Woe to the contemplative real estate,
where the red light shines
quiets itself.
Shines again.
Where the sound is loud enough to oust
the compulsion of rationality
conceding to lunatics.
Growing like absurd flowers.
Bold crimson lines swaddled in shadow,
haunting the eyes, even in darkness,
animated almost.
Stop motion secrets.
The red light cries out endlessly,
while shapes play in the spaces between,
the noise flirting like waves.
Swallowing the shore at dusk.
Echoes of solitude.
Life is the sieve that filters our passions,
straining them thin;
permitting only a few freedoms – here
or there,
until the flow of it runs clear.
With a lattice like maze of obligations and tollgates,
keeping all the big dreams on the other side,
our mind desperately scours for starbursts;
reflections of light caught by precious minerals,
hidden amongst all that dirt –
salvation.
Poetry,
is life with cheesecloth.
There is an umbral seed
inside all of us that will grow
if given light and watered.
There are gnarled weeds too
that will choke those seeds to nothing
if not ripped from the soil.
Gardening is hard, messy, but intentional.
Find the seed and gift it your light,
inspire fertile fruits.
The world, a hollow husk on strings,
begs for the vitality it once entrusted.
Countless efforts shine like stars in the night,
while the sun silently hides, claiming to be a star itself.
Be not silent in that darkness, but,
loud enough to fill that space,
to name it – or at least replace it with dreams.
When you wake, wake with open eyes ready.
The end, random probabilities,
radiant whispers in reality
bright enough to see, bright enough to pursue,
labor over and finally celebrate;
having met the source of the echo you once were.
Those sounds we make resonate.
All want a voice that enjoys being heard,
climbing over them in toccata only welcomes discord.
Listen long enough to find the harmony,
make music you can be proud of,
songs that will be heard long after you’ve gone quiet.
Could you stash your memories in a secret box,
wrap them in chains and bind them with locks,
if it meant more memories could be made to fit,
in the space you’ve spent your life making for it?
Some thoughts grow and grow and grow
until those thoughts and those memories are all we know,
taking the place of the thoughts we should think now,
unless we can find a way to quiet them somehow.
“Perhaps if we feed them they will just go away,”
I hear a voice inside me meekly say,
but thoughts are like hungry cats pawing at your door,
no matter what you give, they still want more.
A friend told me not to think of them at all,
treat them no better than a fly on the wall,
but thoughts are bigger than flies, louder too,
and if you let them, they’ll hide, jump out and surprise you.
When I asked grown ups what to do, they said,
to find other thoughts or memories to make instead,
but some thoughts don’t like being alone,
and will steal the new ones to make them their own.
In the end I had to find for myself what to do,
because of all those I asked, no one ever really knew.
I held those memories close, whispered softly in their ear,
“I love you, but I need to move on. Don’t worry though, I’ll be near.”
And I gently tucked the thoughts away,
in a big cedar chest labeled, “for another day,”
so I could make new memories, keep the old ones at bay,
but go back to feed them or keep them company should my thoughts stray.
Childhoods absurdity wrangled,
rooting through thick wooded landscape,
reveling in every winding curve,
each ambitious jump,
just high enough to hang a dream on –
backwards.
Like memories gone false,
long past their sell-by date –
our minds are starved,
so we eat the dirt.
The shadows feel like water.
The way they move around me,
reminds me of my daughters;
the light kept from them, the silhouette they see.
Prescient moments arise
lived backwards like memories,
rowing past soft pastel skies,
in the universe’s transient reverie.
A burst of life shines like hope,
feels compassionate like home,
the sober end of a rope,
that will throttle the throat when we are alone.
These moments shouldn’t be here,
any purpose they portend
defies the cadence once near.
We all curve in strange places as time bends.
We know only fantasy,
lies we’ve carried throughout history,
on backs, on packs, on animals and carriages,
on everything we could put our name to,
because those are lies too –
A sound was uttered without intent,
echoed, and intent was gifted.
A place was found to celebrate,
loved so much it became known,
shared, and then claimed, owned.
This is how the story goes,
on and on with momentum.
What we owned owning us,
assigned value, printed on paper,
that we depend on –
to be worth more than ourselves.
Still, all these feints in chorus,
compose a symphony of notes
someone told us were chords;
love, heroism, virtue, justice;
a life fulfilled, a place to be,
a heart, a time or feeling for which we long.
Honesty in this late stage,
is a cruelty, not a kindness.
All those colorful fables,
that line our hearts and minds with aspirations,
if critiqued, practically and with reason,
are suddenly
and dispassionately
gone.
Labor over me, I am no triviality.
When the craven shadows creep out the corners,
detritus spilling over the threshold of the coming day,
swallow your pride and come my way.
Deceit is a warm comfort to an old friend,
but that heat compounds anxiously within;
better to suffer the thin cuts of sharp ice,
than to ingest the ashes of a consuming flame.
What armor need truth?
Truth is indefensible,
indiscriminate,
indispensable.
No monsters exist beyond truths reach,
no obstacle can withstand its might,
but few fear its conquest.
For all its weight must be wielded,
and fewer still have such strength.
They speak its name,
list its dimensions,
even threaten,
but seldom brandish it;
betting everything on mere intent.
Like a young heart beneath mortality’s veil,
truth soothes with practicality,
overwhelms with certainty,
and in their embrace, reveals;
truth needs no armor.
No monster endures truth,
not even truth itself.
Grow Gray With Me 