tiny world of earth.

Winter is Coming

It's cold in this my tiny room
winter is coming and will be here
very soon.
My pen scratches out these minor
warnings on this virtual page
rhymes and portents give words
to omens from the eons of the
nameless age, I rage, I rage
against the frozen moment in which
I find that I am powerless against the
arrival of my most bitter foe
nothing good can come from this
war- nothing but streams of crumpled
paper and bottomless wells of empty
woe.
Winter is coming and the rage the fuels
my innermost desire sputters against
it's arrival like the flame driven against
the gales of buffeting madness with
ashes and the vestiges of fire.
I weaken and  I chill as if I will fade
away out into the darkness of the night
will I give in as I cease to win falling away
from the dusk under the rising starlight.

It was like this and It was like that...

It was like this moment when our fingers touched and then sparks flew
between us and then my imagination filled the spaces left empty by the
memories of what had just happened were supposed to happen but even
if providence had been kind and even if you hadn't left you hand there for
my fingers to cross your palm, my nails tickling the skin as you shivered
and even if I had not thrilled at the momentary excitement that we surely
both felt then I would not be telling you this before you said goodbye
forever saying hello as if we are frozen with this stream of emotion and
I would not be writing my own recollection of what probably happened
although I could just be as wrong as I have been about just about
everything else save for that minute in which our fingertips connected.

I was like that time you started to say I love and I finished the thought
with a kiss that caught us both with surprise and our lips only separated
in secret smiles as our breath mixed over our faces and your eye lashes
brushed mine and the proximity I felt radiated in waves of desire as if
somewhere hidden in all of this was a inward turning like the attraction
of moths to the human fire and I was going to say that I love but you
jumped in and our tongues touched and tastes like smooth sweet spicy
sour tart tremors of my senses rippled in the embrace as the waxy balm
of our connection held with long seconds before you I pulled away yet
remained close as if we could not chance a distraction or deflection of
our feelings would rip from us the reason that we were so close that
I could feel the impression of silky smoothness left by the push against
your now blushing then flushing cheeks leave me thus, waiting and meek.

Regrets

Praying God for your soul to keep
praying for anything, to do anything
but all my words that I hoped would mean
something fall from my lips like these
tears that spill from her eyes, all of the
sadness, all the joy, all the badness
I forget, I will not be there with her in sleep.

I know that you have a little time left
I want you to have some peace in your rest
I don't want to be here alone, bereft
I tried my very best, like it was all
like some pitiless contest.

I should be crying,
but I just can't let the despair grow
I should be thankful
but the fear and worry won't let go.

All this things that I should have told you
all the times I should have stopped just to hold
you, all the apologies and all of these regrets
I can't help but feel that it would have been
better for you that we had never met.

Give me, just another moment with you
in the sun, give those memories back
to me. Just give me one more second
to enjoy that last kiss, all of the times
I thought I would never have to miss,

I should be crying,
but I can't get the anger to slow
I should be coping
but the anger is beginning to show.

All the words that I should have said
all the promises I made but never did
all the trust that you had me in me
all the things you needed me to do
all of these things that we once held true
now that death has come for it due
I have nothing left, if I don't even have you.

Original credit to form:

Kate Bush: This Woman's Work

(song almost always makes me cry)

 

A Writer looks at 40 and a few years.

It was bound to happen eventually, frankly I almost missed
the reference until I thought that Buffett would sing about
the changes in latitudes and I would remember the sea.
What did it mean to me? What did it mean to me?
It's like I have cast my lot once again like a line
thrown out over the waves to drop down into the
deeps where all the secrets I had hope to hide
float among the remains of the mysteries that I
want to keep. In my sleep. In my sleep.
Mother mother Ocean, I had heard you call
in the dulcet rhymes of the ancient mariner's
yarn about fate and the fool hardiness of it all.
The words of the whale song ring through the
lines that I would want to write down with my
shaking pen in hand. Will have to give into this
demand, will have to live with this demand.
Father father sky, I still can hear you out in the
great wide open, in the eagle's cry. I should keep
dreaming that I can fly, should give it one more try.
Watched the authors who told your stories switch from
pages to the LCD screens, forgetting the ink, broke a few
pencils, leaving their mark upon my psyche with a
electronic digits, nothing in between. Most of them
green, most of them green.
Yes, I am a writer, a wordsmith scoundrel, my stories
well in hand, hoping for a voice to be heard out
across this land, The years have made me what I never
thought to become, when the language would fail me,
the plans I made grow stale, unrelentingly unrealized
all that I had hope to gain, but still I see doubt in the
mirror of my plots as if I can see into my own sad eyes.
Nothing left but to despise, I am, in fact, a master of lies.

Breaking away

This is how it all begins and ironically where it all ends
this is when I realized that without fervor that so many
things like love and sleep, fights and the need to make up
for leaving things undone, in short, I want to make amends.
This is how I should have said I was sorry before you left
this is how I keep repeating it in the mirror in a bathroom
in a house that is no longer mine as if the ghosts of the 
memories are nothing more than hallucinations to be
ignored, or something I should have felt more for 
unloved, unmissed and definitely unwept as if this is
a certain kind of something that I should have remembered
as if the darkness and the pain were worthy of being
treasured, stashed away in my mind, safely kept.

This is how i will choose to remember this when I am gone
as if all the things we argued over was worth all the 
anger and all the tears, how we laughed and how you
would stop in the kitchen and shake your head and then
just sigh, whisper something like why do i love you,
and i would say that you were amazing since you always
try and then the lies when we didn't want the other to worry
and the times that I wanted to deny that I was worried
that the day would come when it all fell apart, when you
would stop in the foyer and then slowly say goodbye.

This is how it ended and where I want it to begin again
this a lot of words just to say that I really miss you
especially when it rains or is sunny, when the morning light
falls through the windows in our empty bedroom or when
I look across to the chair that you always sat it when you
would read your books and giggle and then you would grin
and i would make another list of the ten things I loved about
you as if I could stop time and look into the abyss that you
left here where we lived, now its just as if your ghost still
haunts the empty rooms and hallways where our pictures
still hang even though I know you aren't coming back
and I keep standing alone in the bathroom avoiding the
mirror which would betray all that I am feeling as this
emotion is beginning to break away.

The Perils of Sleep

In Darkness

Sinking into the meditation of silence

like drops of of water falling in a cave so deep so silent

that each splash rockets its impact out like the

sound of shattering glass 

then the tinkling ringing of each shards flight

flashes out into the imagine 

like stars out and a way
into the eternal night.

I sleep

dreaming of the the spaces between shadows

and the fading light

I run in and out of these sharp edged visions

as if I am but one more ghost

floating with the mists that surround the borders

of the secrets that I would like to keep

from the echoes drifting

down into my sleep

If I awake 

from the suffocations of fretful sheets

will I be conscious that I actually crossed

paths with an omen of my future

like a child's prayer warding her own fears

against the creatures that encircle 

her bed as she cries out

against the terrors that fills

the inside of her head?

Breaking Orbit

I am looking up, yet it is down, the Earth waits below,

I am saying it once again, this is goodbye

Engines are go, I guess we are going to give this one

more try.

The space stands between me and the orb that holds

the lands of rock and green, nothing is like it 

always seemed to be before I found this urge

to breakaway, to reach out into the sky

I am reaching out to Ground Control but the

comes no reply

Sitting there alone, I think about the 

captain who sent me up here as I watched

enraptured by his moments on the imperfect 

box. I fight the urge to call for warp speed as 

we wait for the retort that does not come.

This is it, we are leaving our home,

all the promises that we made in the dark

all our ideas seem little more than a flight of

fancy, an abstract algebraic lark.

Now there is nothing to do but wait in the void

as the minutes slide by looking to our 

instruments for an explanation why.

I swear to the gods amongst the stars

I make promises to the saints that have come and gone before, will the radio reach earthward back to all the things that I had once believed to be true?

Is this all that will remain when we fall away from world of the oceans so deep, so blue?

Will they remember that I was born there?

How long will it take me to forget the clouds and the happy moments that appear to me now that my time remaining is down to seconds, so little time left, heart beats so few.

the electronics sputter, the garble begins to stutter and our isolation ends as the controllers come back to life

This is the end, this is the beginning

this is the moment that will define us as a race

breaking orbit going out into this misnomer 

we still call space.

 

Down in the Hole

Everything looks so far away, as if I am looking down
a long railway tunnel and the world is more like a blur
than a photo and the light is oblique and life wanders by
only stopping on occasion to gaze down in the hole.

I remember the sunlight like a fading memory slipping away
as if I am falling down a bottomless pit so far that the speed
becomes relative, so much that I stop thinking of gravity as
anything more than the emotional weight that bears down upon
my soul as I rest easy in freefall down in the hole.

The last time I cried my tears rose up my face to trail away
like dew in reverse settling into the sky which is narrow and
all the questions that I wanted to ask are little more than echoes
escaping from my lips unutterable syllables of doom as I peer
intently for some sign that anyone marked my passing plunge
into the darkness, away from life and pain down in the hole.

You won't find me if you even remember that you were going
to look for me as I fade away like a ghost slipping out into the
night and the spirits I once held around me like a blanket flutter
out into the missed opportunities that my own fears robbed me
of as my very existence runs out of kinetic motion of the plummet
expends itself like the essence of potential and static find the
sudden need for equilibrium of all my illusions ripping away
from me down deep in this hole.

a question of being

One of my heros has opened the floor to questions.
Amanda Palmer is a personal favorite.

What kind of question should I write when faced with this kind of calamity

should I wax philosophic or just wrestle with my mediocrity?

Am I hoping that she will provide a deeper insight into my world

quite unlike her own, from the perceptions of life as if her brave, 

I am woman wisdom will pass onto to the crazed I am human

courage unfurled like the banners I wish to fly, the dreams I have left 

untried, along with my fears and the hidden tears left uncried.

Can i hope to ask the something that will be notice worthy?

Will my meager request pass the muster of what will be thousands 

of pleas and queries from voices more desperate than me.

Is it not enough, that we think is similar circles? is it not enough

that I can simply sit across the vastness of the information sea,

and give the royal yell to my fellow voyager of non-conformity? 

So this is what i will ask although I suspect that I am not the first.

At leas this will not be much more than the worst to ask what moves you

out of the blandness, out past the fog of apathy to inspire the words that

you share when all else in the world does not pity nor care

how do you reach, how do you find it in yourself to dare

how is it that the stars still shine in this universe of seeing

it's a not so simple question of believing and being?

All the things you should have left unsaid

An hour later, the thoughts are still running around inside my head,
like my brain is unable to move on beyond the coldness of your voice
as I listened to you expressing your sense of betrayal and pain.
Was it the anger that drove you forward to express you fears?
Was it just the first moment to really say it after all these years?
Was it just happenstance, that this has ended our tragic romance?
Was I the one who really needed to hear all the things that would
have been better left unheard, unsaid?

An hour later, you still won't even stop pacing to look at me,
I said I was sorry although it wasn't something I had done,
it wasn't even a thing I had even thought nevertheless even said.
What was I to do as you railed against my lack of compassion?
What was I to believe as you stood there in fury, like you were
right and I was wrong, that I had missed the point, that the ship had
sailed, this was my one single chance, did I pass you by without
a pause, not even long enough to linger on my view askance
Is this a question or just one last plea?

An hour ago, you burned this bridge, case over, put it all to bed,
yet I lie here sleepless with more questions than answers in my
mind, am I always going to feel that I have been left behind?
Was it wrong to shed the tears, admitting the wrongs that someone
else committed, giving into imagined guilt, just to make peace
trading all that I have loved in order that we preserve what little
we have built of this relationship, like a sinking boat with no rats
we scrabble over such minor depressions like a pair of wet cats,
as it should be left unwritten, no tears wept, sanity is dead as I
reconsider one more time all the things you should have left unsaid.

The Legacy of Thorns

When the world makes perfect sense forming patterns in the flowers
that entertwine through the tangles of the vines of higher powers.
When all seems stable and endurable as we walk out into the light
that surrrounds us like the wings that seem holy and divinely right.
Then life is perfect, free from the shadows of pain, awake in the morn'
Why, in all this do we still find the thorns?

She dreamed the dream that girls have when they believe that they will
become Queen.
To rule with beauty, grace and the justice of all those who wish to be free
only to find that instead of roses, your truths are like the thorns that grow
inbetween.
Are we but spiders weaving our webs of deciept? Are we but conniving asps
biting our backs in a vain glorious attempt to hold onto ideals we never can
fully grasp?
She found that her power was only to dance on the ends of the puppet's strings
like a sad marionette moves to whim of the words her master want her to sing.

He dreamed of glory and the fortune that comes hand in hand with fame,
he believed that his might made all that he had done just and right
he believed that the Church would give hime identity, a holy name
he believed in so many things that turned out to little more than lies
whispered among friends and enemies like secret lovers lost in the night.
In the end, there was only pain at the failure of his word, his eternal shame
In the end, there was little else to do but look into the abyss, endure the
scorn.
You see, he forgot to look for the sorrow that comes when you stop looking for
the thorns.

The Knight falls, the moon fails, love, truth, freedom ending in this our tragedy
was any of it meant to become real, was it not all meant to be?
was there ever hope that we would change the world for a brighter day?
was there actually a chance we could succeed in any other kind of way?
was there a prayer for love amidst the ruin of ashes, tattered and torn
Will this be our legacy, as we find we live between the roses and the thorns?

Look now for another path that lies like the Sun in the east
wait for the change to come, wait for the coming of the Beast.

Walking in the Wasteland

The sun falls down from the sky and fire washes the earth clean of the human stain-
like a promise that only through the atomic fire can there be an end to strife, an
end to pain.
I walk upon the highways of molten glass, all that really remains of the paths of mankind,
was this all we were but travellers on the land, as temporary as the windslept memories
in my mind
Did all that we hope to achieve end with the child-like tantrums of half a dozen men
all screaming as if the world was a toy to be fought over in the middle of a school
playground?
Did all that we hoped to dream for come down who had the biggest bad bomb
as if our collective thumbs itched to press the flashing red button just to hear that
awful sound?
The end will come with a flury of fury, why are we in such a hurry?
are we but rats on the sinking ship of humanity to scuttle and scurry?
Is the wasteland all that will survive as if to say that all can be assured of
was the passing shadows of out past failures to make a hell below and another
hell above?

The sun sets on the wasteland where my feet had once walked through the ash
All that was, is no longer what it could have, should have become, hope defied
in the momentary angry clash
like school yard bullies laying waste to the efforts that would assured us of a peace
like we have never known
like the absolute denial that non-violnece was what we should have pursued instead
of weapons of steel and stone.
like there was a chance that we could walk hand in hand, finally knowing what it was
to be free
and all that should have been was like a universal love that could be shared between
you and me.
Now all is dust and I will find no place to place my head, the is no rest wherever I shall
roam
There is nothing but the wasteland and it's memories that lie scattered like skeletons of the
place that once was my home. 

Why you should never write poetry when you are depressed

Woe, rhymes with toe and who cares if it doesn't make a good metaphor.
Sighing, yeah that's what its like but even more so and that is what it's for.
Agony, is awkward and tragedy trumps the analogies that follow
tears and general miasma leaves your lines empty and hollow.
Despair is more amiable because you can juxtaposed against care
it's almost as maleable as using the rain like tears, pain like fears
like fog and mist and disaster and rhyming yet once again all the 
while as the thunder booms and the lightning flares and somewhere
in the middle of all this emotion, you forget that it mattered
that somewhere in this drunk moment, that you forgot to say something
about death and happiness and Kipling's words are to remind you
that this like the similes that preceed it are but pale imposters
will end your reign of coffee and madness, there is still some
random chance that you will find a meaning to all this sadness.

Aftermath

The rains had fallen is steady waves mirroring the destrcution of all the things I had known
or rather I thought I had known.
There were no more tears to be cried, everyone that it mattered to had already lived and died.
There was only the road upon which a thousands storms had worn smooth what once was rough
yet still the ghosts that surround me continue to whisper.
Was it enough? Was it enough?
Yet, if there was more I could have done, I would gladly redo it, I would reap the whilrwind once again, i would forget that I had paid all my dues, i would stride back across the world wasteland
just for one moment more to spend with you. 

The winds roll the few remaining clouds across the wide open skies each day, the memory of the rains wasting away like the promises I made but even as I made them I knew that they could not
be kept, like the space I wanted to preserve on my bed where once you had slept.
I shall not regret all that has passed, these are words to be unwritten, feelings that must remain unwept for if I am to remain walking down this desolate road knowing no end to that which I am not looking for.
The echoes of the laughter follow close behind, the ringing of her voice is still around me, here to nudge me, ever to remind.... of the days when I welcomed the sun and the rains, when nothing would harm me and by your side I would stand, smile in hand, as if that was all that life would
demand.

There is only the road now, the broken bits of pavement, the glassed remains of the places to travel
nothing is left to see. Was it for truth that you left. was it for love, was it for me?
Life is about the struggle, life is about the loss, life is about life and death and the tragedy.
I feel like MacBeth on this road, left the burn away like ash in the wind, I will strut and fret no more on this stage, I will not be remembered like the last words you wrote upon the pages of my heart. I am the idiot and the fool, who's tale will not be heard as your touch slips away down this lonesome path.
I walk on into the future, I walk away from the past, I walk on not knowing the outcome of all that I have won and lost in this our aftermath.

Dog Days

There it is out the window- in the sunlight, the moment when the heat slogs

in with humid tension and you know that the summer has gone to the dogs

sweat runs down your cheeks and drips off the tip of your poignant nose

the coolness of shade shrinks away from where ever you try to stand

as the memory of rain shrivels away like cellophane crisp upon the sand.

Then the clouds pull together as if to declare that they still can unite

bands of lightning spark and flash between the edges in and out of sight

the skies grow dark with the promise that there might be a gentle fall of rain

thunder pounds in drum beat precision cracks and snaps shattered glass

but no water drops come- just the sound and fury, nothing comes to pass.

These are the long hot days when a little bit of water would go a long way

to cooling the mad passions that rise up and tend to go wildly astray

where everything is so dry that all you can think of is finding a garden hose

spraying freedom to act like the child that you remember somewhere within

to dance upon the grasses, to run, to slip, to slip one more time again.

Waking Life

This morning as I lay in my bed semi dreaming absolute half fantasies
the web of the world I believe in frayed against the one that is without
and the change in gravity pulling me back to the sunlight and shadows
cast by the curtains that can only hope to block some little particles of
that which separates me from them.

Refusing to face the world without I pull the pillows over my head only
to disturbed the woman I dream of sleeping with in my lonely bed
she stirs and shakes as her reality begins to shrink around her and then
with a groan and the briefest of fingertip touches she slips away with the
last detritus of the night along with the now invisible stars and I am left
sprawled on the sheets in silence.

I live in this my waking life in anticipation of chance meetings that refuse
to occur, hoping and dreading that at any moment the woman that I have
longed my whole existence for will turn in the checkout line and talk to me
and I will stand there praying in fervent rushes that my reply will not drive
away this one chance of her being in this reality and that I will never have
to return to my lonely bed.

Walking into the Light

It went something like this, so read carefully there will be several things
you won't want to miss, the first time I heard it was on a bus and the irony
that hit me rang true with the lyrics I heard coming through my phone- a moment
like an epiphany that kept repeating like that was going to be my ringtone.
and that was when I wondered, not for the first time, if God wasn't one with us.

The next time I remember thinking about it wasn't in a church but rather in
a park in the middle of the night when all the questions one should have should
have been caught up in the dreams that I was avoiding in order to go back to the
moment I spoke my belief out loud and found that being denounced wasn't as bad
as it would seem as if I could no longer play for the team that I had grown up
believing was right, but now I see that I must walk alone out into the light.

Now every time I feel its presence I know that it going to be left up to me to decide
whether I live in fear, eluding the commitment of practicing what I want to believe
since I have nothing and nowhere to hide and why would I want to anyway since
I can walk with him or her or it without judgement or the need for reprieve.
I am going to speak about it, write what i know to be true, I do have to be perfect
I don't have to be right, because now I am walking into the Light.

MidLife Wisdom

Maybe it is a simple as this.
I am what I am
or to say it another way:
I am that I am.
Maybe God or this Being we English call
God had it right all along.
YHWH
I am who created you.
I made you so that you are.
maybe it is not something to be questioned
or analyzed or discussed.
Forget the theories, observations -
just accept the facts as your brain
allows you to understand the inevitability
that you are.
Our science, such as it is, really can't explain
why this mass of complex atoms composites into
a set pattern that then lives, breathes, talks, walks,
falls in love, can hear innumerable sounds, differentiate
tastes and sound and even, in rare cases, think abstractly.
At some point, even the most soic, stalwart scientist
takes off his or her glasses and pinches their collective
noses and admits that they don't know yet and then
they go home and do a thousand other things that
many of them will just accept as surely as the idiotic
understanding that despite all the facts and science in our
world, the sun will rise and set and that days will pass as
our little impossibilities we call life continues in their
relative motions until our bodies - nay our energy patterns
change into something else and our souls sense of
being takes flight and we can join the others who went
before us as we make that transition into the light.
Maybe it is simple as that
We are what we are
and God is what we see him or her or it or
nothing but accepting that we know almost
as much about it all as when YHWH first
spoke out of the light to me.

Piercing the Veil

I stand before this present darkness that separates life from light
it's like looking out into the mists that roll in on the edge of night
a screen of ghosts that drifts in between
a web as silken a thing as what cannot be unseen.

With outstretched hands I long for what was and what could be true
life has been empty in these days since I knew that I had lost you
that I was alone in the now empty rooms
contemplating this my final sense of doom.

Can I anticipate the edge of this veil that blocks my way out of hell
is this solid material or just another fiction fantasy who can really tell
am I really here or is this all in my mind
did I really come ahead, did I leave it all behind?

With my love thrust out I will throw myself against this impassable wall
with my sense of guilt I will not grovel before the challenge, I will not crawl
holding on to the one thing I can truly believe in
I will succeed where I have failed, I will not lose even if I cannot win.

The Promise

I wanted to make you a promise that I would always be there-
kind of crazy to even say, but I think I can manage that
even if I am no longer near.
I wanted to promise more that I could ever be able to deliver-
a grand gesture that showed how I felt about all the love
that you have had to share
I'm sorry but I wanted to have the right words to say
I wanted them to somehow matter to you anyway
I know that the don't meant what I wanted them to be
You just need to know that they really come form me
that it wasn't just this song that reminded me of
my love for you
that all this wasn't another way for me to try to forget
that what little we shared was ever true.
this is how it all came out, not really a whisper
not really a shout, it's what we started and now our
feeling just came out.
I wanted you to know that we are more than just
friends
that I want us to be something more, but it depends
on how you feel about us in the end.
I realize that it is is awkward but I can't think of
the right words to write
how can I bring how I feel into visible sight?
All I can really say- is that if you do really care
then I promise you I will be there.

A Song for Isaac

There were so many things that I should have told you
there were so many truths that should have been true
enough to overcome all the doubts, all of my lies
but I failed to tell them when I first saw you look 
into my eyes.
What am I to do?

There were so many times I should have held you to me
there were so many days that I should have been what I
ought to be
But there were so many buts that if became like never
I would take them all back if I could just be there ever
When will it be time for us?

There wasn't a day that went by when it wasn't rough
there was this one time when I got going -when the 
going got tough.
I should have been there for you, for a day- just one
I should have been there for you, my son.
How can I say sorry enough.

What am I to do?
How can I find the words
that will really prove
that, I did, in fact, love you.
When will it be time for us?
How can i expect you to even trust
any explanation, I have definately
missed that bus.
How can I say sorry enough
how can a child's love be limited
by my own inaction, to be forgiven
that I could show you what I am 
really made of?

Someday...

Someday I will become a metal butterfly
then I will fly away out into the endless star
filled sky, somewhere so very, very high
I know that it is mostly just something like
a lie because my doubts betray my lack
of ambition to even ever give it a try.

Someday, I will get up from this office chair
go away from this dirty city, I will even walk
away from this life, I will go somewhere.
I will ask that person who sits beside me
on the bus/subway/train, and he/she will
look at me in a new way and only our
collective regrets will remain as I dream
about what we will do in my lonely room
I call my brain.

Someday I will get it all so very much right
someday the this rusty caterpillar will crawl
fast enough to glow, then with a spark take
flight, And then, I will soar away from this
questionable reality to fade out of sight
you never know- someday I might.

Someday (a film)
for my brother.

Words like Gravel on the naked skin.

What she wrote is still on that crumpled piece of paper lying next to the waste
paper basket by her bed. What was written waits for the one it was meant for
unseen and unread. I wonder what she wanted to say as I look on at the signs
of her misery, the tissue cliches that surround those that find themselves at the
other end of their tethers, staring into the abyss. Do they ever stop the lining
with their collective ballpoints and wonder if it would just somehow be easier
if they were simply dead.
Where she sat that last night by the radio - in front of her laptop, behind the
locked door as I sat with my back to it on what could only have been over
looked as a somewhat cleaner floor. I would whisper although I knew she could
still her me that I had said all of it and that there was still something more
that we could be something like love yet a few shades from our lives like
that was actually something we should live for. I leaned my head back as
I wanted her to come over, open the door and take me in her arms and
tell me she still loved me and would no longer ignore the signs she was giving
that we had a chance to go on living
But all I could her was the sounds of her tears in the sobs that still haunt
me after all these years and that I let a composite of wood and cardboard
separate my desire to reach across the space, take her face in my own hands
to reassure her that her fears were misplaced. I wanted to be able to say
that there was some meaning to all the things we were feeling, that there
was still some things worth fighting for.
My words felt like naked skin on the gravel or broken shells crackling as
I wished that my tongue would speak to her needs and that the language
that flooded into my lungs would not betray my own doubts to her lips
that I wish i could still feel the impression of on my own instead of just this
lack of presence that rests like the dead in my memory. I closed my eyes
once again and long to see what was written on that discarded letter that
she wrote for me.

Regrets

There were things that should have been said
there were memories that should have stayed dead
there were words that should have stayed in my head.
Sometimes it's like I am wishing too hard undo

all the things that have already been written and read.

I find myself wishing that I could make like none of it

ever happened, like I can just turn back the clock
un-throw that rock,
return the bullet to the smoking gun
still my feet which have already run.

There were words that should have never left my lips

there were lies revealed inside the mirth of my quips

it's like drowning yourself in sadness inbetween sips

from a cracked shot glass left over from one of my trips.

Sometimes I wish that it would all burn down

then I could get out of this unfortunate dirty town

but its like I have the gas but lack the spark

so I sit here in the dark,

I will wait here where I do belong

there is no fast car in this Tracy Chapman song.

There were truths that I should have told you

there were actions we could have taken too

but I stumbled, leaving them undone, overdue.

Sometimes it's like I can see us together before

it all began to fall apart

as if it could begin again

back at the very start, then I could remember that

I still have a heart, that even in a poem a dream can come

true.

What to do when you are lost

Drink tea.
Not sure why but this seems like the first thing I would do in this situation.
It's calming, tea drinkers reflect while debating the merits of one lump or two?
If it's going to be an Earl Grey kind of day, I would rather drink another cup 
with someone like you.
Parkbenches.
There is something so comforting about sitting on a parkbench to consider the 
predicament of finding one's self alone that I would just go to the park.
Like a meditation amongst all the green things in the creation around about
as if to ask what is there to be afraid of should you find yourself out after
dark?
Play piano.
According to an expert, just hitting on the black keys of the shiny ebony,
letting your fingers drift over the sounds emanating from the melancholic box
allow the song to drive away the poisons of depression, the blues flow around
you as you find that it will bathe you, purify the soul, rest, relax and detox.
Hug someone.
For one thing, you will no longer be alone which which make you feel some 
emotions akin to the idea that you have at last been somewhere-have been found
then hand in hand, watch a sunset and remember that you got lost just so
you could come back here and see if I was still waiting to see if you were 
coming back around.
Kiss me,
then you will know a truth that is easy to see
we are all lost until we realize that it really
is just a way to let it all go and be free.

Afterwards

The sun still sits high out in the cloudless sky
the road, always the road, is empty, undriven
unlike my soul as I stand there a moment in the dust
wondering once again why my world has ended
as if the tears that wet my face is not enough to
remind me everytime I cry...

Days are like this out there in this wasteland
when the rain was burned from the heavens
the people I knew were lost to the ravages of
the passages of time like pages of the books
as they burned and the memory that I once had
is gone, like all the dreams that we had planned.

Hours have lost meaning in this post apocalyptic
form  of dreaming, was it all that like that when
mans wars came to the sudden and swift end
then all the arguments we shared fell away like
ashes in the wind as the world was laid bare
to the ruin that was all at once both simple
and tragically cryptic.

The moon is down, no longer to greet me in the night
the stars will look down pitiless in their flaming
paths through the wonder and awe that I can
only imagine down here on earth as they drift over
my head still out of reach. One day, I will reach
up with my soul and trace my fingers in their current
slipping away into the endless light.

"What is lost" followup

I just watched this video that inspired the "What is lost" poem.

So here's the video:

It's interesting to me (anyway), that what they say about their song is very similar to what I have said about the poem.

here's the poem:

What is Lost...

It's sometime in the morning, somewhere before the dawn

breaks into the twilight that comes after the moon

passes from the cloudy skies obscuring the stars

that were there before I went to sleep knowing that

there would be something I had lost when the light

comes creeping into my bed room and I can still

stand the empty sheets

the place where you would have slept, 

the fears that you could have kept 

the moments of doubt that were left

are all I have now here bereft of 

my tears like echoes of "I love yous".

It's like memories of a relationship in my dreams

falling soft like feathers fluttering through my mind

like the words that fall from my lips like drops of rain

meanings without implications, desires midst the need

that you wanted from me and were lost when I stopped

trying to fight from the minute that is all I have left 

to blame in the end

All the ink and all the paper on the table

all the justifications, all reasons to enable

all the maybes and all the endearments fail

I am alone and I cannot offer any apology

that is not static, repeated or stale.

the ones that I have loved are now all that

I have lost, it wasn't old nor was it anything

that I believed to be true- 

it was more like my whisper that I wanted to

to find what was constant, what could have

been as simple as saying

I love you.

I say...you say...

I say that you are the one that I want
without knowing who you are and
then where you will be coming from
and yes, I am a little bit afraid that
when it finally happens that you will
just walk on by me and that I will still
be alone.
You say that I am the type of man that
you have been waiting for all your life.
Am I going to meet the expectations?
Am I the one you will find at the end of
your day after all the madness and all of
the sadness, will be what you want to
call your own?
I say that I was meant to be for someone
just like you that love and gladness would
replace the rainy overcast minutes between
the moments of laughter and the brilliant
bursts of wild disaster that comes with the
exhilaration that changes everything like
our first kiss, the seconds tick by as we
stand together, can the idea of "US" be
engraved in stone.
You say that you can't remember what it
was like before I came along as if our
romance was captured in some catchy
love song. I laugh at you look of irony
but somehow I still think that this feeling
is wrong, that I will open my eyes and
find that you are gone.

Poem a Day in May 31: Finale

31 Days of having to look into the onion of my existence, layers upon layers

to peel and cry and cut through the complexity while trying not to laugh at

the comparison made to it and by an unhappy ogre who is trying to deceive

himself into believing that he is happy that there is nothing more than the 

analogy that he has just given to an jackass. 

Self-examination and inquiry is crucial if you want to know what your motives

were and are you being sincere about wanting to find love, be loved or at

very least have your words remembered as something more than "he was 

just a man and not much of a guy at that." 

It's like finding a box in your attic and then finding out that the person you stored

in there wasn't who you thought she was, that her taste in clothing is opposite

of what you had wanted to believe that those shoes and that lipstick did match

what you were feeling when you made yourself pack it all away in there, secretly

hoping that you would never have to see it again.

31 days learning that you might have started out as strangers but in the end of all

things that you could and would become friends and that you like the 

face in the mirror a lot more than when you went there to shave it, that while

the razor moved you discovered all the things that make your profile are 

noble and brave and kind and that you both deserve to be loved and that

a touch can carry more than just the pain of a slap or uttered rejection from

someone who is more afraid than you ever thought you could be.

Last night I dreamed that I would meet her and that it could be perfect-

that perfection was not what I had always thought it would be, not in crisp

clean orderly lines nor in the jigsaw pieces fitting exactly together but rather

in the proximity to just be close enough that a touch means more than just a

brush of body contact as if you are stuck in an elevator with a complete stranger 

and that you can embrace him instead of pushing yourself into a corner

just so that you can continue believing that it is just normal and you have

somehow saved your precious identity.

You both say "hold me' together and then laugh at the absurdity that makes

all that I have written mean more than just metaphors on the page. That we 

are all one in our need for belonging to something more than what we can

ever hope to gain on our own. This is what I hope all my poetry has shown.

PADIM 30: Getting ready to go

7 o' clock in the morning, nothing is packed and I am not getting out of bed
I wish that you would lie there too, like the figment of a thought that I have
about you in my head. All my past regrets couple with all my current failing
by 8:30 am, all my hopes and dreams of what would be should be gone, I will
stand on my deck, cup of coffee sitting on the plank railing, one more goodbye
to the only person I have ever loved even though there wasn't the time for any hellos.
Will I miss you my friend? Will you understand that I both love and loath you?
Will you know?

By 10 am I will be on the long and lonesome road, my car -a stream of memories
going back to the days that surround us like the green shabby hills of Tennessee,
I wish I could still feel you despite the angry words we spoke when you said goodbye
I wish I could take back the resentment I am feeling, well I will give it a try, There
was really nothing I could have said, their was no persuasion that I could have
used instead. I just wanted to make you understand how I felt, I just wanted to
to know that it wasn't ever our fault, that it just was the hand we were dealt.
It's like wanting coffee but only getting tea, will that bring comfort or is that all
we were ever meant to be?

The last time the tears slide down my face is by 2 pm and already I have begun to
slow my pace, there are too many roads that I will have to trace until I can find a
better time, and better place. In the breadth of this moment that we now can share
I want to look back in the mirror but I am afraid of the expressions that I will find there
Was I wrong to want my life to be more than what my parents had for us in store?
It was as rotten as any meddling turns out to be, rotten to the very core
I hope the rain will come and wash away my guilt like bug splatter against the windscreen.
Is that all my hopes and our plans and desires have just been?

7 o'clock in the evening and the moon will be full, have I escaped mother earth's gravity?
Will I escape from her pull that she has so long had upon me,
Is that what I believed that love meant, was it worth the blood and sweat that we
have spent looking for the silver lining to life's simplistic view of a rainbow
will you ever forgive me? Can I forgive myself? Or will the guilt continue to grow?
I wish I could just keep driving these thoughts from my mind, leave my past, and the
present, all that grief just leave it all behind.
Tomorrow will find me further away from the other side of this mirror's illusion
Tomorrow will find me further away from the push and pull of all my confusion
Maybe once I am gone I will finally have something to show
will I find the courage to do all this when I finally get ready to go?

PADIM 29: Golden

He told me that things would be okay now
that the days where the silence was accepted
would no longer hold and that music and laughter
sounded out from all around, that our noise
could shatter the walls of heaven and shake
the lies and misery to the ground.
She told me that love could heal the worst of
my wounds, that life could have meaning,
that errors would be forgotten and insults
lost between the giggles and jokes wipe
away the tears, that I would be forgiven
and the rain could fall down without the
need for sadness and fears.
He told me that I was the reason that he could
go on living, that there was a purpose to each
smile, that it was worth showing up and that
comfort was the warm blanket of a hug
that I was just his kind of style
She said that I was the sunlight coming through
the clouds, that it was the reason that she opened
her eyes with hope as she got out of bed in the
morning and that before she knew that this
poem was just unwritten and unsaid.
this is where all our paths have led.
it is what I have to say, what you have read.

Friends are more than a means or the ends
they are more than words or feelings or
even the promise I would be holding
back, they are like a rainbow at the end
of life's storms, for all things like this
they are golden.



For Alan Burgess.

PADIM 28: Chastising the Darkness

In the beginning I was without form and in darkness
existing inside the face of the deep skimming the surface
of eternal sleep, like the void and the utter lack of being
until a word was given and then into the light I was born
like one of the billions and billions of stars in the night.
In the beginning I was an idea without being even as much
as a word without ink or even a page, I knew then that I
would become a part of a thought expressed in sentence
like the whisper of emotion, the passing of another age.
In the end, I would become many surrounded by others
to form a coherent argument about the need to understand
why we all exist and therefore we mast wait upon the Maker
to persist.

PADIM 27: A note left behind

Dear whomever finds this note
I just wanted to tell you that I am sorry that I missed you
in the moments between wanting it to be you who I would
have kissed. I know that it was too much to ask so I tried
to make it a demand but the whole situation spiraled out
of hand and now I thought that I could give this all just one
more try, but then I stopped short of you telling me to
say goodbye. I should have trusted you more, I should
have kept the faith that I could not ignore, but that is how
I fell down, down into this darkness as hope has fled away
into the night. I should have remained, you would not have
given us up without a fight, now all I feel I have is out
bound flight. I want to believe that we could have gotten
something right.
Now it is all just a little out of focus, out of sight.

I sign this with my love since anything else is trite
like some cliche inked out here on the paper white.

PADIM 26: Simple songs for Simpletons

Another song often comes along
almost as often as it gets it right
but more likely to be wrong
it's sad that to this group
many of us just belong
sing it any way cause its
a simpleton's song.

Another tune will surface soon
almost as quickly as it plays
for days and days
just another way
to remind us to
just stay on the bus
and sing along.

Another verse almost as verse
it couldn't possibly get any worse
as if repeating word afterword
is not as absurd
as what we have just heard
so right it's still absolutely wrong
it's just a simpleton's song.

PADIM 25: Forced Rhymes

What made you even think?
That you could drive me to the brink
not even the fear will make me
drink beer I will show you see
it's not as if I am going to let you be
unkind to us -it's enough to make
me
cuss.
yet I think about you all the time
you affect me even as I am forced
into this rhyme.

What made you say what you said?
Did you really wish me dead?
after all that we meant to one another
your affection cannot even smother
the disgust that drives me now to write
how much I would love to hate you
with
all my
might
But that would just be sublime
even as I force out my feelings
into this rhyme

What was I really thinking would come true?
Was it somehow my time, I am overdue
It's going to be my word against yours
like a slap in the face what was this all for
I only wanted to be the one you kissed
I would lie about it- say you'll be missed
But I want to be honest and sure
there
is
no
cure
Because this is just that kind of crime
when I feel I must be forced to
compose all of this
into this rhyme.

PADIM 24: Poetry will be the death of me

Here I sit with so many things left to do today
but I cannot find the words to write, nothing is
going to be in play while I work my craft like
the fine tuning in finding the right phrase, the correct
form of a verb- I must pretty crazy or sadly somewhat
lazy to be this absurd!
My kingdom for a word!
Shakespeare is having the last laugh as I pound along
my keyboard searching for the meaning that I am
supposed to be instilling and that is by far not even
half of this verbal form of math. I may have lost count
but I am still willing to try and try again before
I cross the four hundred and ride my simile
like the horse into the valley of death and madness
trying to mock even this the sudden sense of sadness
that all my effort will largely go unread unheard
in the end I am a poor poet strutting about on the page
looking for the moment in between the bouts of rage
here I can show my rhyme although it is just my age
time has passed me by and love is just one more thing
that I have yet to try. I realize this is more like a white
nerds rap but I will not given in even if you my readers
have given up by now or see that I am bout to spring my trap
it's moments like this that I know I wanted something more
but that's ironic even for me in this metaphor.