To:  A Flaming Heart
            Of the Hedonistic School

From:  A Slow-Burn Refugee
                Of the Broken-Back-Pack-Mule

                        ¤¤¤

I've had dreams by day
That brought the nightmares back.
?In the daylights exposure it was dark  
When the negative light was bright.

In the sea of people
I was the floating remains
Of a Great White's meal. 
On the lonely roads of thought

My mind was in gridlock.
Comforting memories were suspended
Over a psychic black hole
By jagged and rusted

Medieval-type surgical tools.
My remaining senses
Were nailed to a cross-section
Of psychically atrophied grey matter

Along neural pathways
Guarded by gladiator-type tormentors.
Left with nothing
But the stinging desire to be freed

From a curse that had to be cured
And the hell of searching for a cure
When I was convinced there wasn’t one.
The powers that be come with force

To quell primal lusts & desires
Forbidding you of them
As they seductively
Dangle them before your eyes
  
Until you are so frustrated and unfulfilled
That you no longer
Care for your world.  
This cracked glass remains empty

Even though it is constantly being filled
Then spilled or leaked on the floor
Until you learn to lap it up
Like the lapdog that you have become

For their amusement.
You remain with a love for freedom  
But your cage is so large 
That you think you are free

Lost in societal fantasy.
You think for a while
That these fantasies are real   
Until you come to your senses that aren’t

As you join other fools
In comfort that you're not the only
Broken-back pack-mule. 
But in spite of it all

And in the face of them all
Don't let these birds of prey                                                          
An­d powers that be
Deprive you of what they
cannot see

In that hidden corner
Of what is still untouched--
The real you
Uninfected by the world.  

Take care of your spiritual affairs.
Don't let the global beast
And your primal hissing forces
Make you be your own pallbearer.

Poetic minds are islands often found
In common reaches of the status quo
And in remote and deeper waters
Of vox humana in muted undertow.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

12 years have passed since I’ve last seen her in this life.
Distance and sickness in our being had robbed us both
of streams of time which passed like a long cold winter
into her death. These lost memories often create over-
exposed and superimposed photo negatives of imaginary
frames of time I desperately imprint to hold tightly in my
heart and mind.

But I still hold tightly in memory to her soft voice on the
phone and pictures of split second frames of physical
time my sister would send me. Many people don’t even
have that.

In this life she loved to mother her three grown children
and flower garden as near as
she could to the end. It was
in her nature to nurture us--
her perennial children--
and to help make the move easier for her literal annual foster children plants taken
from a confined existence to a deep soft warm bed of comfort.

Stamped on my mind is not the faded and worn, bruised
and torn image of her outward shell in the Trauma
Center at age 88, but the indelible inner and outward
image at age 38: a lovely young mama who tucked her
little boy in bed every night with a song and a prayer.
The little boy that is still alive in this man.

The Agèd Hands of Time have reached yet another
toll of the bell.

I got a late call
Just the other day --
    Sister reluctant to say
  What she had to say.

Mama's not well
     She almost passed through
    The veil --
A life of hard work
    Can make any strong
Woman frail.

I'm not an old man
     But time isn't always kind --
Teenage children
Make youth that much harder
                      To find.

It doesn't seem so long ago
               When I was that
        Young and free --
My parents feeling like I do now
            When they'd look at me.

      She was always proud
Of the garden that she grew --
   Working with her hands
In everything she'd do.

But now her body can't
      Keep up with her mind
And father seeks for what
        They both cannot find.

        You're a child with
Parents all your own
Then it's your turn at the wheel
      When you are grown.

Then your children
See you old and frail --
Time goes by faster than
      You realise and you've
Passed through the veil.

I've always watched
      The Agèd Hands of Time
         Winding other lives down --
       They were not mine

But now my past
    Is in the distance and my
Future is as close as my agèd
  Parents and my growing children
     In The Agèd Hands of Time.

Demons to so many are simply Metaphors
Symbols of our darker side.
A rational mind may discern What is real
Even with spectres seen and Voices heard.

Seemingly real what our senses Feel
We can swear that we heard a Disembodied voice
Or saw a ghost or spirit.
But they may be an illusion--
Our eyes and ears do play
Tricks on our minds
Like hysterical blindness being All in the head.

As in dreams by night
Perhaps these things
Are conscious dreams by day--
Our minds trying to tell us Something
In its own symbolic and abstract Way.
Just as real as physical symptoms
Deeply rooted in the mind.

It has been said that your Perception is your reality.
If so, these things are then your Personal reality.
These things may be real
But only to you
Or whoever is in your headspace
Or our collective headspace
Where our senses peak.

Your reality or your orientation Is defined
By what you focus on
And what you look through
Day after day.
You truly are what you eat.

Are the negative effects of what You see
Compounded by further Distorted perception?

Are you focusing on something through

     <A spider-web-cracked
           Window?
     <A spider’s web built across
           Your Window?
     <A fogged-up or frosted
           Window?
     <A coloured or tinted
           Window?
     <A *****  smudged window?
     <A window partially or
           Totally obscured
           By bushes or trees?        
     <A window at night where
           What you
            See beyond the window

            Is superimposed with
            Your own reflection and
            That of objects and lights
            That are behind you in
            The room?
     <A window with the blinds
           Closed?
                             Or
     <Are you myopically looking
           Through what is just
           A picture of a window
           Hanging on
                               Your wall?  
                      ~
Whatever windows we peer Through
Or whenever we enter
Humankind’s collective and Connected
Head-space
We see and hear these demons And spectres
Dancing through the dark empty Rooms
And hallways of mind

Waiting for the right time
To bring the party to the light of Day
Where they will forever stay
Since we have been inviting Them
And have been preparing the Way for them
For a very
Long time.