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140 · Dec 2019
Gemini
Dan Hess Dec 2019
Co-formed in stardust
A spurious reunion
with undulating dark
Nought sparkles
but the gems in my eyes

Reconstituted, magnanimous
encircling consequence
Bore yours in ageless wake
Over profundity diaphanous

Let lay the light of night
Through interconnected time
which belies even death

What shines bright
in the depths
Has long since
suffocated

Imperforable is the visage
of godly nectar
Undue the musings
of mortal instruments

Take your gaze and shift
Uplooking tantamount to order
You who casts aside
the name of nature

Your basking kept
to distance lost
in increments of the inexplicable

Whose multitudinous worlds shimmer
Bright in reachless stars beyond
As dreams you claim your master



Bury your head
Dan Hess Jan 2021
grasping at the past, heavy of heart
and shocked; paralyzed
wishing for wings,
to fly in my dreams,
find that castle in the sky


travel through the vortices
of interconnected minds
there, you, I’d find,
my world divine

my love, accosted
ever lost

my muse
who’s left behind


and
forever shifting is the heart
ever yet never drawn apart
so bound are we
o, me to thee
such (pressed in pressure)
encounters brief



like lightning in my mind’s eye
to see the air electrified
whenever your eyes meet mine
hovering; swimming in ethereal fluid
surging with infinity’s energies



yet
arching in my back
a miasma of light
erupting from the heart

out of the eyes

stranded, abandoned
drifting in the void
crippled
by the weight of indiscretion

longing
for such loves forever lost
such levity intrinsically bestowed upon me

whence coalescence splits bereft
by weight of evanescent fate
and there is nothing left
not love nor hate
am I too late?
am I too late?
138 · Aug 2019
Subjectivity
Dan Hess Aug 2019
Reality an elegant ruse
Mentality portends the muse
In blight or bliss it misconstrues
Twisting neutral, natural balance
as it may choose

Perception blinds the aching mind
thru meaning sought in surfeit
of information's dissipation
by humankind, concerted

The relevant and elegant
realities we're exposed to
are simply short of sembalance
as limitations impose you

No objectivity exists
interminably trapped alone
as we are forced to reminisce
with ego's memories on its throne
138 · Aug 2019
Untitled
Dan Hess Aug 2019
Enigmatic coalescence of realities diverging
A blip suspended in Nought of regality interspersing
To commandeer and command the blight emerging
To balance in semblance of fear, unnerving

Husks of beings and frailty confounded
Biding and vying in torturous endowment
Escalating the muse of mine to drown in it

As gods betray the world of man
In surfeit of ignorance
The emptiness of space should span
As worthless proof of innocence

The freely formed, unmade again
Forlorn and grasping death
Retired to eternal sin
Adrift in space, bereft
Dan Hess Nov 2019
Adorning madness, sacrosanct
Bemused in my internment
To rile in the utter, rank
Entrails of my dispersement

Abhorrent wells of isolation
Portending masks of weight
To sit in sorrowed degradation
Doomed to always contemplate

Oscillating information
Wrought upon the intonation
Of the songs of overlong
Approaching condemnation

O’ force of magick whose affront
Should emblazon darkened skies
Captivate mine with endless want
Or give me my demise

I glue my eyes upon the stars
Stretch my gaze o’er the vastness
I swallow the universe from afar
Now chockablock with blackness

Consumed with empty melancholy
Cursed to mend a mind afray
As hubris is my greatest folly
To swallow night and abandon day
130 · Jul 2019
Daunting and Unforseeable
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Meandering in longing
Enamored and encupped by awe
The throngs of no belonging
Emotions’ breadth in crypts of flaw

Supposedly a brief respite
Stretched to a night unending
Monotony and doldrums sit
In magick’s-wove pretending

Surrendered unto nothing new
Defender of the hidden true
I bide aside, in wait of you
In wait of fateful mending

I had a calling, when out there
I saw the light and rose, aware
But only now, as I’m ensnared
Do I see Night’s ascending

So grant me form to see in dim lit solitude
And grant me grace, to waste no time in interlude
I wish no more to stray amiss in destitude
And only then shall I find right, my wronging
130 · Jul 2019
A Beggar's Solace
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Whose kinship weighted to the stars?
Whence ‘pon somnolence alone I stood in brazen
As in tumbling ever unto unbecoming
Doth mine feeble mind, eroded, dessicate

Twas thee, elusive child of naught-let whimsy
Whose implorement did expose my pale visage
As in storms of seas, and listless nights,
thine ilk erects atonement

In shattering shackles of perspective
With gentle blades of softest sounds
To render mine enigma commonplace

Prithee, take leave
But frail fate, do not abhor
As it were, an oft unproached night
Beget allusions of entreatment
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I wish to rest
In the cradle of your mind
And feel your perspective

From the inside out
And I wish
You’d see mine
So I could finally feel
Something is certain

I am cast upon a dream
To find a true connection
And become something
I can be proud of
But moreover, something
that will continue to grow
Even after my death, a legacy
To hold faith that the things you love
will continue to see and make things worth loving

I have forgotten prayer
And I fear insolence
For I fear I am un-pure
My very essence
I have deviated from a path, so long now
I have no faith in guidance,
for my fear is wrought in doubt
And I trust nobody

I share this pity with no man
In truth, I give them glimpses
But my aura cools, and it can sink
Still, weighing me down
Striking my heart with rods of steel
It has weighed upon me
This is not poetry
It is alleviation,
of words too long unspoken
God, I beg you, unbound me

Bless my aching heart
I just can’t fathom living here
With no rapport, and nothing
Stagnant air can bring about a heavy heart
I’m not feeling strong
So obvious, I call out to the dark,
Where nobody listens
If only a voice would soothe me
If only I could not fear to let down these walls

I don't even know what I'm doing
just meandering, aimlessly
eloping with my echoed soul,
my true companion
a voice inside me, which soothes,
and warms my heart

Who guides me, always, through the dark
And radiant are we, for lions break their necks
When we shall stand against them, unwavering
When we shall show them mercy
Even in pain, I remain my own man
And I hold a heart like gold
I swear it

Can someone just grab be by the neck
And kiss me
And remind me that I can love again
That the fire’s still burning
And I just need to breathe
And I can feel okay?

Could you imagine what it’s like to just become someone
And then to be that guy who used to be someone
And then your mouth’s on the barrel of a gun
And you wish you were back in that, time
You wish you could love, and have fun
Like you’re not anyone
And there’s nothing left to run from
So you just, let it end

It feels like ***, if I knew what that was like
But it’s more like I’m just floating, dreaming
I can’t think about the bad things
I just want to sit down and watch the world go by without me
It’s never been about me
I’m just lost in this place
But I feel like a wanderer
Now
It’s been so long

but, is there ever truly an eternal image of oneself?
Are we truly who we are,
or is this all just a clusterfuck of circumstance,
and thought, based on trivial, random experiences?
And what do I give a **** if my life means anything,
if I have to go through pain to find anything?
129 · Aug 2019
Allbecoming
Dan Hess Aug 2019
An overarching sense of one
Left open to new changes
Love's energies forever run
Breaking free, love rearranges
Ether's gross, effulgent shifts
Course openly forever
On currents of unending bliss
Meandering thru vast endeavor
Into the brightest, freeing choice
Newfound promises beget
Gnosis one, but our own voice, fragmenting to currents met
Attempting to write in different style of poetry. This is an acrostic.
128 · Nov 2023
Meteoroid
Dan Hess Nov 2023
pulsing and throbbing
with the desire to be one of them
traveling along busybody vectors
living life in motion

that listless, sondering countenance;
an aching, yawning, gnawing
yearning feeling

the star-blight cacophony;
sound cannot emanate throughout space
i cook myself
in burgeoning sonic vibrations
128 · Jul 2019
T'h[e] Sesquipedalian
Dan Hess Jul 2019
By acquisition of perfidiousness,
  superabundant equanimity serves as cynosure
for perspicacious circumlocution
  Extricated from acumen by coruscant conviviality
     prescient luminescence elicits magnanimous ebullience
   Profundity wrought the saxicolous
    Winebibber, penultimate in cupidity
    Unencumbered by concupiscence
   in which anomalistic accoutrements might unto be bequeathed
Alas, only by auspices, might idiosyncrasies be brought to be remunerative
As such, in trust, bellwether, to excogitate and make usufruct
is as to find parsimonious, what opulence incorrigibly writhes therein
By hedonistic primal instinct, chase, to what is callipygian
127 · Jul 2019
Alone
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Deep sunk heart
When tension's low
My heartstrings bow
And resonate in flow
With the reverberations of
Higher vibrations
Thoughts of love
Beyond me

I remember feeling so strange before
I want to rip out my heart
Bleed my ichorous essence
And paint a portrait of my mind
In my own blood
Dan Hess Jan 2021
it sleeps
wry, the tide of meaning seeps
transpiring through erosion, til
the cracks reveal a secret,
hollow, in the highest hill
which scrapes the sky

through night and day which pass us by
within the blink of an eye
the howling of the wind in interim
un-winged beings wish to fly
sweeping dirt and dust and dusk and dawn
away into the emptiness
that claims itself as nought; abyss, 

it sleeps

the bidden meaning of the deep
eternal matriarch of heaven’s rays unfurling
only wakes to blink an eye
and see the world return to starlit sopor
light which shines beneath the mind
betraying souls against their mortal forms
it eats

it eats of liminal things,
of transience in space,
and whilst we race
unending to our deaths
til nothing’s left

it is consuming
of the moving
til inert
in stillness rests
it sleeps

for it knows
the dreams of life
to life bestow
in gestating below

the mind, aglowing
shall it grow
unto the flowing
and the overflow
123 · Feb 2021
DMT
Dan Hess Feb 2021
DMT
Unleashing arrows of light
which scorch the sky
encroaching on the domain
of ancient anchors

Boring
through deep, unspeaking shrouds

as the orbs of everlasting force
should only sing through resonances
abounding when tangible things
dissolve in their fall from grace
alongside the eyes of earth

As if by rods of Zeus,
I am struck with white noise
meteoric light ruptures the heavens
rejecting the frailty of corporeal existence,

as the mind’s eye is forced open

my ears explode with ringing
the song of heaven vibrating my teeth


“Pay attention! Wake up! It’s not too late!”
The voice of ages calls through all eternity
to excite the soul which rests
in the groove of the heart

Spirits sing

always they are singing

their voices synchronize 
in chain reactions
causing reality to unfurl



Each star, a node
the strings of heaven shake
in holy harmony
spectrum-slipping into ripples
inconceivably infinite iterations of existence
unveiling vortexes of vectors
Tangents, tangling Totality in tantric tandem
until ubiquitous uniformity upheaves

the insidious illusions of individuality


So melt, dissolve, unwind, and un-become
again with the slipping, weaving, winding
blinding light of time unbinding from the mind,
til we exist in emptiness and find
that all along, we’ve intertwined ourselves
with what is else, a wealth of living
in delivering the realm
of dreams and streams of being gleaming
in the crux of everything
and nothing
there is opening
the apertures, the rapt and ruptured slipping
rippling
dripping starlight
fissures

Where beings bleed 
through overstretched dimensions
only held to wells of willowing intentions

a blip, a blast of consciousness
morphs into the pupil
of the master: World-Weaving-Thing
that observes the observer observing

eye am not eye am what I am eye am I?

sublime sub-liminality
entrenched in where, whence present
becomes presence without essence;
coalescence regresses
into evanescence
as
returned
is me to thee to We

Then

-Not-
123 · Feb 2021
Title TBD
Dan Hess Feb 2021
Balanced am I upon a mountaintop
one leg cocked skyward

poised thru tethering to the gravity
of constellations woven into fate
mine energies cohabitate

Whilst glued to grinding
neath the bound surrounding
free to nearly being in conspiring
with the flow of time inside
my flailing soul
whose spiritual coalescence

belies mine essence,

blind
in the rivers
of ether
deliriously breaking
into tangents, ripple-spake
by words of power

circumstantially; expanse
condensed in resplendence;
by the intraterrestrial churn
erupted in lattice breath

whose breadth breaks,
ne’er brakes, a hatch-ed egg
this intimate visceral expositional
relay race, disgraced
in commercial 
pragmatic proximity


We
whose manifest, relegated,
dissipates our freedom

unto they who
reel in the dark
alert and ever dredged in
drudgery; disseminated
unto Us who are
fettered to leaving

There
shall, then, it coagulate

beyond bright shining Sunlight
molding in the wrought expanse

of pools running deep into streams
of eye-lit closure intermingling
in the universal anima, where light refracts
to form a mirror

Emboldened is collective perspective
Nigh mind left blind
couldst thy finding unwind thine

intertwining whence dispensed;

betrayed and evanescent
foolishly you went, alone,
into the extraneous
dry, cold 
dark

so light cuts chasms
through the third dimension
rending obsolete your sole intention
we are your very essence
learn this lesson
Any suggestions on the title?

P.S: Some of these words aren't words. I am aware of that. They make sense if you furrow your brow a bit.
122 · Jan 2020
777
Dan Hess Jan 2020
777
Perhaps it is in quietness and subtlety of realization that transformation may work its way under the skin, and settle in and into, and become a part of being. That stretching, yawning idea that one sees as fact without ever having greeted it before, yet may respect as if it were so intrinsic to their day to day life as to be unnoticeable. Existential crisis may send the mind spiraling and gripping at open air as one’s very soul plunges into empty abyss, thereto disintegrate; but existential connection is so integrated and undisturbing that we may grow alongside our ignorance, and befriend it. Rather than lose ourselves, we might find we were there under our own noses, and shrug or laugh at the foolishness of seeking in darkness what was always exposed in the light.
121 · Feb 2021
The Vertex Betwixt
Dan Hess Feb 2021
Storm clouds tarry in the air
the bleakly casted shadows speckle,
dancing across the muted earth
a sheet of sleep bestowing peace
in stillness, stowed away 
is yesterday


Teeming, leagues above the atmosphere,
in auras gilt by passing rays of starlight,
hover minds detached from interplay of 
toiling ant-like beings, infinitesimal 
they seem, from here
in heaven


They who pass timeless moments
skipping stones across the cosmos
sending waves worlds over
just to see the way eternity might
crumple between fingertips
when hearts burst
creating galaxies in their wakes


a world of magic;
eyes alight with splendor 
share a glimpse of reverie
a memory of fantasy that’s lost within a dream
of towering trees and lushest greens,
of homeliness and softest bliss,


to reminisce of a place
so familiar, yet erased
a surest sense of true belonging
tucked away within a pocket
in the corner of the soul


reaching 
for the stars
to fall into the abyss
to be consumed
or to subsist
on traversing that space
of emptiness
to find a place where we exist
no more, amiss
in the vertex betwixt
120 · Jul 2019
Let it ride
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Storms of blackened sky and dampened earth. Thunderous silence. Aggressive solitude. Rot; erode, my afflicted qualia. Decompose, my ignorant regalia. Again, to grow, from blackened sky? Arise; from soot and silt, a sprout, amongst the flowing dirt.

Return to your mother, and be exhaled as color, anew, your own.
This heavy chested, poignant, indescribable emotion of chaos amongst emptiness; I suppose I will forever fail to describe it.
Who are you? Who am I? How can we be empty, or full, if we are not even shells?
Cyclical life, extant but fleeting, yet never without itself, throughout, without, inside, and beyond time.
We are the ocean as well as the drops, the sand, the shells, the air above, the sky beyond, the space and time and energy. Microcosms.
I don't understand.
120 · Jul 2019
Dark Baron Mephistopheles
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Thunder beckoning my tribe
Of foreign hunters from the sky
I fly on wings of solid steel
Centuries of anguish to appeal

He rides the lightning from afar
While trailing from a shooting star
The fiercest wind, a crashing sound
Mephistopheles inbound

The Satan's spawn, demon of wrath
Is on a malevolent path
Onto a rendezvous of  souls
Intent on taking all control

He hunts the weak to gain his power
Until will come the final hour
A battle between beast and man
The fight to take the promised land

In days of six and nights of five
The promised one will be revived
He will forsake his own
To sit upon his mighty throne

The innocent will be beguiled
All hatred will be reconciled
But this will all just be a hoax
And the world will be engulfed in smoke

Miasmas of the blackest night
The death of innocent by blight
Inseparable of death
Inoculating breath
Is taking hold of me
Suddenly I can see

And from the sky there comes a sound so loud!
In my mind I am alive again, though gasping for air.
I say please, save me!

They take my hand and I'm above the clouds.
And lighting fills the air.
And everything is energized, we're floating!
And I can see myself over there!
It's not over; he's back, the final conspirator!

So I grab hold of him, and I start punching him, but I'm just a boy!
They were there with me, my comrades, and they attacked him with the various building blocks.

But he unleashed a fearsome attack. All from his body it exploded. Shrapnel made a mark to me.
I fall feint.

And when I wake up there he is; Mephistopheles, standing over me.
I say, Mephistopheles! Why??
And he say, because there is no point!
And I say, what does that matter? You don't need a point to be happy.
He said, now, that happiness isn't everything. And he stabbed me in the neck.





But in my very last breath, no longer inoculating me, he say that it is to live that is to mean and that death is just to be as much.
I gasp!
Then it all fades again, this time for good. But the last thing I see, my comrade is falling down upon him and the final blow ends it.

Yeah, he got his wish.
119 · Jul 2019
Stark Accosted; Mother Lost
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I am ire
In the land of wrath
And I smile emptiness
On your behalf

I linger, soulless
In the grass
Overgrown
and under pathed
In terror, peril
Paralyzed
I reap the fortuned
And dole demise

I am nature
Cruel and empty
I once was full
But you reject me

I am every sin you've casted
To the wind, now everlasting
I am the dark you dread
I am flagrance, and the dead
118 · May 2022
crown
Dan Hess May 2022
I go outside and see
the birds and the bees
Listen to the wisping wind
and whispering of the trees

Open up my eyes
and let my mind begin to bleed
out through my skull
and into everything

Look up, watch the clouds drift by
and feel the passing breeze
and as my head’s becoming light
I see the sun begin to blink

Everything’s alive
and It is breathing rhythmically
I leave the cave behind
To exhume the world from in my dreams
118 · Dec 2019
The Manufacturer of Dreams
Dan Hess Dec 2019
Whereof void cometh light
Therein the realm of whispers stretching vast
By what great somnolence fore-takes the night
Unto the mind’s recoupled, last

By speckled sand in burgeoned storm
Whose weaving deems thy make
In nebulous, unstructured form
Til brinks, again, daybreak

Whence shrouded depths bestow thy name
O Maker of the Lands Estranged
O Dark Unbridled Taskmaster
What mirth beguiles thy claim?

For in the harbored bow of day
To eat of such abound
Remade in Night’s shadow’d parlay
As we, remade from ground

What, by thy gazing over land
Should bring immortal what is man?
Where through the reaching unto nought
Shall future’s stake, our hearts allot?

Where dreams be dreamt in wake and rest
Your hand to ours, there, to caress
To guide our minds and move our breaths
To breathe for life’s unending test

As is the mount to he who hikes
A place to chase the peak
Should we, who in nature alike
See ours and wish our keep
Dan Hess Apr 2022
We’ll start with a cackle
when I think to myself of spiritual principle
and the voices in my head debate the ideal
I stop thinking, by circumlocution

saying every different perspective,
to unsay the unsayable
I am right and I am wrong
I am here and I am there
I am all and I am nothing
yada yada yada, bla bla bla
whatever

At which point, I am presented with the hysterical image,
and idea, of “god” however you understand that,
to present itself as a bush, and say
“ I am who am” I am the alpha and the omega,
and so on and so forth.

Essentially evading the question,
because there is no answer.
It cannot be spoken.

Words are predicated on understanding,
but when we follow that thread of context back to its source,
we are left with pure, unadulterated awareness.

And what is that? It doesn’t need to be said.
It needs no context, no justification.
It simply exists and is being and is truth.
It demands to be known.
We cannot live without it.
116 · Apr 2020
Unquenchable Thirst
Dan Hess Apr 2020
Drink of it
Drink of it all  

I am but one
And yet it all
  
pulsates
Ebbs, flows
Rearranges, in interlocking
Mechanically organic  
Alien transcendence  

For, What is a mind?
Please, draw it for me  

Who am I?
Eye cannot see.  

We are everything, I am thirsting for a change
I want to live, and I am free to die  

Yet
Yet again
What does yet mean?  

I want to live in every ambient flow
Every vibrating heart that sings,
I want to bask in such a resonance

The slow building pressure of a bountiful harvest
The fast paced, ever changing constant
of a living, thriving metropolis  

I am exhausting myself
Doing nothing
Dreaming of what I could be  

I will cherish my thirst.
116 · Dec 2019
wEarth
Dan Hess Dec 2019
Low density
slow entropy
expansive ethereal
immaterial inclusive
conducive conclusive
collective perspective

Interjected perplexing
Vexed intensive directive

Perspicacious intonations
repulsed over nullified
Emulsified dry mindless intrinsic duplicitous insistances
redacted and reacted upon retroactively,
in posthumous alacrity,
as backed and packed to me
are primitive tenacities
by classless massless animalistic catastrophes
in baseless traceless
uniformly adjacent replacements

Tasteless abasement
in braced,
placed erasure of nature
Replace her with infrastructure
Good old abundant mother, **** her

I'd love to plug her with rubber
unsung troubles debug her
rewind and entice
and drown and rend blind with devices incisively derisively winding
her planar engagements
to ownership taken
forsaken by god
but we're shaken by odds
of new values in clods
of endowments toward rods of power each hour we glower
and how her entreatment
might trap and devour
if we weren't so clever
we'd sever our heads as we shower
in the ichor of the dead
and instead we're just thicker than blood
with our money and crud
replace water with crude
and a bad attitude

I'd be true to the money
but wouldn't it be funny
if deigned be the dummy
as warless and lost
in the loathesome defrosting
of planetary exhaustion?

Now tell me the cost
of the death and the offing
of all we've been coughing
to the air we've been drawing from
gnawing the earth to her bones
always want some more worth from our home
but it's worthless if we end up alone
We used to be spiritual
Now it's all about that empirical material imperial
115 · Aug 2020
[. | .]
Dan Hess Aug 2020
Every passing day is a lesson in gratitude, and an opportunity to expand awareness toward greater consideration of the precious and unique nature of the experience that is life. Our time here is so short. What makes things beautiful, if not transience? We cannot hold onto that which we cherish forever, and that is why we cherish it so.

I aim to understand who people are. My passion is peering into the soul of another, and perhaps being influenced by them and their mind. I want to feel the magnitude of the human spirit impressed upon my own. I want to love and be loved. I fear the deepest and most intimate aspects of being are utterly inexplicable, and that being understood and understanding others is nearly impossible. Still, I will never give up on this aspiration. I aim to articulate the concepts we cannot bring into words, and illustrate what it means to be. I will make poetry out of those things that define what poetry is. Namely, the beauty of life, particularly in the imminence of death. To be mortal is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to be open to love.
112 · Jul 2019
Xenophilia
Dan Hess Jul 2019
In spite of melting
I am formed of clouds
Cast on the wind

I am nature's mutation
Existing without being

Life churns in avenues and cinches
I am cosmic expletives

Tear me apart
And let me wisp
And deteriorate
In the map of stars

Give me nothing
But a push
And I will drift forever

Who is that?
Was it me once?
What is "What is what is?"

I remember bleeding
Before tears

I am seated in the cusps
Of fissures in time

Harrowed
Is my nature
Unto oblivion
I am

Oblivious

For
I have no mind
For earth
111 · Aug 2019
Reflections
Dan Hess Aug 2019
Mirrors flip a picture

Show you warped, but nigh to true

A glimpse of you thru shallow fissures

Your resemblance seen anew

Tho light is sparsely scattered
o’er nought but space confounded

And these windows hold no light to shine their own
Utility and grace abounded

Whence the mirror image shown


Yet in the company, akin

Of mirrors against mirrors

There is infinity within

Til something else comes nearer



Such beauty lost to fleeting things

Of beings fettered to this land

Yet in their company it brings

A vortex ever to expand
110 · May 2024
Overstimulation
Dan Hess May 2024
Writhing is the brain, hair stood on end, 

with every beat of the eldritch heart. 

The air, a-buzz with cacophonous, insectoid droning, 

threatening to infiltrate and indoctrinate the mind;



twisting languid listening into a maddening gaze,

ablaze with hate and lacking sophistication. 



I cling, with fingers tensed, to the heavy, sticky rot

that lingers thickly in the air, 

and all my cares are gnawing at my soul. 



Something stirring deep within has heightened, 

and I’m frightened, finding myself once again 

scared of the dark. 



A darkness creeping deep within my dreams, 

which, snaking, strangles me; and when I wake 

I find I’m face down in contorted misery, 

like something ghostly sought to swallow me

alive. 



Wretched wasteful 

-undue, unholy and unsanctioned- 

sour tasting, ugly, rank: 

anxiety
Haven't written anything in quite a while. Maybe using poetry as a vehicle for catharsis will help with that.
110 · Dec 2020
Joy of Art (Sonnet)
Dan Hess Dec 2020
Hast, yet, thee found on toilsome, trembling ground
a path thy moving feet may walk in earn’st
(whereinsofar thy nature circleth round
by brash and blindly pathing, here, thou durn’st)

would’st thence, by hearken unto chiming bell
of holiest incumbent owner’s place,
thine acrimony in thy bespoke hell
of handed, wrought creation be erased

Could’st, in transcending evanescent sight
to see the world erode in passing tides,
the soul bestowed but lost in darkest night,
there come again to sit where mind resides

When heart resounds in union with the eyes,
and salubrious joy might be restored,
there dissipate egoic source’s lies;
by life, may life again become adored

Subsist in thine existence, whose intake
should evermore sustain thy thirsting heart
Forever curiosity be slaked
by mindful making of the soulful art
Flow state, yo.
110 · Apr 2022
Severance
Dan Hess Apr 2022
Love abundant, everlasting
only comes when we’re not grasping
Truth can bind the eyes to the sky
but with a heavy heart you cannot fly

Air cannot be jarred and hoarded
labeled, priced, and then imported
Love cannot be only mine
but with each breath my heart aligns

When I’m left no longer clinging
to my pains and wants and thinking
Evidence of Love is singing
to my heart through piqued up ears

I climbed the mountain, fell in darkness
felt my heart sink, saw the ground
but as I thought the end was here
it dissipated into sound

If life is beating, then retreating;
dancing ‘round the burning bush
Death is left when ash returns
to cradling, beautiful, silent hush
109 · Jul 2019
Nigh Can Ether Flow
Dan Hess Jul 2019
2:37am

Spells of sonder sink within my soul
If only to love and be loved
When one so misunderstood can take glimpse
And hearts beguiled by coalescence
Whereupon the mind recoils
Emotion stands on high

Whence fleeting youth foretold of recompense
Allude to thee, take refuge in my heart
O, piercing wind, subtly showing strength
Encompassing earth, untouched
My mind will flitter, clinging close
Adjourning hastily toward
(Un)destination
Together, as one, in truth
Transcendent

Passerby within my mind
Your camera clicks may part
A darkness thick as endless night
With limited reach, alas, does penetrate the light
And so, my candle sparked, I hop aboard
Catch the train; soul of yours, headed toward
Another night, without reward
Another fight, more endless scourge
But nothing quite, can be ignored
Or recommended for
As we are weak and worn
As we are different forms
Pretender, sure, in truth do you bore
Shelter self within the walls of my cerebral core
And do implore
Your every wish, without, needst lore
And every instance sworn

Open ended, gratuitous, and transparent
Synergy restored
As love is love, and hate is more
Individually wrought, but torn
Taped, remade, forlorn
Alleviating self, amor

So, and so, as one, we charge forward
So, and so, in confidence, we pour
-emotions into crucibles of halves of selves, before
But now, as one, so absolute are we, for
Each other's heart we bore
109 · Jul 2019
Who am I?
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Auspicious ostensibly ostentatious pontification expounded
Proliferation of erratic introspection elucidates subconscious
aggrandizement

Internalized defensive antagonization of subversive intention toward affirmation
Irrational exacerbation of separation from an inconceivable force

Liberation begets elation of self
The soul-mind complex regurgitates doubt
Infinitely separating composition exposed
The illusion of individuality

Convolution brings malice in ignorance
Through dissonance in emotion
Collaboration of thought incites foundational expansion

To indoctrinate logic of subjective philosophical altruism
Pulchritudinous is agape affection, for we revel in its touch

Never to set our eyes on other stars
We gaze out at the sky
And forever wonder
106 · Jul 2019
Celestia
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I see angels
hiding in interesting places
Reading numbers and
forging signs for many
minds upon
passing tides
of energy
I see them
perched
atop their
ethereal pedestals
in astral
in multitude
and bleeding beauty;
magick, which winds
into the arrow of time
I see emotion
crystallize
and bend
the flow to
rend inertia
to the will
of mortals
I am
forever floating
on the tides
of in between
I am
I am
not
I am
but
a vessel
for this
energy
to see
itself
106 · Nov 2019
(W)hole
Dan Hess Nov 2019
There is no such thing as the abyss
Static, white noise, information overload
Analysis paralysis
The mind shuts down, but never squanders its supply

I am worn thin
I am overwrought and jaded
Lackluster and swooning for the mist
Yet in the midst of everything, I feel amiss
I am the nothingness that lost its place within the confines of an empty concept
Labeled the ‘abyss’
It does not exist
It is overload and darkness
Stare forever and your brain will short circuit
but leave the lens behind
Retreat into your caves and sleep
And your long exposure will reveal light
Answers
Unlabeled, mysterious and so far out of reach

I am overwhelmed
Distant
A cacophony in deep space
Choking as I gasp for air
Dying, literally dying
To be heard

But I can’t cry anymore
I can’t speak like I used to
Can’t dream at all
I am the abyss
But I am not empty
You simply cannot see beyond yourself
To know what I hold within my depths
105 · Jul 2019
Denna
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Strange things, these eyes that wander only to find a beaten path
It was like magic, when I saw the numbers, saw the signs
And then she was, like magic, brilliant, full of flourish and such
And she was dark but luminescent, an enigma
And as it unraveled before me, all in one fell swoop
Did I feel alive again, but for a moment
Until from her grasp I fell, even before meeting her eyes
To see her wisping with the breeze
And see her wander
And squander herself on petty things
To avoid the clutch
Of that which would hold her
105 · Jul 2019
Untitled
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I've always known there was a reason for everything. That's why I'm so obsessed with that infernal question of "Why?" Although, in recent times, it seems more about the "How?" than the "Why?", and every piece of the puzzle seems to be a twin. When the puzzle's almost complete, but the picture isn't the same as the one on the box, maybe "Why?" and "How?" should be substituted for "Where?" and "When?"
Ah, but never "Who?"
That is one question, when asked, which will only withhold the answer.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
In she came
Like a gust of wind
Sweeping me off my feet

And in the air
I lingered there
And felt my mind retreat

It was loss of heat to air
Through which my mind became aware
And thence did doubt deplete

And as I lingered in the air
And as I saw myself engulfed
My eyes did rise to shining sun
Seeing visions of plenty; my whims undone

But thus, alas, as time should fleet
To harrowing mysteries before
My bubble burst at the seams
I plunged to dark, abhorred

Through questioning and recompense
I sought the light fore-met
And in the mind’s eye, new light shined
Through memory dispensed
So there I fell
To abject hell
And there my mind resides
Yet only in the shadow’s summit
Should inner balance, and life bide

Break free of fear
The dark is here
You harbor it inside
Make only effort to balance dark
With all the light you find

As love should take you places
You could never hope to see
Take care to love your many faces
Seek setting your soul free
104 · Feb 2021
Playlist
Dan Hess Feb 2021
i’ve been listening to the playlist I made for you
back in days of bliss, when everything felt new
and when it came the time to bid adieu
i didn’t want to

but the sun went down over pompeii
and One Million Lovers came to fade away
and I Wish I Knew You back in better days
when things weren’t strange
and life was a bit less gray

but Amber, I can hear the sound
of corvids cawing when you’re around
and they’re still singing that ominous sound
even to this day



my heart is swelling with dismay

I wish for Lotus Flowers
on The Altar
so when Seasons Change

I can waste away
without (Waiting On You)



i Wish You Were Here
but Look At Where We Are
so far from Yesterday



so Honey, if You Are The Right One
Give it to Me straight

was I too late
or were we meant to break
The Distance between fate


my Bloodfloods with Multi Love

in this Mad World

our hearts beating in rhythmic synergy
as I inhale, and out you breathe



but the sun’s still shining now that you’re gone
and though I can’t say I’ve moved on

whether or not you’re my Alter Ego

i’m Ready To Let Go
104 · Aug 2019
No Goodbyes
Dan Hess Aug 2019
Cruelty of heart
The swelling
Before tears
When no tears come

The pressure
In my ears
The howling wind
As if
A portal in my head
Could take me away

To mountains swarmed
In tempests
Touching the sky
Daring to scrape the stars

My head hums
I think of conch shells
Holding oceans
In their caverns

Yet
In this silent night
Crickets
In my empty dreams
I am allured
To unbinding
In the distant tides
of nought
104 · Jul 2019
Existentialism
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I seek for an amenity
To this disease inside of me
Which aggravates my energy
Extrapolating violently
Ironically, I'm logically abusing rationality
Irrationally exacerbating deductive realities
Which are bound to me in stagnant times
When my mind flies to other fallacies
I have to be strong but I'm just breaking microscopically

I'm always thinking too much
I can't stop, I just rush
I'm overwhelmed, but I can't touch the point
but I'm inbound and I won't disappoint

My thoughts are always chasing me
Tied down by acute empathy
And sympathy is not for me
Cause I can't bring myself to see
What is to come, what cannot be
where I will be eventually

Spirituality, obviously, must be bound to physicality
And so I ask you, how could we describe our own psychology?
An amalgamation of the slightest mental energy is quite the anomaly,
How can we help ourselves if we're just damaging humanity?

If you ask me, when our brains gain new insight
We can think in different ways and make change
Make the world bright
Let's share our claims with all who complain
And share peace and make things right

It messes with my head a bit that our mind processes everything,
That's all we ever really experience
We'll never be able to get inside someone else's head and test drive it.
103 · Jul 2019
Mental Haze
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Into this inseparable, ineffable haze I gaze.
My thoughts are fogged but I find ways
To describe the pain and turn a phrase
From what is waning in my mind

To make it blaze and use that fire
To shine the way through this dismay
I've been contained in all along
101 · Jul 2019
Earthbound
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Twas but an arid night of ambiance
They sought in duplicitous reunion
Of the innocent kind
When stars would shine, undermined
And spotless sparkling eyes would watch them blind

We are starbound, on the ground
Never hoping, never found
As those who fleet abound
In space, and leave no trace or sound
Are seeing us and wondering how
We manage to keep ourselves from choking
On these troughs which runneth open
To our feeble mouths

Oh simple scintillation
You are not what I beseech
I wish for truth in energies
And not to look back; to repeat
What I have seen that beckons thee
To hear my call, and ever fall
To what is empty
Dan Hess Jun 2022
nothing goes without first being
and I am clambering
in this cloying, oppressive heat
making moves to rise, or pull the sun down

and thus, again, in solar matrimony
with moon sleeping sideby my aching dreams
i am cosmic catastrophe
amidst the emptiness of sordid petrification

steam drifting, careless, in a nightless dimension
wherefore should light clarify, if only by
dissolving me
to revolutionary inconstancy

all things change
deranged, nonsensical, heavy aired
beguiling abominations of nought
heat pulsates, water breathes
suspended

we are baking lest we recoil
to shadows basked in memories
of once been dreams
that now wither, stagnate
grasping at an instance of dominion
100 · Oct 2022
XIII
Dan Hess Oct 2022
On the cusp 

of the dawn 

of a new day,

there is tremendous hope


if this is what death feels like;
the burgeoning light 

of the rising sun 

rolling upon the horizon, 

cascading out over the land, 

my eyes awash with tears and warmth;


is it surrender?

is it trust?
or does one simply 

melt away?
Dan Hess Feb 2021
I am rattling, as is my proclivity

muscles tense and then collapse
limb by limb, releasing a skeletal clatter

would i hover if the gravity, of dizzying,
that makes my head swim, lightly,
floating in the ocean of stuporous emotion
thunderstruck connectivity, latched onto me
crown o’ my skull, pull my spirit from its vessel

would eye
blink shut
a rut in the road
a node
bowing, wherethrough flowing in the breeze; it bends - again - against the everything so rushing
by and i
consider it a blessing to believe in nothing
knowing only what approaches me
and seeing things so clearly
how spirit lives in me

have you ever felt the chills?
ASMR, perhaps, electric, rising
running fingertips over goosebumps

have you felt the way Earth communicates with plants?
can you bleed into the natural expanse?
you’ve been dead before, do you remember?
98 · Oct 2022
Rain
Dan Hess Oct 2022
In sunblank white,
a-shimmer is the sky.
Multifaceted fragmented droplets
strewn asunder through the air,
and we are soaked with atmosphere today;
there are no shadows anywhere.


The sun mourns its fleeting dreams.
Nostalgically, kissing the intimacy of morning,
it drinks itself into oblivion.

But, there is starlight on daybreak’s breast
and my primal mind beseeches:
Stay inside and paint the cave with color.
Gray days need not complain
and the heart needn’t ache
of winter’s whispered promise.

It is a season of ghosts
of ruby dusk, and windswept mystery;
with death, things move,
yet life slows, to nigh halting breaths.

We are blissful, melting in memories.

Eyes sparkle
with the magnetism of the ageless
as we reminisce and wish
to pass along songs sung by our eras.

Through our creation,
legacy gleams eternal,
the world vibrates
with the synergy of consciousness,
and those yet long unborn
dwell with us in the universal heart.
98 · Jul 2019
Queen of Ambivalence
Dan Hess Jul 2019
You are
Interspersed
Between the lines
Of fate and fortune

You are
Fleeting
and flittering
On the cusp
Of reality
And fantasy

You are teemed
With my thoughts
Of love lasting,
And love lost

You are
My treasured jealousy
My wrath
And my bemusement

You are my
Ideal,
Wrapped in leaves of gold
To cover your iron

Yet,
You are light
And smooth;
Almost weightless
I cannot grasp
Your heart
I think you to
Be entertaining many
And loving none, or few
You are beguilement
And empty promises

You are the reason
I get up every morning
And wonder
If I will ever be loved
Like I love you
Yet,
forever you claim
To love the me
You cannot even see
Dan Hess Mar 2024
i started off learning from the wind.
and, like the wind, i slip-streamed by
and gazed into windows from afar.

all i've ever done is flowed and felt,
and to me that's enough to be magic.

everything i've learned is from listening
quietly
and finding where silence isn't.

that voice amongst the white noise,
that howl in the still darkness of night,
is my teacher.

beautifully my heart aches,
when the emptiness
is infinitely more haunting
than the ghosts that drift in it
as memories lost to time.
or should i call this “Attempt at a Noiseless Echo”?
Dan Hess Aug 2019
I sought the answers of the soul
I pleaded God to make me whole
For years I searched, til I unearthed
A bright, delicate piece of worth

Cradled gently within my hand
Hoping greatly it would expand
Most precious thing on this green earth
A bright, delicate piece of worth

Sowed like a seed into the ground
To grow into something profound
My savior, object of my mirth
A bright, delicate piece of worth
Attempt at a Kyrielle. I don't know what this is.
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