Trying to create a world in your twenties is like building a house with dynamite. There's no pieces of sanded wood. There's no nails or cement or stucco. There's no architect, designer, or foreman. There's just you, hocking ideas that explode into something, into nothing, or into the wrong direction. How anybody makes it out of that long stretch of ten years, I have no idea. The idea of what you could have been becomes a myth, an apparition that if chance, luck, and ***** didn't get you on the same path at the right place and the right time, you'll always be chasing. Nobody tells you the present is an illusion. Life is nothing but chasing after something that can't ever be caught. I know that now, but I didn't back then.

Liquor store romance
Prayers in the gallery
Behind China #5
Mysteries of curly friends and
Barmaids named Gretchen
Line cooks cold cocking their ruebens
Faking fornification
Making something into nothing
Destroying the dopamine
Riddling the relatives with fake stories
Of glorious mismatched and useless education
Trying hard to try hard
Everyday
A notebook with nothing in it
Letters turn into words that turn into paragraphs
That turn into pages that turn into chapters
That turn into Acts that turn into End
Flower petals assess the scenery
Decide to die
Connecting to robotic friendship
The only time I feel at home is when I'm asleep
Sometimes with the page
Not tonight though
Tonight I feel I have nothing to say
Nothing to give
Nothing to feel
Like nothing is new
Today all I'm good for is ingesting
Taking
Giving nothing for I have nothing
Even my voice is shallow, thin, void of empathy
Interest, love, friendship, curiosity, zeal
Whispers wane on disregarded street corners
Take me back so I can try again
I don't feel like taking a step in the right direction
What are day time naps a sign of?
A hero is a mask of the times
Though what they give is never enough
Temporary alleviation to a permanent problem
What a weight we are, us humans
It's ok to not think right now, he says
It's ok to think that I'm a girl too, she says
I say, let it be known that Jesus never rose
Never bled
Never pushed the rock away for our sins
There is a darkness here
It tastes like peppered olive oil and train station air
A taxi honks for you and you wave
Take me for granted, says the voice
Take me for a ride once and a while
It's not like we never have a good time when we do
Are you upset with me? He asks.
Are you upset with me? She asks.
The barriers are cracking and we're running out of water
A myth is a mirror to the world
Telling us there is universality in un-truths
There is only the here, the now, and the nothing,
Fleeting emotion
Like flies scattered from a corpse

Is an
Attempt at:

Self-realization
Self-destruction
Self-realization
Self­-des­truction

Death just once.

See yourself
As not yourself
Currently
In the mirror
If you have one.

Try.

Don't try.

See if I care.

Imagine
Stepping into a wind,
Taking in
Only pollution

When you
Second guess
Yourself
Your only self,
You,

You take that first voice,
The voice only
You and you only
Ever hear,
And silence it.

Wait.
Have you not heard yours?
Wait.
Are you as much a stranger to them as I?
Wait.

I'll tell you mine is:

A telling voice
A meandering voice
A voice without a reason
Chiseled by glassy experience
Glued together by a fragmented past
Melded not with
The precision of the sword
But of the chaos of love
Of an accidental death
Of a slip on the ice
Of a kiss not on the lips

The voice plays no favorites
But to its host
The voice wants to be heard
Needs to be heard
For to be heard is to be recognized
And to be recognized is to be seen
Solidifying your existence

Did we see each other today?
Surely or surely not.
Does that mean I or you or
Any eye that reads and thinks these words,
Reads these words,
Will assume I'm here

Still Here
Will be Here
Has ever been Here
At all.

What am I saying?
Poetry, prose, and words have always
Transcended life.

Syllables save your soul,
But not your body,
If you do right.

That's the catch.
That's the deal.
That's the way it is.

But, to be seen, to not be seen
To be recalled as someone else
This someone else or
The other has seen before, may
Or may not
Actually mean that we
Are all in fact here.

We unknowingly
Transport ourselves
Away from ourselves
To distance ourselves
From ourselves

Until we do something right
Until we do something too right
And aim to transport ourselves
All over again

The search is a cycle
And the cycle is our lives.

Accept it already.

I'm awaiting my transportation
My shedding of the cocoon
Will it come naturally or
Will it
Come forced?

Is there a difference?

Nature is a force of nature.

And like nature,
There is only one true kind,

Much like
Your voice.

So listen to it.

Your voice speaks
Just to you,
Only to you, though
It's funny,

And it may just be funny to me,

I wonder if my voice
Gets angry or bitter or feels betrayed
By sharing
What they
Are only supposed to share with me

To you.

Should I ask them?
Will they answer?

Voice,

Are you angry with me?

They aren't saying anything quite yet.

I'll let you know
If they
Get back to me.

Loaves
Of dry bread
Rest on my
Dusty windowsill

Someone
Just said my name

I didn't answer them.

I'm worried about dust
Getting in the cracks and
Holes of the dry bread
On my windowsill.

Something tells it's going to happen.

Much like
Everything else
That's been going on
Lately.

What is that something?
Who is it?
Are we all just seers
Locked in our own perspectives?
Like horses with
Blinders on?

I think about money
I think about gold
I think about a white picket fence
Surrounding a manicured yard
With one of those silly garden gnome
And a flamingo with a Santa Clause hat on it

(It is Christmas time)

And then I think about a field
And I see a wolves den
And a birds nest
And a beavers dam
And a gopher hole

I see the roots of a redwood
Planted by the hands of the Gods,
Staking their land with their
Winding tentacles.

We've always done this.
Before we were even able
To call ourselves a "we"

Separation and conflict
As a species
Has always been so.

There is a truth, but
What we lack that the animals have not
Is respect.

They eat their neighbors
And the neighbor know
That this must be so.

What they take comfort in
Is they know the sun will rise
Again for them in the morning.

They do not think they deserve it,
For they fight to survive every day,
Losing brothers and sisters,
Siblings and spouses;

The loss is their payment for the light of the moon and the sun.

They earn it.

The dry bread on my windowsill has molded.
The once gray dust has turned green.
I waited for a bad thing to get better.
I waited for a bad thing to do the right thing.

I'll have to toss it
And bake
Another loaf.

I don't have much
Anymore
I don't
Care to

She told me
Nice and quiet
That's what
She wanted

That's not
Or what I'll ever
Be.

There is
Something wrong
With me.

Something
Permanately
Dissatisfied.

And yet,
I'm apart of nothing.
Seen as nothing.
Pushing nothing.
Producing nothing.

There is something
Wrong
With me and something
Right with me

Where support
Is needed
To support
The support
I need to do
What I need
To do.

Does that make sense?

Here I press for me
For' I press and I live
And I crunch and I buy
And I spend and I bend
And I curse and I drink
And I sleep and I am chilled
For no one

I do not want me.

How do I rid myself
Of myself
So I can see the world
Void of ego?

Void of perception?

Void of weight?

Void of past?

I no longer want to try anymore
To be my best self, but
A
Vehicle for something
Unpersuaded, yet,

Un-restrained.

I don't want to believe in money anymore.
I don't want to believe in you.
I don't want to believe in loving anymore.
I don't want to believe in you.

Once I start believing in you,
I have to start believing in me,
And once that starts, well,
We just start,

Right back where we started.

Noble no one
At a loss
Of myself

Of my words
My life
To take myself on
The road again
To make sure
There is ground and
There is personality
And there is
Life's energy

There are breaks
In barriers that have
Yet to be built

I'm standing on the roof
With a crippled kite
And I don't know if I can
Do this anymore
Should do this anymore

When has there ever been belief
But

From me?

Presenting oneself
To the muted sea,

Vulnerability envelopes
My step by step
Your step by step

Toward that void -

Or is it
Something else?

What is the ocean
But us?

What is the expanding sand
But our skin?

What are wind whipped gulls,
The sideways skittering *****,
The diminished coral reefs,
The longing blue whales,
The suicidal dolphins and the waning tuna,
But our souls, our personalities, our multitude of beings?

We are born
Of nature.

We come from the soil,
The boulders,
The kaleidoscopic winter leaves,
Shifting in emotionality,
In love and in hate,
As the tides do, as the moon does, as we always do

If you are seeking home,
Look out your window, your tent flap, your terrace,
Look at the sky that embraces the clouds
To her ***** like you do your child or loved one,
Your dog, your cat, your pig, your ferret...

Whatever pet you may keep and
I hope
You keep many...

For you are home,
You are at home with the waves,
The rivers,
The brush, the fires, the lakes, the snow,
The rain, the hail, the storms, the eruptions

These tides that turn
Are of us
For us and against us
Guiding us, teaching us, and challenging us.

You are home,
She whispers as she bends the thin glass of my window;
Wets the thin fuzz as my cheek grows redder;
Forces me to shiver as I bring my bones closer,
Demands me to sweat as I try to wipe every drop away
In futility.

You are home,
She whispers, And
You always have been and
Always
Will be.

You are home.
You are home.
You are home.