The white banks have risen high.
The smoky powder fills the sky.

Blooms of consciousness are frozen still.
Consequences of dying on that hill.

Time slips, blurs, no longer stirs.
As thoughts dim, and pain confers.

Darkness consumes the glistening tomb.
Life gives in to the doom and gloom.

The universe used to whisper dark melodies,
in the secret garden of mind.
Seeds were sewn with thoughts that were ravenous for the wicked sound.
Each idea bloomed into insidious beauty, humming a haunting tune of its own.

When dusk set on the infinite, the ghastly chorus set too.
Silence boomed, poisoning the life of creativity.
What grew now, was gnarled indifference, a green of dark envy.

Borderline blasphemous and a challenge just the same, a tune of antithesis finally became.
The garden sang its own song in finality.

The dream thickens and my eyes grow dim.
They drown in darkness and light becomes thin.

The lids become heavy, and I cannot swim.
I sink below the surface, sleep begins to win.

Farther I fall to madness and thoughts are now grim.
Prying my eyes open, as penance for my sin.

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.

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.

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.

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.