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Devin Ortiz Jul 2020
I muddle in uncertainty,
as time dwindles dawn.

All the while wondering,
if I’ll make the final song.

Shall I make the end of the story,
in anyone’s spinning tale.

These thoughts are always fleeting,
and the pain never fails.

Scream now dear echo,
hold that note so strong.

Now comes the waiting,
always lasting so long.
Devin Ortiz Jul 2020
My life changed on a whim.
For no particular reason I watched a squirrel scurry up a tree.
He, or she (but not an it), stared at me.
They went branch to branch, stopping here and there to observe their new observer.

And how many times has this moment passed by, going unnoticed.
How many times had this animal instinct been drowned out by the clutter of daily life.

It wasn’t as though I had disregarded life before, but this was a fundamental awakening.
Before I could wrap my head around the simplicity of this divine happenstance,
I saw a cardinal swoop down on a fence-post a few feet away.
Again, I was enveloped in the novelty of this life.
I was in a state of dull wonder, looking at the vibrant red, the low swoop of the crown, the small of the body.

The trance broke, another squirrel scurried past me and up a tree.

I noticed this one bore a scar.
The hind leg was stripped of fur.
The skin wore the discoloration of freshly healed flesh.
They too, stared at me, perhaps perplexed that it was being watched.

I walked on.
Then finishing my morning walk, I noticed many things.
It was not just life that was intriguing me, it was the way the mundane began to scream at me.
I walked through abandoned lots, noting the way their roads would crack and crumble.
I noticed broken security cameras from long departed offices and buildings.
I noticed the broken marlin in the trash heap behind some house, no longer sporting its beak.
I noticed an old ford with a rubber rifle shell for an antenna and a load of wood planks in its bed.
I noticed a graffiti stick figure on the short bridge, some dystopian cave painting.

All of that to say, a hidden world became revealed.
A world that existed underneath my own, blurred by its previously perceived unimportance.
So now, I wonder what to do with this knowledge.
I think I’ll borrow its magic.
I think I’ll write down the bizarre normalcy that I see.
A running list of averages.
It is the beginning of something.

A door has opened.
Devin Ortiz Jul 2020
Today, I am walking the path of the infinite self.
It is a road that stretches forever inwards and outwards.
I unravel,
I cross the rubicon,
I contain multitudes,
The door in the sky opens.
A hand reaches down and pulls me through it.

I become a face in a sea of many:
A swimming ocean of everything I’ve been and yet to be.
A dream floating on the sleepy universe of impossibility.

I accept this smallness.
Then I reach inwards and offer a hand.
I become whatever self I require.
Devin Ortiz May 2020
The Sun was a no show.
Raindrops begin to bead off the brim of my straw hat.
This beat continues until it slurs into a stream.
The thought to leave never crosses my mind.
Downpours are downright hypnotic, magic made real.
The eye of the heart opens to the rain's musical incantation.
And there it stands, the doorway to infinity.
Inside is surely unknown, but to have the great beyond exist,
within the turning of fingertips is unreality itself.
I suppose the power of this muse lies in its mystery.
Yet still, I forge endlessly onward to annihilate the enigma of it all.
I'm sitting here, in the rain, watching these words turn about.
Devin Ortiz May 2020
The liquidity of rage, swoons like a red ocean.

It is a tidal fury that rises, rises, rises.

Within its climatic ascension, exist an anxious torture.

Thoughts rush in, pacing on what conclusions will come.

These waves have come before, the carnage is extreme.

And while the destruction strikes the shore, the bastions will stand.

Ruin though, shall come, and each storm stands testament to that reality.

The walls will fall, and all will breathe a final sigh of relief, at the end.
Devin Ortiz Apr 2020
Having decided to go out in a whisper, this vignette, blows through and around the bones of the no longer relevant truth.

It is a wonder how something as simple or complex as a paradigm shift, can usher entire worlds in and out of existence.

I've clung to this narrative that I am a prisoner in my own mind.
That some usurper took the reigns when I was otherwise too weak.
I needed to believe that, that there existed a power beyond me.
That there was some distinct discontinuity between us.

And if we are indeed one and the same, we are also different.
There was strength in being divided, separate, unique.
I've not yet created a reality where being a singularity is supreme.
So I cry out in agony, united in my unknowing.

I write to shape this new form, this new being, this new structure.
I write to fight against the unmaking of my self.
Devin Ortiz Apr 2020
My falling out with the Cartographer was not absolute.
Though it's easy to notice when the deep gravity of the Universe,
has been reduced to the mundane whispers of the ordinary.

The strength of loyalty is tested in these blind walks of faith.
As the world unfolds beneath my feet, the mind too does wander.
Hidden worlds vibrate between reality and fiction.
I map this microcosm of the known, to reach the ever after.

And so it goes that in my purposeful aimlessness, I'll find the road back.
Every excuse will always be, but letting go will set me free.
Free to once again entangle creation's creativity.
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