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Dan Hess Aug 2019
To be what you are meant to be
To find your purpose, and be free
First cast your shackles on the floor
Learn you must choose what is in store

For destiny though daunting, looming
Is something you choose for yourself
With passion's energy consuming
You'll find fulfillment your greatest wealth

Each day will be a blessed gift
Your life will be transformed
For once your mind has taken shift
Then your heart will be warmed

Everyone has a personal truth
Something to share with all
Grasp it, becoming living proof
You can rise daily and stand tall
Attempt at a didactic poem. Feels a bit sloppy, but this is mostly for practice. I used to get very caught up in the idea of destiny/purpose/fate, until I realized we are free to choose our paths in life, and that is all for the better. I see so many people struggling with deep questions, such as the meaning of life, when it's as simple as appreciating the meaning it already has, and building something from it for yourself. Thought this may be helpful. Any criticism would be greatly appreciated. I want to make poetry my purpose.
Dan Hess Mar 2021
with each step I take

deep, dense, solid

my heel strikes earth

interlocking quakes with stasis

as the world rolls behind me

propelling me forward



I am exhausted

watching the sun melt

into the yawning periphery of absence

as god perforates the sky with light



who am I meant to be?

walking with the weight of waning years

inscribing cryptic milestones on the dead flesh

of an intimate, innocent facet of sprawling life

teeming through the crust of corruption

monuments to the ephemerals’ search
for immortality



I am a pillar of dust in a sandstorm

isolated in the desert

swept away on all encompassing

howling winds



even as I am transformed 

upon the worldly winds

gazing over earth 

from views yet unreached 

I am aching to be molded



yet, I do not rest

forever suspended in unending transit

between realms of night and day

as wisps and twists of rain, and tides of change

rearrange in blinks and blips before me

I am hovering, incessantly 



stuck

a mix, betwixt the thick and thin

‘tween everything and nothing;

space and place, yet I’m erased

they call it bliss, return, amiss

the self you seek does not exist

but I’m not even built
to begin crumbling



a legacy of fading

what remains betrayed

to days of waste

forbade from ever being



who could love 
a soul
without a husk?

I’ve never been 

to be empty
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Untruth churns in depths of elden castings
Falsehood turns the pacings, everlasting
Duplicity in everything avasting

Misinformation station
Take a ticket, wait, debate,
Assail, avail in love of liar's nation

Circuitous circumvention
Of mindful morsels of intention
Swept beneath the rug
No worth be mentioned

As suffering and death explain
The qualms and qualities
Of life beget to life in vain
Entrenched in their dualities

Thine incision thought deranged
Transcribed in abnormality
The pointed lance, in hands estranged
Whence masking actuality

So stir the *** of melting
For it may cool and thence congeal
It seems we're strung about and welting
Punished in penchant to feel
Dan Hess Apr 2022
Ascension cannot happen 
without
stepping back 
to examine one’s shadow. 


Three steps forward and one step back

is still moving in the right direction. 



To own the present moment and embrace 

without expectation or disappointment;

to integrate and elevate and validate 

in cycles of breath and breadth,

without seeking sated self in other,

is to shed dead weight.

I am free. I am free. I am free.
I have always been 
intimately, utterly myself. 


I invoke hope, and truth, 

and communion and community.

I invoke Love to flow through me. 

I am one with Truth’s Reality. 



There is no fear that binds me. 

No darkness blinds me. 

I am light shining divinely through.

I am a crystallized sun and a holographic moon.



I am the rebirth, and I am the womb.
I bloom. I bloom. I bloom.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
He's cold and hard like ice.
That's what his energy is like.

I will be flowing water.
I will be warm water.

I will be compassion and gratitude.
I will be welcoming,
and enveloping,
and encompassing,
and strong.

I will follow currents of truth,
and become bigger
than he ever could as an iceberg.

I will show him that strength
can be found in vulnerability,
and maybe one day, he will melt.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Beauteous insurgence
of emotions from the nether realm
beget to me a sense of solidarity.

As the veil shifts
and fissures form,
my thoughts are swarming
with indulgence,

for I know the time is nigh,
and ripe with wonder.

It is the beauty of the spirit
that sparks light in life,
and time is ridden
throughout our fragile minds
as we embark upon this journey
of baited transience.

I rise up from the ashes, now,
and choose to make of myself anew;
beginning where I thought my self had ended,
and emerging,
renamed as Allbecoming.

I see Us, and smile,
for understanding is a kinship
only found when thoughts
surrender to the stars,
and all is one.

I am nought,
and return to clay,
to be remolded.

I am love, untouched,
and you are the earth
that presses against my form,
thereto unfold me.

I am lattice,
growth, and strength,
and you are all that holds me.

You are the love amiss, and now,
when I am forced to reminisce,
I know the feigned nostalgia of old-life
is but a whisper in the breeze,
incomparable to the needs
you fulfill,
without me ever having seen them as such.

Your love is blinding,
but my eyes are opening wide,
dilated, and ready to receive
the light you cast;

it blends with shadows,
and amassed,
is my only guidance
through dark dismay.

You are renegade,
and I am nomad.
You are the one
through whom my soul
should coalesce,
and form a balance.

You are mother
and child.
You will never
be forgotten.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Born into darkness
Surrounded by supplement
To seep into the depths of myself
I must acquire new light
And as I grow, my roots expand
Reaching, ever reaching forth
Toward a better perspective
At that deciding point
The first rays of light shine upon me
To flourish, to grow in the sunbeams
Flimsy, readjusting to find betterment
Darkness reclaims the day
And I sit in waiting
Still, under my skin growth expounds
Each individual cell fighting
Until the sun peeks over the horizon
Until the elusive head of joy is found
Life moves forward, and around me
Growth is expanding and retreating
Much time passes
With each tribulation, strength given
With each success, I reach forth
I spread my limbs in the sunlight
Once so flimsy
I am now unwavering
I reach to the sky
Standing above all else
Heavy, strong, and supporting
And I am not alone
Dan Hess Feb 2021
colors bleed in memories
like submerging my mind underwater
swimming in an ocean of tears

is it haze
or does the light not reach
this deep?

Sharp memories
pierce the mind
sunlight pierced a cloudy sky
the wind blowing swiftly through my free flowing hair
it would be a lie to say i lived without a care
but you were there
and I was happy

we’d walk
no day too hot or cold
just to breathe in everything
we’d become accustomed to the company
of one another’s languish

though, stuffy it could get
within the confines of each other’s
hot heads
full of pressure

venting fumes into the atmosphere
surrounding our bodies
pressed tightly to each other
almost fusing

now, liquid pale reflections
in a bucket full of silver
when the spirit slips
a viscous wisp

into, white blue
pools of you
i trip and wobble
surface tension breaks

i dissolve
in reminiscence
sunfire reverie
cautiously swallowing smoke
i hold my breath

and seek to saturate my blood
with the fading echoes
of an ancient, timeless reunion
thereupon the rolling ghost

in silent semblance, reflection;
an interpretive dance
of two flames flickering
in tandem



to imitate the birth of the universe
the swallowing of nebulae in
whirling, cataclysmic implosion
we’d inhale the gasping sigh of spirit

how fragrant, once, was emptiness
now I see the difference
Dan Hess May 2022
there we sat,
four strong in the abandoned station
boxes and trash scattered haplessly about
the dim lit room, on couches
tense and anticipatory

she saw seesaws by the water
tilting to and fro
as wind blows cloud by her open mind
a mouth ajar and hanging lame,
spittle sticks

a miscreant metaphor abhorred in dark
a lonesome emptiness that cannot get a grip
when suddenly a crowd forms from
the avenues wherein adventure halts

sign the form
name and date
Brain: Frog

she rants and raves
or is it "he?"
butcher you, to stay
with me forever

No
I will not tarry there
in the stagnant air
won't weep with you
in this empty room

I'll dive into the deep
hide beneath the false surface
waves under stillwater

I swim up
a boat laps over me
exposed belly
no rutters cut
no blades to leave me empty

I survive
Father'lone, a search party
but in my dive into obscurity
I left my friends behind
We could've taken her
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 Jul 2019
At first I hoped they’d speak aloud
What words were held within my mind
For thoughts of mine would allude
To their listenings and interlude
And sometimes strange things make me wander
Into thoughts of crazed be-yonder
And I wished for freedom
Validation

But now, they speak so freely
When my mind is caught in wandering
That I should fear to hear
The words so openly, they’ve spoken
For, the fears of freedom
Haunt me
And tie me to monotony
For I can see the damage I might bring
In my abandoning of doubt
In favor’f certainty

My life is cinematic
And in truth, I’ve had it
Up to here with fear
And never near to what’s pragmatic

Might I ever come, in following fate
I’ve shed my doubt too late
I must accept my unbecoming hate
And plunge into the depths of madness
To avoid unspoken sadness
And stop myself from binding lives
To death and endless scourge of lies

Am I harbinger
And emotional winter
Am I the one who will beget our fall
To end it all?
And if so, what is choice?
What’s the point?
Where is my voice?
I do not want this.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Oh, supple godhead,
I must partake of your fruit
to sate my interminable appetite

My mind is agape
with nonsensical rambling
My heart is in flames
and my body is eroding
But my soul soars ever further

Though you, heroine,
carry the sun on your shoulders,
My burden is superfluous still
We call to arms the hand of man
Stopping the world in its tracks

Until we drift through cold,
and blackened space,
or smash into the sun
Burn all our coal
Our forests wither
And still we dream of angels

Inside ourselves is a cocktail of opulence, greed
Ignorance, intermeshing substitutes with needs
Illusionment our only passion, for we bleed
But we escape our pain with substance

And in altitudes
above our perception,
you sit
And watch
But do nothing
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Three fools divulge in halves of truths
Between the presently aloof
Alluding dissonance as proof
That everything is nothing

Three friends insist that they are one
And every moment must be fun
I cast myself asunder
For I am only getting younger

He tells me, soon, that he should die
And quietly I still deny
The nature of existence
No matter, I am still persistent

They ask of me to love them deep
And in them all my secrets, keep
They tell me I am one
Through many others, nature's son

And when his glory fades away
Her face shall see another day
But I shall be forgotten
And love once promised now has rotten

I gaze out from my widow's wharf
And she is the oncoming storm
And I am filled with fear
For love was once so near
and now I stand abandoned
The storm before the clear
Because I, as but a man, have sinned
Dan Hess Mar 2023
This beauty must be discovered carefully.
It's like falling into darkness.
When something is born, all reality is created,
except fruits and perishable goods.

A promise of a romantic relationship;
when the long moon shines in your eyes.
But, don't lose sight of it.

Pure victory.
I came home in a ***** car.
I wasted my time.

I raised my hand to him.
Cut flowers and damaged plants.
But I believe in the light of another day.

This dimension can be seen in simple things.
Because this is a new concept of tough love.
And talk, listen.
Running poems through many different translations using google to produce something entirely new.
Dan Hess Aug 2019
The earth is never still
torrential momentum
can you feel it too?
The way the universe moves in pivots
on clockwork, centripetal lensing

Locked upon the surface, inert
Stagnant never stopping
Living in transitions
I am
Expeditious

If I were cast
into the void of nought
to sit in stillness
would Time shift
to a grinding halt?

Would the gears of reality
befall me
as I am consumed
into the fleeting rescendance?

Light-speed is dark
color blurs, and lines of stars
are not but imagery
when nothing can reach a mass
which tears itself from gravity
unmoving

If I were to melt
into time itself
becoming spaghettified
energetic, formless
would’st petrificatiON
arise belied to existence?

Could, then, I be
without me
without freeform, broken
penchant

Time shifts in days on
Ever standing in coagulant collision
Universal
Rot

Many dimensions intersect us
Poking through the perforations
Of the quantum flux

And soulbound to the collective
Is the suspended intervision

I am introspect, delicate derelict
A piece of self, its own
Unknown to space’s haste
A purer nothing

Then pop!
Come I, again, to being
To become undone by tunneling
Through infinitesimal
Again, herein
The fabrix of
what Matters
Dan Hess Dec 2021
Look in the mirror
Kernel of the eternal
Sees only body
Dan Hess Nov 2019
Go out and greet the universe
Meet your dreams in the middle
Surround yourself with passion
Light your world up, by stepping into the sun
Bask in the brilliance and splendor of daylight
Of sunshine, and warmth, and rising

For someone out there, you are standing on the horizon
Everything’s just over another hill
We’ll keep spinning around, even if we never move
So why not take those cycles, and turn them into spirals?
Why not greet our challenges as if they were our friends?

If we appreciate life, if we truly love it, we must accept that it loves us, too.
In that, we are bound to be a part of it.
So stop hiding yourself away in fear.
Once you expose yourself to destiny, you’ll be riding that wave straight to freedom.

Let love align with that light inside.
Everywhere is home, on Mother Earth.
My brother inspired this one. Took a minute to work up the never to just let it out.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
This bleak, overcast sky
holds in it a well of condensing energy;
similar to the way one calms down in their deepest despair.

The wind rages with no destination;
it is carried only by what is left behind,
and falls ahead,
flowing blissfully with a current.

The trees have no care;
they thrive off the land and the sky,
the sun blanketing them in warmth
and feeding them to elicit growth.

The animals frolic
back and forth in repetition
only with their most primal desires.

It is only we humans
who concern ourselves
with personal desire and want;
that will be our downfall.

Sometimes,
to simply stop living a fast paced,
reward induced existence
and pay attention to nature
is to realize the value
of forgetting what is
and allowing yourself to simply be.

This is my safe place.
Dan Hess Nov 2019
I like to bake crumpets
on sunlit avenues
of sleeping cities

Whose bustling is an uproar
of white noise
in the collective mind

Lulling them
to
perpetual sleep,

like the drolling of a fan
in the dark nights
of their electric grid of thoughts

It’s nice to make something sweet
out of the heat
that radiates from the surface
of a broken paveway

Cracked, though it may be
It gives me hope
that I can sustain myself
in this faced paced world
of nonsense

And yet the world is always
a blur around me
As I stuff myself
with metaphors
sugar coated
and left to rot in my stomach

I could never hope
to match their speed,

I’m too caught up in the weeds
overgrown in my head

Sure, it’s cutting,
fast in the haste of being slow

Taking a machete
to clear out some space
Leave me feeling empty

The wind never stops blowing
in my inner world
It sure shuts them up
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
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Humans; label and categorize; nothing
Dan Hess Dec 2020
The universe speaks
and so inlaid is my awe
it feels mundane

The universe loves with unrelenting fire
such wisdom is its light
so delicately, intricately interwoven
is the force, the immensity of everything as one

and I
am but an iota
a speck on a speck
in some unknown place
in the vastness and transit
of outer space

whose voice is allocated to the insignificance of the imminence
of what slaps me in the face

and yet I'm being bombarded with divinity's infinities, subduing me
placating my aggravations and intimidations and fears and anxieties

every mirror image shown
returns me to my heart and home
reminds me who I am
that I am chosen to be me

I am shaken
my foundation breaking
tears escaping
from this love that seeks me

but I am born to be rebuilt
and I am thankful
Dan Hess Dec 2020
Spiraling

a vacuum in my sternum

drinking in the void
gasping for air in the emptiness



I reminisce of distances
leapt
in instances
kept
in memories
forever, lingering

How heavy can emptiness be?
Who am I who sees
not me?

Who are they

who could not stay
and did they ever know
my disarray?



I am

an erratic notion
of emotion
in motionless

vastness



I am spastic
jerking and tumultuous

in the openness 

of this
cosmic
loneliness

the endless
hindrance
of the intimate
i n f i n i t e
I
Dan Hess Feb 2022
I
Being, freely being
to manifest in purity
align with authenticity

Embrace my abnormalities

to coalesce with clarity



because truth

is where I’m meant to be;

the meaning of life

breathing life into me


A reason for believing

when I’m born to be achieving
Me



I’ll trust in the touch

that touches deeply,

bleed into the energy

seeing me perceiving, 


when I’m gleaming with integrity

as is my integration 

with vibrations of eternity



I was, and will forever be

exactly as I’m meant to

I trust in my essential being

and surrender, as to bloom



I am Love in full expression;

no digression, lest I suffocate

In being born, and all Life’s lessons,

with truest self, I integrate
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Shots fired.
Casualty at 100%
Nothing is lost

Candid natural mutilation
View life from behind a fissure
See no truth that is not gain
Sacrifice null to the wisher

Those who fight for value
Corporeal nonetheless
Are made up to be heroes
And momentarily addressed

A cannon is an instrument
With blood the field fills
But who will be left standing
To write the final will?
Dan Hess Jul 2021
to touch one person, who touches one person, who touches one person...
to feel in a way only you can
to see through the lens of your individuality
to impart an aspect of your identity onto reality
you are a fragment of eternity,  

i see things changing and it aches
but we could not think, could not feel, could not experience beauty
if time was not forever rolling onward
if things did not change  

to grieve is to love
to love is to empty yourself to hold space for another
to understand in spite of your ignorance
to grasp the truth that we cannot be alone
and nothing exists in a vacuum  

i’m tired of feeling insignificant
i am magnificent, passionate enchantment
echoes resounding in the vast, indifferent infinite
an embodiment of spirit amongst physicalist pessimists  

I may be small, but I am all,  
if only I connect with existence
Dan Hess Feb 2021
I am the air
i can fit anywhere
without ever taking
the shape of a container

i am nebulous
amorphous
orphic
shifting in duality
precipitating energy
while still remaining
empty

i glide inside
the captivating
pull of worlds rotating

still enamored by the moon
emanating atmospheric sphere's
within the room
Dan Hess Feb 2021
In those fleeting moments
of telepathy I shared with you,
it was revealed that
only love can break
the silence of the mind.

When the heart sings,
thoughts we thought
we’d never share with anyone
become rays of light

that split the mist
of consciousness;
connecting us through
heartstrings interwoven
into time and space.

Nowadays the silence is stark

only art and nature sing to me
in the way when I once sat
magnetically attached
listening to your heart



Though, not everything is verbalized

and I’m still speaking through
the energies and memories

that cascade unto
the gravity of heaven
causing me to fall
upward


That must be why ghosts float
lol
caught between the pull of worlds



but, anyway, we speak through
concentration and consensus
in my fingertips which drip
into the ocean
that I’ve talked about before

I’m always letting magic slip
in synergy and unison
ubiquitous with this
gasping sigh of relief

love laced in life’s belief
that we should know,
though life is brief
we are together in the deep
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
II
Dan Hess Nov 2021
II
Coerce me not by semblance nor by grace
nor make my purity known before my blights
Appeal to me in pleasantry’s embrace;

convince me you know nothing of my nights



For, in my deepest truth, I am entrenched

in fleeting, mortal nature on this earth

With every light, will darkness be dispensed,

and sadness mirrors every shred of mirth



So find in me, these unbecoming things

hidden in my heart and cowering

Find me there, still clutching this raw wound

Embrace my darkest parts to be attuned



May I find love, in authenticity,

or be alone, but know what’s truly me
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Hence I’m eclipsed in the magnificent indifferent specific specious indecent breeching meaningless exceeding bliss of bombast. My *** is grass, I’ve smoked my last **** and I’m broke so I’m hopeless but riding cloud nine in divine psychotic ****** illustrious lustful insightful divisive incisive mind fuckery. But I’m not talking about ***. That’s to be expected from the words I’ve been ejecting, but I’m speaking in terms of the indulgent churning I’m partaking in regularly. To no degree do I need to be cheering, or fearing the ever encroaching approach of a swift and painful death. I’ve been bereft since I was swept out of my hiatus in the ether, and I think I speak much deeper when I’m quiet, but why hide it when I’ve got so little to lose? I’ll just abuse my verbal onslaughts as a way of shaving off some time, cause I went blind a while ago, and seeing truth is burdensome to me, when I just bleed in silence in the mind, and I lack reason to pretend I’m ever fine, because the things I say don’t matter. How could they if I’m lacking any reason, holding onto nought but doubt in this incessant mental clatter. Truly in my mind the voices scream forever, no endeavor to be clever can save me from their decrees of ignorance. Perpetual ambivalence, my only friend, when I’m suspended in the dark.
This was a response to the quote "The less you say, the more your words will matter." -Rae Carson, The King's Guard, on tumblr. Credit for finding the quote goes to the blog poemswords.
Dan Hess Mar 2021
Forests part to form a road,
as the Earth swallows itself
erecting mountains which split in two
and on the horizon,
basking in the glow of the rising sun,
your outstretched hand draws me in at shimmering speeds  

Together, we adjourn, to radiant morrow
my heart settled comfortably in my throat
radiating warmth, and love, and truth
nourishing me deeply,
setting me up for a beautiful future
full of joyful tears
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Intelligence is irrelevant
Without offerance of incidence
To displace the weight of ignorance
Your inference is lauded in inconsequence
So take pleasure in existence
By making efficacious
Your predisposition to seek opulence
For, nor humility or ingratiation
Shall exceed the levity of elation
Wherein flux of information shared
Might unto oneself represent
Human glory, thus defined by presentation
And as such, we exhume growth
In spite of evanescence
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I don't like to be touched,
so I avoid letting people hug me.
I don't want them to realize how tense I am;
I don't want them to notice
that my muscles are hard as rock,
and full of grooves,
and constantly contorted out of shape.

I don't want them to know I am in pain,
and they are my medication.
I don't want to get addicted
to the temporary solution
brought about by a love that will not last.

I don't want to cling
to the embrace of a friend,
while telling myself
I will never find the love I truly seek.

And, for a while, that all worked out fine;
I became immune to the throbbing,
and the pain of anxious tension;

I was able to hide
behind the mask of indifference,
and in doing so I grew numb;
but, after more time had passed,

I grew colder;
the space between my two empty arms
grew more vast, and the heat dissipated, and
now I feel so heavy, and slow, and tired;

now I can no longer walk this path alone;
now I need a hand to hold;
now I need these arms
to be filled in yours, elusive lover.

Please find me... I am hurt...
Dan Hess May 2020
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.
Dan Hess Aug 2021
Is every sense a sentence?  
Is every birth a death  
of emptiness?  

Must we be captive, captivated,  
waiting for our breath in endless,  
breathless steps upon  
the winding road of silence?  

Is this aching, heartbreaking  
anticipation of something,
a world working;
a sensation,  
presentation coming through  
to its unearthing?  

Why does time stretch on
while we wander, squandering
the very truths we’ve clung to  
in our being and becoming?

It’s not every day
I have something to say
or something worth bestowing.
Sometimes, there’s nothing showing,
nothing growing…nothing flowing.

I’ve written “all and open”
over and over again
yet I feel closed from knowing
what is true, where to begin.  

In tumultuous earth,
quaking in memories
I see the death of me;
the rest of me, left empty
in a shell of reverie  

I cannot breathe.

These influences of devotion,
to "shall" and "should" and "would"  and where to be,
are gripping me with apathy  
as I refuse to find my muse  
in emptying the self I’ve come to bleed through.  

Nothing structured,
layaway my pain,
let rest my brain;  
no more contained  
in rage or evanescence;  

no regrets,  
no retrospect,  
no message. 

I’ve been,
and I will be
remembering and breathing;

still believing in moving on  
I’ll reach for the stars
until I burn inside the sun.  

Those days are gone.
I am not Nothing.
Done calling myself nought,
I am becoming.  

Even if I sway,
tarry here and there,
in my own way I’m home  
amongst the air; the wind  
still embraces me, without a care.
No caveat or cross to bear.  

I am bare to night,
tonight.
I swear it, naked.

I am starlight
drinking starlight in.

Candles steady.
I am ready,
but not simply to begin.  

I recognize the moving tides
that crash against my skin;
that fill me  
up from within.  

My world, akin.
My Endless Ocean.
Dan Hess Mar 2020
Each time I tread
lightly
on the naked earth

When the wind
blows through me,
as if I weren’t there
at all, yet
seems to carry away
my woes,
and clarify my essence.

When I attune
to the cosmos,
and recognize
that I am at one
with all
that is flowing,
being
and becoming.

When there,
upon the shore I rest,
silent yet full;
I am listening
to the coursing
of the waves.

I am breathing
in tandem
with the natural world.

What is eerie about taking pause?
What is silent about me?
I am melting…
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Through emotion
Every aspect of existence achieves vibrancy
Every whim becomes a dream
For it is love that connects us
For it is beauty that inspires us
Doubt that impedes our worth
It is happiness that elevates us
Sadness that innovates us
And anger that inhibits our thoughts
Above all else, in the deepest crevice
of our conceptual reality, it is hope
Hope that brings light
to an otherwise interminable darkness
Reaching out to grasp a token of worth
Constantly moving forward
Despite ignorance in surplus
We are creatures of change
Hope
Love
Warmth
Inspiration
All things are brought back
to a belief in a better world
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I think fast, hop straight to analysis
Delve deep, ask too many questions
Even if I know the answer,
I'm just dancing in the act of it
This much expansion of my cognizance
Is really quite liberating
But who am I kidding?

I'm just
Setting myself up to be ******
When I act like a nut
Asking questions of such
Which should be plain to see
Putting myself in a rut
I'm just greedy

Or maybe I don't trust myself?
Maybe I'm just an oaf.
Or, perhaps I'm just going to hell.

What a joke, I'm just swell.
I'm a stand up guy.
Don't make me choke.
I can tell.
I'll be fine.

Don't you see,
I've been doing
The very thing
I've been describing
This entire time?

But it is so sublime
Quite enticing to rhyme
What beauteous words
You can combine

And yet, when beautiful things become masks of truth,
they are nothing more than fodder for pigs.
Dan Hess Jul 2020
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
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Strange of you to measure fate
by way of every step I take.
When surely whether I trip or not,
I'll find the path goes ever onward,
and always get back up again.

What is this plight of which you speak,
and why does it daunt you so?
To where do you, too, disappear,
when your mind seems to go?

What is your sight, this dismal night,
and what wonder might it show?

Ah, but to know is to not know,
and in my mind, I am bound to the "although."
Without a doubt, it allows to me grow,
but I am lost in the lies I might sow.

Alas, there is no threat below,
as what reigns above should alleviate my woe.

Yet, my fate is sought,
and his is bought,
and I am transcended
by way of my thought,
and your view is concerting,
but ever diverting,
from what is but nature of rot.

Do you see what can be
of an old willow tree,
when a branch is newly planted
in the ground at your feet?

It is similarly true
of what you can do
with a concept all *******
and taught in your thoughts,
for your words are but seeds,
for a new willow tree,
or instead, are they branches,
maybe?

Water your tree,
and from words,
weave worlds of wisdom
within wistful watching eyes
of soft, metallic gold,
and you will learn
the ways of the souls of old,
and you will become what you seek.

Let the passion of eternity
drip from your tongue
like pure decantations of light.
Breathe in the winds of life,
and bridge the gap
that separates dark from light,
and cast your might upon the shadows
to form a picture,
then turn,
and from the cave,
walk into the light of day,
and gaze upon the open sky,
and feel alive, for the first time ever.

Like namers do,
practice an exercise in becoming you,
by seeing without eyes.
Let it go,
so the world can flow,
into itself, and continue to grow.

Then take a stand,
you are no ordinary fool,
no ordinary man!

To be as if without,
and take hardy in faith without doubt,
is as foolish a foolishness
as a fool can spout.

This is a journey without end,
there is no good found in the pretend,
so take your path,
and remember to laugh,
and take pride in the "rule of the bend."

To know you do not know,
is to allow yourself to grow,
but there is a reason
for the change of the season,
and sometimes
you just have to follow the road.

You must abandon identity,
to grasp the root of everything.
You are existence, and all is one.
There is no partition,
only illusion of separation
begat on subjective interpretation.
There is no divide,
until it is recognized inside.

See without eyes.

Choose to feel otherwise.

Everything will coincide,
as it has already,
and one must only open the mind's eye
to grasp the light
without finding themselves to be blind.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
I'm addicted to the punishment
I just keep coming back
I've got the motive
I can own it
Til I conquer what I lack

It's like a high when I get by
And I'm a better fit for more
Cause I'm awaiting all the pain
And all the suffering in store

It's just a fact of life
You've gotta go through strife
So why not take the edged knife
Put in your mouth
And take a massive ******* bite
Dan Hess Feb 2021
God is a face with no name; 
a whisper in the breeze; 
the hum of insects in a forest 
aglow with the first rays 
of the soft light of dawn. 

God is the vibration 
of everything as one. 
The emotion of a heart 
awake but breaking, 
choosing instead 
to carry on. 

God is the transcendence of hope, 
when faith is another day; 
the present moment fleeting; 
making the most of the lives we have 
before they slip so fragilely 
through our fingers. 

Yet, in this swelling of divinity, 
we do not cling… 
We cherish but let go, 
because we know 
that we must grow, 
thereto bestow 
our pearls of wisdom 
onto the future 
living in our dreams. 

We are aflame with inexhaustible spirit. 
We are chock-full of life and love 
and we owe it all to the immensity of being. 

How full we’ve all felt. 
How we’ve striven 
to leave ourselves empty, 
not knowing what it means 
to long for life in our wizening. 

We only want to be whole. 
God is forgetting, and forgiving 
ourselves for what we lack, 
and what we are or what we aren’t. 

God is the intangible spirit 
of knowing we are whole 
in our very melting. 

That through the coursing, 
and the melding 
of ever present energies, 
we belong to something greater 
than ourselves. 

God is ALL. 
God is One. 
God is none, 
for we are he are thee. 
We’ve split ourselves to many. 
To let life be lived aplenty. 

So dream, 
my dear past, dream. 
Soon you shall see. 
Soon you shall 
remember me. 

Maddening, I know. 
Yet, with every step, 
we manifest.
With every step we grow.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
What a curse for the world of poets to lie within the realm of dreams. We'll never see the real thing the same way, nor will any other see our world at all. So we are strung apart, and never understood, as we seek endlessly to understand ourselves.

Kinship, and loss.
I know of resonance, but not of thought.
I feel emptiness, but I am not.
I am nought.
I am wrought.
I am molded in the image of my dreams.
Which are brought about from all that I have seen.
I know you feel it too, but I know none will see me, true.
Won't know me truly.
I am nothing.
I am losing, simple, fleeting, flighty me.
I am bemusing, ever strewn, interminably.
Lost upon a fabricated of sea of my own dreams.
Dan Hess Jan 2022
I want to live in this state

where every breath feels like vaporous gold

my blood is ablaze with the violet flame

and the gravity of cosmic, celestial ethereality

suspends each simple speck of being,

pulsating with transcendent, growing energy



Aperture adjustment; 

light parts the mist of the physical

a bloom, returned

consumed in energetic being


seeing through illusion


I want to transmute

the frazzled, festering things

that constitute the dissonant;


returned to harmony

with a decisive tap!

like liquid crystals flipped

to shine white light



Melt the astral ice

entice my mind and soul

to cascade into the ocean;

dissipate my shaking being;

make me feel whole



I am love. I am love. I am Love.

I am nothing.
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.
Dan Hess Feb 2022
Everything is Being, in its most quintessential form. I'm reading The Doors of Perception, and while I disagree with a lot of what Huxley says in the book, the concept of "Suchness" as an ever present fundament of reality is close to my heart. I think the mind, in its folly, approaches that graceful bumbling and stumbling through which the overarching world, too, transpires into Being. Things that seem imperfect are tantamount to the immaculacy of the Pattern.
People see seasons and cycles, years, and births and deaths. They see decay and blossoming. They see in this the liminality of truth, and understand, as we do the contained and confounding grid-work of particles under force forming atoms forming forms, that all things are bleeding at the edges. The problem of identity is age old and often understood to be Oneness. This concept permeates philosophy, religion and culture; we are social animals, bound to Love to survive and coexist. We seek to understand ourselves, to understand the world, to make something of This. It's simple, and it isn't. We're making do with what we have. I think everything makes sense, and we struggle to make sense out of everything, because we are tethered to the corporeal illusion of separation; and I think, that is perfect, too, because it facilitates awareness of connection through reflection.
There is a great, profound truth in that all things are one body, but that doesn't make this any less "real."
Real is just a word; what matters is how we choose to use it.
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Music captures emotion
Unspoken cues of pure passion
in subconscious impressions
It puts a feeling to the words,
and adds that meaning
Lets you feel what was felt once before

Music touches the soul
Gives a glimpse into the essence
of another's heart

What happens when a song captures it all?
When love is found between the notes
And upon them, heavily impacted sorrow
When joy is wrought from each rising tone
And devastation in every falling sound

If a simple melody
So exquisitely and without forcefulness
Can carry itself, to empathize
With each and every man, woman, child
The only proper response is to cry
Dan Hess Jul 2019
Petulance
The redundant quarrel
The mind betwixt in atrophy
Though only psychologically
It rapes the soul, the mind of idle insanity

Jaded, wax upon the distant periphery

Perceptive filter overrun and clogged
And emotionally, numbness
In indignant retaliation, drained, apathetic
Pleasure turns to irritation

Socially, drugged, to mask
the pain of aging without progress
As if dragging myself through sodden debris;
gore, filth, disgusting
I am unclean
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.
Dan Hess Feb 2021
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!
This was inspired by a prompt on JoeHillsTSD’s most recent hermitcraft video, in which he gave the poetry prompt “Let Nature Be(e)”
Never expected to be writing a shakespearean sonnet inspired by a minecraft video, but here we are 😂
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