Senseless

Knocked out of the blue, out of the catatonic state of slumber like the
tearing of fabric from peaceful places into shreds of pieces of dismantled
ideas or conceptions of what was at war with what is or what will be
because there is no safety in this storm of cacophony clamoring to get
out of my brain onto my page as if the would be ink could explode out
to capture the emotions that rage under the pens strokes scrapping grooves
into the paper that comes apart like so many tatters from a raggedy man
in the hostile wind.
Dazed then confused like the seventies, so overrated so over used, a cliched
remark commentary so crazy so blase might as well speak another language
that no one understands nor wishes to hear since admitting to the absurdity
that fills our lives like swimming with sharks fearing that it will be the
tuna that will do us in.
Sleepless nights without anywhere to lie down, nothing softer than rocky
roads, unmappable tarmac wandering all hairy scary like the cracks across
the concrete playgrounds in the building sprawls of the construction jungles
that crowd through the wastes of modern civilizations devoid of the living
walking among the dead going forth to ambition-less minions shuffling
along the paths amidst the standing stones of a forgotten future leaving
the promises of the past, I am the relic of my own mysterious sense of
dramatic irony.

Wasteland

It started with the fear, the fear came before the fire that burned away all that we
had known- ever known. Hell, the fire burned away all we had ever hoped to know.
The world was ash, the shadows of people flashed into walls and doors, onto chairs
and beds before the fires came to sweep away humanity like the refuse riding before
the janitor's broom in some forgotten school building with it's worn brick exteriors.

The roads and deserts were turned to glass, smooth to the touch yet non-reflective
under the merciless sun, which once had warmed us thanks to the atmosphere's
ability to shield us from the solar radiation that now sears away the desire to sit
out in the sun. Yes, even the very idea of sunbathing seems like a wild idea
that is more a myth now than the memory of nearly naked people on the sands.

The skyscrapers stand out like skeletons on some undead army trapped alone
in the cities that are more like cavernous ravines of crumpled civilization
mocking all that had been considered modern and new rusting in the infrequent
rains that still come when enough moisture can permeate the air to rise and
fall like the ghosts of those friends and families that wanders this silent earth.

We used to be God's chosen people left to mind this once green world, but now
those of us who survive are only the fugitives running from the sins of our
father's who squandered their stewardship choosing to deny that whether a God
told us to take care of our home or some evolutionary sense of reason would
reveal to us this basic truth that we are all one before the fires would come.

The wasteland stretches out before me, so close that I can almost smell the acrid
harvest of scorched grasses once amber now gray swaying in the wind,
The seas rose to swallow the land before they boiled away into the scattered
rains that still come to kiss the scarred surface that lies even now beneath my feet.
I will walk away into the past since that is all that's left- this world that we have made.

 

Stacking the Deck

What is this existence where what we accept is not what there actually is?
Can there be a science nay a truth that is beyond our own senses, beyond
the edge of our imagination, that surpasses all our knowledge, all our
philosophy, magic, religion, perception that explodes into being not in
chaos but order like the formation of the smallest insignificant beauty
that occurs when water turns to moisture then freezes into a whisper
of being. Creating snowflakes is like stacking the deck.
What is life but a series of meetings, one moment from the next
like the collisions of leaves falling from the trees in wide swaths
only to be swept away in the universe's wind some of us clinging
for a time to another before spinning away in the happenstance
of dance, like some many twirlers spinning in and out of existence
until our journey is done, fading away into the rot of mulch
transforming ourselves into the food for trees.
Why does it matter so much that we are one way or another
that we find someone else to cling to, that what really matters
is each other, that love is not a lie, that truth is written only in books
that if you can see the light or feel the rain than you will
understand, you will comprehend that we should accept
the cards that we are dealt,
but not me, I am stacking the deck.

In the Cloud

I wake to find myself under the shroud
wet, rain, mist mixed with dense fog
soaked I stand midst the moisture, sog
I am aware, I am in the cloud.
As in a dream, feelings of isolation
wandering never finding prevails
I walk, I run, I stumble, I fall
against the odds, swept away by fate
I will scream, my latest complaint
I will not give in, I will note hate
The unfeeling unknowing sleeping giant
stirs around me deaf to all my cries
the unfeeling computations this is
the satirical equivalency, the web of lies
I reach out with artificial hands
I grasp towards the apathetic stars
the universe remains distant unseen
far away from the earthbound crowd
like some forgotten god unfettered, lost
while I dwell far below water bound
standing in place, I am in the cloud.

Seemingly Impossible

You cannot do it unless you do it

or at very least, try to do it.

You cannot live it, unless, of course, you discover

you are already living it.

You cannot say that you won't go there

unless you have tried and failed,

then can you say that and actually mean it.

You can say that you don't want to go,

but without a reason, it won't mean

a thing to anyone you tell save that

they should go there instead.

Some of this is true,

some of this is possible

none of this is a lie,

unless,

you tell me it's impossible.

Cutting Stone

for Charlie

My hands caress the smooth surface

feeling for the shape locked therein,

my fingers are the keys to its secrets

to uncover with chisel and wits alone,

as long as the pain does not betray
for this is the day I am cutting stone.

My age tries to define me in aches
criss-crossing my limbs like branches
of a wizened and ancient oak tree
I rest from my labor at the noontide
to consider what I have found within
the rock that resists the vision I seek
in this, as in all things, I shall abide.

Time again for day to chase the night
a body is born from the fragments 
falling away like leaves in the breeze
autumnal seasons, weathered bone
I bite back the hurt, I will remain
releasing my desire cutting stone.

Falling Forward

A casual sense of fumbling in forward momentum over the edge
a spastic plunge down or up or just out into the abyss, the nothing
the joy and sadness and ecstasy of weightless as well a easy dread
the music is around me, it's to my left, my right, then in your head.

The dead drop down down down down-falling into the deepness too
bottomless rhythm erupts like a box-beat blown out of my mouth
like a bass scream of ominous yet curious portent now resounding
now pleasantly violent though deliciousness amok chaos pounding.

Then like an explosion of light and colors and dust, now then Saturn
overturns Jupiter, thrumming in the absence of the sine waves crash
shattering like a thousand tears of glass all over the surface of Mars
such beautiful substance, such insane significance midst the stars.

I am the hammer of my own heartbeats, one, two, three now four
there is nothing but the fall, there is nothing here, no nothing at all.
there is no emotion, no fears, no tears, no laughter, wonder extreme
nothing is apparent, nothing is obvious, it is after all just a dream.