Here it comes again,
that feeling known so well,
when your heart hurts
and things start to stretch.

The machine you're trying to type
on is starting to fail,
the words you're trying to speak
are sounding cheap and ill used.

There is something you know,
deep down inside,
some seriously heavy hitting truth
trying to claw it's way out of you,
a drop of strange, a hint of deja vu.

Pulling back from the lies you've told
to yourself, afraid to see what is...
and what ought to have been.

I'm afraid to go through that door,
shedding the faces and skins I've worn
for so long, but I know that I have to
open it and walk through standing tall.

Miller High Life and/or PBR: for getting drunk for cheap.

Steel Reserve: for getting drunk for cheap and going to jail.

I remember that day,
complete loss of control,
feeling more than just drunk
more than upset at the position I found myself in.

I remember the self destruction
and the understanding that it was an experience
that I needed to have in order
to have something called legitimacy maybe?

Handcuffs are very, very uncomfortable
but so is waking up on a couch in
a building full of cockroaches
to realize that everything that brought
you there was your own fault.

I will never know why I was so angry
will never understand why I was such a monster that day
unless I give myself the excuse of thinking
that I had lost all hope in anything.

All I can say with any certainty
is that if somebody ever dares tell me
ever again that because I'm white
I don't know what it's like to be
picked up off the street, they are
sadly mistaken.

I just crossed over it.
That demarcation between
who I thought I was, and
wanted to be....and actually
have become.
Behind me now
is that person I
yearned to be.
In unfamiliar territory now
and expecting imminent
destruction.
Yet there is nothing here
on this side of oblivion
save a bottle of whiskey
and pure existentialism.
After having another drink
and putting on Led Zeppelin's
When The Levee Breaks,
I remember a similar rainy
night seven years ago,
stealing two bottles of
red wine from the Publix
in St.Augustine and drinking
said wine on the beach with
Lauren and Kiki as the storm
enveloped us in some sort
of human connection.
I never ****** either one
of them but I would have
liked to, but in those days
I had no confidence even
when drunk.
In those days I didn't
realize that I had something
to give besides money and
an averaged sized ****
(even though it's not crooked).
I believed in love and truth
and was eventually shown by
the world I find myself in now
that there is nothing but the
life we make for ourselves.
It is not up to me to change
the fetid world, it is not up to
me to hunt down that *******
who pumped a nasty load
all inside of a random **** victim.
I was raised to believe that
we actually had a purpose, a
mission given to us to do
all we can to negate human suffering.
I realize now that it was all
nothing but sheer false hope.

Here I am
waiting for the whiskey
to stop being coy
and finally kick in.
Rome is burning outside
but the flames haven't
crept near yet.
Front row seats
to the end of an era
that I'll soon have to pay for.
I can already smell the smoke
and see the angry glow
against the weeping sky.
But I have some time yet
before the air gets hot
and the streets become
screaming rivers of humanity.
Bearing witness now
to the weeping heart
and fate's feckless whim.
Outside, Rome is burning
as the tide of time reaches
out to find the high water mark.
All for a dream
a half formed and
half thought impulse,
the urge to conquer
not a woman or a nation
but the whispers of the psyche.
Soon now the fat lady
will sing her rusted heart out
and I'll see the last great age
fall to the caprices of a power
that I will never comprehend.
Rome is on fire
and in that destruction
might something else
be born?
The histories of nations
the folly of man
the lives of the great
replayed again within
the lives of those
whom I love.
The center is indeed crumbling
and we of the flesh,
we cannot hold.

She had bid unto him, that a garden should be built. And he, with all the art he possessed, driven on by fire, had done so. He stands there now, alone in the dark, aching for her as he has never ached for anything else. Remembering the stories he had told her in the beginning, how it made him fill with light at the request. And he thinks of the strangeness of it, this soul that speaks as if it has walked out of the East on the heels of Rumi. How he can not ever seem to say these things aloud, how he fears the past has more power than the future. He wishes that he could have been given a book about her, so as to be all he can for her. This is how he communicates the deepest parts of himself, afraid that she will flee at too much tenderness, or think him weak and effeminate. Belief alone in her, and of what they share, is all that propels him forward. Knowing they have only begun, that his experience of her is merely a taste of what may be, he writes.

Restitution*
Even now, I think that perhaps we followed each other,
dogged each others' steps for many years
before stumbling upon the ocean our love became.
As people who seemed divorced from the world we live in
maybe Nature drew us together, or more likely it was Nurture.
No matter.
You touched me that first night, for the first time, in the first room,
whispering "hush" as you put your fingers to my lips. Always you are
embarrased of your hands, "Rough" hands, "Not at all like a
woman's" hands should be, and I never could fathom who gave you
that ****** up idea. When you touch me, when I remember the feel
of them, I always think of driftwood, and smile. Powerful and utterly
lacking in self-conciousness, your hands knew their origin,
remembered the glory and the majesty of making fire, of making a
meal, of making love, of bringing forth light and life out of the
depths. I hated it when you apologized for such wonderful things.
For it was with those hands you brought something back in me,
something lain dormant and whimpering the dark, dying of thirst in an
empty land long forsaken. Holding you in my arms brought strength
back into them, your teeth on my skin ripped a growl from my lungs,
just remembering your voice crying out in surrender and triumph
makes me want to tear off my clothes and dance naked around a
roaring bonfire, howl like a wolf into the night for the sheer joy of it.
After so long being dead, you kissed me, and I was again alive.

Encounter

It was afterward, in the light from a streetlamp
you sobbed and said that you wished we hadn't.
Anyone else and I'd have taken my cue, left, and drank till sunrise.
For some reason I stayed (having no choice really)
pulled you close and asked why, expecting an answer I'd already
heard many, many times before.
You looked into me, and said 'You smell like pine needles.
The next one won't smell like you, and I won't be able to pretend
that he or she is you.'
That was not the answer I had a defense for.
"You smell like cinnamon, and I want to run. But I won't leave,
unless you want me to."

Winds*

"Let me tell you about winds," said I, trailing an apricot leaf across your left breast. Giggling, you tried to bite my nose. "Shut up you, I love that book too, and I know Herodotus better than you ever will."
"Ah yes, you were his lover at one time if I recall."
"Indeed I was, long before you and your sandy hair came on the scene. Your hair IS sandy."
"It is so totally NOT sandy, it's light brown. And all the grey is your fault."
Sauntering to the bathroom, you gave me the finger as you bent down to turn on the hot water. I waited till I saw steam, long enough for you to let your guard down, and hit you in the *** dead center with an apricot.
"Good shot you *******, but that's no way to treat a lady."
"Whoever said you were a lady cheri?"
Laughing, you tried to shove soap in my mouth as I slid into the scalding water. The tub was a bit cramped for two people, but we didn't mind. We never minded when we were forced together, at least here was privacy. (Although there are few things sweeter than a stolen kiss in a train full of singing Rajput schoolchildren, a story for another time)

Boxes

God in heaven how I hate Frank Lloyd Wright's creations. Not aesthetically mind you, just how his vision makes me feel. And deeper than that, how you act when you're in one of his buildings or stare at his work for too long. You lose a little vitality when you spend too much time staring at boxes arranged in different patterns. You start trying to arrange everything else into neat little lines and clearly defined delinations. Too long, and you start doing it to me, to us. You start acting how I did before we came together. And it scares me.

Death*

It's always strange watching people's reactions to death. Most of the time they get cold. They get analytical. The whole stages of grief thing I guess. Circumstances of the death play a part, as well as how close the dearly departed is/was to us. Leftover's from our Hellenistic roots maybe? A good death is one earned in pursuit of something. A death in battle, a death by drowning at sea, one earned in struggle. But deaths by freak accident seem too, Dickensian I suppose. A boy drowns in a pool while his dad is in the bathroom, a woman is crushed by a tree randomly falling on her kitchen in high winds, a man falls from a wooden ladder while cleaning a chimney, a church roof suddenly caves in on a whole congregation for no reason. Let's keep it all bottled up inside and pretend like there's some other option besides acceptance.

Encounter II

You cried the first night we spent together, and the night after, and almost every night since. At first I feared it was something that I was doing, some piece of love you needed that I couldn't give. Hateful as it sounds, you weren't the first that I've loved like that. Hopefully I'll love none after you and won't have to worry about the last. Regardless, I've come to love myself enough though, with your help, to understand that it wasn't lack of love that caused you to sob into my shoulder. It wasn't some failing of mine that pushed you to seek out what comfort I could give. You cried in front of me because you trusted me enough to do so. You had no part to play, no face to wear other than your own. And now, deep in the wee hours when you fold yourself in to me, I don't question. I give all I have of myself, so that you can sleep peacefully.

Blood

Let the Christians call it the devil's work, but I call it love. Really, if we want to get outrageous about it, most of their practices are just as anthropologically based as all other human ritual. All lovers have little rituals, small things that only they know, quirks and nuances that are the real mortar that hold the walls of their relationship together. Herodotus became an inside joke, my cheap metal raven head became a symbol, we trail leaves over each other after ******* (if available), our foreplay includes brushes and india ink, etc. When we began rearing up what we are to each other though, that work began with blood, as all holy things do....

"Baby, c'mere. Please?"

"Honey what the **** happened, you're bleeding everywhere?!?"

Wrapped your wrist in the gauzz I keep beneath the sink for just such an occasion. Insisted we sleep on the couch so I could hold you and you could watch your favorite shows at the same time. Spent enough time sleeping on couches anyway. Sleeping on one with you, listening to Jude Law talk up Cameron Diaz or some **** was gorgeous.

Weeks later

"Darlin, I ****** this one up."

"Don't say **** like that babe, what happened?"

"You know how I've been ******* about my ear hurting?"

"Yeeeaaaahhhh?" as you walk down the hallway.

You see the amount of blood on the tissue

"******* Daniel! C'mon, we're going to the MediQuick right the **** now!"

You did your damndest not to touch my ears for weeks after that, and it took a month of me saying they didn't hurt for you to start biting them again.

Submission*

I never want to give you up. But I'm not afraid of change. It's one of our favorite games, pretending we are elsewhere, loving like the world is different. Like we are different. Knowing that it's all transitory, knowing that these blue sky days will end. I always remember the Hospitaller in Kingdom of Heaven(played by David Thewlis), saying that even if something has only lived for a while, it still has lived. I try to keep that in mind on those occasions when we wander from each other. We will end, eventually, somehow, probably incredibly unwillingly....but that doesn't mean all that we are isn't beautiful.

I really hate the nothingness that we became. With confidence I can say that it was your doing and not mine, but that doesn't make it any less abhorrent. Your absence tastes like ash all the same. I'd like to think that your thoughts turn to me as often as mine turn to you, but more than likely you give hardly a brush of me. That's alright though, I'd be terrified if someone like me started digging around in my heart and asking questions, challenging every self deprecating statement I made too. The odd thing is, I know exactly how that feels. I lived it, ten years ago, and I ran the hell away, not knowing how to accept it.

Go ahead then baby,
**** that guy good,
**** him like you wanted
me to *******.

Sorry I couldn't just
be your weekend man,
sorry I'm more interested
in your heart and soul
than I am your ******.

It's the same old story I guess,
playing the role I was given,
doing what I do best,
from a serious distance.

All or nothing is a bad game to play,
and I'm still playing it though,
but this time it's with you.

This is in fact a story, one worth
telling or writing or living,
but it hurts, it hurts to the point
of me wishing it weren't true.

"I fell in love with a fairytale."

Those were her words when I asked why our lives had become what they are now.

The first entrance to her flat, tapestries and flowers and shards of pottery assaulting me as soon as I set foot through the door. A six foot print of The Accolade embroidered like the Bayeux hanging in an alcove. The single rose I gave her placed in an empty wine bottle. She played Yo-Yo Ma on vinyl with something that looked like the first gramophone ever made. I always think of her now when I hear a cello, and whatever it is I'm doing at the time stops for the memory. I will always remember her curled up on that red loveseat like the empress she was to me. We first made love there, on old red satin or whatever it was. Corse to the touch, but beautiful. It was only after the first time that she would let me kiss her on the lips, like it was something allowed after passing a test. She never spoke of it, when or why she let me into her world, a world I had only ever been permitted to sojourn through before. The Kiss hung above her bed, and after she had fallen asleep the first night we lay there together I stared up at it with her in my arms thinking....thinking that I had been searching for this woman forever. I have not been the same man since that night. She became my faith.

You wouldn't know to see it now that we had bliss in this place for five years. Five years of being whole, of the absolute knowledge that we were exactly what we were supposed to be. There is nothing left of us here now. The door is gone. An explosion of some sort destroyed most of the living room. I believe her bedroom was used as a firing position for an anti-tank team at one point in the fighting. Shell casings are everywhere, all the glass is shattered and there are stains in abundance.

Where is she you ask?  

I didn't want to believe what I first heard, but after seeing her face again I knew it was true. Oh, you know her well I'm sure since you were able to find me. She is the reason the front has been extended. She is the reason there is bread now, even if it isn't quite palatable. She is the reason so many more have died than necessary. Over here, let me show you who she is. She's on this poster, the valiant People's Commandante leading us into a glorious future. You know who she is now, serve her excellently I have no doubt. But before you do whatever it is you were sent to do I want you to know that I saved The Kiss before our city burned. You will never find it. And even if she refuses it now, once upon a time she had a different name. Once, when she loved me, her name was Ivy.

There is no map for me to follow here,
no signposts
no magic theatre
just the forest and the rain.

Whatever it is that is pulling me toward you
must have some purpose
some design
a love worth believing in.

I'm an explorer pushing back through time
pulling chunks of stone from old walls
brushing dust from mosaics
piecing together what I can of your soul.

It is what I'm good at
and what I think you may need me to be
an archaeologist of the heart
rediscovering you for the first time.

It's dark here and lonely
though I can hear you whisper to me
out of the pages and words and symbols
ushering me forward into the night.

Whatever I find at the center
must be something beautiful
something grand
but I won't make it through the twilight
without you to hold my hand.

"Mary, why is it that thee comfort me so, when mine twelve
and the multitudes of Judea, plead for me to grant them
aid and succor in this world, when I can only promise them
peace in the next? Do ye not also wish from me things I have
not the power to give?"

"Ieshua, I have loved you all the long years of our lives, since the
moment we played with sticks and sand upon the shores of Galilee. We were children and even then I knew that my love would be filled with sorrow and longing for you. Your Father, even in those gentle times held sway over you. We were very young and I sought to kiss you when your earthly father and mother were away at the market. Our lips touched and our hearts turned to fire, and you lept away, banishing me from your sacred heart."

Years passed and Jesus the carpenters' son, Prophet and Savior yet to be
never forgot Mary of the Magdalene, she who held sway over his heart
while his Father in Heaven guided His Son upon a path unforseen.

The moment that Jesus of Nazareth, and Mary of Magdalene
may have indeed lay down together as man and wife,
matters not at all, in spite of what those angry priests say.

She and He, their Love, guides me.

Sometimes it doesn't matter where you're going.
All that matters...is that you are going somewhere.

I.
Quid Nomen Est?
Thus spake skeleton eyes to we upon the forest path,
the long woe of you and me and we upon that gravel path
with those tired trees baring their naked selves to us
in dead questions all the crooked way.
Lo the **** shall crow thrice indeed on the morrow morn
but for now we who have not yet forgotten
must needs cleave to the bidding at hand,
must make do with cobwebs in our eyes
and the ashes of the Archbishop in our mouths.

II.
"Torches, torches! Have we none, for long
grows the hallowed eve and our task not yet done?"
Indeed no light have we, and our destination lying
still somewhat far off among the ancient oaks.
Haven't forgotten have you, those skittering stories
from bedtimes long ago, warnings to travelers by night
through ragged copse and brooding glen?
Yes, those whispers old of those gone further into
twilight never to be seen again by mortal eyes.
Quid Nomen Est?

III.
Up sprung the pale lights all about us,
yes the torches of those unaging.
"My name, my name, you shall not have it
for given by others to me it was!"
Silence greeted us with open arms and a
light snowfall as we, trembling and withered
continued toward our loathsome errand.
They did not try and delay us nor lead us into sorrow,
merely followed with us unto an open hollow.

IV
There the stones, the faery ring standing older
than the memory of a time when the world
was young and beast and man lived as one.
Not a dead leaf stirring, nor cold wind blowing
as we and our silent companions tread upon the sacred earth.
At last our destination reached, though the journey not yet done.
One thing left to us before the peace of sleep.
No longer cold, no longer withered and old
but become again the man who loved you once.
We lie down together there between the sky and the earth,
with none to bear witness save the standing stones,
the silent torches and always the naked questioning trees.

V*
To the din of Thunder and Battle I awoke,
still within the ring of iron grey stones.
There above the wailing trees the Huntsmen and
Hounds rode reckless, beckoning me as expected
to join the Wild Hunt forever away from Love.
I held up my hand and at once they stormed toward we,
a curse riding forth, fierce and fell till the end of time.
Lo before they caught my upturned hand for me to join forevermore,
I searched one last time for your face among the faery mound,
and found no memory of you in the bones scattered upon the ground.

There are no ancient swords to aid in this,
nor prophets pointing the way,
no magic rings to find in dark caves,
nor a sleeping host awaiting the call.

Under the mists of time,
the faces worn in the light,
and the fears in the night,
still we stand and fight.

There are no keys to hidden doors,
nor waystations upon the road,
no mountains which to climb,
nor holy refuge to stumble upon.

Under the mists of time,
the faces worn in the light,
and the fears in the night,
still we stand and fight.

There is no face to the dark,
nor name to cry out to within it,
no blessing that I can give you,
nor any promise I can make.

Under the mists of time,
the faces worn in the light,
and the fears in the night,
still we stand and fight.

break for riff

Under the mists of time,
the faces worn in the light,
and the fears in the night,
still we stand and fight.

How can I be what you need?
How can I fight the past without weapons?
How can I hold you in the dark and make it go away?

There is no quest to be had,
save the one that takes me to you,
no battle worth fighting,
except to fight for you.

So much said and done,
so much unsaid and undone,
lost here now, lost within and without.

Under the mists of time,
the faces worn in the light,
and the fears in the night,
still we stand and fight.

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

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

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

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

Grab a guy's **** and he'll do whatever you want.

Put your **** in a ****** the right way and you own her.

Power equals ****** potency.

****** potency equals power.

Behind every powerful man stands a woman.

And behind every powerful woman stands a well hung man.

The problem that arises from this outlook is that love is nonexistent.

Love dies when all we need is a good ****.

That moment when we decide that who we are as individuals is our
own  choice.....that moment breaks what we were given.

It began to snow. Big flakes, slowly spiraling out of the night sky. For a moment I let myself go and caught one on my tongue. It felt good to remember that not everything need be dramatic and painful. Good to feel a quiet peace for just a few seconds. She would have found this intensely beautiful. No good to think of that now, no good for yourself. There is something out of the past that continues to interfere with the present, some laughing hate born when I was a child. I met him under a streetlight, knowing he'd be there. "So you killed another love, boy, and now you're here to **** me? Doesn't seem very fair, after all I've done for you. Ungrateful I'd call it." Sneering at me with the old crooked smirk I knew so well, he lit a Camel. I told him he wasn't welcome here, did not have my permission to poison me. "Isn't this childish of you dude? Writing about trying to **** a part of yourself you hate, but that has helped you protect yourself from so much. Seems like you're whining to me, poor little boy got his feelings hurt and all that ****. There was no one there for you then except me, and there's no one for you now because you won't let the war be over." Starting to protest, he cut me off. "Don't you even dare to talk to me about her, or any of the others. You know **** well she's right and you're wrong and you don't have the right to come here and ****** at me for your own idiocy. Always trying to get rid of me and then you get hurt and come crawling back like you expected something different to happen, as if you expected to find love and happiness after causing so much pain. So what you've been lied to your whole life, she never gave you a reason not to trust her. And you brought all of this to the table, tried to hide your own wretchedness, wouldn't even tell her about your little mental health problem, so you can't be mad at me when that blew up in your face. You lied and hid not because of me, I'm just a defense mechanism. You did it because you couldn't really accept that maybe she'd love all of you, couldn't believe what you actually hoped for. Isn't that sad, this pattern of suspicion that if she knew everything she'd bolt at the first opportunity? How can you be upset when you didn't even give her the opportunity? Why are you surprised that it didn't work when you only ever showed half of yourself? No, don't interrupt me, you know I'm right. And you know what, you'll do it again, over and over and over, because you can lie to everybody else and yourself, but you can't fool me and you couldn't fool her. Admit it, you don't really find yourself lovable at all. You're ashamed of yourself and you don't even know why. So people fall in love with you and you can't accept that love. Or you fall in love with someone and strangle it. But you won't even accept that responsibility. You blame me. Well guess what, I didn't make your parents divorce, I didn't make dad hit your Mom with a frying pan, I didn't make you move in with him, I wasn't the one who ***** Kiki that night you were ****** around with Emily instead of paying attention to your friends, I wasn't the one who taught you to hate yourself and I **** sure didn't make you join the ****** Army. I protected you from all of that as much as I could......." I turned and walked back into the night.

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

Which of your tired angels, or stone-faced prophets, write the epitaphs for those dreams that we sacrificed so tenderly? Is there a meadow
in your heaven, a quiet place apart from the ceaseless rejoicing, where the beauties of what might have been may go to forget the slow
decay of remorse? I ask this of you, without pity for myself, but rather, sadness for what has become of those feelings and hopes and
loves that weren't permitted to die a natural death; the hearts that were silenced by betrayals. I haven't forgotten that first
entrance to your cathedral in the woods; I felt in that moment that I could change the world with nothing but a pen and your love to guide me.
The world it seems, has seen fit to punish my vanity, and rightly so. Or have I finally come to understand that I don't live in a legend or
an epic, have I woken from a fairy tale to understand my own weakness? I wish I had known how green the world was in my youth; perchance
I would not have taken those quiet moments with you for granted. I don't believe in myself, how can I when I have thrown away so much,
spoiled so much beauty with my ignorance, my need to ask questions of the dreams rather than accept them as blessings from your soul.

As the saying goes, "All who wander are not lost";
  I wandered far and long and very nearly was lost.
I would have been if not for signs you left for me;
  markers on the road to you, lanterns in the dark.

I knew, and always have known, that I was seeking for you,
  though I nearly surrendered many, many times.
It was always then, in the moments before I abandoned the quest forever,
  that you would whisper to my heart: "Not yet. Not yet."

And with these hands, and your love, I would rise again;
   but to what end, and for what purpose, forgotten long ago.
That clear morning where we stood together for the last time,
   had all but vanished, barely a memory, a whisp of a dream.

It was an empty land I sojourned in, but beautiful,
  so beautiful my heart would have been broken.
But no longer, for I have journeyed far enough in such places
  that I have become like them, unable to recall even your name.

But one thing in me shall never die, shall never grow old and wither,
  shall never sigh and fade into the twilight of this desert.
My heart will not forget, nor my soul abandon, nor my hands forsake
  that which gave me destiny: my love for you.

It's getting hot again, and I always start
to come back to life in the heat,
something to do with being covered in sweat
and the way things smell,
plants exploding everywhere,
wind caressing before a thunderstorm,
and the throbbing of drums deep in the night.
Somehow I always wake up with bites and scratches,
recurrent love-making and the urge
to put up mosquito netting so I can leave the windows open.
Ah, the sun turns everything soft here,
well, not necessarily everything when you're with me
and the world dissolves into a tangle of limbs and tongues,
something akin to dancing in private
and I'm not sure which I prefer;
the sensuality of moving to drums and guitars with you,
or the ferocity of our moonlight sonatas.

Ozymandias was a conqueror, a man that lay low kingdoms,
and yet is now a pillar of dust.

This, dust beneath us, is all that shall remain.

Love is all that we have of ourselves,
the only thing worth giving,
   or taking,
which stands the test of time.

Today, today.....

Did I not stand beside the shores of your river, weeping the ink my pen should have used for mere words of regret or shame or longing.

Longing for a kiss of flowers, did you not witness me writing calligraphy in the sand with the shard of a broken sword?

Today, today.....

You deigned to visit again in the small hours, a lotus from the Ishii valley, whirling in drops of incandescence.

Did I not wince with a longing for something I can barely remember save in dreams and flashes, that mystery you write of?

Today, today.....

Pieces of paper are all that may remain as proof that what I experienced was something that actually existed once.

Did I not realize that these Revolutions in my heart are only the absence of having someone near to pour my love over?

Aujourd'hui, aujourd'hui .....

Est-ce que je n'ai pas se tenir à côté des rives de la rivière, des pleurs l'encre mon stylo doit avoir utilisé sur de simples mots de regret ou de honte ou nostalgie.

Nostalgie d'un baiser de fleurs, n'avez-vous pas témoin moi par écrit la calligraphie dans le sable avec l'écharde de rupture d'une épée?

Aujourd'hui, aujourd'hui .....

Vous avez daigné rendre visite de nouveau dans les petites heures, un lotus dans la vallée Ishii, retourneraient dans gouttes d'incandescence.

N'ai-je pas wince avec une nostalgie pour quelque chose que je peux à peine n'oubliez pas enregistrer dans les rêves et clignote, ce mystère vous écrire?

Aujourd'hui, aujourd'hui .....

Morceaux de papier sont tout ce qui peut rester comme preuve que ce que j'ai connu était quelque chose qui n'existait pas dans la réalité une fois.

Je n'ai pas compte que ces révolutions dans mon coeur sont uniquement l'absence d'avoir quelqu'un près de verser mon amour?

I am afraid of what my hands may write
   I’m not sure why….
most likely something to do with not wanting to hurt anything innocent
   but I suppose we all fail at that endeavor.

Fragile, beautiful things come into our hands and we break them,
   not purposefully, desiring not to **** a lovely thing…
but we can’t seem to help it,
    can’t seem to help hurting people we love.

It ought to have been different, no one should be made to laugh at their own dreams…

I don’t want to write anymore; I want the peace of sleep.
   But I have to write…to keep my soul from dying, I have to write…..
but the only person I want to say anything to doesn’t hear me.
    No matter how absurd the situation appears,
the emotions that we feel are all we have that keeps us alive.

Oceans separate people from each other….
    oceans that even psychonauts are loath to attempt a crossing of.
Anyone who ever believed in anything knows this:
   things ought to have been different….

But people can’t think about things like this all time;
  people aren’t able to go through all of the ******* that encompasses modern life while contemplating the mysteries of human experience.
   And when things get too complicated we run away…

We fear what we don’t understand,
   and I am afraid of you.
No one had ever turned me inside out like you.
No one has ever managed to cut through the crap and shake me to the core….
   except you….

But there’s no time to focus on that,
  there’s no time to focus on one another when the whole world is imposing itself on you.
How can we possibly be expected to delve into people’s souls
  when our mortgage is due eh?

Why should we have to feel the need to love someone
while having to maintain one’s sanity in order to survive?
Since isn’t that what love is…a kind of insanity;
  the kind of insanity where one’s ego is completely swept away.

Freud never loved…
  never could form the concept of ego death
into a beautiful thing…

Certain things will never be spoken aloud by me,
  only written of….
because I too am enslaved against my will by fear of the unknown….

In the silence before the creation of existence,
what God there may be spoke of all that may come to pass.
And this is what I now come to realize:

The rhythm of the universe cries out in one ALMIGHTY voice “remember";
   Here, now, listening to Tool whilst William Blake weeps in the corner beside me,
weeps at the folly of the search for truth and meaning in such a dark
   and lonely place as this godforsaken desert of a planet……

Though what Blake knows not in his head,
  his poet’s heart has known from the beginning:
WE CREATE OUR OWN MEANING.

Just because we are lied to from birth,
  just because we are made to believe that if only we follow the rules
and vote republican, that everything’ll be all pizza
  and ******* (to quote Don Cheadle)...

Just because we realize this lie does not mean that we must submit
  to the tyranny of lost souls and pens of insignificant blabbering about god,
and morality and some such nonsense about politics.

There is NOTHING…….
  save the world we create for ourselves,
within ourselves…..like that Talmudic script of wisdom:
”We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are”.

For what dark god must we sacrifice ourselves,
to somehow save ourselves or some such ******* that doesn’t make any sense
except to say that the death of the self somehow equals salvation.

I am the Hanged Man, questing irrevocably onward in search
  of my own metaphor of a Dark Tower…..
If only you knew what kind of an impact you would have on me…..
   you who tempted me to remove my Iron Mask
because no matter how burned and deformed my soul may be,
   you prefer it to a lie…

And that’s what I have done, unto others as was done to me…..
I LIED…..I lied to protect myself from all that I thought could destroy me.

But once upon a time, in the darkest pit of despair I had ever thrown myself into,
  when I had not God nor Love nor Belief to turn to for aid or succor,
I chose to continue existing simply out of spite;
   the knowledge of life within death sprung from some unknown source within myself,
or perhaps Jung’s collective unconscious,
   or maybe even the Soul of the Universe…

I once thought that the Truth didn’t matter,
   because if one has enough power the truth becomes irrelevant
and only what people think is true matters….

BUT YOU, YOU WHO BOW TO NO MAN SHOWED ME A DIFFERENT PATH,
  A PATH OF TRUTH WITHIN THYSELF.

I couldn’t muster the epic courage necessary to tell you
   what I feel I must tell you….much more than a simple drunken I Love You of a text message…..anyone can say that…..

But ONLY I can say that I have know my first untroubled sleep
   in many years while in the same bed with you.
You asked me if you could touch me and you said I was soft….
   you said I would be soft...

I am just as soft within my heart for you as my skin used to be.
   We did nothing but look at each other and I was content within,
for just the short time we were there…..

And then came the fire, and the emptiness, and waking life
   where I walk like a wraith in *****'s rags,
thus why I hate fascism and communism and totalitarianism
   and theocracy and all that would seek to destroy the world
that I have come to love with such a fiery passion
   because it has liberated me from the chains of resistance within conformity…..

because of you…..I AM FREE.

So you've got a grudge and a roll of dollar bills stuffed in your pocket
   staring through other people's lives and loves with those hungry eyes,
and wading through the refuse you've piled about yourself.
 
 So you go burning bridges and murdering saints, weeping oil and restitution
movin and groovin and trying oh so hard to impress those ghosts,
   those shades shackled to your heart trailing behind you like hamstrung legs.

So you go on wishing you were Dante and stumbling over Elliot,
   stuck in a loop, stuck in the past, or is it the past that's stuck in you?

So you blame the world, blame the stars, blame the very beauty that it hurts
   you to see, hurts you to love, but more than anything you blame me.

Well that's too bad, that you don't want to see, too bad that you don't want
   to be stuck inside of me, torn apart and inside out, just too **** bad
that you don't wanna be sad when the sun rises and shows me who you really are.
  
Now let me tell you something boy, and I'll be extremely concise, as forward
   as I can: It's time to stop running like a hunted thing in the night,
time to turn, to change and fight.

But you've got that grudge, and those dollar bills, and you wanna find some pretty,
   broken thing to spend it on; yeah to find some hopeless eyes to rub your
empty heart on, or maybe some sad hippie girl to get your conscience on.

You turn away from me sometimes in the night and cry silently into your pillow, not wanting to wake me. But I always wake when you weep like that, and I can see the outline of your slim ivory shoulders shaking with each stifled sob. Your dark hair cascading around you in a soft halo as some unspoken sadness carries you so far away from me, to places I can't follow. Once I would like to just cast aside the hesitation and enclose you in my arms as I do when we make love. But I know that I would be invading a private moment by doing so, would somehow hurt you more, even if I don't understand why. Is it some secret shame you carry within you that causes you so much pain? Something you think I would recoil from if I knew? I would not, I swear. I would kiss away your tears as I did that day I found you in the bathtub with a bottle of whiskey and handfuls of oxy. I pulled you up out of the cold water and you clutched me like a drowning person. I never told you that it was I who really was drowning before you found me and brought my dying heart back to life. It was that night that you baptized yourself in my bathtub which gave me the courage to really love again. I played Szerelem, Szerelem and you pulled me into the bed, just wanting me to hold you. It was you who were really holding me, though you didn't know it. And when we make love, your hands in my heart and myself moving within you, it is you who are pouring your strength into me. I know that we can't last like this though, with secrets and shadows between us. Whichever of us leaves first doesn't matter. Only that it was beautiful while it lasted.

From: ex PFC Shierling, J. 16 CAB S-2 Analyst
To: Screwtape, Undersecretary, Hell CENTCOM
Date: 2015/02/14
Subject: Poor Methodology

My Dear Screwtape,

I must congratulate you on the position you've managed to hold intact for so many years. A fantastic strategic gamble to allow your correspondence with your nephew Wormword to have become published. The Patient's individual soul may have been taken in by your Enemy Himself, but the allowance of C.S. Lewis to come by those letters and publish them served you very well in it's purpose I suppose. Those souls already lost to your Enemy were confirmed, but those teetering on the edge of belief and hope in Him were turned away by such a blatant portrayal of human fallacies. Truly, your gamble may have been worth it...time will yet tell. But Screwtape, or whichever of his underlings has been assigned to break me, my own life is all I am responsible for. It's a great weapon you devised, this idea that individual humans are responsible for the actions of our entire race, that one of us is guilty of all. Yes indeed, self hate is the quickest way to your master's chains. Honestly though, your CENTCOM failed in the directives and the propaganda they fed you. Though you and your underlings may have experienced the War in Heaven, and that terrible retreat to the outer realm, I can say with absolute certainty that you were deceived in the beginning. I am imperfect, and everyday that I live I know this, and I also know that I will never be able to know the things that your Great Enemy knows, but I accept this. Nothing that you and your kind can do to me shall prevent me from looking to the stars, no pain could your broken spirits do unto me to take my hope in my Father, who is also called Love. And yet, weren't you punished by your own Chain-of-Command? Were you not tortured by those you gave loyalty to for giving Wormwood your nephew advise about your Enemy. Perhaps I, being human, have no right to cast judgement upon those who have walked about my people. All I have left to write tonight; should you grow tired of the horrors you and your kin live every day...ask of me, and we shall welcome you among those yet seeking.

It's twenty minutes to Midnight,
almost time for me to hate myself again.
Twenty minutes, and the clock is ticking
till I'll be hunted by you again.

Already I can smell you creeping,
taste you slithering up and out
of the past like some broken nightmare.

Some nights you've got the upper hand,
and others I can hold my own ground,
but neither of us can seem to outright
vanquish the hope in the other.

Were it fated for you and I,
to battle on for all eternity,
it just may be that I could jive,
nay, savy and roll with that.

But you, you've been putting your hooks
into my love's and my dear ones,
you've been putting your ****
in holes that don't belong to you.

Haunting hearts in need of repairs,
forcing your crooked smile
and your fingers made of knives
into places bleeding enough without you.

Come then, if monster enough ye may be,
to face me fully and let us end this
macabre dance in the old way,
have at me, and leave her to the
quiet love of the light of day.

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

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

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

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

So they're building yet another gigantic marble city hall right next to my office. Where does the city get the money to build all this useless crap when we DON'T EVEN HAVE A CHIK-Fil-A!?!? Oh wait, I forgot about all the old people that retired here to die.

I sit here, night after night, pouring myself into the cracks of history, bathing in obscure knowledge for the sake of trying to aquire some sort of superiority. Pointless. I've been burying myself in dusty scraps of information since I was a boy, and none of it has prepared me for you. You throw the beauty of an experience across my shoulders like a blanket and I shrug it off with mere facts and annotations, as if I'm afraid of what it would mean to accept the simplicity of you reaching out to me, not to explain but to share. The simple fact is that I withdrew from things a very long time ago and now I don't know how to come back. Always I must explain and analyze, pry up old tombstones thinking that if I can only find some kind of secret that I'd be able to step back into life. You told me that I hold too much back. You're right. I hold most everything back, bury it in the mass grave where I dumped the corpses of many selves. I don't know how to participate in life anymore, only to observe and calculate. And I'm afraid that if I can't figure out how to change that, it will strangle us.

The odd thing is that the words never stop.
Doesn't matter what time, nor how sober
I may or may not be.
I'll be at work in the middle of fixing
some poor fools situation he got himself
into by not paying attention to what buttons
he was randomly pushing and then all of
a sudden I can't really follow the rant he's
going on about windows 8 and Fannie Mae
/Freddie Mac and the whole corrupt housing industry.

Instead of paying attention to my customer there
are lines of Rumi or le Marquis de Sade or
(God Almighty) Dr. Gonzo pushing themselves
into my very frayed mind and demanding a voice.

It's at that point I decide that I have a need,
a yearning that I'm not able to fill,
subsequently I go home and drink
and write because it's all I've got keeping
me from going completely insane and
doing something ridiculous like selling
all I own and getting the hell out.

It's times like this that bring it all into
perspective for me I guess,
that moment I stop writing for the reader
and start writing for me.

Sure I'll be explicit, I'll throw my soul
onto a computer and worry about
what people think whenever I wake
up in the plastic morning.

I'm at the point now, where I'd
accept love from anybody,
my ideas (that weren't really mine)
about *** and morality, and the
strange connection between them,
really don't matter anymore.

If you want to touch me, do so.
If you want me to touch you, move my
tired hands to yours.

Amidst tangled lips and intertwined
hips, sweat and soul and heart
it's nothing but union I'm looking for.

I no longer imagine you next to me
when I lay down to sleep.

A low roar in my ears, when I accept that I'm not the one to take away the marks left by a bad man.

I'm writing you this letter because I have no address to send it to, and our relationship is such as it is that if I ever see you again and tried to speak, I would flounder upon the words. All these years later, I still receive visits from you in my dreams. I'll turn and almost expect to see you sitting beside me in the car, or reading in the park when I take my lunch break. I can still remember exactly how you felt in my arms, can still taste you if I think hard enough. The journal we shared found it's final flight from my arms in the only city I ever loved, the city that has changed me so much from the boy that didn't know what to do with a love like yours. That journal full of memories, full of who we used to be, has been brought to it's final home by the Atlantic tides. What's left of the romantic in me likes to believe it was found and read by someone who needed to know that portion of our stories. I've come full circle now I think, and I'm still grappling with the same questions I was then, still locked in combat with myself. I know that you're happy though, wherever you are. My heart still tells me that much. I hope that you've been able to turn forward and live for life's sake, and if you have, please send some of that my way. I could use some of that light you always carried with you now.

How does one climb up a mountain,
that great peak of the lover's self-doubt?

After wandering elsewhere for so long,
am I now found?

How can one convince a lover of her beauty,
nay, of her value?

I, Tiresias, though blind, could answer,
yet one must find thine own, dear worm.

Shall I tell you of that dark valley I love,
the rivulets of touch that reach down in to abandon?

When I speak of her body, she laughs;
when I speak of her heart, she tells me to shut up.

Yet, when she laughs I am overcome,
and those long nights spent speaking...cementing a meaning.

I am one apart, a man not comfortable in
full regalia, finding vulgarity resentful.
(Especially since I think myself ******)

Her resentment of her own body,
how shall I convince her otherwise?

She works with children,
yes children full of the need to be heard,
yet felled by genetics and denied
the right and ability to speak.

The connection between beautiful soul,
and wondrous mind,
and body of salvation.

Longing, longing, to be whom she needs.

And yet I know that I never will be a man
with a history or a story; that arrow through family
which she clings to.

All that I am is held in these insignificant flames,
a soul meeting another
and flowering.

This might be my last chance to write anything worth writing.

Once I stood for something tall and proud, a set of ideals and heroes.

I am no hero. No great power to wash away the shadows on your face.

I have betrayed who I am, what I stood for....out of emptiness.

I am waiting for the walls to close in on me, looking for the web to be closed over my broken limbs.  

Wake me up please, I'm tired of not enjoying this life, living only to fix those memories I see all around me.

Van Bough had something to say, and he cut his ear off in order to prove what he painted on canvas was real I think.

I am on the edge of a knife, about to find my destiny, either in hope or handcuffs.

Somehow, someway,  I have to make all this mean something, lest I give up on the world entirely.

But that doesn't matter, I am no prophet,  no wikasa kakan

I have to make myself ha e the courage to face the worst, face my soul,

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

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

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

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

(A message to my self when things get bad)

Arise boy, arise and remember this
   no one will remember your bravery

No one will remember your hope
    Or your sacrifices
Or the nights you spent hunting
     For whatever may fill the hole
      right through the middle of you.

You don't do it for the accolades,
   and you don't wrestle with your
   Minotaur for your parent's approval (as if you could ever gain it)

The chips fell as they did, because you can take it. You live under fire, because you can take it.

You give all you have....because they need it.

I was a soldier once,
and because of the time spent in that world
I thought I knew what suffering looked like.

I thought that because I have smelled death,
  and thrown away the bodies of innocents
like so many empty fruit rinds
  that I was enured to that hole in the earth.

How wrong I was to believe that such things were
the heart of that river

  the darkest I would stare upon,

"Had Paul of Tarsus been convinced that he was nothing more than a wandering weaver of carpets, he certainly would not have been the man he was...The myth that took possession of him made him something greater than a mere craftsman." -Carl Jung

Drums in the distance
as the multitudes groaning
beneath the heels of power
are beginning to realize
that they have a Voice.

Too long have we waited
silent and obedient
as we have been stripped
and beaten
and murdered.

Without fanfare and trumpets
a simple slogan
shouted through tear gas
as workers march on the Arch
and the bombs continue to fall.

"HANDS UP!
DON'T SHOOT!"

Will the people of peace
prevail over such reckless
fear and hate
crawling through the bowels
of our once great nation?

Or will there be fire
raining down from the sky
children with rifles in the streets
a prophet born in a diner
become a martyr?

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

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

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

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

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

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