Look at what I've got;
I've got bling, and money too.
Why then the despair?

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.

Sometimes I get
Overheated
And my mind
Swirls down this
Vicious path, in a
Whirlpool,
Turbulent,
Wild,
With a radius of spin
Ever decreasing,
Steadily moving in for the final drop ...
... At the last moment, I awake, and
Reach out to grip
Something, Someone,
Anything that can
Halt my
Descent.

Trying very hard
Not to over-think
While the lack of action
Brings me to the brink.

Hey man, you want the money,
Why d'you have to play this game?
Why pretend you don't need it?
Just admit it, you love it,
Love the thought and the feeling of it,
Love the things you'd get,
The way you'd feel,
The way you'd want others to feel.
Why lie to me, why lie to yourself ?
No one's gonna give you a medal,
For persisting in this pretence.
So you better be sure
About what you want,
Or you'll be left, in the end,
With only your holier-than-thou.

Not so silently, that I miss it myself,
Speak a little louder to me,
I'm setting sail for the lonely isle,
Over the lonely sea.

Look, this hour, the moon rises,
Watching over the moor,
Would you wait on me, in the field,
Till it rise no more?

There is a time, after time,
This you must believe,
For I'll see you there, in that certain place,
Where there's none to grieve.

I've figured out, perhaps,
The problem of my
Procrastination, which is
Nothing more than a
Denial of
Reality.

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.

He said, I don't know how
To get unstuck.
She said, the only
Wrong thing is to do
Nothing.

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

The hardest part about
Growing
Is fighting
This sense of time
Running out,
Of wishing
I can do better than I did,
Wondering
What happens if I don't,
Dreading
What happens if I can't

I sleep by the fire,
Waiting for it to burn out.
Wake me when it ends.

Run, run, run!
Through the field, but
Wait, wait, wait!
For me, I'm not
As fast, and
Look, look, look
At me take a fall.

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.

Returning now to the scene of the crime.

I was a different man.

At a different time and a different place,
I will find one person the same

I'm not so bad,
Am I ?
You don't need to be
Scared of me.
Come closer,
I won't bite.
Forget what I
Said earlier,
I'm not really
Out to get you.

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.

Cold waves
Dark clouds
The plants crawling up to me
An island kingdom
Moving rock
Boats setting out to sea

I'm not
Interested in the
People who live their lives
As zombies,
Go to work, go to school, go
Shopping, who live
Without feeling,
Without curiosity.
No, for me, the
Wounded people,
Those who spend their days
In a haze of
Incomprehension, trying to
Come to terms with their
Thoughts, their actions, their
Feelings, which though
Denied, bubble up
Continuously, and sometimes,
Break through.

Judging big and small
Is hard to do.
Would you judge by
Fame or fortune? Or by
Their words and deeds?
And what do you really know
Of the latter?

The fervent quest I felt I had been on
Reached a desolate dead end.
I cannot see where to go from here.
I fear I must know retrace my steps,
A long way back,
And join the rest
On their well-trodden paths.

Spiky wavy lines
From the center of the sun;
I must be so high.

You tell me this way, I go that.
You ask for this, I give you that.
You say sit, and I then jump.
You say slow, I speed over the bump.
You look down when I look up.
You climb up when I walk down.
You push and shove, I slip right by.
You fly and I crouch near the ground.
You stand at guard, always watching,
Don't bother with it, you won't see me coming.

I quake with feelings
That I thought were long suppressed
Why do you taunt me?

Pick a number,
pick a moment,
pick a memory,
pick a thought.

These are all the same.
There are just as many of each of them.

They are just as close to each other
and just as far apart

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.

Are you like I was?
Is this who we're meant to be?
Were you like I am?

How do I wash myself
Clean of the past that still
Clings to me and makes me
Doubt every action,
Censor every thought,
Freezes the flowing river of
Change into a dull,
Crystalline, still image.

Chug along,
Don't make too much of a noise.
You want to make an impact,
But you don't really want them to find you,
Do you ?
Do you want to be seen,
Or heard,
Or felt ?

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.

To decide what to do,
It might help to
Focus on what you would
Regret not doing.

Something stirs within the
Imaginary world, and
Through my mind,
Desires, most strongly,
To be born.

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?

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 had a dream, in which I asked
Why I was so unhappy,
Why my life turned out the way it did,
When I clearly wanted something else.

I was shown a mistake I made,
A long time ago,
A terrible mistake, I now perceived.

When I saw this,
The sources of my problems
We're clear to me; the path
Of my life since then
Was clear to me.

“But”, I cried out,
“How can I change this now?!
How can I fix this?"

No answer was then received,
And I realized,
That I was far unhappier
Now
That I knew.

For better or worse,
When I awoke,
I remembered the pattern of this dream,
But not the mistake.

All these blogs and news sites and social networks
Are like a crowded stack of loose, unordered
Books and sheets of papers,
I'll-balanced, towering, quivering,
Ready to bury me under them any moment.

When you stand off base
And let the winter cheer in,
While the trees dance
Their merry dance, and
The wind circles round in glee,
Remember this moment,
When all was wonderful,
Remember it for you and me.

I am a ship, he said, of the desert.

I go to the oasis, to get all the love I can,
To soak it up and store it,
For the long, hard journey ahead.

The mirages, they trick me.
Cruel they are, to show me
What does not exist.

Argh! Stop telling me
What to do.
Wait, you're not anymore,
You say ?
You just used to ?
Why am I still doing this then ?
Am I a prisoner to the past ?
Or do I just like it now ?

Somewhere it was
Where I misplaced you.
Now I retrace my steps,
Looking within the
Pools of streetlights,
Hoping I don't need
To look in the dark places.

I'm in a rush now
I'll regret it very soon
Abysses unfold

Not enough to die;
I must create a new life
From my former self

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.

I was weak, and
Then I was split,
Into Two.

One in a cage and one,
I,
Strong.

But I was lured by fear,
Near
The caged one.

I sought shelter, from
An image, and
He let me in.

Then he locked us
Both in,
Trapped us.

The key was gone, he
Took his life, and
Left me.

Clearly,
Worse off than
Before.

It's funny when people think
I make up the stuff I write,
As if I sit around choosing
What happens next.
Or maybe it's scary,
Or maybe it's embarrassing,
Because really all I do
Is writ down what I see
When I close my eyes.

A strange dance
Of circumstance
I jolt awake,
Revisit the quake
The scene of the crime
Where I made mine
The Great Refusal.

I submitted my case,
"as you can plainly see",
I understated,
"I'm not quite happy",
And was promptly
Laughed out.
Oh, hah hah, they said,
It's way past the time
For that;
What've you been doing
All this time?
Well, alright, I said,
But don't blame me
For the shape of things to come.