The golden hours of the morning met my eyes with favor.

Cherished and tender, the Sun kissed her skin in a swath of freckled light.  

I meet her gaze and she fades like waning of my magic.

In her absence, I stumble from then to now, tethered along by the wish of her reality.

She is ethereal, her between moments, unmoored by convention.

She is a freedom, I do no know.

She whispers her truths, words which wage war with profound ambition.

Dusk comes and I succumb, it is time.

Behold the smooth transition of brushstrokes and bristles to the field of marigolds.
The sweet friction brought by divine hands, is the depth you were searching for.

And as the storm rolls in, high on the technicolor clouds, you take a moment to catch your breathe.
Next thing you know the rainbow wildfire blooms from the painted raindrops, setting the flowers ablaze.

It is a world created of mind made matter, and if you cannot see the parallels, then you lack the imagination!

Any fiction can carve its way into reality, that is the truth of all worlds.

That is the key, forge your ambitions and blow the doors wide open.

I’ve stood coast to coast, listening to whistling, winding songs of the ocean waves.

I’ve lost myself in the sound and stories across the American highway.

Growth is not linear. A new place doesn’t make a new person. You take your baggage. You take all of the miserable excuses. You take time.

I’m not a sojourner. I’m not a traveler. I’m not some whimsical man.

Though, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it all. Enjoying it through the gritted teeth of resentment.

Reality is what you make of it. The when and where can matter, but it’s not all there is.

Sometimes we just need the roots to settle.
Sometimes we just need to let life bloom.

So I’ll take a drink, praise the sun, and live.

Life has always been about the decaying permutation of possibility.

When you are young, the infinite paths sing with endless potentials.

These branches are primed with the indifferent hands of time.

Choice still exist, as it always has, yet the narrowing is haunting.

It is that inevitability is that hangs around in ominous fog.

Approaching that finality is a journey of bittersweet grace.

Stone slabs descended down,
forming a staircase straight to hell.

A sea of screaming miasma suffocated
either side of the winding venture.

The light of the world above no longer
registered as darkness swallowed this place.

It seemed that whether forward or back,
this road was infinite.

Finally, after endless time, the monument
of this suffering came into view.

The blackest Obsidian rose beyond
comprehension and without feature.

Voices wailed and tension bloomed
in ominous agony.

And as it called out, a liquid wave of
familiarity poured in and around me.

The door, once unmarked, split down the seam
as I came within the final stretch.

Understanding drowned my mind,
as I pressed my palm against its surface.

Instantly, with a deafening boom,
it swung open on ethereal hinges.

Walking through, in bewildering clarity,
what was one became two.

Books are fuel to the imagination.

Works of fiction pour into my mind,
hours at a time.

I feel the power rise,
as I climb through expositions.

Looking down,
I see the world in the palm of my hand.

Looking up,
I see my face amongst the clouds.

On this high I craft my own words,
some spoken and others in ink.

And as I fall,
I ponder the time until my return.

The current of clouds flowed above in a stream of darkness on top of the deep violet vignette's of sky.

In opposition of this, a defiant sickle of moonlight joined the scattered street lamps.

Their small chorus of light illuminated the early morning for the wanderers .

It is a quiet time, before the Sun gives breathe to life.

Before dawn, serenity walks all the winding ways.

Eternity lives within these moments.

Tears welled in the mourning of everything unwritten.

The mind's starvation is the stagnation of the imagination.

Survival has been no serenade.

A memory is just a story altered.
Every recall differs from the one before it.
The details will fade, though the essence remains.

An orator of the mind spins the tales,
Our experiences catalogue them.

The bitter ones grow even more bitter.
The happy ones grow even happier.

But this mind of mine refused my request.
Figuring some memories are best,
left behind.

And so in my unremembering,
I ponder the splendid and mundane,
that has all been locked away.

As he walked about the world, it fell to shambles around him.

Buildings crumbled, the sky fell, the ground tremored beneath his feet.

He'd rub his temples, blink his eyes, and scream within his mind.

Then it would all reform, destruction undone before his eyes.

He'd walk about his world again and it would all fall to shambles.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unreality had started to set in for weeks now.
And all the while knowing a simple sentence could cure;
I ran from the words that I feared to conjure.

Today I thought of the might of the pen.
While stronger than the sword, its duty is at its end.
Most of my writing is on screens and keyboards.
How many generations before its metaphorical might,
Is something that new writers lose sight?

These days, I visualize all words written, as reality's stitching.
A way to dress the wounds of waiting.
A way to hide from a world of my making.

Far worse than just living on borrowed time,
he was living on borrowed space.

The bullet would be bit, a future price so high, neglect was the only agency to survive the now.

Pulling forward, thinking forward,
such tasks had always been simple.

The lateral moves, the pulling inward,
that was all that mattered now.

He had reflected on what might be, what would be paid in time.

Now came the time for the real gestalt wizardry.

An individual across time is a power spanning infinitely between two points.

An individual across space is a power infinite an a singular moment.

At the axis of all where’s and when’s stood the final gamble.

He knew that now, that every threshold of influence across all space and time, mattered.

Within this amalgam of chaos stood purpose, and purpose would do fine.

Mass hysteria meets mass mortality.
They are dead.
They are dead.
They are dead.
Unreality sets in like a fog.
Like a cog in a great winding machine.
A divine thing, but a cruel and unkind thing.

The winter blues are rich with gloom,
twisting my heart with apathy.

And perhaps shame too, let it not hide behind the weather.

Is it this dark obsession or some hidden transgression?

All the lessons learned, but failure is all that remains.

What road is left, I cannot see between the flickers of my dwindling flame.

Two illuminated halos shrank
into the the cross stitching of
Goldenrod and Jade.

Smaller they became, until swallowed by
the all consuming darkness of his pupils.

This time it was serious.
He flashed one last glance
at his foreign reflection.
Then out went the lights,
as the weight of night over took him.

This body fell once before,
Running itself to extinction,
In the pursuit of the great word.

Piece after piece, as each thought left,
As each prose was transcribed,
The body too, began to fade.

The resurrection has begun.
A small step forward, with it a line.
The magic flows, the body grows.

A step becomes a stride.
A line becomes a poem.

The exchange has equalized.
The give and take finally in unison,
Healing the body and the mind.

I left all of my words behind.

Stress chiseled a weakness within me.
As my vessel failed, my mind did too.

Though..

I’m not quite finished.
Not quite drained.
Not yet.
No.

It had to super secede conscious thought.
To be biologically absolute.

Overthinking is a non conundrum.
Fight or flight, that’s all that’s left.

Removing choice, perhaps the key,
Though it’s no clear cut sanity.

Precision is swift, through non mortal blows,
Just within the fringes of lethality.

On the edge of life or the brink of death.
Let the flesh decide for itself.

The black bird returns to the grove.
Its wings clipped, its pride stripped.

The black bird wretches a horrid chord.
Its song defiled, its depression wild.

The black bird offers a stifled dance.
Its passion shown, its fate honed.

The black bird finds a fractured peace.
Its freedom bound, its sanity found.

Words drift, past the pages and recollection.
Some skip just above a stream of consciousness.
Others hurdle by, accelerating into shapelessness.

A fisherman of thought.
Praying the last of his bait,
feeds him, just another day.

As the days blend together,
and the current thrashes on,
hope is a face on the water.

He’s filled his belly with persistence,
but the need for creation lives on.

Cast the line.
Spin the rhyme.

Feast on the dreams of tomorrow.

“A nail in the coffin, such a significant mark.”
Said the dead man walking,
with a hole in his heart.

But the nail was his weapon,
his sword, his pen.
Sheathed within his own body,
his life, his friend.

So day after day, as stress grew,
as life came.
He welled up all the words,
which sang.

All of this, blood, sweat and tears.
Until the fool realized all his lost years.

He yearned to draw the blade once more,
and so did it pour,
all the words and shame
he had to his name.

So the ink flowed, his life blood,
his prose.
Always to write again, his blooming
red rose.

I set upon the Grotto,
where the hanged men dangled, dear.
Those desecrated corpses,
no longer held their fear.

I fashioned up an axe,
To **** the living, certainly not the dead.
See I’m taking out the demons,
and nightmares inside my head.

Through dusk and dawn again,
I hack away with glee.
Happy little madness,
please end this ****** tree.

Fingertips reach out against the forgotten wood.
An old wicked tree, gnarled with memories.
It seemed only moments ago, each groove
and every ridge was known.

A palm outstretched delicately, hoping to feel,
pressed against the rot of fading time.
The wounds of the mind run deep.

The hand pulls back, steadies it’s rage,
erupts into useless follies.

And still stands no closer to remembering.

The Clock strikes three days until Madness.
An itch of a Tick and every Toc.

The Question of old simmers in the Mind.
A Deviant is only half the Answer.

The Cursed Weapon is drawn at the Ready.
Words offer no Reason or Resolve.

The Golden Feather succumbs to the Crimson.
Yielding all Truth to die as Fiction.

We shared stories as the hours passed by.
Each secret detail, leading to more intimate detail.
Hearing each others mistakes, failures, blunders..
It is an open invitation to share in the humility of the human condition.
We live within the tales of another, carefully refitting the pieces of each other.
So far from the picture we once held, but ever better, imperfect even.
The refined inadequacy is all the truth we ever needed.
For who would we be without them.

The finish line is a delusion.
We run the race at our own pace.
Some walk. Some run.
Some crawl. Some quit.
Everyone dies, no one wins.

Suppose there is no other side.
Suppose you just keep going,
Until you don’t.

Is it an uphill battle?
Is it all downhill from here?

A little of both, a lot of neither.
Going, going, gone.

I reach out and pound on the glass.
I scream to the world, fist bleeding,
Voice scratching into hoarse whispers.

Everyone. They all move...on.

The roads diverged. And I’m on every path.
But more importantly I’m on none.

Severed strings. I dangle free.
Master only to psychopathy.

Take it all. Every crutch.
Can’t manipulate,
What you cannot touch.

To be tethered to a lover is a dangerous game.
A cord of boundless strength winds deep,
Between the flesh and blood of the heart.

When stress rises in you, so too in I.
When depression grows within one, it becomes two.

And yet happiness too, does bloom.
Though not today, nor anytime soon.

We live on the fringe of happiness, my skinny love.

We live on the promise of maybes or never.

I’d sever the cord, if you could be free.
Though we both know that could never be.

This story has been written.
Now we play the parts.
We suffer in the moment.
We live for tomorrow’s maybe.
Time will liberate us.
So it shall be, so it shall be.

Reality begins to break, I shatter
Reality begins to break, I remain

Reality remains, I shatter
Reality remains, I remain

All of this, all at once.
Every moment, every time.

There is no constant other than the unknowing.

That was no ordinary lightning,
I knew that much for sure.
The walls shook with violent vibrations,
Echoes of the beastly ritual below.

Through flashes and thunder,
Archaic broods of badlanders rose.
Each strike tore open the seems of
Conceivable imagination.

This is not the first time.
This storm is without end.
Some will know it for the darkening it is.
Others will hold it secretly within nightmares.

His spectral stride was not the worst of him.
His stoic face was a flawless slab of stone.
His rending claws slipped idly within his pockets.

As if extensions of his sheathed talons, on either side of the ghoul was a hound of hell.

The beasts could not look more different, save for their crimson eyes which sang of the gallows.

The worst had indeed arrived.
Each patient step glided after the other.
With no word, with no tempo, with no sign.
The dance of grimaced howls and fangs began.

Where is everyone off to in a hurry..?
Why am I still waiting..?

Finally..I wake from the dreamless wakefulness,
supposing that now, this is all real.

And how is such a harsh reality met?

By staring down Death’s corridor.
I don’t take the first step, I imagine that
is still quite some time away.
Though this time, it is much more than a glance.

And for the record, I remained tethered
to the living.

But to go on, that must be the work of Mask.
For how could I?

Yes, I resolve this ordeal to Mask.
Absolve myself of responsibility,
for was he not always in control?

Steady now, it is a burden for us both to bare.

a bird born in the city
may not know of the forest.
a bird born within the concrete jungle
may not know, but they share emptiness.

a bird born in the city
may have its belly swell.
a bird born in the crossroads and high towers
may feast forever and never fill.

a bird born in the city
may call it a home.
a bird born amongst alleys and avenues
may sing, but often crows.

a bird born in the city,
flies with wings far from what is known.

Just outside the sea stained window,
An ocean swells into divine ascension.

Blue heaven.
Blue hell.

The impending crash will never come.

Solitude is the strength of separation.
The separation of self, from others, from all.
Within the crowds and between loneliness,
Solitude is power personified.

Solitude walks the streets in indifference,
Passerby’s smile or stare, no care.
The vacuum of isolation’s stronghold,
Breathes confidence, exhales ticking time.

Solitude is the mask of many,
And the face of few.

Solitude is the liar’s crutch,
And the King’s crown.

Be wary of Solitude, its power is profound.

Violent verdant windows of shattered glass,
Sharp walls of flesh illustrate the oozing of lust.
Beneath the anguish of sillouettes and glammer,
Lie the wolf’s gazing demand for power.

Crimson crowns carry the stench of death,
Flowing deep from within the cavern of man.
The belly of this beast utters Hell’s Horizon,
A howl of sadistic victory and damnation.

King Midas has his gold.
The writer has his folly.

He’s broken bread on a tale or two.
Hundreds of scores, blessed by few.

Memories dwindle between the pages,
Pieces of self transcribed over ages.

Words written today,
Swiftly begin to fade.

Every line which is writ,
Leaves scars, oozing grit.

Nobody is the same as Yesterday,
But what’s this chameleon to say?

An invader most foreign has arised.
Dooming with thoughts of demise.

The cycle of ancient history,
All creation forgotten in tomorrow’s mystery.