It’s been a while since I’ve taken a drive through my mind.
I drove when I needed to search for understanding, and then came a time when I no longer yearned to understand.
Objects in mirrors were closer than they appeared. And suddenly…
Life was closer than it appeared whenever it was netted in the echo of a poem.


It began to snow, and the flakes under my headlights turned to shooting stars.
I was so close. So close to…something. I could see the faint outline of a figure…a man perhaps?
Time froze, or maybe it sped up? I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t perceive what was, and what wasn’t.
Then suddenly, he was there—
A man in a dark cloak, standing in the middle of the road, reaching out to me.  
I put on my breaks, and the car came to a sudden halt.
He circled around the car, approaching my window. I could not see his face.
I rolled down the window, and he came forward and motioned for my hand, holding out his gloved one.
I gave it to him.
He held it.
I suddenly wanted to die.
I said, “Can you make the suffering stop?”
He inhaled, as if to speak, and then…
I felt adrenaline and fear surge in my veins. I inhaled to ask him who he was, but there was no air. I was full of nothing.
I did not want to hear what he had to say.
My heart palpitated. My vision went black.  I opened the car door, and flung myself out onto the snowy ground.
The man was gone.
I didn’t want to drive anymore, so I locked the car, left it in the middle of the road, and walked into the blizzard. I didn’t know which way home was, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to know anything.

Life meets human understanding in the most delicate way, when one finds words to echo reality.
After the pen has scribbled something profound, understanding meets fear in the most unfortunate way.  All that once was, crumbles under epiphany.  
What is already known is comfortable. It doesn’t require bravery, for we have already faced it. We have already heard the words spoken from under the cloak, and we already have seen the face of their messenger.

...

Lately I can recall the scent of damp wheat grass,
and smears of red clay on my calves,
at the end of each day when I wandered home
accidentally *****, and purposefully human;
a child of the earth who found unity, easily.

Bury me back in the moss garden, and carve my name on the stones
where I once crushed berries
and painted my cheeks, as
an adolescent nomad celebrating dirt and singing for
sky, while the cows were my companions and the birds,
my messengers of joy.

Take me back there one day, to rest
in final slumber.
Then, perhaps I can feel the ceaseless wonder
that once I felt when
I brushed my hand against the bark of a tree,
if now this life can no longer give me as much.

Vacant pleas for union fill the muffled ears of oafs and tickle these text boxes with futility.
How do I find the courage to write out loud?
To speak to people,
without prompting?
To laugh and cry legibly,
once I know a lover's
listening?

Knives to the chest:
Things I cannot know
Just yet.

There is a divination of unbearable banality which one often has whilst watching their water boil—
Perhaps for their tea, perhaps for their stew—
Which transcends the kitchen walls and permeates larger realities,
Leaving them grasping at the scalding stove top, or
Taking a meat cleaver to their knuckles;
Seeking merely a feeling.
And Lord, isn’t that the most primal
Affirmation?

Sensation.

Which may in fact be mankind's
Consummation.

Not to mention its greatest frustration.



If only we waited a bit longer for the boil...

I blot people onto me, just to buff them away. Soakin em, and pressin em on.
Dabbin, pressin, soakin, like temporary tattoos.
Easy to apply, and pretty to look at.
Fun to show off, without any commitments, and then I just let em peel away after some time.
After their bright pigment fades, or their adhesive fails, I just rub em off.
Scratch em with my fingernails sometimes, when I get impatient.
Rub, scratch, off. Now, right now. I’m tired of lookin at you, feelin you on my skin.
I wore you for a bit,
Now it’s time for a new one.
Rub, scratch, dab, press, soak, press again again again.
Skin red, dry skin rub rub dab dab dab peel peel dab peel.
And then,
the ones I like the most, the most beautiful, the most vibrant,
color, color, color.
Purple, green.
purple purple
Purple,
are the ones I try to keep the longest,
they’re always the quickest to fade,
and to peel,
and to fail.
Fail fail fail, come unglued.
Keep em out of the sunlight, outta the wind. In the dry. But they peel.
Peel peel peel, fail.
They fail.
And then,
I can’t find others quite like em. So I press on any old picture. Any color.
Gray, red, yellow, blue. Not quite right, no blue, no citron, no salmon.
Not quite purple enough.
Not quite green.
Not quite, never quite the same.
The same purple, the same green.
Just soak soak soak soak,
Press. Peel.
Until, again, something might feel right.

A word gathering dust on my internal junk shelf,
Inseparable, it would seem, from my ego.
Assuredly it seems just a threat to my health;
It's a surefire harm to my heart, this I know.
But once given the chance to examine my state,
As impossible as it seemed to let go,
I saw glimpses of wisdom, redemptions of fate,
Which swore to this word’s worth, its quo.
For when read alone, on a page in my mind,
The “him” was the syllabic gong that rang twelfth.
But I took a fresh gaze, and upon my collate
Saw its syllabic partner alone; saw the “self.”
My “self,” I then saw, was discovered through “him;”
Made naked, and shivering, and new.
He’d unveiled hottest passions, and fears, with great stealth.
So “him” I can thank, now the word’s split in two.

Driven apart by an unlikely shim,
I have his remains, but see more clearly my “self.”
The dust I will likely now brush off my shelf,
For uttering the loveliest elision since “him.”

Her, the cynosure,
Once having lilted into perspective,
Is flawed.

By the late fall,
I hope you recall
My eyes.

As this world wretches behind the piles of our institutional bones, I turn to look the other way.
When the beggars graze my pant leg, I don't stop mid stride and feign over their disparity,
For gaining the holy marksmen’s approval. When Judas kissed sanctity’s cheek beside the frames of broken-hearted men, I shook the feeling from my sleeve.  
And I no longer feel guilt, shame,
Out of mere cerebral obligation.
So, have me for a worthless sinner. I will fall to the dust before I bring myself to stand beside the husks of humanity that so many have become; spewing their filth on unfortunate blindfolded men, expecting me to follow suit.
       Well, *******, kindly.      
I’m living for the god that answers to no titles, and parsonages none of these black suited scumbags. I’m living for the god that inspires harmony, and lifts my fingers to dance for liberation, and pleasure, and hopeless longing. I’m living for the god of progress who shakes pieces of enlightenment from his gray beard, and swallows up the offerings of his every wounded child.

I’m living for the god of no religion,
Never saying
“God,”
For this name is tainted by old customs.
Cheapened by the misguided nature of man.

You’re my favorite pair of sunglasses;
White rims, rose-colored lenses.
Try you on, and the world just looks better for a while.
The muddy construction sites, this massive concrete jungle,
The blemish on my chin.  
Each piece of trash on the sidewalk has a story.
Wandering strangers don’t seem strange;
Everything, and everyone, seems deliberate.
No distance seems too great to run,
No weight too heavy
To be lifted.  
Sappy acoustic love songs sound
Like life’s most epic
Anthems,
In my car as I’m driving.

It’s the most beautiful delirium;
Every sight seen is a portrait,
Every word heard is a song.

Though at the close the day,
That rose light will dwindle on the rims of my lenses,
Turning the soft shade over my eyes to rigid shadow,
So that then nothing at all can be seen,
And all that is heard is hollow ambiance.

With this I shed my glasses,
To look upon an ordinary world,
Until the next sunrise, when I will undoubtedly don you again.

I still feel the distant gyrations
Of your eyes
When you’re off somewhere collecting
The marble shards
Of the skies.
And like the fall of roman nobility,
You always come again to rest
On illicit ground,
On my soft sultry breast,
Knowing that
Your past might resurface in a quick crimson breath,
Stealing you soon away
And yet,
Love is nearly as binding as death
In the provocative quiet
Of my soft bed.  
For though convinced I was that we'd gone astray,
Truly fated, we were,
To this life that we've led:
To trust love no more,
Yet to love one
No less.
You're my exception, sweetheart--
A tasty poison, at best.

Hold me.
Just me.

And make it a conscious decision.

I've been bumming rides on Earth’s enigmatic forces
With hungry fingers,
Grasping for the wind outside of car windows,
And Escaping the laws of gravity
For brief moments
Whenever the pressure becomes displaced
Just enough for my hand to float
Purposelessly…


I don’t need the hand of a craftsman,
Or a banker.
Hammering nails,
Writing big checks.
I’ll float on the wind like a gull.
Eating crumbs,
******* on strangers.

Maybe I’ll even be lucky enough for you come float with me,
Drifter I may be,
But drifters only really drift in search of company.

Droplets of powder gathered on the counter
As I drilled holes in the linoleum to let the light in
Excuse the complacency and the drunken composure
But I'm eating my heart, and I'm taking you with me

Down the long fiery hallway at twilight
I will scream your fantasies softly to our moon
And your will to return will befall under its beams

Our private little world coming to an end,
Apocalyptic and honest,
Again to sleep.

I've laid my claim on No Man's Land,
And yes,
There's really nothing here.
Just dust, and the occasional vagabond wind.

Yet,
I've made the dust my friend,
And wind my accomplice,
And the arbitrary my entirety.

I've bent her sultry whispers into rueful screams,
And play them on repeat while I sit here.
Like music, sweet music.
Then I play them backwards,
Giggling as she speaks in desperate tongues.

A merely wicked amusement you are, Love--
Contrived and bitter love.
If you be the devil, then surely I'm your demon.