A tingle up and down,
Sometimes,
A spark,
In love and life.

A fleeting sensation,
Dissolving and
Reforming,
Fixing,
Reconstituting.

Uniting, and
Igniting.

White stone canyon
Gleaming in the sun
Empty of men and women
Empty of grass and trees
Filled only with forgotten monuments
Small ones, and big ones towering above
But above them all a single spire
Judges all around it
Watches them fill up
With sand and mud and dirt and dust
Till it alone remains, a pillar of white stone
As tall as me

Tell me what you see, said the old man,
But it was white, all white, and
What could I possible make out in the storm ?
Yet he insisted, standing behind the rock to my side,
Glowering at me with his steady eyes.
And I in turn glowered, at the
Vast white nothingness,
Which seemed a single mass;
Something there was that seemed to flow
Within it, under it.
Yes, the nothingness did move, and so
On I stared.

There were lines forming in it;
Fractures, small and large.
One in particular loomed large
And broke off, sliding down.
Only then did I see what lay behind it, but
Would you believe me if I told you ?

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.

Judge if you must, but then
Let this much be understood:
All that is good may yet be bad,
And all that is bad, good.

Plod, plod, plod,
He came home and hung up his cloak,
The days of crime-fighting are over.

Tick, tick, tick,
Which corner should he climb into now?
His day of reckoning draws nearer.

Bam! bam! bam!
The kryptonite is doing its work,
He knows it's now all over.

Many black suns
Fly through my fingers,
As I close one eye
And open the other,
Pulsing in beat to my dreams.

A sunset.
A drowning.
Whom do I save,
The sun or you?

We wanted each other
But at different times
There was love to be shared
Between each other

Instead we opted
For different kind of
Symmetric relationship

We hurt each other
But at different times
There was pain to be shared
Between each other

Hah
Hah hah
Hah hah hah hah

Weep now.

The wicked, wicked man.
He took my clothes, my shoes,
My money. My leather wallet
He found it funny. But he took it anyway,
He grabbed it all and then he ran.

I could've caught him if I could stand,
He took the ring right off my hand!
And my new sunglasses, he tore them off
And left me lying in the sand.

Ah that man, that wicked man.
Couldn't some kindness been shown by him?
If he had to rob, couldn't he be gentle,
Instead of smiling his wicked grin?

I didn't see just where he went.
You see, I couldn't quite move my head.
I would if I could, but dearest reader,
I assure you I am quite dead.

Passing through the fields,
He stopped by the lonely tree,
And tied his horse nearby.

A little further was the hill,
Overlooking the sea,
Green in time gone by.

Dug a hole ten paces west,
Got down on his knee,
Put his hands inside.

Pulled out the box,
Opened it up,
Then sat back and cried.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 creeping crawling pain
That seems to control me
And slip away when I try
To find its controlling
Tendrils that have yet again
Succeeded in making me do
Something that I regret

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.

Something there is, that doesn't
Like me writing, that
Pushes back at me, that
Drives me to other distractions, and
When all else fails,
Beats me down with fear.
Seriously, what gives?

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.

They shuffled on down
The long winding road between the mountains,
Each following the other,
Their faces stony and grim.
"Don't go!", I shouted at them,
"Don't you see that it
Doesn't have to be this way?"
I ran around them,
Waved my hands and tried
To get them to stop.
But they marched on,
Slowly, forlornly, on
Into the falling night.

It rushes away from me, I to it
Around me grey mush, dark space
But there, a smooth plane stretching out both ways,
The White Wall

In the dimness I see others around
Me, going about their ways, but
Do they not see or do they
Not care at all?

I move vigorously, but stay in place
As does everyone else, but
Is this enough? Am I not
Supposed to fall?

To fall towards it (or away from it),
I make painful progress. I cannot judge
By parallax whether I draw nearer or
Not, to the Wall.

But I must. I know I must,
Make it here sooner or later,
For when I am silent I do most
Clearly hear its call.

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

His mother's hand,
His father's pen,
The empty land,
The hurt within.

The minds need feeding too, with
Food for thought.
Avoid stale thoughts, fast thoughts, sugary thoughts,
Take in only what you'd like to
Become part of you.

The ticking of the clock
Made me look up;
But instead of its face
A protruding pair of batteries.

I turned it around,
Set it right.

It stopped.

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.

Pull out
Of the flower
The dead bee.
It gets in the way.

A needle going into an eye,
A hundred nails scratching slate,
The hammering of nail into flesh;
These and a thousand other
Means of torture,
Pale in comparison
To the maximum extent
Of the mundane horror
Of everyday life.

I climbed aboard a train that took me
Further and faster
Than others on horseback.
Yet now I'm desperate:
The map is all wrong,
These stations I pass are those
I wanted most to avoid.
I want to change direction,
But see only miles and miles
Of straight track ahead.
Will there be another junction,
A crossing of tracks,
A way to reroute,
To change course?
Or is the only option
Derailment?

It's too funny. My mind
Is overheated. Hate when
This happens. I'm all
Twitchy, and
Jumpy, and
Unable to focus, which
Is not a bad thing, just
Tedious.

It's comic and tragic,
The cycles,
The ups and downs.
Sometimes the devil wins,
Sometimes I do
(But usually it's him).
I'm tired of these
Unnecessary spells of
Unceasing torture, they
Leave my
Body racked, and
Levy a terrible toll
On my mind.
"Crack!", they say.

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

A short glimpse of a disembodied smile,
A run through tall grass,
A sheltering under dripping trees,
A long series of furtive glances,
A rising, a tripping, a tumbling,
Quick snatches of non-solitary
Wandering; these are the
Fading contents of my
Mind today morning.

My happiness is under my control.
So what does it mean that I am unhappy?
Do I want to be unhappy?
Do I not know how to be happy?
Did I know how to be happy but have now forgot it?
Surely one of these must be true,
But which one?

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

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

The mind cannot live for me, that is the mistake I made.
It cannot be easy, because it is not supposed to be.
It cannot be complicated, because it is not supposed to be.
It is supposed to be simple and hard.

Well, I can't just
**** myself;
What would
My parents think?!

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

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

Take my clothes,
Bring me my robes,
It is now time
To go out into the world
Again, to take measure
Of the changes I need to make.