Tag Archives: existentialism

Vultures

We sleep in derelict houses,
haunted by neglect and decay;
our dreams writhing with a disease
that scars our skin in memories
of lives we’ll never achieve.

We are not who we are in this place,
only who they allow us to be.

What they can’t keep from us,
they take from us greedily,
leaving us only these derelict bodies.

Our power, our labor, our passion
snatched from us, vultures on our carcass.

Our bodies left to fester in neglect,
what ravaged flesh that remains,
nothing like who we were in that cramped space.

Like the whole, the parts are just husks,
rags hanging on passively, Spanish moss on dead trees,
indifferent to their existence without purpose,
but not knowing of an end;
such things are their power,
                          their labor,
                          their passion.

Clipped Wings

All greatness we achieve is exploited in the end,
the language we speak used to condemn,
the letters we write now contracts that bind us to them,
and the paintings we scrawl, presentations of our downfall.

If this absurdity had given us large enough wings,
neither you nor I would be allowed to fly freely with those things,
we all know what such power and elegance brings,
a flood of dead president callers, all holding collars.

We would fly, sure, but only if it suited our benefactors,
they’d pay us to stay grounded, keep the lights on, run the tractors,
overwhelm us with gifts of earth born distractors,
ensuring room enough in the sky for those worthy of flight.

Better to sing for yourself and leave them with silence,
write on the walls of your heart, let their pages feel your absence,
paint pictures to paper your home and let them live in blindness,
what greatness is in you, does not need their value.

Maybe we can’t fly,
but we can bound through life as best we can.

The Ur Resonance

That head cold of a place,
claustrophobic like asthmatic lungs,
a beginning, an ending,
depending on where you look.

In that heaving chamber,
a body stands misaligned,
like paper planes fumble folded,
the right side crawling away,
desperate for the solace of shadows.

The rest of the body too, one can assume
(but know nothing).
Where secrets grow like hair,
even as the source will never do again.

Another figure is inhaled,
drawn deeply from the darkness.
A reflection of the native,
lunging towards its chiral twin.

The folds of space between them thin,
become thinner still, non-existent,
a monstrosity of osmosis.

A tired rage erupts from the forebearer,
one ‘good’ hand emboldened and armed,
vomited out from the disheveled shapes,
plunging a dagger into the aggressor,
again, and again, and again, and again,
until, together, they slump away,
retreating from life, reality, everything.

Reflections on Time

Interacting with your own line of time,
feels like death penalty electronics,
brain shouting in pyrotechnics,
warning or celebration, who can tell?

Perhaps it’s the screaming desire,
to transcend the moment,
to be sound, fury, too.
Stretching out into places as alien as you,
manipulating the history of your future.

But the noise fails to silence
the confrontation between your two selves.
Merely a transitory way station for thoughts,
as you try to adjust perspective towards fullness.

A magic eye poster of before and after,
regurgitated onto a single surface,
only making sense to disloyal eyes, corrupted minds.

Singularity, finally achieved, is painful,
requires hyper focus,
the tension if it stretches sanity’s bounds.

To hold in place, grab another and squeeze,
break skin, find empathy.

The Rope Dancer

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.

Singularity

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.

Sympathy for Deceit

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.

Conservation of Matter

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.