It’s a long drive through blurred countryside, cars shuffling impatiently like high stakes card games. The wheels spin blindingly fast, reliving hardships, joy each burst of laughter,
every embrace, every tear.
Whether the days were full or wanting; the nights serene, or fitful.
We hold hands, the connection between us like a conduit, relaying all that energy that couldn’t touch us when we were grounded.
We keep the radio off, listening now to those old thoughts; those historic machines- loud enough to drown out the static sounds of the road.
It’s a long drive, but this kind of silence can be comforting.
Not watching the latest marvel movie at a bar, a game, the gym anywhere else.
For whatever reason
you are here.
Let me tell you what that means.
You could be in church,
stale robes screaming! about how unworthy YOU are perfection the only currency of any value other than your wallet.
You could be at work, for five cents on the dollar; some worth there at least…
not much though. So you’re here. You’re here. Okay, but you could be at the movies!
Some ubermensch sees the world ending, finds himself, his friends and stops it.
All the action! The machismo! The heroics!
The good guys… always… winning…
Yet you’re here, where they often… just fucking don’t.
I get it, but you could be out on the town,
submerged in whatever works to blur the world as it is. A backwards magic eye painting, that makes more sense distorted, digestible even.
Is it too early? Too late? Whatever- You’re here.
Not at a game, a jersey on, screaming at the top of your lungs about how worthy your boys are- (not theirs, never theirs) You could be there,
But that’s, that’s a lot; so you’re here.
You’re not at the gym, living the nightmare to reach the dream of immortality. Some absolute unit telling you you’re doing great, you’re almost there, just one more, just one more, just one more, just one more. You’re here.
By choice.
Vulnerable but celebrated, knowing the good guys, ladies and everyone in between or beyond;
they lose, and lose and lose – but they get back up, they show up. Not paid to be here, still finding value.
Staring the world down, seeing it for what it is, unflinching, and finding worth in every corner, every shadowed table every wilted head.
Pulling from somewhere off the coast, where suns set, the taste of salt, sand, and shadow; a whispered heartbeat from the ocean floor beckons me with ancient sounds. The crest of a furled mystery that awakens a need in me, aching for those depths.
To be but water made conscious, drowning but no desire for the surface or sky. Even before the shore my breath was stolen, though I would gladly have given my last, to be the current that moves through you, yet a part of you in kind.
Exuberance! Enough to carry me to the unknowing, but the wanting to know, to discover peace among the motions, rise in celebration, and fall again as rain laughing into the waves.
Laughing until out of breath, sinking beneath your ocean to swim forever.
I am content in the sunlight a thousand blank pages waiting but without any cause to fight, for my attention. Not needing; necessity is self-defeating; but there- available all the same. The time left us is only wanting, this life having finally been tamed.
The day drifts away but it is still bright, a lifetime of mournful shadows fading behind a long legacy of delight; decades of fruitful creating, the love of those that are liberating, curiosity like an open flame from fire to fire, always leaping. Never quiet is my soul’s refrain.
Eager blades rise like waves, tightly coiled for the depths below, where dark waters twist and tumble fraught to maintain such great heights until gravity’s anchor drags them back to the undertow
Those fangs sink in through the scales, stopping only covetously for the bone. The venom it sends rushes to unknown ends, a curious tide trespassing secret coves echoing haunted laughter in sunless geometry.
The other beast strikes back in reflected anger, rushing its aggressor like a gull caught in a gust; sharp salt sea breeze cutting the sun, fracturing the blue canvas with a searing light before plunging again into the familiar stream.
Two currents opposed to form a whirlpool, neither willing to give any ground to the other, flowing ribbons of water; ocean waves, burrowing against the earth and rising against the sky. For the want to live, they both will die.
The vitriol- the violence gestating in cobwebbed cupboards, all the features of the face pressed against the wood; a toppled plateau waiting for the end.
Say nothing though. The voice will draw it out, all that suffering and pain; is the last of the fruit that remains.
Say nothing then, let it fester, consume us who feed on it; not with teeth, but patience, digesting.
Be done for the day, unanswered. The sleepless nights of the nation bringing to heel those movements transposed, when the walls can no longer protect you from the elements. I felt love, feeding us and making us strong, to become violence on the leeches only a few feet away, who will not bend by force. There can be no companions here. Our identities, something that burrowed into the background, but we’ve known that; reduced we are to subtle heat obscured. Hanging from the wires, no one to prune the eccentricities between this place and another. So eager to find themselves fit amongst the stars, all the insides set to fire; It can’t go on like this.
I can taste the years; every moment respected and cherished, severed from the world around us, on the other end of the beginning; silent and still, dripping. Once we had it all together, tumbling like a clod of dirt down a hill, that will collapse under pressure; restrained only by old roots. Let that comfort you in your time of need. The smell of ancient minerals, oil, grease, that languish lecherously against all the dreams of fate.
The end is nigh, though no one is there to hear the autumn leaves laughing beneath tranquil steps; like water toiling away, tossing up all the horrors we had forgotten. Those truths that hide in the present, revealed, but brighter, leave nothing that was. Echoes, captured by some concern that is not me, a stroke of color pressed hard against a blank paper, the sound tumbling up a long hollow until pleasantness is nullified, from years of giving more than expected, dying in avarice. I’m not sure now why it didn’t break while we fought against it, the long wait and effort vindicated before that final curtain drops. The systole and diastole cannot survive to the end.
Where the wires, pipes and tubes retire, quiet hidden movements with shrouded secrets even the skin conspires on, stabbing at the ceiling in six different places, until, at last, broken. Like orphaned laughter so briefly sustained, to become part of a greater whole, the salt laden water water rising to the throat; a sense of belonging, lapping at what warmth drips down, in the brighter corners of that vacant place. I can’t remember why I enjoyed it so much.
Eager to grow into something beautiful, and quietly resign to darkness; I would fashion some reverence from the stale stone slate. It’s not trash, but it should be, to open eyes questing; awkward, ungainly, bruises, cuts, and wounds. Overwhelming, wondering, yet no less worthy of what alms we offer. And that is enough. We are bleached sidewalks in the sun. I don’t know. Some part of that old life, forcing itself through too small a gap, crumpled like crash test dummies; Belies what was beneath our feet.
I want it all – and quickly, while the state of my mind, cannot reconcile what is real. I must feed it, before it gets away from us. Para llamar a casa, in violent protest.
Hours are indiscernible from minutes. I regret thinking time was like the sea, that primal tugging beyond the veil; but truth does not move through time as we do. Collecting like lightning in a bottle, settled like stew in a dim lit room. This is the world, all our troubles overflowing, like so much sand over the desert dunes. Exhaust what you can, the endings don’t stop.
Naked, I fear that life, though it is dependent on the past. A heavy hand may have cast it out, as a thresher to an arm amongst the wheat; a cloud of chaos still warm from the womb, confident there is plenty more (if you’ve got the coin to spend). It’s not like it thirsts for blood, it will find empathy excavating what innocence is left, in the darkness.The leaves are gone. Lives are short, taint us with histories, known, expected, overpowering, everything.
Where death is natural, the infection settles, overwhelming the end, echoing in the veins, “again, again.” It spreads, revitalizing to keep peace at bay, another day.
The mystery beyond the threshold, pungent like a punchline. Known, expected, overpowering; withheld painfully. Ignorance as sharp as a sword, the vendetta cutting on all sides.
Life is meant to be overcome, not given. not taken lightly. Fought against, bested, subdued. In death; to beg for its persistence: blasphemy. Lance the errant tongues.
Grow Gray With Me 