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?

"What does Happiness mean to you Jon?"

First response without thinking about it: The absence of guilt and shame.

Second response after thinking about how terrible the first one sounded:
The absence of loneliness.

Third response after some serious soul searching:
Creating and sharing beautiful things.

There are a great many things I've wanted to ask of you, whoever or whatever you are. Some far more poignant than others. What I really want to know are questions pertaining to us, your creations, and what you intended for us to do with this thing we call Free Will. Deeper than that, I want you to explain why you made me as I am, why you place people in my path, and ask things of me which I have not the power or the courage to perform. Why did you gift me with the perception to see into the heart of things, and the conviction that I MUST make right that which is wrong. I look around everyday and am astonished at the contradictions in this world. This schizophrenic society we've built upon the ashes of an idea horrifies me with it's multitude of messages, it's towers built on the illusion that we ARE what we OWN, and that worth is measured in stock. If we aren't beautiful, we can pay to be so, if we aren't smart, we can pay others to be smart for us, if we are not brave, we can hire others to die for us. There is so much beauty all around us, yet we've abstracted existence into sections of time, allotments of economic calculations instead of living, breathing humanity. But that's not what I'm angry about. I'm angry that you've made me in such a way that I can't function very well in "everyday life". I saw hell in the eyes of a beautiful **** Addict, the truth of her squalid life behind the veneer of beauty and calm and power she presented only a few hours before. This person had what our society tells us we must have in order to be happy. Clearly, we are missing something if Miss Beautiful Blonde **** Head had to find some kind of feeling in that. And make no mistake, there's very few illegal substances that I haven't forced upon my body at one time or another, and it disgusts me that I have to partake of a drug in order to be able to speak to people without hiding behind some kind of armour. But it's a lie, it's fake, just as the society we created is a lie. I would give everything to be able to have understood this when I was fifteen and could have started this journey differently. But it was not to be so, for whatever reason I, and so many others, are empty vessels on this sea. All those weeping, wounded hearts you placed before me and commanded me to heal, when my own was broken. I hate you for that. I reject this existence, this scramble for position and power atop a mountain of rags and orphans. I deny the Will to Power.  And to the world you allowed us to create, the world that eats living ghosts and plastic *******, that learned how to burn whole populations away....to this world I will always say "NO".

"There is a profound difference between actual, physically manifested problems and problems arising from perception. The two are almost always experienced identically, and oftentimes serve to exacerbate each other."

A wind carried me into the West
   carried my throbbing heart into your hands.

And the rains you poured down upon my secret places
    filling my desert with your love.

The lands of your body like the New World to me
    though I come bearing a passion to give, not a greed to conquer.

A kiss from you drained the bitterness from my soul
    and your warmth moved me as a storm upon mountains.

As I stripped clothes from your form
    you stripped illusions and fears from me.

As you molded me like a sculptor
    I revealed your hidden power.

With my hands in your hair you whispered my name
    and the walls of my heart finally fell.

And when I could no longer tell where I ended and you began
    the pilgrim in me had at last returned home.

There is a point in some lives
when those living it
must accept that the
hope and the dream
which drove it
will only ever
be that;
a hope
and
a
dream.

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.

See me.
Really see me.
As I see you.

I've heard of you woman,
I knew your eyes were oceans
and your heart was a sacrifice
long before I came burning out of the desert.

I know that you were beaten
and I know you had your soul ripped out
by the ones who ought to have cherished you.

But I....I am not those men.
I was not sent here to take
but to give.

I long for the lost gardens of Cordova,
for the glory that was love and light
along the banks of the Guadilqivir
that river still flowing through my heart.

Yes, by all means test my resolve,
I have witnessed too much horror
to let one more heart be wasted.

I want to love you,
I want to take your suffering heart
and pour all the love God has given me
into your many wounds.

But it isn't in my power to do that,
It isn't given to me to rewrite your
book of tears and sacrifice.

I have been sent here,
journeying so long and so far
that I had nearly forgotten what
a home felt like until I woke
with you in my arms.

You kissed me,
and I heard the music again.

You touched my soul,
and the rains came at last.

You open my heart,
and I remember.

Today, sitting in the library waiting for it to be time to go to work, I've decided that its a good time to write about some things that I've been keeping to myself for a while. Victor Frankl has convinced me to live as if I've done it already and now can make good on my promises and make different choices than the last go round (which was one helluva doosie). I should be looking for a house instead, or maybe hunting for that second job I need to take. But what's the difference between one house or another, or even a cardboard box out by the mall if there's no eventual destination one has in mind. So I'm going to write down my dream for the future, a wholesome dream I keep very close because its so real to me. There are other dreams of course, other lives I'm tempted to seek and have tried in the past to actualize, mostly out of a desire to escape, to be somebody else. But this dream is the real one, the true one that is all the more precious because it can belong only to me, whereas sailing the high seas or tramping through unexplored jungles could belong to anybody with a mind to do it. My dream has more to do with minor things, things that don't take herculean courage or a doctorate in linguistics. Things like taking the kids out for ice cream on a hot day. Or piling everybody into the car for the drive from our house in Floyd up to Woodstock for the Shenandoah County Fair. Singing all the old songs and some of the new as we wind our way through the Blueridge. Maybe somebody has a summer cold so Charlotte and I have to hunt for tissues in all the places where they might be, and then find them in the back with the kids where we put them in the first place. And then finally getting there, late probably, so that everybody else is already at the grounds and we can hear the announcer at the cart races as we unpack the car. And then there they all are, my Mother and Stepfather, Uncle and Aunt and Cousins and the Grand Parents deciding to come again this year, though its getting hard for them to make the drive from Virginia Beach. So we all head up to the track to catch the last of that days races, covered in sweat and bumping into random people, a four-year old perched on my shoulders, not just because it's fun for him but also so Charlotte and I can keep track of the other children easier. I can see the magic in their faces as we waddle around the pavilions full of animals for the livestock auctions. Our six year-old daughter gravely points out to her mother that there's something wrong with that turkey in the pen, it's the wrong color. She has only ever seen the wild turkey's around our place, never a domestic white. Charlotte shoots a quick smile at me, trying hard not to laugh as she explains to our daughter why not all turkey's are as pretty as the ones that live near our house. And then before ya know it the sun's going down and it's almost time for the live music to start. So we all wind up in the bleachers again, listening to old country singers whose songs I haven't heard in thirty years, sharing funnel cakes and singing along while I'm wiping powdered sugar off of little noses with my shirt. I could go further, talk about how we decided to keep heading North after the fair, up on to Skyline Drive and Front Royal, and visited the old Firestation where my Great-Grandfather volunteered in the days before there was a McDonald's. But I won't flatten things with too many details. They're not that important sometimes anyway.  What is important, is that when I see these things in my mind's eye, they're clear as if they've already happened. As if I'm remembering the night at the fair with my Family last summer, and writing about it now after I'm done grading papers and the children are getting ready for bed. There's splashing and laughing from a bathroom where it sounds like there's less bathing and more tickling going on, Charlotte laughing hardest of all. I write of this, and I know deep down inside, that I've found something I lost a long, long time ago. As if a lost civilization's Golden Age is sailing out of the mists, building's putting themselves back together and beautiful trees growing right before my eyes. I've got to go now though, I need to help Charlotte dry off the kids and then show the youngest how to make the best PB&J; sandwich ever, the same way my Dad taught me.

I Love You.....And You Love Me
That Is All that has any worth in this world.

I. The Feeling of Floating:
  I've always loved the water. The ease of movement, the grace I've never possessed on land. As if I shed my awkwardness in the embrace of water. Floating at peace, almost weightless, timeless, I can feel a taste of what the monks must feel as they sing their hymns. A oneness with the senses, this knowledge that I am being conveyed by the current, effortlessly, if only I allow it to move me.

II. Describe the Color Red:
   Red is the Heart's colour, and the Heart is an ***** of fire. The passion of the day burning away the night, the fears and desperation of the dark. My garden is Red, my sheets are Red, my words written in the blood of wounded hands. Burning, burning all around me, the beat of a different drum. Red is my Heart, and it beats for you.

III. Sunrise on the Atlantic:
   Once when I was younger, I caught a glimpse of what a Final Victory might be like. I had stayed up all night, wandering the empty streets and alleys of St. Augustine with two friends whose names are long forgotten. We strayed to the marina after pondering the absurdity of human existence and there, beheld a true Wonder. Just the barest taste of things to come, but an overwhelming awe. This Great Heart made of fire, bursting forth from the dark waters, an ocean of consuming majesty, such as I had never conceived. Can you imagine we, these infintesimal specks of life, being a part of this miracle, this new Day?

“Why talk?  If you do not listen to me?", he asked. He spoke to her in Kurdish, the language of her misty childhood memories. Simon had guessed, but did not know, could not know, how deeply she was speared by this simple statement, spoken flawlessly by a man she thought she knew. She ceased her melody, and as the chords faded away, so her warmth disappeared. Her eyes watered...cleared, darkened. Memories long buried, embalmed with religious care, rose again out of the shadows she had banished them to. "How dare you speak to me like that. Who do you think you are? How do you know my language, my childhood?"

"You talk in your sleep..."

She leaned forward and slapped her friend across the face. She knew there was something wrong with him, knew that there could be no such thing as unconditional companionship, as real altruism.
How stupid she was, how naïve to believe that she might have found someone who didn't want something from her, who didn't have a price.

Simon, who knew the alleyways and alcoves of the past like a lover knew his partner's body, should have been more concise. But it wasn't in his nature to approach personal history with spotlights and pragmatics. Ta'ra was accusing now, calling him hideous, a betrayer, one who steals sweet things in the dark from lack of courage. "It's not like that Ta'ra, not an ugly thing like you make it," he tried to explain. But she did not want to hear, did not want to listen as he tried to tell her how she cried in her sleep on the long drive from Cadiz, how Clara told him a little of their history together in Morocco. "So Clara told you so much did she? I should've known she'd pout to somebody as soon as she could, as soon as I wasn't listening! So what else does she tell you? What else does she say about me when I'm not around? Or do you do more than talk hmm?"

She was standing over him now, guitar abandoned like an orphan, her green sweater all askew. So close to him he could smell her. "It's not like that Ta'ra, she cares for you, wants the best for you, and I...I..." he trailed off. "You what? You fantasize about me, you put my face on those ****** you find in the bars and cafes?" She slapped him again, crying in earnest, and he knew that the choice now was his.

So now, after this war has ended, I know I will never be the person whom you loved once.
You've written so much beauty, doing all you can to save what you believed in.....
This is my hope....my own piece of sorrow, since you have given more of yourself than I ever thought you could when we were together.
Beni Beni my dearest, I've lost who I was when you loved me, yet you still believe, and that....has cost me more sorrow than the children I have thrown to wolves.
How can you still love one such I? After all I have accomplished in the name of equality?
I tried to change our society, I tried to make those old Men wake up and realize that their way;
their way is the wrong way, the way that starving children have grown up with.
And I...was wrong.
You loved me, and I couldn't realize the value of that.
All this time later, I just am  now realizing what you have done for me...the person you have helped me become.
I've hurt you...terribly. And you've deserved someone that has the ability to treat you as a painter could portray you.
I love you ... always have.

Hop that train and ride,
please go forth,
go further and live that life,
that life that I wanted and yet shied from.

Dodge that Bull,
swing yourself and your puppy
up and into that boxcar,
living the life
we hypocrites yearn for.

Ride free,
ride hard,
live on your terms
and tell the rest of us
what that freedom is worth.

It was a good day for me today,
till Ryan told me he was going to rehab,
and you posted a pic of a jump....

I don't think that where we live
knows what love is anymore.

We're too wrapped up in norms and opinions,
too focused on crap that means absolutely nothing.

The fact that you opted out,
you said "No, I will not live as a number",
has proved something to me tonight.

You proved to me that it's not an
all or nothing gamble, that one doesn't have
to pay in autonomy in order to be happy.

All that I am goes with you....
and maybe one day
I'll be riding with my own caravan.

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.

Unlike some in this world, Simon was not afraid of loneliness, had no need to feel needed, in fact had often wondered how these two women had come burning out of the desert into his private world. He had been a solitary man most of his life, wandering or running from something he wasn't sure. What he was sure of was that he loved these two people whom God or Allah or whomever had placed in his path one day in Tangiers.

He had read the book by Mitchener titled "The Drifters" when he was young, and remembered it now as Ta'ra wept in front of him. Torremolinos was on the other side of the Iberian sure, but the irony of the similarities seemed so poignant that he couldn't ignore it. He put out his hand to this woman, who had travelled so far and for so long she was afraid of what permanency could mean. She made as if to slap him again, and stopped.

"Please. I don't want it to be like this". A bare whisper.

She touched his hand. A hand girls had once thought smooth and soft. No longer.

"I'm afraid."
"I know."

Sitting back down, she picked up the orphaned guitar, and gazing out over Alfalma, she again sang her childhood lullaby. “Çevrem, etrafım şen mutlu iken. Ben yine hüzünlüyüm”.

A girl in France uses a razor against herself in the bathroom between classes, an orphan in Delhi does what he can to provide for his sister, two wanderers find some sort of peace on a balcony in Portugal, and a broken ex-soldier writes about them in America. Where we began, does not have to be where we end, and the lives we touch may never be known to us. But that doesn't mean that who we are, and the joys or the sufferings, are meaningless. We are human, and to be human is to be searching.....

In my youth, I ran to the desert.
She welcomed me as one of her own,
taught me many things,
loved me in her own unforgiving way.

The years I spent in her arms
saved me from many deaths.
I learned patience, and harshness
learned to welcome all things
as gifts from a God I couldn't see...
so I thought....

I lied to myself, and was alone
though God and the desert and
it's spirits walked alongside me
my heart never grew.

And now that I have come back,
I don't know how to hold
everything in my heart.

I learned to live on ideas;
real love was an abstract memory,
something that cost blood
and horror and betrayal.

I told myself what love was
out there in the sands,
when in truth.....
I could barely open my heart
to the beauty of a sunset.

Nothing has prepared me for this,
walking out of the wastes
to find my own people
waiting for me.

I have seen terrible things,
and so have they;
I don't know how to open
my heart to so many.

Jellaludin said to write what
we are most afraid of
so I shall write that.
I hope Shams approves.

I always say that one day
things will be different,
that we can change the world
as if it was the world that needed changing,

In truth, I am the one that needs to change,
I am the one who must take the leap,
I must step out over the abyss and
believe that it's about something more.

I am not afraid of the dark within myself,
my shadow I have come to terms with.
I am afraid of hurting those that have
tried to love me, whom I haven't allowed.

But that day I always yearned for,
the day when the world rolled back,
and the fountain gave of itself,
the day I decide to let my love **** me
that day is today.

Some hours later, night having fallen over Lisboa, It was Clara who sat in the loveseat while Ta'ra was asleep. Simon kept graveyard hours, partly from work, partly from an ingrained watchfulness that only ever left him in the small hours before dawn. So it was a usual occurrence for the two woman to sleep and wake and find him still active and awake, cooking or writing or at work, sometimes just staring aimlessly at the skyline of the Almafa. Clara was speaking of her loves and loyalties to him, no guitar for her though. Her gifts were the brush and her voice, both of which had always held a power over men. Her life had been one of passions only half felt, half lived, an object to be possessed by those she enraptured with a whisper in the ear or a sketch on a napkin.
"You speak of passion with such...disdain. As if it's something one could do without and be better off..." He looked up at her from the tile floor of the balcony where he was sitting crosslegged like some aesthetic. She smiled her full, rich smile down at him and then turned away, knowing this was a man she had tried to conquer, and failed. She had known he couldn't be swayed the way most were the first night in Tangier while waiting for the ferry. It had been her intention to barter passage from him for what most men think of as passion. Instead he brought them both to his apartment here as roommates, gotten papers for them, helped them start a life that wasn't that of a hunted thing. "Passion is a weakness that brings us away from ourselves, and presents us to someone else's lusts and wants and needs. In the end, we give all we have, and are emptied of life," she whispered, more to herself than Simon. He sighed as one who isn't sure whether he should speak or not. "You say that, and yet I'm attracted to that word, its implications, its many meanings to us. What you think of as passion is so different from what I think of it as, or Ta'ra for that matter." Clara gave a sharp ha! as response, as if she could divine something we mortals were ignorant of. "Isn't that what you two share," he asked, "passionate love? For eachothers' bodies? Your souls? I hear the two of you, envy it sometimes you know. I haven't been lost within someone completely like that in a very long time." Turning back and staring at him hard before speaking, she slowly and precisely told him that he would never understand what that really was between the two women, because he was a man.

I always forget
that Bourbon takes longer
to hit me than any other
type of libation, including
palm wine and fermented mare's milk.

This is possibly why I never
drink Bourbon when I'm in public,
except for those few major mistakes
which always resulted in near death.

The problem with near death experiences
when completely wasted,
is that you don't realize it at the time
so that you don't get the adrenaline
rush which you were looking for to begin with.

All that's left of that sort of night
are the moments of sheer terror
in between retching into the toilet
when you remember bits and snatches
of a bar fight or racing a Harley down
A1A in your beat up Honda.

It's moments like that when I wonder
if maybe I ought to have chosen some
other, less egregious drug to ruin myself
with, something mellow like ****** or
au'natural like ****, but the potheads I know
only ever spit up cheesy rap, and let's face it
****** just makes you nod off while ****** your soul.

We all have our vices, I've said before
and personally, I'm okay with mine sometimes.

Much rather have my own personal demons
than ones that I don't know so well.

I still think it's strange when people
tell me that I intimidate them,
always have and probably always will,
especially when women tell me that,
because by being able to say
exactly what I mean and how I feel
is threatening somehow?

I've been thinking about this lately,
the disparity between how I interpret
myself, and how others interpret me;
betting that if I could take a poll to
those that had some fire for me,
they'd agree with Angela that said she
cared for me mostly because I didn't judge.

Who am I to judge though?
It makes no sense to me, for people
to think that just because I stand up straight
and can speak well, I'm sophisticated or superior?
I know my own history, the things I've done
and more importantly not done, so then
how can I look down my nose at someone
whose shoes I've never walked in?

I guess I'm getting to the part that
should have been written about a
while back, should've been examined
and accepted rather than have the manly
thing done to it and buried like a dead dream.

I did care, I could have loved,
probably should have now that I
really think about it, could have had
something worth fighting for in a
place never expected or looked for.

But I'm good at walking away,
too good at cutting people out of
my life when things just get complicated
and frankly, complicated equals very painful.

This is the life I've made for myself,
much as I may hate it, I have nobody
to blame really, since we all have our
choices and we all have to live with them.

So I'll take another shot
and smoke another Camel
hoping that I made the right
decision to walk away once more,
but knowing deep down that
the only reason I ever did
was complete and utter *******.

I love your scars
all of them.
The obvious ones
the ones other people see
the year old wound across your middle
you showed off to me the night we met.
When I ran my hands over you
I could see the hidden ones
the deep cuts in your heart unhealed.
I tasted the passion and the copper in your kiss.
I knew even then that I'd never
get you out of my soul.

When you meet my eyes for the first time,
trying to reach you across the twelve stools between us,
I won't be expecting it at all.
I may even look away after trying so hard to make contact,
depending on how steadily and heavily I've been poisoning myself tonight.
I love playing the eye game, especially with you,
but I'm kinda rusty these days,
so you might have to be slightly aggressive in the beginning
if you want.
Eventually the curiosity of what I'm thinking will crop up,
maybe right at the beginning,
maybe when I work up the audacity to come talk to you,
maybe when you tell me to shut up and kiss you already.
Or it might be one of those rare occasions with just the right mix of ***** and testosterone when I don't second guess myself.
Regardless, eventually you'll want to know what's going on up here.
It's pretty simple really, no big mystery, even if
I don't talk about myself much in person.
To be sure, I want to know what you taste like,
how you look without make up,
under a shower,
in a bed.
I want to know what it will be like to strip clothes from your body,
as an artist must feel uncovering a work of hidden beauty,
as a madman must when he regains himself,
as Rumi must have in his garden.
Images diverge from there, with equal portions half and half,
your hand around my waist as I lift your skirt in the bathroom,
and reading by lamplight to you a chapter from Divisadero.
You're looking at me with that same appraising gaze I know so well,
and you can be **** sure I'm wondering whether you'd like me to pull your hair, the same as you wondering if I like to be bitten.
You see, there is no longer any separation for me,
between closeness, passion, or ecstasy.
When we progress to the point,
when I finally get your hint,
that I don't have to try so hard,
I've already decided whether I'll take the plunge to your soul or not.

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.

When you finally stop accepting lies from the rest of the world, keep in mind that you won't be able to stand your own ******* anymore either.

Today, we live in a world bound together by a plethora of interlocking mechanisms and systems, some social/political, and a great many technological, but most remain economic(for reasons of simple profit and pragmatism). In a time where the rate at which new technologies are developed is being reduced by a specific ratio in relation to the complexity and modernization of the societies in which they are developed, and the impact they have on said societies can be measured to a certain degree, it is a wonder to me that human beings have not applied our gifts of invention and improvisation to other parts of our existence.
I'm not a psychologist or sociologist or anthropologist, therefore I don't want to seem as if I'm attaching weight to any of my conclusions or opinions. I'm simply trying to put down in words a condensed version of many hours worth of contemplation and conversation. That being said, it seems almost as if the further we advance into the unknown future, technologically and scientifically, we further ourselves somewhat from many of the facets of existence that can be said to make us human beings. While the limits of understanding are being extended in laboratories and universities the world over, and the fruits of the endeavor trickle down to us in the way of items such as smart phones with more computing power than a room sized processor from 1970, our social structure has not progressed at a similar rate. While back breaking poverty and oppression on the feudal level aren't daily facts of life for the vast majority of us in developed industrialized society, modern existence has created it's own demons in the demand for limitless profits in an economy(no matter how much of it is superficially called "Service industry") which is based upon finite means of production, whether they be labour or resource based. This is not what concerns me, most of the time, anyway it **** sure doesn't keep me up at night. What does keep me awake till dawn are the deeply personal experiences that have brought me to see the extremes of human suffering, the kind of suffering which is marginalized and ignored because it has no place in our 'civilized' status quo. I will say bluntly that those who do the marginalizing have never carried their friend away from a house party after she was *****, never set their shirt on fire in the middle of the street because it had ***** from the ****** on it, never bandaged the self-inflicted wounds of another (and wiped off the word '****' which she had written on herself in her own blood), nor seen a thousand year old village obliterated in about 3 seconds, never seen what kind of horror people have the capacity to inflict on each other....as I have. There are many of us who have experienced these things, many who have experienced far worse, and to them I offer my deepest respect and compassion.
The realm of the human heart is the same landscape our forefathers journeyed through in the age of Richard Couer de Lion, the questions many of us ask are the same as well. But there is a difference, and it isn't technological. The serf toiling in the dirt of medieval France had no separation between himself and the land he worked, and to a similar extant, the modern Afghani sees no separation between himself and the will of Allah, which is what binds his entire universe together. Only we here in the First World have been abstracted into units of economic output, reduced to numbers and symbols, and only we no longer know what our place in the world is, or how we relate to each other. I want to know why.

It's ok to let yourself just be a regular person tonight, with needs and wants and hopes and fears. Just let go, get drunk, be friendly, and be fierce with yourself tomorrow. You can afford to not think like a nomad for one night.

As if I only have that much time to type
a lifetime's worth of beauty.
Or it may have only been
that seven minutes of memory.

Seven minutes to scream out
the glory of a first kiss, and
the shuddering surrender of an ******,
sweat and fire and ecstasy.

They told me, when I was young,
that I had to find my love
and let it **** me.

Seven minutes of music
the world rolled back and Samsara
a mere smile in the lamplight,
just another of the gods' company.

I've found many loves,
and their knives tearing holes
and their beauty a weapon
and their innocence a torch
and their hatred a drug
and their pain abhorrent
and their abandonment a sin
and their touch heretical
and their eyes of jewels
and their words made of bullets
and their hope a sad Gypsy
theirs tears a lonely guitar
striking chords in me and
God forgive how good they feel.

I am undone, overthrown, emaciated,
torn out, weary, overcome, eviscerated,
redeemed, hallowed, sanctified,
all of this and more.

I love you.

I have yet to die.

Eyes that speak without words
mute gestures out of the darklands
a pleading and a despair and a hunger
for who the **** knows what.

Walk across the red room of your soul
reach across the red memory of your loves
say yes
say no

I won't live the next ten years
as I lived the last
Pulled apart by the future
and the past.

It's taken me ten years
to wake and touch
ten years to fling all shame aside
and burn my many masks.

How does one learn to hope again?
How does one learn to trust again?
How does one be...simply be....again?

Lesson learned, lesson loved
when you do things to forget
you only forget the good
and the bad sticks around.

We live the life that has been given
all we can expect of ourselves
all we owe to our hearts
is fire.

The mighty men speak of power
and the low men speak of power
power to break and power to bind
as Mr. White explained it
a very long time ago,

Live
Live as if you were dead
and were looking back
As if you had nothing to lose
As if you had everything to lose.

Shuffle up and get down low,
the calender says it's a different day
and a different year,
but it only ever feels like it
during the day.

Sitting here tonight, I'm typing
into a different phone,
drinking at a different bar,
but somehow it's essentially the
same night that I've been living
for ten years...maybe more.

The same words, the same feeling
of a knife in the heart, the same
Irish jigs playing through busted speakers, and what I think I'll find somewhere in the haze still eluding.

All flowing back into a night so often repeated in so many places...Virginia, Washington, Arizona, Florida, even the night in Nogales I never mention.

It all comes back to girls with razors in their purses, the boys who put them there, and the unseen hand that has pushed them all.

I don't know how to write about you anymore. The words that used to flow seemed so right, so beautiful.
But now there remains only a vague hope, a fleeting scent of oranges and the sea.
You are the place my Heart goes when I am broken open.
You are the Home I long for in the early morning quiet.
You are all good things to me, a symbol now of what once was fair.
No matter how I try, you always evade my Love, and my Longing.
You whisper to me in the night breeze, yet no longer reveal yourself to my tired soul. I can no longer touch you, or see you;
I can only feel you somewhere in the deserts and mountains within.
All the time I am searching, searching for you, though I do not know how I may find you.
There is no chart of your endless seas, nor is there a path to your home in the old Blue Mountains.
Here in this Garden I write for you, and my Heart........
My Heart cries for you.
Perhaps one day, you will hear it.

Symbols of personal myth,
your transient biography
etched into your bare back.

Weeping burning tears
into long cold ashes
as if to rekindle the sacred.

****** footprints in the sand
accompany the path of
selves shed on your journey.

Take this breath from my chest
and take this flame from my hand
find yourself again in the circle.

There lay the skins of lions,
and the grey mantle of wolves;
comport yourself in them
and dance once again.

What may be marked as times full of
hate and inequity, of racial scorn and
social injustice, of a seeming end to
the world of green and good things,
perhaps a falling away of what each of
us hold dear in our hearts.

I honestly don't think that this
division is what will determine who
we are as people, I don't think that
the color of our skin or our political
beliefs or standpoint on religion
is what really has any bearing in
the long run on what we choose.

We all want to be accepted yes?
We all want a safe place to raise
a family and we all want to be able to
be able to provide for them?

Whatever the composition of our family,
however it is that we find loved ones,
should it not be that we are able to do
so in peace, in acceptance?

I was taught that it isn't where we
come from or what we appear to be,
but rather, the quality of who we are
that determines who we are as people.

And maybe I'm wrong, maybe I do
live in a nation that was "born of genocide
and slavery", but even if that is the truth,
I believe in the idea of who we are.

I believe in a place that may not exist,
a place where all are welcome, peoples
of all backgrounds and all colors and
all faiths, a place where it doesn't matter
who your father was, but who you are.

Maybe that was the first mistake I made
there at the very beginning.

I wanted all of it, everything I could glean
from whatever life had to offer.

Not only did I want the beauty of Hesse,
Dante, and all the glories of Old Florence,
I wanted someone like me to share it with.

I wanted to wake up in a room in Tangier
to the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer
and have some unbelievable soul in bed with me
wipe the sleep from her eyes and kiss me.

They say that I'm a drunk and a dreamer
and they may in fact be right about that,
but they'll never know the absolute glory
that comes from pouring your bleeding guts
out onto paper at two in the morning with
Pavarotti blaring as loud as you can make him.

I'm almost thirty and I've almost given up,
almost accepted that the finer things in life
will only ever be a dream, a fleeting glimpse
into an improbable future that may cost too much.

And then I meet people like her, Artists and Lovers
that cut me in ways I didn't think I could be anymore.
I'll be doing alot of drugs with them, maybe have some
truly Protestant shaming *** with them, trying to
reach out across that ****** abyss and touch their soul.

But I'll never wake up in Tangier with them.
I'll fall asleep listening to Netflix and wondering
who gave her the scars I can feel pumping through her heart.
It'll probably fade away relatively quickly too,
that one real moment when the walls fell.

No matter, I always knew deep in my heart of hearts
that people like me don't get happy endings or to
live our dreams out unless we die for them.
We go our own way, suffering to be who we are,
creating beauty in ****** rooms with screaming
children that reek of cat **** and regrets.

But if it ever gets too much to bear, there's
always truly running, truly giving up on
having it all, walking the **** away
and being insane and drunk in Tangier alone.

Right on the cusp of sleep,
warm and cozy and drifting off....

Haha, not happening

I'm an American
Caucasian
heterosexual male
and make more than
twenty grand a year.

Therefore,
according to pretty
much everybody that isn't
republican (God help you)
everything wrong in the world
is my fault.

So sleep is a luxury.

Let's proceed down the
strangely hate filled
and guilt slinging
reactionary list.

American: invades whoever
we want for whatever we want,
whenever we want.
We'll bomb you back to the
stone age and then station
fifty thousand ***** dudes
with guns in your capitol
and force feed you Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Caucasian: I may say I hate
racism in all it's disgusting
forms, but in reality I'm
just lying because I want to
buy your sister and **** her
because I have daddy issues
and think ****** was a God.

A dude who likes chicks:
I only pretend to be a gentleman
and sensitive because it gets
me in between hott hipster girls
thighs, but actually ****** is
just another commodity to be sold.

I make over minimum wage:
I don't really have to scrape to
pay my bills, I just live above my
means with money I didn't actually
make, at a job I don't deserve.

The point being that I can't sleep
because I can't decide whether
to believe what I'm told,
what I've seen,
or what I actually think is true.

Oh, btw I am all of the aforementioned,
but I've also never shot an unarmed
Muslim kid, or ***** a drunk co-ed
because she really wanted it, or bought
another human being.

In point of fact, people like me
are kinda despised by everybody,
since the white supremacist bigot
bible thumpers accuse us of betraying
them and their true calling,
and everybody else thinks we're just
going with the flow of progressivism
because we don't have the ***** to
be open about wanting to buy young
Thai girls and force them into a brothel.

Why can't I sleep?
Too much noise.

Hate in fact breeds one thing...more Hate.

He stood on the sidewalk, the image of Film Noir in a trench and fedora, smoking what was probably a Lucky Strike. Casually flicking the **** aside(a Camel in fact, he ran out of Luckies a week before) he summed up the saloon/bar/club type thing one more time before stepping inside. Done up like the Knock Knock, though with a lower ceiling and less lighting, the place was actually pretty decent. He noticed his goal immediately; acid green short dress and a belt from the Iron Age, hair as black as that raven some farmer used to own....she would have been a mighty sorceress if he were in a fairy tale. As it was, she could still charm the pants off the Devil as they say, and come off without a scratch. The Patsi in the fedora took a seat next to her, feigning disinterest. Another woman with her looks may have been irritated by the lack of attention he gave after sitting down, but not her. No, she knew Fedora wasn't here for her looks, this was business, although he didn't look half-bad either. Having that **** Tracey air still works even today sometimes. Eventually he bought her a drink after she came back from a dance and a banyo call wiping her nose. He was too well cut, too clean for a place like that, and it stood out if you looked longer than a second or two. She belonged there, could be found every Thursday and Friday night and nobody who had been there more than once bothered to ask about her or try and savy with her, but they all stared. The college kids who knew their literature, beat types and poets mostly, they all called her Wanda or the Countess and a few called her Venus. She seemed to like this reference to a far darker personality than her own, and accepted it since it added so much to her persona in that place. Mystery comes naturally to some people, and it fit the Countess better than the mask she wore as a very young woman.
They sat together for two hours, talking and drinking, but not once did Fedora loosen up and cop a feel or ease back on his stool, and the Countess, for all her outward glamour, never did goose him or whisper in close. They passed right by on their way out completely intent on whatever they were doing, or about to do. They didn't take a cab, but turned and started off down the sidewalk, pretty quick for patent leather and high heels on a wet night. I was out the door after counting thirty seconds and making a very quick phone call.

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.

The door to the apartment was unlocked when I got there, knowing I was minutes too late. The place was typical, exactly what I expected. Tiny kitchen with the basic bar and two swivel stools. TV on a stand and a floral pattern couch with the sliding door opening on the balcony to my right. Straight ahead was the hallway to the tiny bedroom. I gently closed the door and locked the *** and dead bolt. Walking straight ahead, noticing the bathroom door closed to my right in the tiny hallway. A queen bed in the one bedroom, red sheets and red comforter, white walls and an open closet. Fake flowers in a red plastic vase sitting innocent on a bedside table. No window and a single hanging print of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son on the wall above a folding desk. The desk was home to a record player, circa 60's, vinyl still spinning, Brand New's The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me.
At least she died to something good I thought to myself. I didn't handle the torn remains of the acid green dress laying on the bed. She had put her shoes away and selected the vinyl before they arrived, probably had a glass of wine since there was one of those stemless glasses sitting empty on the bar. I doubted those who had come were the wine drinking type. Death was not unknown to me, neither was **** and retribution nor cruelty to make a political statement. But I did not want to go into that bathroom. I did not want to find what was left. I did not want to add her face to the long, long list of empty faces kept in record by my memory. I hate histrionics and false drama, but expecting to find the Countess gone, I reset the vinyl.

She was still breathing when I walked in. Naked except for her black hose, splayed out in the tub, a perfect 9 millimeter hole six inches above her left breast. It was two in the morning on the dot. In that moment, everything left me. All loyalty, all ideology, all thoughts of advancement, all regrets from the past. Gone in an instant. I gathered what was left of her in my arms.

It was hard carrying her down the stairs, but she put one hand through my hair and it helped. To this day I'm not sure how I found her car keys, but I do remember she whispering to me that her's was the grey Buick out front. She was dead by the time I got to the hospital.

Once when I was younger, I caught a glimpse of what a Final Victory might be like. I had stayed up all night, wandering the empty streets and alleys of St. Augustine with two friends whose names are long forgotten. We strayed to the marina after pondering the absurdity of human existence and there, beheld a true Wonder. Just the barest taste of things to come, but an overwhelming awe. This Great Heart made of fire, bursting forth from the dark waters, an ocean of consuming majesty, such as I had never conceived. Can you imagine we, these infintesimal specks of life, being a part of this miracle, this new Day?

I have no mighty words left with which to challenge the doubts that gnaw at me, as the ravens gnaw upon the bones of my innocence.

I have no sword with which to slay the nightmares who haunt me in the terrible hours before sleep comes.

I have not courage enough to stand and be counted among those who strive shoulder to shoulder against the dark.

To He that shapes the fate of all, I cry out in the watches of the night, I cry out in the rays of the dawn, I cry out in the blaze of midday.

I cry out that You have not kept me alive in vain.

I came to a town on the road to you,
and by chance the day was Eid al Fitr.
The was much music and dancing and rejoicing in life's fullness;
I too was swept away in the simple ecstasies.

But the old Mullahs had heard of my travels
and bid come unto them to discuss heavy matters.
"How can one break the Law and remain beloved of Allah?"

"Because God created the Law out of Love,
thus the Love of Allah is above and beyond it's precepts.
God will Love whom He chooses."
Outrage. Insult. Blasphemy.

The music outside drew my soul away, and I joined
the common people, my brothers and sisters,
while the old men argued without us.

Wordlessly, we danced.

Let me tell you a secret that I've never told anyone before. Here is the key to deciphering my own personal Rosetta Stone.

I can only ever write about things that have the most potential to hurt me by doing so from hindsight, or placing the events into another time and place, speaking from outside of myself.

So it is that I write of you now, as the wind whispers through dunes in this lonely, though not empty place. I am writing from the deepest recesses of my heart, where it is always twilight in a desert. Looking back now, I can see what seems like irony in the way the evening progressed. You needed an uplifting spirit you said, and I came following. I spent all night trying to pull you out of a sadness that I know well, and knew that it was a futile gesture. Since then I've been trying my best to forget how it felt to dance with you in a living room, for once in my life, completely unabashed. We were both drunk by then, and of course, both emotionally compromised. I shouldn't have been surprised how easily it was that our lips found each other, but I was. After hoping to the point of giving up hope, I walked into a mirage and found you there. It doesn't really bother me as much as I thought it would, believing that the night meant nothing to you. Even so, holding you for just that short time, means everything to me. I can still taste you, smell you, feel your body in my hands, and remember exactly the shade of your gray-green eyes. The irony perhaps is that I came to you that night to try and provide comfort, and somehow, it's you who pulled me up and out of the dark. Though we have no future, I'll carry that night with me forever, and when I'm alone with myself, as I am now, those memories you gave me will be enough.

Dearheart, where have you gone?
Where is the girl who rode the bus with me all those years ago?

Tears don't stain a screen the way they do paper,
but even If I wrote this with a pen I'd have nowhere to send it.

I'm doing everything I can to forget you honey, but I know that I'll never be able to. How could I, when you own so much of my heart?

You've left pieces of yourself behind;
strands of hair, a pair of shorts, a shirt, your smell upon my pillow.

Tell me now, memory of my love, how now shall I continue without regret at what ought to have been?

How may I lay next to another,
and not think of you in your need?
To the more prosaic, how can I taste another woman without wondering what other fire may consume her after all the terrible things you've taught me about needs?

You have died to me, and I mourn your passing. And a part of me...perhaps the best part, died with you.

Behold, my cup runneth over,
and I rejoice.

I was alone in the desert,
and now I have been brought home.

Those beautiful things I had thought
lost forever have been returned.

My shame hath been shown to be illusion, and my failures forgiven.

Faith I had not in the workings of
the One beyond my ken.

And yet faith I have been given,
and love, and hope, and a new life.

I rejoice in you Oh Lord, I give thanks
to you for the small things, the little proofs that you have not abandoned us.

I give thanks that You in your wisdom
have brought me to this place; that You have not despaired of me, though I have despaired much of myself and of You the Eternal.

Behold the garden I have always sought, and yet hath ever been my home; that which always liveth within me, yet I journeyed to find.

I am cold and aloof
crawling through empty castles
with my solid eyes and ethereal body

A body you still hunger for

Or is it my soul you send your tendrils after
crooning songs of happiness and children
probing crevices made known to you in my weakness

Ah, and when that fails to move
my heart encased in the shards of empty loves
you send a hand searching for mine

I am not those witless dogs you take to bed
to prove your own power over the gender
that you blame for what you are

And whine all you want about how we're perfect
that we deserve each other
that I can use you as I like

I shall not be moved

You're happy to **** my ****
but you daren't listen to what I speak
Use me as you have been used
and deny it even to yourself

Don't forget that I was birthed in this
a child of the lies we tell ourselves
Son of passions whose sources
shuffle like unwanted abortions into the corner

You will never again win my hopes
while wishing for me to help you ****** your brother
You will never turn again your own hate
into your conception of what my love is

Long ago I crossed the sweet river
that marked the outer border of your heart.
I filled my empty skins from that river
and sang the song for going away.
In that cold water a part of me was
carried from my shoulders by the current.
Perhaps you watched me slide from the back
of my weary pony and gaze across the years toward you.
Mayhap the wind carried some of my
long forgotten words to your ears.
I have not spoken the old words aloud
since that day I crossed your border
and disappeared into the waiting day.