“Laughter begets laughter! Sin begets sin!” said the voices which echoed pervasively in the mind of the guardian of the gate of the tower of the wall of the town of the city of Evanshire.

In response to this, he said aloud “Then what would herald a minor flaw to be chosen as beautiful, indeed?”

Beauty is often found within a transient burst of light which turns itself over the surrounding darkness only moments after. Its superseding ancestry is lost to the environment; however, this is not the case with most things delightfully brought on by human empowerment. Humans, being such compulsive creatures, strive for nothing less than perpetuation of order in all things, and beauty be ****** if that means changing a systematic response to something more naturally, intrinsically made to fetter in the palm of the last vestibule of temporal illusion.

Some see the animals which deem themselves superior as parasite; feeding off the presence of life and ore around their very bodies. Unbridled power given to the bearer of serendipity, humanity turns their noses up as if it were anything of their own control. Disgust is what should be shown toward such foul, obscene little things.
    
The man laughed out at the ridiculous rantings put forth by his narrator.

“Is that what you think,” he said “that we’re all just ****? Well maybe you’re right, but this world is **** impressive. Sure more than I’m deserving of.”

Just as that was said, an owl hooted somewhere in the distance. Its hoot was perceived by the guardian, but his perception was fallacious. He heard a fibrous, alien-like sound. So deeply disturbed by this was the man-guard that he fell back in his chair and lay wrought on the ground for several hours. It was not until he was awakened, by himself no less, that he took himself to try his hand at movement once more. He gently flexed, starting at the tips of his fingers and leading up to his first forearm, before he exhausted all his chakra and mustn’t have had any need to persist, for he was already standing there where he had found himself lying on the floor.

“Are you okay?” he asked himself, before realizing he was talking to a ghost and hadn’t been lying on the floor for a bit at all.

The moon had begun to set and was large and glistening in the oblique sky; its blue tint reverberated the light over the countryside, and questioned the very existence of everything excluding the reasoning behind it. However, this need not be mentioned and would be better to leave for another rant of time and loss.
A crow perched itself on the stone windowsill, which had been chipped slightly on the right edge leaving exposed brick and mortar. Just beneath the arc of the sandstone window was the nest, and the crow held in its beak a few worms which appeared to be dead. One could assume the crows effervescent green eyes were a result of secular radiation and shouldn’t be concerned or associated with the fermentation of grapes, but the guard, who is the same as the narrator and the voice in his head, knew better than to act like such a fool and knew the likes of objectivity to be a falsification of the throne. He promptly removed the eyes of the crow as to stomp on them and make a fine wine.

Alas, no gain came of this. When the captain’s right hand came wandering into the tower’s top room and found the guard, the narrator, and the spectre sit in the armchair whilst laying on the floor, holding the eyes of a crow in one hand and the soul of hearthfire in the other, he lurched out his guts and asked whether the weather outside was weather or whether it weren’t.

“What’s that?” asked the guard, before noticing the cap’n’s right hand had entered.

Upon doing so, he took the rest of the crow, eviscerated it, and made it into a finger puppet. 

“You know how the fooligan do. Look at all the fooligan, perched atop the hillside. Laughing and drinking, and clinging their rosy glasses. The sun casts a plastic glow across their cheeks. And as they smile, it seems so real. Ah, yes, the fooligan.”

By bliss imbued
The self renewed
In energy accepted
The primal force
Of life endorsed
Where freedom's resurrected

In shedding doubt
To live without
The need for expectation
By peace of mind
No longer blind
The soul can find
Elation

I want to become someone

I love when things are written for me
We may not be on the same page
But we're in the same book

It's beautiful to live life with lively characters
Whose depth can fill the void on an empty page
And turn that cage into magic to be woven from our inspiration

We spend a lot of time trying to escape our lives
But that's just it
We keep on living even if we go about our days chasing a fate we're not keeping up with
We can drink away our memories
Or spend an age online, invested in the drivel of another vapid daydream
Or we can live our lives in the making

Sometimes we live between pages
Between lines of words unwritten
And I find myself getting sick when I see packs of people in different stories intersecting mine
Like ravenous wolves, starving for a piece of meat
While I want only to exchange a few words from my story
With another person in the same book

Whose ever musing beauty should refrain
To tantamount endurance of lament
When every mounting truth begets in vain
To all but fleeting, ignorant dissent
As promises romantically inclined
Should shower vagrant starlight on your face
But ever shake the beauty of the mind
To flay itself to fortune in disgrace
I chased a home in something never bound
And lost myself to hang upon the hour
I forced my hand to choke when you’re around
To girdle and bestow a broken flower
Yet in the light of new day I attest
That grandeur can be found in simpler things
For at effulgent love’s newfound behest
By synergy, felicity it brings

Should I find my memories forgotten
What of me would continue to exist?
As, molded by the life I am begotten
And learnt am I through what I reminisce
Should I be struck again with infancy
And gaze upon a world now turned anew
Should everything I lost be true to see
What of the man I was, could re-accrue?
Could every sunset basked in light my mind
Would shallow days gain depth in innocence
Is trudging through dismay what rends us blind
Or is the bliss of ignorance amiss? 
So shrouded in my mind’s breadcrumbs am I
That I might lose the path I walk, ahead
So lost in looking back to wonder why
That I may ever tarry in my stead
Yet if I tripped and fell upon my head
And could remember not who I had been
Would I forget to drop my crumbs of bread
And turn to journey onward without dread?

Formless, hidden flagrance
Bastardizations
Subconscious invasions
Derealization

Murderous mindless mental gobbledygook
Aloof, to bide inside and take a look
Spurious flourish in acrid abhorrence

Tis the demon
Which lies within
That tells me lies
And promotes sin

Trials of toilsome interims
Stagnate and rot, in mine, chagrin

Ineffectual ****** aggravations
Sordid, torrid want, ablation
Putrescence of evanescence

Sorrowful warbles in gargling marbles
Choking on hope,
extinguishing flames of my name and making

Prodding the prongs of the timeless song
Rending and rendering nought to which I belong

Seeing sights, in blindness bind,
simulations of kindness, in emptiest minds

I've seen it screaming, deadened in the dark
It doth implore me, say'n only "Hark!"

Tell me truly, what unruly things of which you speak
Portent futures ever looming, bleak
Unspeakable things

I cannot be
I will not be but me
I am not apostate
To lunacy

you feel an acorn drop on your head

and it doesn't hurt,
but now 
you are always looking for squirrels

where there are none



yet, if you look, intently, at the trees,

at the winding and intertwining of their branches,

you will see the crows, 
subtle, nigh invisible


in every tree in every forest

hidden amidst the leaves


you might lock eyes with them

and they will look away, or they may fly, 

but never explain a thing



but the wind will blow

and it will remember

and it will follow you on your journey

As I walked into the bar there were already tears in my eyes. So much stress. Was I meandering or chasing my tail? I wasn't finding answers, that's for sure. I glanced around, struck with a subtle sense of irony. A few sorry souls sat speckled throughout the dimly lit confines of this stuffy, run down establishment. You'd think they'd have the means to keep a place like this in ship shape, here, considering the nature of spirit. Anything you could imagine, freely given, when the soul should rise... Maybe it was just a load of ****. I took a seat in a corner at the far side of the room. I didn't know how I'd arrived here, but I had no intention of leaving. I was too exhausted. Life had had a tendency to beat me down. I felt battered and bruised. I felt as if I'd been flattened by a steam roller. I always used to say I was tired to my soul; I hadn't realized I was speaking literally. It wasn't long before I was approached by a waiter. All dressed in white, save for a black tie. An amorphous effusion of light and shadow erupting from the place where one's neck should be. A piercing whisper, vibrating through my skull.

"Can I get you a drink?" it.. said.

I was a bit dumbfounded. It hadn't occurred to me until now that this place may actually serve alcohol. Did I even have a body? Regardless, I don't drink.

"I don't drink."

The haze blobbed and bobbed, and ebbed in mirrored tension, as if shaking its head from side to side.

"I think you'll want to try this one." It echoed, sing-songing slow motion distortions directly into the depths of my consciousness.

It was becoming hard to focus. The lines here were, or, are gray. Things bleed between. Every soft, dim light consumed the room. Every noise resounded throughout time. This ideal of a bar, this place where people drink their woes away, stowed away in the afterlife? What must people be trying to forget?

"I don't want to forget." I said. "I learned so much in life. Still, I know nothing. Still I don't understand, but I want to hold onto those lessons. I've left everything else behind."

"I think you'll want to try this one," it reiterated. "Daniel."

It hit me, then. This thing knew all there was to know about me. Not only could it speak into my mind, it could see. This was no ordinary drink, and after all, what did I have to lose?

"**** it," I took the glass from the tray. "I guess I could use a drink."

It looked like nothing more than a shot glass full of water, but as it went down my throat, an unearthly warmth and peace spread through my chest cavity and into my heart. It was the ultimate feeling of pure joy, as if I'd consumed a liquified sun. With my first breath, it made its way into my brain. Stark white, endless plains of emptiness and light. Everything dissolved before my eyes. Cascading was illusion: is illusion. I hovered in the pulse of the everflow.

"How was the drink?"

I needn't even respond. I was awake.

"Ahhh!" I released relief, and let the spirit seep.

I merged with this, the Infinite.  The song of Heaven, I could hear it.  Vibrations of eternity  surrounding me,  and written throughout everything,  the lyrics.   All different pitch  of perfect wave,  resounding to fragment  the quintessence  of this presence  to which I now belonged.   Yet, this energy condenses.  Readministered,  from essence to presence.  A blip within the static of magic.  Eye could not exist,  in reminiscent wishes,  avasting existence.   The depth within the deep  of endless ocean called to me:  to stimulate emotion  in the impartation of separation  from Infinity.   The pull of gravity consumed me.  Here, again, within the fill  of fragrant, illusory "being,"   I live to speak of bleeding  into everything and nothing.

I dried my tears to desiccation
Now I'm stranded here in isolation
Deep within the mind
But I can't find myself to bring elation

I've lost the presentation of my ego to the id
I'm drowned about in seas of tears I've kept contained within
I'm poised in spirit on the nearest island here within my mind
But I'm still searching salty seas for something I will never find

I think I'm crazy, but I can't see truth here to compare
This false lucidity does not help me to feel more aware
I'm killing time within but drowning in emotions, wearing thin

I'm basking in the silent night,
and there's no light to guide my way
I'm strung about
I've learned to fly
But I can't see the shore
To my dismay

It hurts to see the earth all shrouded in the dark, this way
But it's a world within my mind, there's no way out, I'm still a castaway

I Tried to Write a Poem, I Didn’t Try to Write This; See? Proof.



I’ve grown a lot

without even

having to try



But

Do not 

misunderstand me



I’ve tried trying

it doesn’t work

Not trying is what works

Can calamity turn to serendipity?
As all should happen with a reason,
could the turnings’f fate
be brought about
to conquer inner demons?

Might we rise, unbound,
in freedom,
as phoenix from ash?

Could inner fire be quashed
to be rekindled?
Are not we unbridled by chance?

Are we yet lost but found
again in our advance?

Where first to swim 
in drifts ‘n dregs, as drags 
of denser things 
should hold fast 
our frail bodies, 
thereupon the first breath 
of earth’s clean air 
are we alight, 
and therein-lightened. 

To start a walk upon new legs,
evolved to live on land
in vague untempered
night and day;
to sleep beneath the stars
and lay away in homes so vast;
so ever layered.

Then should we climb
upon the freest heights,
and rise no further, lest we fly?

Then should we take to falling
just the same, to catch a breeze
and drift away?

In ev’ry sprawling scene, thine eyes intake,

by boundless beauty of the world, sustained

to drink of Mother Nature’s purest make

and thus inspire the mind to live again!


As is our destiny in manifest

to life belied by souls’ unending glut

to nature’s grand expanse, therefore invest

or from our very essence we’ll be cut.



By songs beget and poetry, returned

to beautify the world we’ve come to claim;

yet, ever in our conquest has it burned

til nought but ashen sorrow doth remain.



Lest human nature end humanity

for all and nature’s sake, let nature be!

Look in the mirror
Kernel of the eternal
Sees only body

What should pass comes forth to grow
To make my life my own, I know,
I must continue,
ever into,
this invidious dismissiveness,
exuberant in emptiness,
lamenting in my evanescence
as my mind is on the precipice

To reminisce
in paracosmic,
Exodus

To acquiesce unto the rest
Most pressing, incessant
Important matters to address

Perfidious indifference
Insistence on what is urgent
Resistance leads to-ward divergence
From the Oath of the Emergent
To the Mouth of the Insurgent

Wherethrough all things are turning  
should the burning thus consume.
Yet, why should gentle fire  
then be likened unto doom?

Beget is transformation’s
integration of desire.
Unfettered from the weathered rung:
unstuck am I from mire.

Such lighter air,
now, too, aware.
To act, in fact, for change.
To try my hand, be my own man,
thus broadening my range.  

Tho ev’ry loss comes with a toss,
the coin is bound to land.
Whence wholesome heaven’s rendered dross,
upon my own two legs I stand.

He falls awkwardly 

and soon lands 
in a quiet resting place


Every ocean shines 

with music and eddies
I walk close but not close;

deaf and dumb.

To write,
I'm in the starlight


Nothing new has come out yet

The change is small
This charge is not for vandalism

My face was very shocked
I drank the starlight 

and closed the hole in my heart


The light shines
Stars and security
The flowers are blooming
Remove the ice crystals

Big or small,
waves are made with wild hands


He was a water spirit 

and just wanted a home


There is no room in the cup

Lilting lullabies
coax me into sleep
I wither away to dreams
of waxing prophecy

“living is an act of prayer”

and we breathe in defiance
of the snarl of noxious, fuming,
haze gray death
which blurs the air,
and causes the mind to tremble

we freeze in sudden braking
turn to ash, and dissipate to breeze
a promise of goodbye remembers
having never left

and loving is an act of praise
every action, a step in the dance
every gasp between breaths
a beat in the song

the eternal,
patternized, shifting
universe in unison
ubiquitous in motion

gravity
ties us to everything
and loving is
a slipping body
loose in a current

energy
does not discriminate
and love doesn’t wait
for a reason

I’m learning that in order to disconnect from my ego, I have to accept it. I’ve always wanted to be this philosophical, poetic person who seeks enlightenment, but I’m not a philosophy. I’m still a person. I like to fool myself into thinking there is no self, but there is, it’s just in flux. The self is like a cork board full of pins and art pieces. The ego likes to think the things that are on the board are the self, but it’s fooling the self in doing so. The self just retains the images. The images just represent the self. Sure, the pushpins leave a mark that may never come out, and arguably the things they support leave a bigger mark when they’re hanging up there, but they can change. There’s only enough space for so much.
The ego draws the self portrait and says “That’s me” but the self knows it’s just a picture. It won’t be the same in ten years as it is now, but, there will still be remnants of the past that have stayed along for the ride.

To see myself for what is truly me

I must accept the ego is in twain

For ever fleeting is identity

When cast aside, the self is what remains

I am but a receptacle for life

Experience can mold me into man

Ephemeral, the lessons wrought of strife

Eternal is the person I call Dan

Wherein the passing days in endless bound

Should stretch ahead with no sense of relief

Where ev’ry gem of wisdom may be found

In conquering the objects of my grief

Though life can be so long, not much survives

Of who I was when I was but a babe

Still in my name forever I’m alive

So, this I swear to carry to my grave

Betwixt bewitched and ensorcelled
Exists the Valley of Folly
In the liminal space
Where ignorance and curiosity
Frolic with mystery

Neath the veil of insignificant things
The augur wrought resounding strings
All twisting in entrancement
The timeless and enchanted

Where the mind wanders
Into deepness, blind
A light which yonder shines
The pendant looming, beckons

All reckoning and fierce conjecture
Vibrate amongst the cords of ought
The sweetest drip, ambrosial nectar
Golden softness shines thru nought

To tempt the mind, the heart doth sing
In confluence with eldest things
In synergy with intricacy
Simplicity whence ripples ring

How sought is solace by the soul
When out of darkness comes the whole
Thereto embark ‘pon currents’ pull
In being One, thus feeling full

To find thyself, amusing
In humoring things ineffable
Embodying light’s effusing
Relinquishing control