Before you can free yourself,
You must first see your prison,
Learn its shape and size.
The way out is easy, a
Hole in the wall; but
You won't make it through
If you don't open your eyes.

I feel like going
On a grand adventure.
To discover new worlds
And new horizons.
I am too full of knowing;
It is time now
To experience.

If you stare hard enough at it
For long enough,
It will give up to you
Its secrets.

Resentment.
I overflow with it.
I am filled with doubt.
Filled with dread and
Longing.
Which is me and which is other.
I knew only that I had to do
The Right Thing.
I cannot now say
What it was.
Either I must persevere, or
Abandon.
And I cannot choose between them.

Have I been wrong all this while?
Should I have done something different?
Should I change everything now?
Have I rejected wonderland for hell?
If yes, can I go back? Can I undo the past?
If no, how long can I go on this way?
It hurts! It pains! It stings!
The past claws at me,
And my faith grows weak.
How long can I go on,
Without a sign?

Why do you keep me alive,
In pain? Why am I not dead?
I do not understand your wisdom.
Why am I dragged in chains,
Through the filth of the world?
What purpose are you driving at?
Why do you treat me so? Do you not
Believe I will rise in anger the moment my
Cage is unlocked, my
Manacles are opened?
Or do you believe by this I will
Learn some Principle as yet unseen?
Do not hide the future in this mist!
Why do you tempt me?
Can I not tear everything down,
Even at this moment?
Why are you so certain?
Why must I be tested in blindness?
Can I not know a bit, see a bit?
Can I not glimpse a bit of that which
I fight for, so that I may
Rely less on faith alone?

Last night, I had a terrible vision.
(Maybe it was something I ate,
something I read, something I felt)
But I saw
Broken bodies lined up in bridges, over
Chasms of fire and molten rock.
I sweltered in the suffocating smoke,
Choked on the overpowering stench, the
Constant groaning and moaning, the
Laments that rend the air, and my heart.
This was not some other world, some
Fictional world, some
Past world.
No, this was the present world,
Collapsed, somehow folded up,
Distilled, only making visible that
Which was hidden.

On the back of the beast,
Being tossed around,
Finding the right moment to strike,
To still it,
To save
My world.

My Facebook feed lies empty,
I have no one to poke.
I took reluctantly to Twitter;
So far it's been a joke!
My Tumblr account was built
From a theme right off the shelf
And I found nothing -- nothing!
When I tried to Google myself.

Some days are sunshine
Some days are stone
Some days it hurts more,
Right down to the bone.

Turned and twisted out of shape,
I stagger away from the inferno,
When I come face to face with another,
My eyes staring into hollow sockets.
What apparition is this?
It's bony finger points the way
To a hollow opening.
I emerge into a
Vast cave,
Illuminated,
Where cloaked figures are
Conjuring up new forms
To replace what remains of the old.
"Is there no escape
From the wasteland?", I ask.
The solemn figures continue,
Mournfully,
Seriously.
The apparition returns,
And tells me it is I who
Perceive things wrongly.
The wasteland is my mind, it says,
If I did not earlier see the
Enchantment,
I will not see it now.

What's that? A
Glow on the edge, with
Smoke rising cloudward.
Renewed hope,
I trudge forward
Through the waste. Alas,
Disappointment awaits,
Since I have only found the
Sacrificial zone.
Cinders and ashes,
Bone and smoke,
The engines and the
Hidden furnaces where
Our erstwhile
Commodities were
Forged. Now spewing forth
Chaotically, yet no less
Uselessly than before,
While the former things,
Divided and mute,
Serve still to distract.

After the deluge, the waste; or rather,
The wastes, the
Mountains of *******, of
Detritus,
Bits and Pieces of the
Disassembled past,
Presented now in
Disordered heaps that
I tread upon carefully, ever
Watchful of sinkholes.
The horizon shows
No end yet, merely
Silent noise.

At the center lies not the
World tree, holding up
Everything,
But instead a vacuum, into which
Rush the broken pieces of things,
Torn apart by the
Centripetal force
Of a chronic
Absence.

I think you do not recognize it
For you have become used to it,
And internalized its patterns.
Everything is falling apart,
But not simultaneously,
And at different rates;
So you may pretend
To find stability
In the rhythm
Of failure.

If it's never too late,
Is it sometimes
A little late?

How do you tell
The difference?

The forms of things
Are ever in flux
On their margins,
But once in a long while,
Solid turns to liquid,
And there is a small window
To act,
To change
The boundaries,
As former things pass away,
And new ones come into being.

How do you live
In a broken world
And not talk about
How broken it is?

What did you find there,
High up on the mountain,
Was it golden treasure?
Or merely corpses?

Ouch
That's just
Cliche
(Or worse,
Convenient)
We don't really
(These days)
Do "love" any more.

I'm sitting
Here, sipping
My coffee, and
Wondering
What you're up to.

I believe that
You'd believe anything that
I told you,
Except the things that
You don't want to hear.
Clearly,
You like being lied to.

Pouring through a prism,
Into a fresh soul.

Bubbling up,
A moving mist.

The first sights, and
The first sounds.

The world, she said, is not coherent,
I do not know what to believe.
I am free, they say, and information
Flows and falls through my sieve.

I once felt as though I caught the world
In a moment when it was off-guard,
When everything seemed inter-connected,
All one -- with nothing to discard.

But that didn't last (what does?), and ever since
As events spin inwards and out,
I journey on, on my long quest
To see what it's all about.

"Who goes there?"
No one;
It is a dark street,
But feels like green fields.

Are we supposed to be happy
Or to do the right thing?
Surely we can do both ...
Which means
Surely I can do better.

They're busy trying
To fill your life
With greater comfort
And greater security;
But they don't know
That comfort's not what
You want at all.
Do they even suspect,
That you would give up
Everything!
For the slightest chance
Of bringing into your life
The slightest meaning?

I saw a whole army of wretched souls
Led on to do wondrous works ...
I made my way to their leader,
One shrouded in a dour cloak,
Who urged them forward to do their works,
And asked him, "how is this possible?",
He replied, "These are all those
Who wanted to **** themselves ...
All I did was to convince them, instead,
To give their lives to me."
I stared, mystified, as these long columns
Made their way through the world,
Overcoming with ease those who clung
Tightly, bitterly, long, to their illusions.

My eyes are drooping,
I should be sleeping,
All that's keeping
Me awake is reading
about how **ed up
The  World Is.

Sometimes, she said,
I see too much.
It jams up the circuits
Of my mind, and
Reduces me to
Paralysis.
If I could but structure these
Constant
Hallucinations
Into a more
Coherent vision, I might
Manifest it
By will alone.

He muddles his way
Through all the
Puddles.
She stutters, mutters, and
After a moment,
Sputters.
He spies, shies away, and
Lies.
She sighs, hides away, and
Cries.

Some years ago, before my
Mind established its iron
Tyranny on the rest of my
Body, and the futile
Revolt that was led by my
Heart was easily suppressed,
I dared to ask this simple
Question: are there
Things out there that have their
Independent existence, or does my
Mind insert itself between me and
Reality, and invent these things as an
Illusion to prevent me from seeing the
Truth?

A lit stage, with diffuse light,
An expectant audience,
Occasional murmers receding
Into restless silence.
All are present and
Accounted for; they hold
Their tickets in their hands
Like sacraments,
Reassuring, validating, official.
They fidget, watch the time,
Avert their eyes from their
Companions.
Finally, their anxiety mounts, their
Silence splinters into a cluster of
Whisperings; why are they not
Entertained?
The appointed time has come and
Passed, the show, the
Show must go on!
From nearby places and distant times,
They've all come for one
Purpose; to watch the
Monologue. Yes, the very
One that others like them
Heard; and how now can they
Be left out?
But look, a man walks on stage,
He is apologetic, he wrings his
Hands, he takes the
Microphone and informs them:
Someone shot the
Actor.

He was as if in a trance,
His thoughts far away,
Both in time and in space.
His body twitched
Of its own accord,
His eyes fixed and unmoving.
"Breathe!", I asked him, but he
Just pushed me away,
Shut the door behind him and
Steadily marched on outside to
Join the rest of the
Dead men walking.

They had come, all of them,
Answering the call of the gleaming
Spire, mounted atop the tallest
Tower. They stood in
Ordered rank and file, gently
Vibrating to its command, their cortexes
Humming in accord with its
Pulsing stream of information. They
Each had eyes but did not see, they
Each had ears but did not hear.
No, they had long ago
Judged far better the sights and sounds
Fed to them. Those who refused the
Implant were cast aside, being
Indistinguishable from that vile, that
Beastly, that ***** place outside called
Nature.

Hey you!
In there, in the mirror,
Looking doped and looking sleepy,
I loathe you!

Hey you!
Beginning another dreary day,
With no plan for your escape,
How I loathe you!

Hey you! No feeling, no
Feeling at all ...

Sitting here in my head,
Staring into the wall.

I see them on the corners,
The goers and the comers,
The lifters and the beaters,
The high-flying skaters,
The low-life drifters.
I see the time tick by
As they move in slow motion
The air growing thick
With my anticipation.
I cry, "the hour is here!",
The clock chimes on,
The day comes and goes,
But oh, they linger on.

A great mist may lift,
And clear out entirely,
If you could only fix your gaze
On the tiniest dot of light
That has found its way through;
Then you might find it expands
On its own, until
The mist is no more.

The man in gray fled down the street
And I followed, flying low
Until I broken even, then
Gripping him in my talons,
Bore him off towards the pit.
Nearing it, I was ready
To drop him, when
I woke up.

in those days
I could not tell
the One
from the
Other

Stop distracting me,
Stop tearing me apart,
Stop holding me down,
Stop ... dissolving me!
You stick to me! Help!
I chop off whatever I can see,
Leaving a few bits here and there,
But it corrodes me still.

Either I will
Be very good
Or very bad;
In my middle ground
Lie burnt bridges
And sunken ships.
One shore or the other
Is where I will land,
I refuse to drown
In the waters between.
Others have built
Makeshift rafts
And occasionally,
Large boats, on which
They peacefully navigate.
But this I scorn.
Though the horizon shows
No evidence of any other
Feature but endless water,
The isles do exist,
And I will not rest
Until I have found one of them.
I hope it is the better one.
But I have lived
Many years now,
Having spurned
The floating comforts
Where others gathered,
And can no longer guard against
The temptation of dry land
After a lifetime afloat.

She said my sky,
My sky is full of stars.
But look, she said,
I'm looking at them
Through these bars.

Ooh, that feels good ...
... what was it I stepped on again?

The moon was melting today,
And I brought out my cone.

My reflection grew blurry,
So I shut my eyes.

Trip, and if you
Keep doing it often enough, you'll
Tip over and run the last time, just
Rip through the road and the people,
The things and events and
The trials and the tragedies,
Till you find
Your momentum, and you
Go off on a tangent, and you
Fly through the air, and
Escape.

And I'm just sitting here,
Biding my time.
Useless, you say?
Useless it may
Well be.
Am I lazy?
Am I revolting?
Am I just
Standing by,
Waiting for you,
To get behind you,
To make my move?

The only thing worse
Than life *******
Is other people
Finding out
Just how much
It *****.

I keep willing the end
Before I start;
Is it any wonder then
That I accomplish nothing?

I hate making choices.
I tell myself
I'm going to die
Anyway, so
What's the point ?
But then I also
Forget to live.

I slipped
In a puddle
And crashed
Into someone
Else's reflection.