Despite what even the most may modest say,
there is always an element of narcissism in art, the vanity of preference.
Be forewarned the parts of myself I want to show the most here are meticulously vain.
There is a whole lot of preference in my language.
In the way the carpenter is with his tools
I want to carve into you with some hardened truth.
Taking lines, forming letters, producing sounds and pictures

touching a place in people that exists
before words.
The closest thing to us being all
right here,
feet planted, on the same world.
Of course, then there is the sad reality of countries.  
Borders for what you belong to.
Tourist! Do not bother,
only the homesick may enter.

You won’t find this sort of thing on any map.
Pens aren’t so precise, our hands too clumsy
all our tools right down to the thumb incapable of enumerating glory.
What with all of it’s digits
tightly wound around it’s bigger stick
the only kind of glory that is heard of
simply because it kills.
But my kind of glory is dying to meet you
somewhere inside, under, between, around, outside,
after, during, before my language..

With that said,
Here is the mission statement;

I pledge to be right with this moment.
To cast myself out the furthest a mind can carry one in any given
instant and bring back more of the goodness that serves
instead of white noise that moves nothing
or clutter that just makes it hard to move.
As I realize we are objects being moved by all that is around us,
for instance;
thinking of the same person every time you enter a particular room.
Romance does happen to those who know how to look.
You do not look by containing anything with separation.
The walls must heave and collapse like lungs
because my body is mostly dead things that are just now
learning.

The words don't come as easy anymore,
As if the very act of utterance
Has now become a chore.
Words that once slithered
From my mind and from my tongue,
Seem wrapped in insignificance.
Like the vacuous distance
Twixt our planet and our Sun.

Oh yes,
There are enough faint marks
That we can trace constellations
In the quiet of the dark.
Finding meaning that was never there,
Seduced by mediocrity
With just a pinch of natural flair.

I feel the muse has died,
The last ember of a humble
Fire,
Now fuel deprived.
So I shall trawl through the
Musings of others.
To find a spark and kindle
My lovers.
The spoken and written word,
Perhaps entwined
With a musical accord.

Perchance then? If my ego may be silent
Perhaps I could take pen again
Assault the salient!
Then if determinism agrees
I may once more feel the words
Flow through me like the breeze.
I will ink my conscience once more.
Till my mind is left adrift,
Treading water to
Distant shores.

I knew not cold

Until I called your shadow my home.

Years have since passed

But your cuts remain fresh,

Leaving me haggard,

Blind to my own radiance.

We know each other no longer

But you hold a place in my heart

Born in jealousy,

Reborn in hatred,

With sharp pangs of love

Which refuse to be drowned.

You must begin to understand
that you are not something you can discover,
like some unknown land.

You do not carry any hidden caves
in which you have yet to explore.

You do not contain any quarries
holding secret riches waiting for you to obtain.

You roam blindly around in circles
trying to decipher symbols in the Earth
that you already know.

You are not something you can discover.
You are not unknown.

You search for pathways around the mountain’s base
and fail to realize they do not exist.

You fail to see that that time was a waste
that you could have spent on climbing
those mountains instead.

You are not something you can discover.
There is nothing you do not already
know.

These things you search for,
they’re already written in your skies
and along your valleys.

These answers
you are desperate for, lie right beneath
your nose, in front of your very eyes.

Those hidden caves that you believe to be
unexplored, have been your home
all along,

and those riches that you so strongly
long for, are already well within
your grasp.

You are not something you can discover.
You are not something that can be found.

Because,
you are not something
that is
lost.

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast—
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child—so high—you are,
And all this is folly to the world.