Im envious of Bermuda.
Her triangle is so deeply recognized.
I am caught in the "this is me now" in the face of who I should've been, and who I thought I'd be.
Cathedrals stacked to the stars
Like for Margaret.
And that you don't know this reference is the perfect epithet.
But how can I place my weight against the scale?
Imperial? Metric? Metaphysical?
What is the search for a sense of self
If not a desperate notion to understand our gravity?
I'm grave, for the far too many I've buried and the far more whom found a mausoleum in me, secure in my secrets.
In theory buried with me, but buried within me, and that is far too great a weight to put on dirt and rock and mantle.
I won't be buried.
Not because I could not keep them but because of kindness in grief, and in the ground isn't safe for these stories to rest, lest, and list - oh list... they die with me never to be uninterred by graverobbers or corporate land barons seeking to build a new golf course.
If the earth had to bear the gravity of conscious existence, she would implode like a fledgling star.
I doubt humans are alone in the universe, but I'd honestly get it - such a mistake...
For evolutionary crafted monkees to dare say this is Me and bend the world and rules around us, mostly by seeking an understanding of those rules...
And then turning them to profit. How human.
Fools, all of us.
Slaves, indentured to the tide of society.
I thought the progression of civilization was to move forward.
The things we'd learned from the dark ages - foolish and desperate attempts to cling to what we thought of as power.
But what happens when power evolves?
It certainly has exceeded us by the boundless laws of physics.
We relent and release in deference to the "please lead me" through questionable times
No one questioning that we brought this unto ourselves
A marooned ship a mile from paradise but destined it it's ignorance to sink.
Nothing, spirit or body, would intelligently design this.
At the very least if the concept of God was not just metaphorical but an ecumenical argument that we should be better...
Why the need to argue at all?
We are perfect imperfections of random chance and about 4 pounds
Of mostly wet pretty much bacon
Electrified like an sophomoric Frankenstein
And most of us haven't even read Mary Shelley
We are a species so magnetic to ourselves.
Watch what we can do.
Even if we shouldn't do it.
Maybe I'll just do it to see what my neighbor does.
And so the echelons grow.
To a maximum order of magnitude 13.
If everyone tells two friends
And those two can only tell two others
With no repeats
Only 13 times can a story be shared before it exceeds the maximal population of our planet.
Only 13 times can a paper be folded in half until you breach space.
Life...
It's a poorly dreamed up pyramid scheme.

I am not who I thought I'd be
Sure I look a little like John McClane now
If he'd birthed Gary Busey.
An unrelenting action hero
That finds "action" an unlikely filter too far from reality, and "hero" a notion so freely given that societally we have reduced what it was meant to mean.
Heroes used to be subjects of admiration
That which inspired aspiration in our youths (utes- some of you get it)
But the title of "hero" was an impermanent...

(Character) is a hero (timeline) for doing (x)

Yet it becomes their lifelong nomination to the firmament of history.
How many of our "heroes" died on crosses only to reveal skeletons (a lot) or journal pages of moments?
How many times have "heroes" been exposed as nearly inexplicable excellence deposed by the consequence of inconvenient fact?

{This guy did a super awesome thing... but oh, wait - no... don't Google, he's really a *******}

That achievement, as laudable as it should be, is no replacement for an expectation to be human.. to be in spite of being.

Athletes, actors, poets, and songwriters, producers, investors, and attorneys who all say "you're going to do great kid", who support you right up until the moment you aren't doing great... or in reality: they're about to get "me too"-ed. {I desperately want to call it moo-ed}

It's not an accident that every movie is familiar and every song sounds the same except the few artists who stake their own vulnerability - it's a badly written matinee.

[Like trying to make those words rhyme]

If we sound or seem mundane, it's because you, the sheeple, conditioned to show contrition at the steeple, believe it to be a reflection of your pain.
We've crafted a carefully cultivated currency of resistance in the constant contentious, captivating and  licensious, breeding and ever feeding, consumers of today... to tell you all to stop listening to us.

And stop smoking cigarettes <wink>.

Taylor Swift, America's sweetheart and a genuinely talented songwriter keeps writing songs about why you should stop listening to her. And that none of you get "it" is probably why I never will.

It's more subtle now. The punk and post punk movements of the pixies and velvet underground refaced the pavements surreptitious to what "adults" then thought was "a wall of sound".
But what is punk now except an exposition of 30 somethings trying to find the after hours after party, even literally underground? Or just go to bed?

We cannot even have an open discussion without being so hurt we have to find private corners to complain about anyone who disagrees with "me"
Never giving credence or understanding of what "me" means...

It's nothing. History will forget you as I hope it forgets me. The only thing I hope is that a few people read my lines, I might help shape a few minds, and I might live forever in the national archives - the pages of memory.

Terrible people are capable of great things
Just as every person history records as great...
Just as all "Great people" have all done horrific things.
No exceptions.

I may have been seeking
A perfect disaster
Thats where I found you
Poring through the files in the evidence room

Swipe right, its like a mirror
You're my reflection
In the beautiful fractals of broken stained glass
A composite of missed memories and failing to act

But I
Keep callin you "lady",
But thats a stretch like calling me a "gentleman"
I am a perfect *******
That's what you're after
Baby I'd be your "*****" if only you'd let me in

A thousand times I should've known
I should have felt
The thousand times without.
For the misplaced faith in a wraith I couldn't doubt...

My own feeling left me reeling
For me to tell the one story,
I'd left untold
And I can never know - if I was right...

I dreamt a hundred lives
And in each time
I never saw your face...

You were here with me from the beginning
Maybe a reflection of my ghost
Or I was too young for me to place you.

On and on.

But I chased you well.
I told the stories
In poems, songs, in visions
In theories, in ev'ry mis-decision
I keep you alive in every lie
In every breath that claims that I
I believe

Did you know that I drowned...
Twice?

You are my hidden face
Wittness to my unveiled disgrace
I was once asked in all my songs
Who were "you"

My unseen mistress
My forgiveness,
My implacabal
Agressive shadow

My insecure insignificant
My insight
Myself deplorable
An adorable
A beautiful disaster

And we slept
So many nights
In each other's comforting arms
And I invited you in
Without a fight
But thats all you left in me

... the FIGHT

My disgraceful, irreplaceable
My exoneration,

my desperation, my displacement,
my revelations...

My whimsical
Mystical, quixiotical
My enervation...

Disgraceful, irreplaceable, it's not just distrust,
Its ireedemable

You're my,

Captivated, and one day they'll maybe see
You've always been me

My inescapable

"you"

You...
Feel the ***** of your feet
Each step painting a tapestry
Each breath left unnoticed
Each move unrelenting...

Neither of us
Wished I were here

What should've been a revival
became default to a recital
And every pirouette
A moment none of us
Should have missed
... and I'm no better

I'd've penned you letters
Each with the broken, desperate intent
And secret hope, you'd just throw it away

But I can feel in each poissson
As i fish for every moment you've lost
And the tilte barre
Cant fulfill your absent tomorrows
I could have staged for you
an "I'm sorry"

Now every time I hear your laugh
In playback or live from a hundred miles
Your giggles reignite in me
A flame through a negative
The moments as they might be
But here we are
And where we both were left to be

I had a normal day once...
I suppose that depends on how you define "normal".
And I think it was a Tuesday,
But that depends on what a Tuesday is, or means, or if our Tuedays have ever meant the same things.
It was late spring. April, maybe May.
But it was a steamy Tuesday, the first angry sun after a rain.
And the only thought that occupied my mind that day,
Suspiciously
Surreptitiously
In that moment and in my memory...
Was how the uneven earth felt beneath my feet
As I, solo, explored the woods beyond the shopping plaza across the street
And it might have been or may still be the last normal day for me
On some random Tuesday, two decades ago
In April or maybe May.

My intellect has served me only a level of awareness of the fragility
Of our world... bonded pieces tethered together
By the bubblegum and handshakes, and gentleman's agreements of
Violent, un-gentle men
Lost in time to a group-think long rumored to be extinct
Rumors whose purpose serve only to palliate the weariness of consumers
To keep the market machine spinning
But whose ideals every decade or so resurfaces to strike bold into each generation that our history is not as clean as
The books, and songs of the "good ol days" mislead us to believe
And to raise the rancor of the awakened shouting into choruses of their own voices carrying the same message of resist
And whose fervor is cartooned as extremist
It is said the entitlement of the peaceful to sleep sound at night
Is owed to the will of brave men who stand ready to deliver violence
On their behalf
But whose iron sights and guided bombs increasingly shift focus to the not-entirely-innocent
Whose guilt by association signed in iron pen their death warrants by foreign manipulators claiming liberation
They know what's best, after all
My intellect has served only to deliver this life of anxiety, in the pursuit of happiness.