Reclaim that which was never taken away.
Seek out that which you have hidden.
Take the spear and drive it deep.

As within
So without
As above
So below

Understand this before all else:
What is right for your soul
Bears little resemblance
To what you expect.

To know thyself is the call
And the paradox.
By seeking the truth of thyself,
You discover the truth of others.

One must ****** your Minotaur,
And kiss Mephistopheles in his rage,
In order to assume your Theseus,
And fill your Faust with purpose.

I'd continue in the same vein if I weren't drunk and tired and simply out of patience. Essentially what I'm saying in a poor imitation of alchemical allegory is that the worlds outside of ourselves are bound to the worlds within.

/\

Missa

"Here's to pretty girls with filthy thighs!"
So the time-honored toast goes; another festering monument
to the God of Ignorance upon his writhing throne.

I smile and drink and try to lie
attempt to pretend that I can simply laugh instead of cry,
but behind that smile there's no misunderstanding
of the results that mind-set implies.

And then there are eyes shouting blue nuances from a corner,
deep wells of liquid Band-Aid summoning me
to worship yet again at the altar of Hedone.

The usual small talk, no realization as yet
of who it really is speaking about flowers
and reaching casually for my ******, stricken hand.

She has no name, but she has a face
like carven ivory, she has no past but a tiny diary
which peaks out of her leather purse like a toddler.

She is in my closet of a room now, no pretenses
and all passion, arms around me as if there really
is no tomorrow, and I am all she has left to love.

Out of nowhere, holding my face in both hands and leaning close,
staring me down she whispers "Follow the music."

Symbolum

I found him in a bar I'd never been to,
and I wasn't looking for him, or anybody else that night.

Something about the way he grimaced
when his friend shouted a bunch of crap,
endeared me to him then and there I think.

I've met and slept with so many that I
can tell about things, I can read people too easily,
and he was haunted, like me.

I don't think he knew for sure exactly what I was,
but I have no doubt he guessed,
as he easily stated no other women were
as bold as I am.

There are some moments
which bring true clarity,
whether by song or by
substance or merely by
the warmth of a human
touch against fluttering
fingertips grasping.

Those moments after
the heat of good ***
lying quiet and perhaps
content or maybe not,
staring at the ceiling
and listening to the
perfect rise and fall
of your lover's breathing.

The few minutes of
the workday paused
to take in the grandeur
of a sunset over a lake
with the simple open
happiness of a smoke break.

That one point in a
song when the world
dissolves around you
and there is no past
nor a future but truly
the here and now filling
you up with all you
feel has been lacking.

There's that singular
point of intoxication too,
when all things that
seemingly make no
sense at all when sober
suddenly come together
into one complete whole
to be lost upon waking
next morning hungover.

There are some people
who say that love is a
mere illusion, the same
as an acid trip or the
endorphins women
experience during birth,
mere chemistry that makes
us all that we are.

And there are also
those who preach
that all we are is
simply an experiment
by some divine personage
to see if free will works.

I don't have it in
me to believe that all
we are is anything that
can be quantified by
any singular theory
or description encompassing
all of human experience.

I don't have it in me to hate
anymore either, though I
have been given many reasons
to do so, it just seems so
adverse to everything I
have ever been taught by
people who loved me.

Yes there has been pain
and yes there has been suffering,
personal as well as that of
our nations', as well as that
of our understanding of
what humanity is as a whole.

We have done terrible,
unspeakable things to
each other in the name of
some rancid idea or another
and yet, others of us have
given all that we have
in the name of something
called empathy, maybe passion?

All I know for sure is
that I should have been killed
two years ago by my own
idiocy and yet I was not.

It is time for me to depart
brow furrowed, burdens too heavy for lesser men.
So I tell myself in the long hours
without recourse to violence
or prayer.

I have grown soft you see
apparently
as I have almost forgotten the sting
of your love-whip at my back.

My road is not a lonely one
verily,
yet it's travelers have no heart for conversation
since the desert engenders silence from we wanderers.

You alone walk upright,
seemingly burdenless
free
but the desert and I, know
what you keep from the mortals.

You laugh at vengeful passersby
fearing nothing,
everything.
You should not worry over much
as your secret is probably safest with me.

We are walking to the blue mountains
out beyond Rumi's field,
that place where you and I made love
in the days before Christ made you his concubine.

I welcome your scorn, your disgust
lovingly...tenderly
for it proves how much you once loved me.
Though you truly have forgotten our
half healed wounds.

Smiling a child's smile as I tread behind
your bare shoulder of a memory
I recite poetry aloud;
heartlessly
you continue ahead and above.

It's almost over
this journey I began years ago
thoughtlessly
the day I held you close
so our souls could touch.

When the low men came for you,
   why did you let them pay fifty solidi for your body?
Why did you not resist them,
   for you had other lives to live, other loves to profess?

I know you were given only vinegar,
   when all you craved was the living water.

And I, the Honest Fool, met you in that desert,
   clothed in the rags of a *****.
You had come seeking freedom, and I....
   I had come seeking oblivion.

God may have you in His hand, but I have you
   in my heart. And all is as He wills I suppose.
Even though you had made me promise to take you
   to the city where His Son was birthed.

I know only one thing for certain:
   where you began is not where you will end.

I wonder often if we have chosen poorly,
   selling our souls to those who killed Lazarus
after Christ raised him up.
   Are we worth so little?

I want something that they cannot give;
   I want to walk where He walked,
and love as He loved.
   For I was meant to wield a plow,
        not a rifle.
  
What is it that you want?

And if perchance you ever walk in Gethsemane,
   will you weep?
Will you yearn for what ought to have been?
   I will.

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?

What shall we be to each other
and ourselves
in the years to follow?

A foolish question
without an answer
but something worth pondering.

I don't know
how to tell you this
but I will do my utmost
through the medium I know best.

I can see myself walking
footfall heavy and somber,
but no empty vista residing
within my heart any longer.

I dearly hope to travel
further with you
to seek and to find
all that we yearn for.

However it may end though,
I am content within
knowing that we will
be the better for it.

Following you all these years
thinking that perhaps I would
one day overtake you on this
wandering path travelled so long.

I never did make it to Bethlehem
nor kept any other of the
hundred promises that I've made
to so many, some spoken aloud
and some made silently.

Of all the lives these other
pilgrims say I have touched,
I never could seem to
touch yours.

I am old now, and weary
of the sands and the winds,
beautiful as they are I
am sure that they also
have tired of me.

Where is there left to go?
I know now that I will never
find you, will never
be found by you,
weeping on the edge
of some oasis.

I have no answers
to my own questions
nor do I think does
anyone else upon this
road that leads where
all others do.

Trading my *****'s cloth
for the raiment of a pilgrim
was the greatest of gifts
from you.

After wandering for years
living on sorrow
and regret
becoming empty as the desert
it was enough to have met you.

I am afraid that we will never be
that which I so fervently wished
no matter how deep my love
may envelope me.

I won't pretend that this
brings me any sort of joy
but if it's the only way
for me to progress
I accept.

I know where I am going now,
have a destination at last
that may or may not
involve companionship with you.

Some day though,
I will reach the place
out beyond Rumi's field
and in that oasis
I will build my Garden.

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.

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?!

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?

I have now gone from this place,
this running river
this journey seeking a farce.

I shall walk no more
those tired paths
leading nowhere.

The desert has been my
companion for so long
and I do not know how to
leave her embrace.

Nor do I know
how to put your
bare shoulder behind
who I once was.

You have left signs
and messages written
in the sands, upon rocks
at the shores of those oasis
we once made love near.

Yet I cannot read them,
I cannot understand these
portents drawing me
further toward a love
that I know I am unworthy of.

Perhaps I may get up and go
body as well as spirit,
I may answer this call
felt since I was fifteen.

I shall get up and go
I shall go to where you live
that place you call home.

These being the words of a tired poet
desperately fighting to rekindle a dying flame.
This being the end of an era spent chasing shadows
and loving weeping ghosts.

Take this heart within your hands
before the body that belongs to it fades.
Do it now, go on and take it while
the light still breathes in this place.

My time here is ended, if I ever really
was of here to begin with, perhaps more of
a wanderer than I realized in those blue sky
days when our love had a body and a soul.

But you, your time is now and it is a perilous one,
in this world slipping away, turning inward.
So carry this heart with you into the night,
talisman of the old world, last of the fading light.

Shall I then have the audacity
to approach your magnificent figure?

Shall my bowed head incite contempt
as I expect from women such as you,
or would such old-world humility
touch your heart expecting brutality?

Yes, those men you count as a conquest,
those who don't spend time upon pleasure;
yours or their own doesn't matter,
the only need being your sense of owning
the man/boy, and his need to boast to his friends.

After the charade is pulled away though,
what then shall you have to say,
what then shall your conquests give to you?

What is left,
after the heart burns through?

Machiavelli spoke of prophets, and surmised that it is only those prophets armed by something that have seen their message spread.

Arm me then, arm me with your nightmares and your suffering and your nights filled with wailing at the sky.

Arm me with the anorexic teenage girls, with the empty eyes of the hobo at the liquor store, with the broken hopes of a *******.

Give me your shame at the mirror's lies, give me your self-inflicted scars, give me that loathing for yourself.

Give me that need for one more shot, give me that hopelessness after ***, give me the knowledge that Mom is never coming back.

Clothe me with the skins of a hundred thousand suicide victims, pour over me the tears of a million hungry souls, burn me with the fire of ten million hearts broken under the heel of a dying world.

Do these things, and you will see me become what you've been trying to turn me into all these years.

There are two rivers within my heart
one flowing toward the future
and one toward the past.

There are two worlds I live in
one of the everyday materiel mundane
and one of something I have no words for.

Did I not bathe in the sweet waters
of both rivers flowing?
Do I not live within both worlds,
paying bills and yet loving with all my soul?

My Body lies at the foot of my friend the Cypress,
  why have you come to gaze at it so?
It is raining, and magic things happen in the rain here,
  but you do not see the growing things.
Your Beloved needs you, cries out for you, but you do not hear.

Life surrounds you, caresses you, quivers under you
  yet you push her embrace away like a dying thing.
You stare at my empty husk, but you do not even see it;
  it is yourself you see, your own supposed pittance, fearing life more than oblivion.

Stay and waste yourself then, friend...fool.
I am going to go smell those lilies over there.

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.

War is a machine, make no mistake.
Insert money here, and add soldiers there
and in the end
all we receive
is blood and soil.

Farewell my Love
you have gone to a place where my soul can't follow;
perhaps there peace may wrap you in her arms
and fill you with a warmth
that I never could.

These reflections of a future that will never be
a mirror into the great perhaps,
such as what you always wanted to find in the end.

I would have followed if you had let me,
would have poured myself into all the fissures in your
beautiful beating heart;
would have burned my own as an offering to you.

I see that I have not the power to take a heart
and by the power of my love
make it whole.

I thank you all the same for allowing me to see
that all we have are memories and choices.
It is the choices that give shape to our souls,
that make meaning of memories.

Such courage for you to have to make a choice
to spare me a greater pain
and for you to suffer alone.

I stand now weeping and empty
alone in the house of roses
and where now I go that your spirit is gone
only the wind knows.

He is used to waking most
mornings, and there is nothing.
No fluttering heart,
no breathing other than his own.
It is better in a way,
knowing what to expect,
come time to meet the day.

At some point in life,
he decided that it was
easier to stop longing
for things that once
made waking something
worth looking forward to.

Those tired hopes and
those memories aching
with romantic sentimentality
never did serve any real
purpose other than to
foster eventual solitude.

Writing is all that he
allows himself now,
the only recourse back
to that ancient past
full of magic and great
soul-shattering loves.

He both loves and
hates the nothing of
these mornings,
just as he loves
and hates this fire
that has almost gone out.

There it is!
Vague memories of a night
at a Brand New show,
when the truth hit as hard
as the ***** and the music.

I'm only good for the people
I love, and that love me,
when things get to the point
that crisis appears.

I can dance Irish jigs in the street,
but only when I'm drunk,
I can spit in the face of people
much bigger and angrier than me,
but only when I'm drunk,
I can live how I believe I should,
but only when I mix the right amount
of alcohol and/or other things,
and only for that night.

The rest of the time I am
a slave to memories and
intrusive thoughts, states
of agitation based on a
chemical and experiencial
**** up in my head.

When you need me to
pull you out of a crack house,
or be fierce enough to keep
you from shooting up one more time,
I'll be there of course.

But happiness and bliss,
when everything is going
exactly the way it should...
I'm bad at that.

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.

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.

When the music stops,
It's time for me to get up
And walk on out.

And when the sun sets
Over this beach we live on,
I've always got to go on.

For five years, it was OK
Being alone, being needed
But not doing the needing.

Guess it doesn't really matter,
Since I sure can write like
It does, but writing is just words.

These days though, after the last
Year spent belonging somewhere,
Being part of a crew and a crowd....

Someone throws on the Stones,
In walks the ghost of where I know
I'm headed no matter what I do.

Yeah, here I am now, exactly who I
Thought I wanted to be, living my
Own rules, beholden to no one.

And ya know what, it's made a great
****** story, something I always wanted to read, the kind of story your's is too.

Sure hasn't been as much fun
Living it as I thought it might be,
Finding you in your driveway,
And I was too drunk to be who
You honestly needed me to be.

Isn't that who you are baby?
Goin up town in your red dress,
face painted like a Goya,
clinking glasses with high life
at a fundraiser and older rich
men laughing at your ****** jokes.

You having a hole to fill,
a need to be more than where
you came from, no ***** trailers
to wake up in anymore girl.

Spent the money on this ticket
that coulda bought ramen for a week,
but you need this night more
than you need food.

I don't want to sound judgemental,
because I'm not judging at all,
just commenting on a life
so many women like yourself
have wound up living.

Least you're not turnin tricks anymore,
so I hear, and for that I'll thank
whatever deity is responsible,
hopefully you never need to sell
your perfect body like that again.

All those boys you thought were the one,
all those nights with a needle in your arm,
all those mornings waking to sadness.

When you get home tonight,
to an empty bed and dusty memories,
I hope somewhere deep down,
you know my heart goes with you.

Thus do I gather these scattered memories
tenderly,
having been burned
having been broken
the time comes to carry them into the coming days
quietly.

She said to me, that first night,
"You've been touched, deeply.
But in all the worst places."

"You can afford to be a romantic because you're self-sufficient." I wish that had been told to me years ago, before I turned in on myself. Slowly I'm coming back, having reduced myself almost to nothing. Hollowed out and worn, looking straight through people when they talk to me.
I don't have a narrative for what brought me here. Just images, silent pictures, exaggerated expressions. I was somewhere else, and now I'm here, with no bridge between. I was someone else, and now I'm this other person and I don't recognize either of them. Living a life that has no anchor to it, nothing to wrap my soul around.
I bought new tennis shoes today, laced them up and ran. I haven't done that in years, but my body remembered, fell back in to the smooth rhythm that used to eat up miles almost effortlessly. Only a couple for me today, and my cartilage bereft knees hating me, but it was worth it.
Friday I walked through a forest in the rain again. Smelled it, tasted it, was moved by it. An old friend not spoken with for many years. An old magic I thought I had lost forever.
I am being brought back to life by something I don't understand, like I'm being willed into an existence by some force I don't have a name for. My hands itch. And I know this feeling, this wanting. A desire to create things, to plant trees, raise up fountains, give joy. As if by some transient alchemical process I could refute cruelty, transmute pain into happiness, heal broken hearts. I know I can do none of these things though, have tried before and failed, many times. Maybe whoever it is that brought me here can.

Excellence indeed,
mind shorn of the heart
and it's incessant nagging.
You didn't ask why I drink
but I'll tell you anyway
because I want to.
Keep in mind though,
I'll never make the mistake
of asking why you drink.
Don't think me selfish
or magnificently uninterested,
it's just that I think I already know.
Maybe it's different for you,
presumptuous of me to assume.
Truthfully I'm not happy
with the ***** itself,
but it's the only thing
that takes me outside of myself,
the only thing that turns
off the terrible inner dialog.
Jesus Christ, all I need is one question, one sentence from you.
"What makes you think it meant nothing?"

Tonight
I took the last
vestiges of my
faltering morality
by the sweating hands
and led him
out back
to be
shot.

Public Service Announcement: Don't read "Women In Love" for the ***. Read it for the bleak, cynical examination of human experience in an industrial wasteland.

The medium which brought us together
  is the only way I know
how to convey to you what's in my heart.
  Since I can't touch you, or speak to you,
or make love to you, I will have to write to you.

To be completely honest, I don't know if
  I have the power to be
who it is you need me to be.

I don't know how to take the shame that's been
  shackled to you like an unexpected visit from KGB,
and help you believe that it's all a lie.

Believe me when I say that I know,
  how unyielding self-loathing can be
especially when there are good things
  pulling you away from that empty place in your heart.

But that's why we found each other I think,
   to prove to one another, that the past
only has the power to keep us locked within it.

I promise you that one day, regardless of our supposed weaknesses,
   that emptiness will be filled, and the light will come back.

What are you supposed to do when everything that used to bring you pleasure fades? Has been fading....for a long long time. It's not like you can do just more and harder drugs. Going back and trying to make things okay with old flames isn't an option either, they've just mastered the art of moving on, while you clearly haven't. And it's one thing to have not been able to move on, but another to wake up and realize that the people you love are standing around on tiptoe, waiting for you to lose your mind.

This isn't for them though, this expose isn't for my loved ones. This is for me.

It's 10:54 PM on Friday the 18th, and I am only responsible for my own actions. That's it, that's the beginning and the ending of everything I have ever written, or thrown up, or cried, or whispered into a lover's ear.

My name is Jon Daniel Shierling, and my Father was a Navy boy. He did the best he could with what he had, and he loved my Mother deeper than he knew how to express. My Mother was a Virginia girl, the blacksheep of her family, the hippie girl just a few years too late, but she had a vision and a hope. This scene I'm giving you is probably very far from the truth, but it's what i remember and what I've been able to piece together. For better or worse, their story is one that has followed me since I pieced it together. Not that it really matters anymore.

I'm just your run-of-the-mill garden-variety baser(as my brother calls them), but I used to do good, I used to try. I gave all I had in pursuit of something. I joined the Army in the hope of making a difference. Turns out I was just the same nobody I always knew I would be. Lemme tell you somethin about hookers boy, all of em are lookin for the one, and you ain't it. They've all got the face of your long lost love that you couldn't be there for.

There's no such thing as the one, and the girls that you've met dying for something more, it's not your job to give it to them. You'll never be able to give them what they need, and it's not your fault.

You knew this, way back when at Flagler when you were still a boy in cowboy boots getting chucked out of beach parties after trying to steal a bottle o ***. What a ******* scare when you saw Kiki up in St. Augustine a few months ago, as if that was a good enough reason.
Get mad if that makes you feel better, but you know it won't be the truth. You're the same old soul today as you were driving down Hwy 98 with the wind in your hair in the old green Taurus. You had people you loved with you, and it ended. That idea ended. Just because it hurt doesn't make it okay for you to stop being a caring person.

I digress, I stopped believing. I stopped believing the day that I understood that I couldn't love a girl enough to take away the terrible things her father did to her. I couldn't **** that man and make it better. And she's not the only one who loved me. I attract girls looking for hope that I don't have to give. I loved Rachael too, but there was nothing I could do to take back what her brother did.

Maybe my real failing, my real **** up, was not recognizing a good thing when she came my way. Maybe that's why I couldn't understand something so simple. God Amanda was, is, beautiful.....she was all I was looking for. And yet......I never slept well in bed with her.

Yes I have hurt people, hurt people that loved me without my understanding. This I thing, this I word, I'm not sure that abandoning will get me to where I should be. We'll see what happens. We'll see where I end up.

Isolation: I disappear when things start to slip. I get too close, can feel the fulcrum coming, and push myself away rather than accept the possibility of actualization.
Anchoring: I find something to hold to, a constant, whether love or *** or work or substances. Faith has transient meaning on a very selective basis because it seems so distant.
Distraction: Resurgence of hobbies and an attempt to return to previous states of identity in an attempt at fusion of opposite beliefs vs. experiences.
Sublimation: I haven't gotten there yet. Thanks a lot Fydor.

Premises:
1. Identity (or virtue if one wants to be an old-fashioned stoic) takes primacy in questions of morality and judgment. Concept is highlighted by Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy, ca 534. "She (Lady Philosophy) contends that happiness comes from within, and that one's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune."

2. If this supposition is true, then it stands to reason that, as the struggle for identity has been one of the overriding conflicts in my life, all decisions made must be deferred to my own concept of right and wrong.

3. Why? Because to compromise one's beliefs is to compromise one's self. In doing so, one betrays that which defines them.

Problems which arise as a result of this perspective:
1. Openness to new experience and ideas is somewhat curtailed.
2. Tendency to stagnate.
3. Conflict with other pillars which make up my belief system, namely radical acceptance of loved ones.

In other words, I hold my identity to be the one inviolate thing that no one can take away from me. However, I've had to fight tooth and nail to figure that out, therefore I'm extremely reactive to perceived threats to my belief system. Source of Cognitive Dissonance > trying to reconcile absolute judgments on good vs. bad with acceptance.

So there he sat
wounded and weary
spilling platitudes
***** and dreary
when first I found him
darkened and dangerous
working wounds with weathered hands
and wondering why on this worthwhile
world we stand?

From then to now and now to then
rumors of rancor and roaring
at children's feces filling
a head howling with horrendous chiding
hiding
from how near he might be to crying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXCPaCr4pdc&spfreload;=10

And we in the Occident thin we're superior?

That's my private name for her...Grey Eyes. And they are very, very grey, a lake shrouded in mist. A strange thing, to be in love with a feeling. To be enamored of arrivals, departures, mitigations. Odd also, when someone leads you to an understanding of yourself...or at least, a part of yourself. It is satisfying for me to let futures go. In some strange way, it's fulfilling and sad, for someone to reach out a hand to me across the dark waters. To see a possibility, very much yearned for, and to deprive myself of it. I was given an offer today that I had thought about often, daydreamed and hungered for. Ultimately I declined, my reasons being vague at the time, though my explanation was valid (somewhat). "I get uncomfortable when I can't pack up everything and leave in a day, and I wouldn't want to do that to you". I didn't think about whether I may have hurt her by saying that, though it wouldn't have changed my answer. Something deep inside whispered of danger and confinement should I have taken that road, great sorrows unimagined. Somehow it was deeply moving to be able to stare down my childish craving, and turn away, to be able to recognize that this path was not for me. People like me, people with a history but no story, don't move in with a woman that they have feelings for and end up happy. I've walked that way before, though the stakes were much lower and I much younger. One more test passed. I never wanted to admit this about myself, but now I suppose I can accept it without shame, without anger or judgement. I sometimes enjoy killing my dreams. Rather, killing things about myself that have no purpose but to cause distraction and delay, ideas and hopes that lead sideways rather than forward. Of all the skills taught to me by my Father, this has been the most valuable.

Timeless trinkets scattered about our home,
  pieces of those painted moments we shared.

This paper full of scribbled love; and your pencils,
  worn old with creation...and desire.

Why is it that such things are all I have left of you?
  These burning stars within me.

The paper is the novel you were writing, and promised to let me read.
And the erasers of your pencils; the pink of your breast.

These relics you've left behind,
  proof
    of your soul within mine,
have become my creed,
  my faith.

Because everything is biography.

Sitting at work watching the scenes of mayhem and gross misuse of force pouring out of Missouri doesn't really phase me the way that I think it should. And that in itself is cause for alarm, this kind of nonchalance in the face of injustice. It's become a common phenomenon in the years since the Towers fell however, local police armed with military grade automatic weapons, riot gear and armoured vehicles confronting crowds waving signs and throwing plastic water bottles. Albeit the violence was escalated by a small group of agitators within the crowd throwing molotovs and rocks, the vast majority of the protesters were completely respectful and well coordinated by local activists. In a kind of eerie throwback, Gov. Nixon ordered a National Guard detachment to the St. Louis suburb early Monday in an attempt “to help restore peace and order and to protect the citizens of Ferguson.”* Granted, civil disturbances are never a stroll in the park, and I commend the efforts of community leaders and law enforcement attempting to prevent violence and looting, but common sense dictates that you shouldn't shove weapons in the faces of people that are just standing in your way. Crowd dynamics being what they are, one of two things will happen when authorities respond to civil disobedience with violence, 1) the response is heavy enough and quick enough to prevent organization and coordination by the protesters, or 2) the peaceful protesters respond to violence by becoming violent themselves.

Sweet, kind and thoughtful.
Those are the words you used to describe me that day,
the day I almost told you too much,
the day I almost broke my own rules again.
I may be those things, but you can tell,
somehow, sense somewhere,
that it's a barely maintained show
I put on for you, and all the rest.

You know, and I know, that I don't belong
in your bed, or in your heart.
Ask the ones who've come before what it's like
to wake up in the middle of the night
and find me sleeping on the floor,
or to have me claw my way out of a heart.

Brought down by hands and hearts and eyes,
hands to break, hearts to bind, and eyes to lie.

You know, and I know, that I don't belong
in your hands, or even on your street.
With my body in your hands I still
won't unfold from my ol' time contortion,
waiting for the dream to end and the bomb to drop.
And you'll spend nights wondering at four in the morning,
while I'm wandering down your empty road with my soul on fire.

I'd love you with all I am, in my fashion,
the way that keeps half of me always away from you.
There are doors that I'll never open for you,
secrets you'll never tear out of my throat,
rooms in my heart walled up and left for those
long after to come and break into.

It's alright though, since you're movin along,
and I'll be movin on too soon, but I guess it's good,
good that we met each other since you've exorcised
one of my ghosts, and I hope that maybe I've helped
in giving you a little bit of hope for all that's left out there.

I will come burning through you like a wind out of the Hejaz,
   a hand to pull you from the depths of that outer sea.

I will reach into you and sooth that heart like a theme of yearning,
   a kiss that breathes fire into your chest.

And with these hands I will build an oasis where once there was dust.

You have come as a soft rain out of the West,
   a whisper of the world in the Elder Days when all was green and young.

You go walking as the soft twilight under stars,
   a music that winds through the tired land bringing memories and sapphire.

And with these hands you pulled the veil from my eyes and smiled.

I have been wandering in this desert so long I have become a part of it,
   thinned out and hollowed by the empty places.

I saw your footsteps in the sand and had no thought but to follow,
   heedless of what I would find when I arrived at your resting place.

And with your own bruised hands, you filled my cup from this sacred well.

I have some things to say to you my friend,
  if friends we still are.
Things that I should have said long ago,
  things I have always been afraid to say.

In this quiet night, this pregnant silence,
  I wonder why you chose to show yourself
in my dream last night, unbidden, unlooked for,
  as if you had always belonged there.

Maybe it was only my old heart yearning for company,
  or perhaps a guilty conscience, ugly brute that he is.
But I prefer to believe in what feels true,
  in what Rumi and Shams would say if I asked.

I knew I was dreaming, but it was the best kind of dream;
  a dream that's more real than a summer afternoon.
The kind of dream that begins with waking up;
  especially when it's Mandy's wet nose in my face.

I wish I could remember the words you spoke to me,
  after you finished laughing that is.
But then, the memory I have I think is enough,
  because sometimes words just get in the way of what eyes can say.

You followed me around all day today, purposefully
  commenting on the state of my mind,
And heart, as I rushed the day away.

You smiled and laughed and made your fine acquaintance,
   when I introduced you to my friend.
Yes my friend, the Cypress I always sit under when I break at work,
   he liked you very much, but found you more of a Willow person.

And I didn't realize how the little things are evident more,
   when I brushed that cockroach from my knee.
But you pointed out to me that the me you knew once,
  would not have simply brushed it aside and let lie.

I guess I finally learned that he has just as much
  right to be there as I do, under that Cypress tree.
And that set the wheel in motion, you and the tree;
  what else have I been missing?

This is not a love song, nor an ode, nor a plea of some kind;
   my heart doesn't have room for motives or means any more.
This is a thank you, an adoration, an exaltation, a hug or three;
   a fire rekindled and a regret unmade.

The truth is that I want to say something to you,
   something that I don't know will sound right,
Or convey everything that I want to,
   but again, sometimes words just get in the way.

The truth is that I have never, ever met someone with the faith and the power and the love and the strength to do what you did. You went all the way to hell and turned back, turned back the dark not with a hate and a burning, but with leaf and branch. I know I don't have the whole story, and that I was gone, in my own way, but I don't think I need to know anymore than what you've told me, what others have told me, and what I've seen. I don't have the words to tell you how much I love you for who you are, and what you did for me when I was nearly lost myself. You gave me hope amid despair, and courage amid cowardice and I just want you to know that when I think of the souls I have met on this road, you shine with the clearest. Thank you Adri.

I gathered myself from four winds when you first awoke in this life; As you opened yourself to the world, the center of the universe held it's breath in awe; When you wrote your first poem, in the depths of Heaven, angels cried for joy

Your spirit has journeyed through greater spaces than your body; You followed your soul and came to the East, the heart of faith awaiting your return; How many nights have you wandered these long roads upon a camel and your courage?

I first knew of you in my dreams, mere feelings in an ocean of feelings; And yet, before you had been conceived, I had walked with your soul through the streets of Babylon; I knew you a hundred lifetimes before the Towers fell beneath the wait of our folly;

When the world was still green and young, when our whole life was nothing but fireflies and honeysuckle; When the height of a summer's day gave us hope for the people; That old shaman, hy heart, bid me hasten unto you, and your quiet peace;

I met you in the robes of a ***** on the road to damascus; my soul broken, my heart tired, my faith nearly a dead thing, you brought me back from despair.

What it must be like,
To cling to a hope so savagely
That all doubt is swept aside.

I begrudge the women I've loved,
This hope in ****** men,
This belief in miracles.

I wish that they'd believe in me
one day.
But then, I am indeed
Someone else's dying need.

You had no room for a garden at your
    house in Valencia
so you made an Eden from brick walls.

I remember your kitchen full of tropics;
  how you loved the hot plants.
Loved what they whispered of even
  more; fleshy, supple summer nights
with no need of sleep.

Do you remember those golden afternoons,
  those siestas full of honeysuckle
and oranges?