the practical city man –
executive, driven, productive -
so used to due diligence
always pursuing the best deal
goes to the Zen Master
and asks how long it’d take
to reach clear mastery
“Ten years,” says the Master

“But,” says the would-be student
“I’m willing to throw in double the time
your most diligent student puts in
and applying the principles of productivity -
how long will it take me then?”

“Twenty years,” says the Master

Sometimes Smith has no idea of what’s happening
Whether the ground below is vanishing away from his feet
Or he is just levitating past the skyscrapers
Smith has a good book
There he reads about a great artist
A con artist to be precise and all his sadistic puzzles
Smith tries to wake up, thinking he is still dreaming
Because the artist’s puzzles are still at large
How is he that successful? He has vast architectural knowledge
Knowledge enough to create ever-tricky mazes
Only the divine can fix the con’s jigsaw
And sometimes those with the divine touch show flaws
The con creates a series of optical and mental illusions
Illusions great enough to make you think there’s no divine being and even make you believe there’s no con
Smith wonders why the bad escape and the good suffer
Sometimes he gets trapped in his mind, thinking of the **** luscious mermaids and geisha girls
He is able to ignore them sometimes
But barely escape them and their never ending charm, on a very lustful day
The con artist sits in his empire and literally tries to get people stuff two plugs together or merge two sockets together.
That is a sick idea!
The con keeps smith wondering in delusions
He hides under the disguise of light
When the divine light shines, it melts off Smith’s saturated delusions
And restores him to reality
With the light he can see, you can see
How the con poses monsters as **** pretty ladies, heat as comfort, graves as castles, blasphemy as thanksgiving.
How he tries to make people monopolise the power of the divine
Sweet in vanity
In the end the divine light blinds the con artist and all those gleaming eyes in the dead dark

Courage does not answer every call with a roar
But with sincere heart
That knows pain and disappointment
That says tomorrow we will try again
Don’t worry i am here to help
I will hold your hand

you stuffed the sharpest fragments of your past
deep into the pockets of that green coat
so that they couldn’t pierce you anymore

sometimes in conversation, your hand shifts towards a pocket
I give the gesture attention, so you go ahead and reach in

the memory you pull out, you hold before you like a line-up
I tell you I’m not taking mental-picture mugshots

all I want is to hold the parts of your past that hurt the most
and grace them with my tears

for when I look at you, I see a girl with the courage
to pick the broken fragments of her shattered self off the floor
and piece them back together

I see a girl who dares to ask the deepest questions of life
because she has already been broken
and is not afraid of the answer

as a youth, he learned the art of separation
it was the only way to survive the pain
that burned his flesh and drowned his mind

he put his heart out of reach
placing it in a tin can - his only possession

the can became battered, dented
but his heart remained untouched

he had a gift, which he bent into a barbed wire fence
to rip apart those who tried to jump over

he surrounded himself with people
who were content with looking through the holes in the fence
who didn’t need access to his heart to love him

but then he met a man
who didn’t try to jump the fence like the others

by example, this man showed him how to open fences
this man handed him vulnerability, so he could see what it looked like

holding it for the first time, he noticed that vulnerability
had the same color, same shape, same feel
as love

in fact, he realized, this complete vulnerability
was love

he had never seen it in such perfect form
bold, deep, secure

with the knowledge that such love existed
he allowed himself a feeling he had always guarded against -
hope

he used this hope to pry open the tin can in his chest
where he found a raw, shapeless lump

so he set off, vulnerable written on his chest,
in pursuit of hands that could mold his heart

when I die
I do not ask that you surround my body with clay soldiers in the depths of the dirt
I ask only for you to lay me down in the grass
and construct over me a monument of your words

I ask for you to speak of me as I was unable to speak of you
for I can not articulate your presence past the word love
see, my vocal cords cannot adequately express the way I feel about you
the best I can do is replace the ink of my pen with the blood of my heart
and splatter it upon the page

you know, its times when you’re there, and i’m here
that my mind fills with your thoughts
that my elbow refuses to bend because it misses your shoulder
that I pick a flower, press it to my nose, but still smell only you

its those times, when this page, is all I have of you
so instead of folding it into a paper boat and sending it down the river
I write words upon it
I write how much I miss you — and then I send it down the river

for I know that the mouth of the river is your favorite place
that you love to catch things just before they reach the open ocean
just as you caught me, before I sailed off without direction

you stopped me, you handed me a compass,
and then you climbed right onboard yourself
and we faced the open ocean together

so when I die
I ask that you speak of our journey
speak of what we learned about love’s tendency to forget the cardinal directions
so that the compass of my soul points neither here nor there
it points solely and unwaveringly to you

the funny thing about time
is the way it grinds your bones to dust
while they’re still sitting in your flesh

we can all feel it,
we pretend we don’t, but we do

you feel it when you wake up in the morning
having dreamt of your childhood
and the sound of your sister’s laughter is still ringing in your ears

you feel it when you look up from a book
and its not your brother sitting in the chair next to you
but a strange fellow with a deep voice
and a nose that looks remarkably familiar

and strongest of all, you feel it when at the dinner table
your mother asks you what you’ve been up to for the past 18 years

see, the funny thing about time
is the way it grinds your bones to dust
while they’re still sitting in your flesh

just the other night, I pressed my palms together
and I called on a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile,
to ask where he’d been

he told me he’d been spending time with my father
because the man really needed some company
without his oldest son to talk to

oh and while I have you, he said,
your mother called
she told me to tell you
that your bed is made, if you ever want to come home

Your voice was as sweet as a siren
A conscious contradiction
You said that love is impossible
But I heard the waves inside your ribcage
And saw you smile upside-down