The winds that blow across the sea will find you,
And where they do, so too will I be found,
The shadow cast of your wonderous light true,
Forever free to remain attached and bound.
You change, evolve, and grow into something more,
And I admire you anew, as before,
These winds that endlessly carve away the land,
Change all save the bond you and I have in hand.
Wind blows gently across the plane,
It’s soft hands sifting through the grain;
A golden ocean crashing endlessly,
Relentlessly splashing,
Colliding with the setting sun,
Deep purples on the horizon,
Lulling the world to sleep with hues of blue,
And sweeping clouds askew.
A depression hides in the field.
A secret quietly concealed,
Some wandering soul now lost to the earth;
A cost assigned at birth,
A body of anxiety,
Now bereft of society,
Become a bloated, bountiful buffet
All decayed and fetid.
Yet the wind still finds its beauty;
Perhaps a false sense of duty,
It circulates the smell through the valley,
Life rallied with a knell.
A perfect place for young flies,
One decides as it lands on an eye,
And then skitters about to find its place,
On the face to be mined.
It rises and lands on the cheek,
A landscape both supple and weak,
But then the cadaver struck the fly dead
And said none would have her.
Then settled her hand to her side,
Contemplated the world outside,
And enjoyed her death as best as she could.
The good life, she thought in jest.
Pushing wheels against the wind,
Pedals crawling in circles,
The road rises to meet us,
The wind folds past us.
“Don’t do this,
Don’t do this right now.”
“Now isn’t good?
Now isn’t the right time?”
“Time has nothing to do with it,”
“Time is relative.”
“Relative to what in this place?
Relative to… nothing?
Nothing makes sense,
Nothing seems to work.”
“Work on shutting up then,
Work on less talk, more action.”
“Action is what got us here,
Action broke us down to this.”
“This isn’t so bad.
This is at least a quiet place.”
“Place yourself in my shoes.”
“Place your hand here,
Here you can feel my heart,
Here is a sign of persistence.”
“Persistence ruined us.”
“Persistence to endure.”
“Endure? When is it enough?”
“Endure until we can no more.
More time is needed,
More information is out there.
There has got to be a way
There has got to be a purpose.”
“Purpose implies intent.”
“Purpose gives us goals,
Goals give us hope.”
“Goals pacify with data,
Data hides loss behind numbers.”
“Data can also keep us grounded.”
“Grounded! That’s rich.
Grounded to the fact that we’re dying?”
“Dying is not the word I would use.
Dying from what?”
“What ever it is this place is,
What would you call it?”
“It is like a purgatory I guess,
It is a waiting area with nothing to do.”
–
“Do you hear that?
Do you hear that sound?”
Sound rose out of the nothing,
Sound burrowed through the fibers of existence.
Existence gasped and collapsed
Existence found itself wanting
Wanting
Collapsed
Such wrath has been wrought in the name of capital,
Empathy extracted from the mouth of existence
To leave it toothless and unable to chew;
Drip fed contradictions and exaggerated insecurities
Until existence is neutralized to nothing more than,
Selling our lives and our time to buy the good life at cost.
Step right up boys and girls, everyone’s a winner!
Come see the sell outs and the golden calves,
For half your earnings you can watch your own execution,
Pay double and unmask the villain
But if you’re too afraid to confront yourself,
There’s a teacup ride where you can go round and round ’til you die
If you vomit, try not to hit the operator,
They paid good money to keep you in circles,
And we wouldn’t want the rides to stop, would we?
Step right up boys and girls, everyone’s a winner!
At least that’s what they tell us to get us on stage.
Shirts and skins, but if you lose they’ll take your shirt; skin too.
And if you win, it will only be for all the people you flayed,
So at least the ones that lose everything,
Can say they never skinned a man,
But they’ll still buy the skin if it says ‘prada’ and is on sale,
To have that moment where it looks like they did, so,
Step right up boys and girls, everyone’s a winner!
If only I had a pair of stilts,
Long legs cutting through the distance
Piercing their steps into the ground
Sharp points on impact finding comfort
In a place of contact shaped to their image.
If only I could walk around like that,
Towering above
What others call level,
Away from the broken and disheveled,
Away from my station
Invoking some hesitation in those that passed by.
If only I could be as unnatural as I feel,
I’d lumber around without guidance,
Moved only by curiosity,
Infected with unfounded zeal.
To be so tall,
So high up,
So distant,
That everything else becomes so absurdly small,
So intrinsically manageable.
If only I could get further away from this rock,
Yet still be on it,
Not tethered or burdened,
But inquisitive and troubled,
though not without agency.
I could scatter about like a bipedal spider,
And thread what looks broken together
Wrap it in string,
find pride in the suture,
and never be wounded.
But here I am,
Too close for comfort.
“I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where,
the living goes
when it stops.” – Charles Bukowski, “Layover”
Turning inward I find a child
starved and pleading
“Let me out!”
but I hold it down and bind its mouth.
I can’t hear over the sounds
and there is so much I have to listen to
to stay afloat
and you, child in me, are just weight.
Leave me and go so far
I no longer know where you are.
Somedays though
I feel I’ve heard enough.
The cacophony has caught me
jabbing stationary in my ears.
This might be a good time
to find that kid.
Let him play for awhile
because it sucks out here,
but he’s gone
and I walk on and wonder where.
I’m trying to paint this landscape
and they’re telling me how,
but the landscape keeps changing
before I can even raise my brush,
And this kid comes up
Kicks me in the ankles
and says, “What the hell are you doing?
Paint your own thing, you’re fucking this up!”
I kick him back and tell him that’s just how
the living goes.
This is how we spend most our time,
two parts of a broken lock,
meant for a purpose we can never serve alone,
but together, only binding.
And though I hate him,
but because I love him,
I tell him we are almost done;
and he says he doesn’t care,
“Just tell me
when it stops.”
Friend, you are the universe.
Know that as you weep alone,
All of this was unrehearsed
Expressions of the unknown.
You are as much randomness,
As an echo of battle,
Old records of callousness,
Made self reflective prattle.
An apex of existence,
Speaking to it of beauty
With unyielding persistence
And a false sense of duty.
You do not owe anything;
To live and breathe is enough.
Why spend your time worshipping,
The jailor and his handcuffs?
There is much to venerate
With no need to stray outside
Instead one should celebrate
What existence has implied.
One: You are here observing.
That from which you were sculpted,
The success of preserving
Knowledge in one who’s trusted.
Trusted for your survival,
Trusted to keep on fighting,
To witness your arrival
And to put it in writing.
Two: Much has been overcome,
Once lame, now you run meters,
Once deaf to everyone,
Now an eloquent speaker.
So much world was ingested
That you were set to rupture,
But instead you invested,
Putting those forms to structure.
Three: Nothing is eternal,
Once you are gone, it’s finished;
There is not an external,
No reward, nothing punished.
The birth and the conclusion
Bind your story like bookends;
So enjoy the delusion,
And let your fiction distend.
Indecisive flowers
Trees raging against the sky.
The earth is fruitful.
Grow Gray With Me 