My whole adult life,
I've been running into people
unexpectedly on street corners
and having somewhat profound
conversations in odd languages.

Consider the guy I spoke with in broke *** English
at the bus station in Jacksonville,
or the girl from Kiev I happened upon in
a very expensive gentleman's club in Seattle.

Herat was also a very strange place to find
oneself in, Dari and Pashto and Russian and God
knows what else might be run into.

The wonderful thing about all of the
ridiculous places I've found myself in at
one time or another over the very hungry years
is that no matter what language or background
we came from, if there was ***** we got along.

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
****** standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these ****** despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

What city do you live in?
What town?
What hamlet?
What village?
What homestead out in the middle of supposed nowhere?

Where in this once great land could you live
and be able to say to yourself "No, I haven't
felt the pain of trying to provide for myself
and for those whom I love?"

Where could you be, from West Coast
to the East, and not at least wonder during your
work week once, what is happening all around us?

Or do you sit in relative comfort,
as I do, fighting only personal battles
and yet knowing deep down inside
that there is something not quite right.

Feeling perhaps there might be something wrong
not with yourself, but with where you live
and that maybe your supposed failings as a person
have nothing whatsoever to do with you
but rather, with the land you live in?

1) "An unstable political situation, marked by sharp social divisions and usually, but not always, by a foundering or stagnant economy." Check.

2) " A political objective, based on firm moral and ideological grounds, that can be understood and accepted by the majority as the overriding cause of the insurgency, desirable in and of itself and worthy of any sacrifice." We have yet to achieve that cohesiveness among the various factions and break-away groups within our society.

3) "An oppressive government, with which no political compromise is possible." As yet to be determined. The situation remains fluid.

4) " Some form of revolutionary political organization, capable of providing dedicated and consistent leadership toward the accepted goal." As yet, there is no organization that can muster the popular support or bring disparate groups together to make any sort of legal headway against our common enemy.

And where indeed have all those slim lines
of genuine verse gone?

What has become of the Garden wrought of dreams
and a love so keen that it could barely be spoken of?

Wherefore gone the desires for quiet words
and innocent love-making?

I will tell you that they have been drowned
by the cries for justice gone so long unheard.

They have been swallowed up by the indifference
of a nation so engrossed in consumption that the world outside
our borders and within only exists on television.

But the real fact of the matter is that I am ashamed,
I am ashamed of myself most of all,
for if I truly cared as much as I say I do,
I'd have stopped writing altogether by now,
and started doing more....

I'd be reaching out to whoever would listen
to whomever I could find
to those of us that don't want to wake up one day
and realize only too late
that we are all in fact slaves.

Here I find myself again, low lamplight reflecting a shadow. Waiting.....waiting is all I do now. I wake up in the morning and there's nothing. Nothing but repetition, the demeaning struggle stuck on rerun. I was waiting for work to end, now I'm waiting for the gin to kick in, and soon I'll be waiting to fall asleep so that I can do it all over.

What am I doing here in this room, on this beach in a paradise, hiding out from something that I don't want to be, pretending to be someone I'm not, putting on a smile during the day and acting like everything's gonna be okay?

Justifying so much to myself because I don't want this compulsion, this need to take all of the bad things I've ever seen and use them as fuel to burn this whole world down.

What I've really been hiding from is a part of me that was born in the dark, while wandering down nearly deserted roads in the middle of the night, passing figures huddled in alleys and dying for a fix, meeting strangers on streets I've never been able to find again and wondering what it is that we're searching for.

This part of me that can hide behind eloquent revolutionary rhetoric and believes itself capable of sparking a conflagration of the poor empty masses, truly is only lost, still lost and wandering those nearly empty roads.

Should I give thanks for something?

Should I give praise to Allah?

Should I thank Jeshua for His Compassion?

Should I thank Zoroaster for Dualism?

Should I weep for Peter's Pence?

Should I wonder what world Rumi came from?

Should I give all I have to my love?

Should I cease fearing someone perfect?

Should I stop wandering.....
    
and begin living.

Well, let me begin my announcing to the HP community that I just pulled my ex-best friend's child's mother's hair out of my mouth without realizing how it got there since I haven't seen her since Saturday. Yeah, good luck pondering that breech of physics. Also, I realized that I've been breaking the magic rules of drinking at work as laid down by Cracked.com with impunity since before that majestic article was written, which kind of makes me feel like a badass and also like a terrible alcoholic whom the gods will eventually strike down. Or perhaps, everybody at work with me is also drunk and/or high all the time, a suspicion I've had for about a year now, but have not been able to prove, despite careful observation. Sure, the typically WOW playing awkward dude gets a box of not one, not two, but three bottles of beautifully crafted wine delivered DIRECTLY TO THE OFFICE every month notwithstanding. And does our supervisor say anything even remarkably reprehensible....no, not while she's on the clock. But she did steal my Don Corleone hat, and by thunder she still owes me for that thing, since I'll bet all the money I made this year that she got some fantastic head because of that hat. There are minor arguments in the breakroom over how ****** the coffee actually is, whether it's police station or AA meeting detestable, and on slow days people are chucking gigantic medicine ***** across the room while laughing at the destruction they cause. Then, Monday through Friday, woe unto you if you call the 24/7 line between 10 and 12 at night, since you will be picked up by me, the 3-midnight guy. If you're an idiot, or loud, or from New Jersey, or can't seem to be able to wipe that bleached ******* of yours without assistance, DO NOT CALL. I will be drunk, and while drunk I will take whatever ****** excuse you have for being a worthless and pointless human being and very tenderly, very politely, shove it up your *** on the end of a very thick nine iron. This is real life, and this....this is where I work.

What she said to me sitting at that bar
sipping God's own overpriced whiskey
was the truest thing any one has ever
managed to tell me about myself.

And the drive up to town after
the ribbon of freeway stretching
on into forever and the radio full
of Bukowski's guts blaring with
her feet on my dashboard.

That room with wine colored
walls and a taste reminiscent
of some novel I know I've
read somewhere, somewhen.

Tiny bed I'm constantly trying
to not fall out of sweetly
forcing me closer to her
in the early morning grey.

Something unspoken and
something unseen but somehow
un-needing to be clarified
for once living on feeling
only what there is now.

I found all of my Army papers again tonight,
and revisited who I was then.

I searched back a little farther,
and found some things I had written before.

Amongst the buried rubble of a person
that I once may have been.

Piles of books and notes and scraps of
memories peeling away from reality as of now.

Sifting through old photographs
taken 10 or 15 or 20 years ago.

I wish that the person I was then
is who actually loves you now.

There is some such music that may be played
a strange lilting tone as they say,
that no matter my condition
nor present company I find myself in
shall move me to tears....
perhaps of joy or sadness or long forgotten despair.

It's overwhelming rush of memory and hope
rising and falling upon my tired, blood-stained heart,
as the immeasurable and ever flowing tides
shall perhaps one day carve of me,
the man I was born to be.

Wandered I to that ancient place
found your footprint upon the shore,
sea meeting sky and sky meeting earth
the scent of your passing upon the wind.

Thaisteal mé go dtí an áit sin ársa
Fuair ​​do lorg ar an gcladach,
spéir cruinniú farraige agus spéir domhain cruinnithe
an boladh de do rite ar an ghaoth.

Cried your name through whispering glen
spoke to Holy Oaks and brooding pines,
nights growing long and the days unkind
only ever traces of you could I find.

*D'ainm trí ghleanna
Labhair le Naofa agus goradh,
oícheanta fás fada agus na laethanta
ach riamh rianta de tú raibh mé in ann a aimsiú.

So the poem I posted before this. I was drunk, and high, and apparently became a 15 year old emo kid cutting myself and shoving a banana up my ***. Please forgive me poetry gods, I knew not what I did.

I wish that I could just be a normal kind of person,
I wish that I could just fall in love
and shrug it off if it falls through
could just have had a regular and everyday
kind of love that high school and college years
were meant for.

As much as I may wish it otherwise, I
must accept the foolish fact that I
am breaking without you.

Let me go home
to those green valleys and blue mountains
where bluegrass is played alongside jazz
and you can get vegan meals or a good steak
most people not really caring where you
lay your allegiance god-wise
as long as you don't go around converting folks.

I've been in this desert solitude
for far too long
emptying myself out upon rocks
and thinking to find something
transcendental and awe-inspiring
all while not realizing that simple truth:
the love I've been looking for really
could have been found anywhere.

So let me go home Father
take this useless cast net from me
especially since I'm a 'hossman
and sure ain't no fishaman
so why did you send me wanderin
to the shores of this sea?

So I could find her maybe
or realize that, like that one story
I had to leave everything behind
and journey on some kind of suffering
inspired pilgrimage to nowhere
and then come back again?

As good as I may be at spitting out poems about injustice and social rage, as tough as I may sound or pretend to be, as cynical and jaded as I may talk and walk, none of that is really who I want to be. I don't want money and fame or power to remake the world as I see fit. Wouldn't be able to handle the responsibility of political power anyway. Honestly I don't even really want to be the person my 18 year old self wanted, and yet have become, almost without realizing it. He would envy me, my younger self, of the life I live now. Beholden to no one, doing basically whatever I want as long as I can afford the rent and make myself go to work after nights full of pointless hedonism. But that entire veneer, yes even some of my writing, is just to make up for this hole that runs right through the middle of me. All I really want, is to return from whence I came. Be a teacher or something, write a bit on the side, have that mystery called true love and family, maybe own a bit of land just for us, somewhere on the edge of a small town full of artists and good honest folk. Coastline or mountains make no difference to me, the language spoken not really that important either. I'll go anywhere and do anything I can to find this dream that I tend to not ever talk about, since it is the one true thing that I have ever really wanted deep down inside, even if my younger self would've denied it.

Please don't look at me the way you do,
with those crystal blue eyes burning right through me.
Don't ask me about people I used to love
whenever we get drunk.

Please don't touch me when you lean close
with perfect hands that I don't think have ever harmed anything.
Don't express such tenderness to me
while thinking you were critical of yourself.

Please don't talk to me the way that you do
reminding me of the dreams that I left a long time ago.
Don't ever kiss me softly
and ask what it is that happened to me.

Please don't think that I might be the right man
for you, because I can't live up to that.
Don't let me start hoping
that meeting you wasn't an accident.

Please stop being the person I've not been looking for
and happened to stumble into.
Don't let me fall in love with you.

So here's the real question.....can I get drunk enough to have sixty pounds of Dutch courage to think I've got the ***** to start submitting the crap I write to these six badass UK Journals that supposedly want "New and Fluid"? Yeah, I can do that. I can be the drunk, no-*****-left-to-give American with a chip on my shoulder and a drawl when I have one too many shots. Especially since that's exactly what I am anyway.

I ain't lookin for anybody to save me
won't even accept the twirling garbage
that some women have tried to spoon
feed me after they figured out
I loved them in spite of the nasty ****
they confided in me.
You bet "I'll be your back door man"
and I'll actually possibly maybe wake
up the next morning without feeling any
kinda disgust towards you or myself since
I think I've thrown that unwanted baby
of puratinistic sticky ***** out the
window like I should've thrown out
my backwards medieval wanting for
a fairy tale called true love.
Yeah and life rolls on like a highway into
the pearly reflectors in the road
beckoning on into the dire consequences
of knowing that you want to love somebody
but understanding that all you will ever be
to that woman you've wanted to be with
for a year since you met her on accident
and that one day she found a yellow tweety bird
which had tried to **** itself on a glass building
we both worked in and you in your shyness refused
to pick up and put into a tree till she was gone;
is one weird ex-army ******* unless you
get you **** together and explain to her that
you don't want to be without her anymore.

That was a thought I entertained for a whole two seconds before unceremoniously throwing it into a dumpster.

Hey there hott stuff why don't ya bust
out that saxophone and play some serious
New Orleans Blues while I drink a beer and
try to calm the **** down before I start crankin
out some seriously ungodly **** that I'm possibly
going to regret in the morning.

And then it hits me that I'm having a
Bukowski moment and maybe
even channeling the spirit of that St. Paul
of new age seekers and left out hippies
shooting up in broke down cars while
holding some sort've seance for he, Jim Morrison.

Or it could've just been a convenient excuse
to get a sad lonely hipster high and
**** her brains out since she was looking
for something that mattered and happened
to find your crooked *** and a **** begrimed needle.

So don't ask me why I take concepts half baked
such as just go with the flow and all things
go according to the will of the universe
and rub my perfectly shaped **** all over them
since 9 out of 10 it's an excuse for terrible
**** that people do to each other in the name of
great grandpa experience for experience's sake.

I'll laugh in the face of people who ***** platitudes
and I'll teach their cats to **** on their
newspapers in the morning just for the
pure naked mischief of it.

There are so many lives out there in the big blue
world full of so many hopes and dreams and
loves and hates and memories and futures
that no one, any where, has the right or the authority
to infringe upon for any reason especially
that golden calf of fearful worship
the supposed Great Scapegoat of the Greater Good.

So come along with me and my people,
we who do not bow, we who do not submit,
we who wake up in the morning filled with
a burning insatiable need to take our world
by the PMC encrusted ***** and make something new.

Apparently I have no voice of my own
merely crowing sick imitations into the wee morning
moonlight as waves crash upon the beach
and I find myself in this ****** den of a room
again swallowing poison to drown my anxieties.

Is this really happening all around me
as colors start to blend and the one and
only Velvet Underground is pounding away
somewhere inside my seemingly mismatched head.

Run run run and type type type
cry cry cry and drink drink drink
**** **** **** and smoke smoke smoke
keep on keepin on and fake it till you make
it and eventually I'll wake up and realize
that all of this is just some childish acting out.

All this crap I call poetry, all this festering wound
of a single minded attempt at self validation
really and truly and unnecessarily is an attempt
for me to try and feel like a human being while slowly
inexorably slogging my way into a one armed knife
fight and all I've got is something that couldn't even
get it's **** hard enough to shoot that miserable
IED makin ******* in the face as he sanctimoniously deserved.

You wanna talk about real so then let's talk about real
lets dare some wannabe ******* to talk to my
pasty white *** about hard decisions and true to the
***** maxie pad core of human experience.

Call me a hipster and a beat while burning the pretty
marijuana fire that some use just as pervasively as others
drink while calling it medicine since it comes from a plant
but it's still a crutch unless you actually have cancer.

Maybe I am indeed just an angry kid fighting to find
a place in this metal shod ******* of a country
that we pray to like some slumbering god but
if that's the case than that is really what we all are
who live here and dare not take up the honest
trade of making molotov cocktails.

Go on then and type type type away
into the gloom of a dying Eastern seaboard,
waiting and watching for a glimpse of that
rotting corpse you call a messiah,
yes the prophet of power reeking of
stale cigarette butts and old ******.

Type type type the day away
buying your worthless flowers
and plastic ******* palm trees
as you shed pieces of your soul
like flakes of aluminum shavings
metal snowflakes trailing behind
your beat up industrial exterior.

Type type type through the sickle cell night
wallowing in the animal urge to
go dance naked round a roaring fire
and make sweet love to Anglo-Saxon girls
lost in moonlight on a bed of pine needles
only to realize that those dreams are just as
sallow and jaundiced as the *** on the
rusty iron corner that you know you
will someday be sacrificed to.

Type type type till the pink lips of sunrise
claw their way out of another shuddering dawn
to find you red eyed and drunk
screaming obscenities at the computer screen
and wondering how the dead certainty that
filled you with passion and verse the night before
could wither away into the hollow crevices
that forever wink up at you out of the
gangrenous ******* chest wound of American Dreams.

I do believe that I'm finished for a time,
tired of longing after other lands,
and other climes in search of something
I know deep within, I have known
and had all along.

That place is my home
a home that I've always known
and always measured my loves by;
green fields rolling into a valley,
and a great mountain filling
up the horizon.

I wish to know where you have come from,
wonder if you remember what New York was,
or if the death of your grandmother
meant far more than you let on.

I left a cheap vase full of white
carnations on your desk for a reason,
and it had nothing to do with the affection I feel for you,
just a simple gesture,
a minor hoping happiness for you.

There are such things as a world yet undiscovered,
and yes, I get that you refuse to date a man
younger than you, but for ****'s sake,
you don't even know me?!

When I look at you,
I don't see beautiful legs,
or a gorgeous face,
I don't see perfect *******,
or eyes worth drowning in.

When I look at you,
I see through the material
captivating as it is,
and into a mystery
beckoning to the immaterial.

When I speak with you,
the rest of the world doesn't stop spinning,
but it slows down,
and the doubts and history,
fall away into the nothing
from whence they came.

When you touched me,
there was no ecstasy,
nor a beautiful pain;
just a simple warmth
which I never thought
I'd be able to feel again.

This always happens,
somehow,
someway.

I have many things that I want to say
a feeling that if only were slightly
intensified, would be able to pour out of me.

So I will have a drink, or three,
but then, for some inexplicable reason
unbeknownst to me,
my hands start to move of their own accord
and I find myself writing
things I never had any intention of saying.

They say that one can lead a horse to water,
but one can't force him to drink.

Indeed,
this must be true.

However that may be,
I've never seen a thirsty horse
refuse good water.

I imagine that Jellaludin would have
something very witty to say about this.

I simply will say,
let your heart be like the horse
who never refuses sweet waters.

Dare you say I have not the capacity to Love?
Have you ever loved someone you were sure would die before you?
Have you ever hidden yourself away for the benefit of another?
Have you ever wiped blood from a naked thigh?

Dare you say I am not a man?
Have you ever received a call fresh from ****?
Have you ever been the caretaker of another's memory?
Have you ever lost yourself within hope in spite of all?

Dare you say I am a coward?
Have you ever lost all you knew?
Have you ever pushed forward alone into the night?
Have you ever remade yourself in the image you so desired?

Dare you say?
Dare you nothing.
Dare you not live as a soul on fire.
Dare you not accept any kind of desire.
Dare you not.

And do I not sit awake these empty nights,
thinking long thoughts and desiring to weep,
my feet and my heart urging me to get up
and go, no matter the cost or the pain,
urging me, "Go hither and live."

And yes, I did love...do love,
many things and many people,
other seekers, other wanderers,
some children of the empty places
such as I, and others perhaps prophets
or saints who do not yet know their power.

Did I not wake from a dream with sand in my shoe,
wondering if sand I had tread upon or within,
knowing that deep inside it was true;
I had never worn those shoes upon the shore
of any beach, anywhere.

I do not want this, such a calling as it is,
feeling the wind upon my face
and hearing whispers in the dark,
a presence following me,
pressing me onward.

My chest hurting from too many cigarettes,
and my heart aching from too many losses,
and my legs aching from too long going
without sitting astride a horse.

How do I begin to explain all of this
to someone new, to a soul I have no
knowledge of save drunken small talk
and the small things that we remember
we do?

Does it all return to the sound of wind
and the shaking of a tent pole,
lovers embracing in the dark,
sweet and content in togetherness,
as I ponder what next I must do?

Explain to me, dearest Muses, about dualism.
Yes, dualism, the light and dark, yin and yang,
contradictory nature of all us mere humans.

How is it, verily, that a man (or boy)
such as I, may keep a copy of Rumi
which I read from almost sanctimoniously,
yet also drink like a ***** Irish fiend,
spouting profanity thirty seconds
after writing a hymn?

Self-renewing logic fail, let us begin
as somebody believes that the Internet is actually God.
Or perhaps it's vice-versa, and Facebook is guiding us
to the promised land with a shared post from Jesus.

Well, I guess I shouldn't judge, as that
would make me a hypocrite of vociferous proportions.
If people want to find God in a machine,
that's their business.

Lived my whole life
near water or mountains
and lemme tell ya,
there's nothin like wakin up
next to something beautiful.

I spent all of this weekend drinkin,
partyin and just havin an all around
great time with people I love.

This past month, man oh man,
did I seriously have to revisit
some things that I thought I needed
to stay the hell away from, but
whoh how wrong I was.

Jimmy Buffett songs and
Brand New shows,
takin life as it comes
and givin up everything
for a chance at love.

I can write about God
and morality and whatnot
but if I really dig deep down,
what really matters to me
are the quiet moments.

Those seemingly insignificant
memories, such as teaching
my very young cousin #3 how
to fold toilet paper, so that
his *** didn't itch, evidently
his dad couldn't teach him that.

Am I still a boy?
Hell yes I am, and hopefully
always will be, never giving up
that magic, that wondrous sense
of possibility.

Is it a bad thing, that in moments
of forgetfulness I greet my grandmother
as Wendy Lady and she replies, "Hello Boy."?
Do I still watch the Goonies with rapture
and bliss and yell "Hey you guys!!!"

And yet I have walked through fire and death,
seen darkness in all his guises,
lived and ate and breathed horror
as only Conrad can recount.

I can cook, and clean, and provide for myself;
having lived off and on alone for years
so dare you not think me a child,
but my god I'll never give up that
sense of life, that belief and hope
that any and every day may yet be
and adventure worth the telling.

At one time,
in the midst of my journey
happened I upon Emmaus
and the Pilgrims many there
lost in the ecstasy of transfiguration.

Those that lived there still,
residents in a land of many wonders
welcomed them, and myself
with strong arms and hot food
warm beds and burning love.

So many times upon this Road,
had strangers met and fed me
throwing blankets of goodwill
over my weary shoulders
and still I am amazed and overcome.

How many stories to tell?
How many loves have they loved,
and lives they have lived,
and woes they have suffered
and joys they have known....

This was the Feast of All Soul's
and so the wine began to flow
in celebration and memory
of both the living and the dead,
those among us still
and those gone from these shores.

Amidst the shared revelry
and also the quiet supplication
sat I, at home and yet alone
remembering music and happiness
such as this from many lifetimes
ago, so it seemed.

And of a sudden
without invitation of expectation,
approached a woman, garbed as a Bedouin
whom without glancing
placed a wooden rosary in my hand
and whispered the following benediction.

"Allah, Great and Glorious,
watch over him who sits alone,
lost from himself and seeking
that which he cannot find;
provide unto him with the Prophet's
(Blessings Unto Him) resolve,
and the Christ Child's compassion,
that he may find what he journey's toward."

Kissing my forehead,
as my grandmother used to do,
the great woman disappeared
into the night without a sound
and I, I sat in reverence and prayer
till at last, I felt a burden
finally pass me by.

Kyrie Eleison*

Father, my Father, Glory unto Thee, creator and sustainer of our Earth, hear my prayer. I found a single strand of hair in my car, long and reddish brown, and I wept.

I wept not for myself, or for something that I had lost, but for an idea which that represented, a yearning for something greater than myself, for a finale end to this loneliness I have run from for uncounted years.

Yet I understood that we, your children, are more than abstractions, more than symbols, more than mere variations on a theme.

We are the landscaper who left a single bunch of flowers unmowed in an open field, we are the children attending a theater in Palestine dedicated to self expression and non-violence, we are the penitent kneeling at the pillar of St. Simon in Syria, we are the bus driver giving free rides in Queens, we are the random person who pulled a needle out of my friend's arm one night, we are humanity, and our journey is a long one.

Many of us feel abandoned by You, many don't believe in You at all, and many, such as myself, are merely lost and wondering, searching for signs You have left along the way, managing as best we can to get back to that place where You live.

I thank You though, thank You for the beauty that is all around us, but more than that, I thank You for helping me to see it, to see the World, not as I am, but as You are. I am trying, and perhaps one day I shall succeed.

I said to my love,
in the waning spring
before yet children we bore,
"I will return dearest one,
fear you not, surrounded I am
by the songs and hopes of yore".

And yet never again walked I,
that path wandering
and beautiful at twilight
to our home in mystic hills
whispering truths and sighs.

For I, grown weary,
and forgetful by drink and blood,
cannot remember who I was then,
nor what even the touch of
that heav'n she gave
tasted of.

Our home,
a fleeting memory,
her face fading swiftly,
as a tearing and a burning
a sorrow and a yearning
swallow the magic,
our love once knew.

Do you know where I live and eat and breath, what sustains me and kills me, how and why I am what I am and also seek to be?

Bah, who wants to read that, who wants to know that, unless of course it has resonance within us all.

And yet, one piece of experience, one pen pouring holy writ, the breath of a tiny slice of one person's understanding of existence, ah now that may indeed prove worth some pondering, some meditation.

Isn't music emotion as sound, isn't poetry passion on paper, isn't what we try and communicate to each other, by any medium we can muster, a thing worthy of praise and contemplation?

For are we not all continually Transfiguring, are we not all continually following, and growing and flowing and metamorphosing, as we proceed through our lives?

So go on then, read to me from your sacred book full of songs
and half articulated dreams, spinning irresolutely toward a destination I have no name for.

Show me these images and portents, these slow chords and rhymes, high and low and inside and out, reaching into me and twisting the screaming infant of a heart that I need to so desperately give away.

Commanding me to step outside of my own experience and my own fear, asking me to follow you on outstretched wings of wax and gull feathers.

But I have known your kind, was one of you once, those figures of myth and meaning, swept away in an instant by the music that I hear and desire and suffer for, and yet shall not be beguiled by.

But what I write now, this sort of struggling epitaph of straight razors and crying boys, this is not a specific tirade against you, or my irritation at having been seen through, no no, none of that is really the feeling that I am seeking to evoke.

........................We Are The Sum Of All We Have Been,

The poor weeping ghost of William Blake back again to sit by me and wonder, what many things the world may hold...............taking me by the hand, we follow.

And yet we may and will continue to grow and flow through the ever changing riverbeds of soul if only we try, if only we seek, to overcome this thing, this empty hole that I can see following us all.

And yet, somewhere in the six inches immediately in front of our hearts, there seems to be this kind of faint glow, a multifaceted hum, projecting itself forward into a future where both end and beginning form a wonderful, beautiful whole.

Or should I say ride?
Should I say rather,
burning down the highway far too fast and wishing that maybe
just maybe I could find it out there somewhere
that was place where I could stop existing.

So I push the boundaries
push so hard to get through this unreality
drugs and ***** and ***
or alternatively
faith, religion and morality?

I've walked both ways
the straight and narrow
as well as the crooked and wide
and NOTHING has ever satisfied
the burning need to feel
alive.

So tell me readers and writers
inform me if you please
or perhaps sell me something
gimme some peyote or holy water
anything and everything
to explain why in all this self-induced rage
He has yet to simply let me die?

Because something inside is not of me
a two faced fiend with no imagination
and a jealous heart looking on the world
with scorn and derision,
knowing that there is a world out there
that I can see but will never be.

And apparently no one can teach me what to do
can't seem to inform how to simply be
seemingly the easiest of acts
but some hole in my soul
will not allow me to achieve.

Cello was not at all happy with what I told him. The call didn't exactly go well, but at least he gave me a slice of information that made some sort've sense. "Those two you told me about, the situation, it's very fluid right now. I need you to go talk to talk to this girl. Tonight. Now, actually. Don't worry, we have this Alan ******* looked after, as you heard. But, um, Wanda, as you call her, may have some things to say, under the right persuasion." Slightly taken aback by what Cello was implying, I said nothing. "Look, I know where you've come from, I know the kind of work you've done, so just find her and figure out what the **** she's been ordered to do for those Coalition *****, OK?" Besides what I may, or may not have done in the past, all this was a little bit more than what I had been contracted to do for Cello and his cronies. They didn't pay me enough for torture, they only paid me enough for listening. Cello put me on hold long enough to get the go ahead to pay me another two grand evidently, since when he got back on the line all he said was "Find her now and get the story, money is in your account, call me when you've got everything that ***** has to say". I said "Okay, thanks but I'ma do it without the whole missing body parts thing. You'll get what you need, but it's my call on how ja?" Cello gave the ok and that was all that was needed to get me moving.

The phone call only confirmed what I already suspected, and I didn't have to be told what Cello wanted done. Odd guy that Cello was, all theatrics and shoulders in person, but smooth as the Bird* when it came to business. For all his panache though, we didn't exactly get along personally, but worked well together for some odd reason. I trusted his ability to read a situation and I guess he trusted me to keep my mouth shut. I wasn't quite sure yet why I was watching these two, the woman known by various monickers and nameless fedora guy. Oh well, I'd find out or I wouldn't, either way Cello would have his information to compare with whatever I found out that night. They crossed to the other side of the street, which was empty, so I hung back a bit. It was raining that perfect rain, just hard enough to cover footsteps but not enough to cover voices above a whisper, so I could hear them murmuring to each other. I'm the kinda person given to introspection I guess, so I wondered about them as we paced along, presumably to his apartment (I already knew where Wanda/Countess etc lived). It all seemed out of place, almost staged even, like it was for my benefit and I didn't even know it. Snatches of conversation here and there didn't help at all. Mention of politics, typical though, who wasn't talking about politics in those days? Something about a deposit box somewhere and a key held non situ. That peaked my interest but there was no context, nothing to go on. They turned a corner and out of sight, so I crossed to their side as quick as I could without making too much noise and crept up to the corner. Peaking around I saw them standing under a streetlight in front of a boarded up curry shop. I didn't understand what I was hearing at the time, and to this day dearly wish that I had lost them that night.

"...wondering why you're here is all. Things are fine. I haven't had to use the box in months, the whole thing is paying for itself. Sure there've been hickups, but nothing I couldn't handle." She must've known him, I realized, Wanda was standing too close for them to be strangers. Just one more thing I misread that night. "That's not why he's here," said Fedora. She grabbed his lapel and shook him a bit, not hard though. "Don't **** me around like that Alan! Who'd they send to eyeball me?! I'm not just some stupid little girl ******!" Fedora, Alan apparently, gently took her hands off his coat. "Nobody thinks you can't handle it, and they didn't send anybody. I told you, he's here already, wants to make sure those Rot Kappelle ******* don't start any crap with you and your people. The op is still yours, he's just keeping an eye out." Wanda had stepped back at the mention of whoever "he" was and put a hand to her mouth. "I can't believe Silas came here for me," she said, shaking her head. "Who all did he bring?" Alan looked like he just ate something nasty. "Arthur and his group of misfits, no idea why so don't ask. Can't stand those *******, but they're good to have if it gets nasty." Not a single word of this made any kind of sense to me at all, but that didn't much matter at the time. Something was going on though, this Silas guy I had heard of here and there, but never anything solid. There were so many factions and movements springing up all over the place, it was hard to keep track of them all, especially the coalition people, which these two were I guessed. As for "those Rot Kappelle *******", of course that was Cello and the rest of my bosses, whose names I didn't have any inkling of. This was freelance, contract by contract, so I worked alone except for my connection with Cello and of course my own unaffiliated contacts. Their conversation continued along the same lines for a minute or two until Wanda dropped one more choice line. "What about that crazy hippie chick that's gotten so popular? I'm losing people to her, all that crap about love and positive social change and how we can make headway by disobedience and negotiation." "Pretty sure that's another reason Silas came here in person," responded Alan, "It's a problem we need to handle before things get out of hand. Look, it's starting to rain harder and my room is bugged, so that's out. Silas told me he'd find you once he gets a feel for things here in the city, so don't go looking for him. I'll be seeing you around...." I was already gone by the time Wanda came back around the corner, Cello had to get that information as soon as possible. I was sure I'd be seeing one or the both of Moose and Squirrel again later on that night anyway.

Feel like I'm falling somewhere
somewhat transcendental
needing to stop pretending
that what I feel
and see
and live
isn't
real.

I suppose that I wanted to write
something that may
have been something
magically enticing
that could
bring me
back to
you.

But I'm sick of these vicious ravings
tacked up on some kind
of failing travesty
crying out
for an
idea.

So what that I was looking for someone
to cling to in this raging sea
so what that I may have
been the exact opposite
of who and what
she and I
may have
desired.

I don't think that my absolute and unwelcome
need to write whatever comes to mind
is some kind of balm that may cure
whatever sinking, slithering thing
that ails me so, irresolute
and very sullen
but rather
is a mirror
unforgiving.

How this phrase grown out of a horror movie
and one thousand years of Alchemy
has become a byword between us
living as a hashtag and a symbol
in the world we now have here
our only complete interaction
contact in something
souls flung
carelessly
away.

Realizing that I'm not writing this to you or me
but rather all of us that have fought
in our own way to continue
believing in something
greater than ourselves
weak and yet
resilient as
firelight.

I have not the words to break through the walls
that I have built for myself out of
shame and a soul wounded
and so scarred as to
have torn your
happiness from
you.

But I still retain this deep suspicion that
what still lives within us all
is a burning and a knowing
something not for Truth
but for not needing
to feel so
****** lonely
so sickeningly
often.

And so I sit here behind by computer forged from
metal and silicon and greed, typing out love and rage
not really believing that what I say
will ever have any real impact
on the society that I have
come here, truly
to destroy.

So let's take a true gander at this wretch of a world
that we've created for ourselves, hoping
that all of this half-assed search
for real and absolute
freedom from oppression
is more
than
a
pipe-dream.

And the mist comes a'fallin
in October the month of Harvest,
breathing portents and signs
as we all feel this
some sort of calling.

And the Dark comes a'risin
in October the month of Changing
when Heroes and Heroines
of our home the Earth
find themselves despising.

And Samhain comes a'whisperin
in October the month of Remembering
what we used to be and still are
more than mere flesh and blood
children of the Annw'n glittering.

And the Veil comes a'witherin
in October the month of Delivering
that which those of us bleeding
from wounds deep within
a God's Love continually Transfiguring.

Three shots of Jameson and a few mouthfuls of Publix potato salad in, and I'm ready to write. Or so I thought. And yet, in some sort of cosmic ****, somebody with a name out of the past liked a poem on this site. No picture, no poems, no identifying information to speak of. Just a name. I don't even know what I was going to write now. Had some sort of an idea to talk about this job I have and tie that into a metaphor for America, all this very clean plastic and mysterious machines emitting odd beeping noises as I blast Muddy Waters and croone to poor people on the telephone who are far more bewildered than I. But now, oh no, not now. Now I have to reconsider my assumptions, yet again, and this on the heels of finally resigning myself to the demented suspicion that there really is no place for freaks like me who run off of alcohol and a sort of dark throw-back Watergate mentality. But now I have to look up at the tiled ceiling and have a what-the-**** conversation with the great comedian in the sky....again. I guess that's just the way it is, people coming and going out of life, and me doing everything I can to try and make some kind of sense out of this outrageousness. Ah ***** it, this is the Blues after all, and man oh man, sure makes a good story.