The sustained winds of our life
Blow strong in the direction of love
Consistent in its endeavor
To engulf the "I" with your eyes
With you I am grounded
Compounded with the rushing pulse
Of my hearts buffeted beating
Such that, with every gust
I realize how deep the roots go
That prevent me from falling
In any direction other than into
Your arms

This is our true strength
Stronger than any hurricane
Brave enough to cross the path
Of our loves typhoon

And so the corruption began
Spreading like oil drops in water
Pooling like ***** into the eyes whites
Black the irises dilating large orbs
Frantically dashing to and fro
The enlarged vessels sickly green
And blue pulsing yellow ****
In jets to the bodies rhythmic beating
Of a dying hearts last effort less
The panicked mind give in premature
To seizures electric rigidity
Locked tight such that the leather boils
Erupt in the beautiful mitosis
Wherefore the contamination plagues

The skin sloughs ever so slowly
As it parts from the blade and body
Slipping into the pail of past identity

On top I can see the newest addition
Eyes burning with golden bursts
Accentuated by cool emerald outlines
Staring back at their owner
Accusatory
The narrow pupil dilated in question
"Why go blind?"

I ignored the orbs
Instead turning back to the business
At hand
Where I was carefully removing
Fingernails and thumbprints
One by one joining the flesh
That had once been me

My eyes glared at me
I stared back
Empty sockets dripping
Drip
Drip
"Never have I seen more clearly
For without my skin I truly feel
Without my eyes I cannot cry
Nor nails nor prints to conceal
The real me is not outside
He's inside wanting only to heal"

How can one year seem like ten?
Is love just a form of multiplication
Stacking seconds on top of minutes
To the point that each hour
Somehow violates the laws of time?
Or does the weight of our hearts
Bend the very fabric of time
Creating such gravity that our
Beats move like a wave throughout
The cosmos?

To the outside world we appear normal
Whereas the seemingly everlasting days
To them seem brief at best
For our love is anything but general
It is special to the extent
That the faster we move
The heavier we become
As we grow and learn together
Within the shared experiences
All contained within one year

365 days
8760 hours
525600 minutes
31536000 seconds
Of the special relativity
Between us and the cosmos

The oppression of life can be sweltering
For as it is with responsibility
Not all directions are chosen via choice
Nay, sometimes we can feel as slaves
Bound to a way of opposition
Against the natural progression
That would otherwise define happiness

Nature, therefore becomes operative
In the language of experience
As from childhood to adolescence
We are free to live and choose and fail
All-the-while learning from each
What it means to be a unique
Individual from the herd that
Silently stalks its prey
Patiently waiting to strike
With its conformist claws
Coated with such vile poison
That the freedom we once had
Becomes a shuddering hallucination
Quickly fading into the obscure
And routine dance of the day to day
Operations that progresses the opposite
Impression of oppression

The heat is unbearable
Just ask the sweat dripping
Drip...
Drip...
From your forehead

Without you I am lost
Awash in this sense of dread
That permeates the very core
Of a rationality held in such esteem
That never could I think
To see myself dripping and bathing
In a pool of my own blood
Intertwined with thoughts of you
And completeness and purpose;
Without you I am insane
Left to tremble with your absence
Felt as sharply as a needle
Knowing that you are too far
Beyond walking distance
Such that my heart seizes it's beating
Forgets it's meaning
Begins the ending
Deathly sending
My final thought
About living in a world
Without you

The sky was foreboding as we set sail
Dark tendrils dominated the horizon
And the telltale BOOM of distant thunder
Predicated a storm we will never forget

In defiance of mother natures fury
We pushed on
Uncaring and willing to face whatever
Obstacles she dared throw our way
Be it hell or high water
We would not quit

Neither the first disrupting sprinkle
Nor the darkening gloom could dissuade
The course we had set
As a cool chill began to soak to the bone

We yelled at the doom:

"Is this all you have to offer?
Nothing easy is ever good!
This temporary drizzle
Will never sour our mood!"

As if in response a thunderclap rose
And white lightning lit up the riverbank
Illuminating the disappearing islands
We had so stubbornly named
Engulfed by the swell of oncoming
Floodwaters filling the river to the brink
Pushing us ever onwards towards
Bank after bank
Hoping to capsize or submerge our hubris
For a monument to all who dared challenge
Her wrath

We yelled at the monsoon:

"We see you there
In the miniature big bangs
And the millions of bouncing diamonds!
We see you there
In the rising depths of oblivion
And the countless tons of tears!
We see you there behind it all
And we still love you
Mother nature dear!"

We yelled until we were mute
We rowed until our hands seized
We shivered until we were frozen
We pushed on never to be seen

It was a plainly written script offering little explanation into the intricacies of life after death.

To quote

"For every new beginning there is a new ending"

Perplexed, I took it upon myself to attempt to explain such vagueness in a way only a poet can.

What follows is to be known as:

The Prime Covenant

As I stand on the thresholds of death
I can see the landscape of my life
Spread out against the horizon in frames
Within one I see my birth
Kicking and screaming as I met the light
(Curious because, in life, this moment was fast forgotten following the burst of new experience)
To take in the sights of my mother
So proud to have her only child
That she clung to me through joyful tears
Then my fresh eyes caught my father
Shaken to the core after experiencing
The recreation of his own birth
For I was like him and he was as me
(In between all these new wonders rose my first breath, which was so sweet that even the frame of the memory shuddered from excitement)
Through it all I see the memory of love
That can only be found in lifes first moment

From the corner of my peripherals
A new frame caught my eye
Where I stood for the first time
Following months of incessant beckoning
From my parents to abandon the crawl
That had led me away from infancy
Flashes of fear and pure joy mingled together
Leading to my first step
Which led to another
To another
So rapidly I couldn't control the momentum
FREEDOM!
And then I was running
(The fastest toddler alive if you ask my father)
My legs taking me far and wide to explore
The wide world around me as the frame shifted

Orienting itself into a picture of me
And my first favorite tree
A magnolia standing taller than any God
A child could hope to fathom
But also small enough a mountain
To not stay my freshly found love of movement
Until I was at the top
Looking down at a world wider than comprehension
As flicks of terror stained the frame red
When the screams of my mother
Snapped me back to the reality
That I was a toddler in a tree
My tree

Driven away by panic the frames spun forward
Like that button on old school casset players
Comprised of two sideways triangles
Where every frame appeared frozen
While also moving
Until I sickened of the pace and settled
On a frame seemingly dark
(Bits of angry red and sad grey completing the new patina)
That revealed a new memory of forgotten times
A time where tears prevailed for all accounted
There stood my father, frozen in the door
(The screen partially open to allow his head to poke through)
And my mother, hand on my arm in a vice
Incoherent through sobs of lost love
As she dragged me away from the door
My arms flailing as I made a futile effort
To reconnect the two
...just two more steps...
Then I was in the car
(An old Ford pento if the frame is to be believed)
Reversing away from the driveway that was my home
From my first moments to my first tree
I wailed in what seemed agony
At my father's outstretched arms
Protruding from a screen door
Illequiped to hide his tears

Within the frames I became lost
Neither direction nor time having meaning
(For what end can be more traumatic then divorce for an innocent five year old?)
Here and there were glimpses into yet more
Beginnings lost to even more endings;
My first day at school...
The death of my grandfather...
My first kiss...
The end of my first friendship...

Friendship

The frame broke my distress and stole my focus
"David, my mom said it was alright if you stay the night at our house!"
I was excited
(Finally a reprieve from traumatic rememberances)
He said "Alright, I'll tell my dad and be over after school!"
He was excited
(His mom had died the year before due to something called 'overdose' and was constantly sad so it felt good to see such life come into him)
The frame grated into place a few hours later
My mother stood in the kitchen of our small trailer
Crying as she told me "I have something to tell you."
(I was eight and seeing her cry made me cry)
"What's wrong mommy?" I asked
She said "honey, we can't afford to live here any longer, your aunt is on her way to pick us up."
(According to the frames this was the fourth such occurance)
"But I invited David over like you said to stay the night!" I pleaded
To no avail as my aunt pulled up to take us away
From my first friendship

Distraught, I raged at the horizon
"Why do you toy with me so?!
You tease these memories of beginnings
Only to destroy them with endings!"
As if in reply the frames shook,
An internal earthquake occurred
And there she stood
My wife
Frozen in the frame of the first time we met
A memory I could never forget
As beautiful as a late afternoon sunset
Fixated, I took her in my arms
Refusing the frame to let go
Holding on through the fast forward
Of our first kiss...
The first time I met our kids...
Our first argument...
To my last breath...
"Though there may be endings to some beginnings, my love for you will never die...
I...
Love...
You..."

The frames ended similar to the last reel of film from an antique video
The light across the horizon faded
Yet I still held her frame
...never to let go...

You see, the Prime Covenant is the deal we make with ourselves upon entering this life.

We agree to feel love as equally as we agree to feel loss.

Life after death is the reward for making this pact so that even in the darkness that follows the light, the most wonderful beginning will always be with you beyond every end.

Symbols are signs,
Assigned by design.
Representing the ideas,
Concepts reside.
In the language we speak,
The words we write.
Symbols are to blame,
For contradiction plight.
So say what you mean,
And mean what you say.
Letters and numbers,
Symbolic Array.

When faced with limits
Art goes to die on a mount
Born a deity is

Rules that restrict life
Natural order of things
Resenting our art

Break the rules and see
With haiku is prophecy
Limits are the start

To fly you must jump
Free falling before the ground
Breaks apart your skull

Atlas may have shrugged
But you're a fool
I wish the weight of the world
Would simply crush you
And your blind faith
To which you hold esteem
That is quickly draining
Your life as you bleed
To death do us part
Theres always a plan
Whether divine creation
Or evolutions hand
You think I'm wrong
We'll let me teach you
For in every situation
My philos will be true
Never succumbing
To popular notion
The wisdom of your words
Like an empty ocean
So tell me again
The master plan
Because blind faith
Creates a blind man

We're all weightless
Compared to the mass
Of the sun
And moon
Yet our minds
Can carry more weight
Than an entire galaxy
Maybe this is how
The universe communicates
Across the ever expanding
Cosmos
By creating the byproduct
That we can observe as time
While the space we occupy
Is minuscule
In comparison
To the big bang
That is a thought
Without weight

There are bodies lying everywhere
Decaying
Home to thousands of wriggling maggots
And flesh eating flies
Devouring
The remains of your victims
While slowly mulching organic material
Into a fertilizer of death
Destruction
Where each corpse is marked
By bleach white bones
Crossed in such a way
You can visibly feel their pain
Decrease

Be mindful of what you say
In your personal world of lies
For with every story you tell
Only an ounce of truth resides
Hidden behind honeyed words
Or elegantly designed lines
The honesty that we surely see
Is nearly impossible to define
Past the point where it all began
The meaning intended to be divine
Is nothing more than a metaphor
That a reader will struggle to find
So just ask the important questions
And in the process you will bind
The hearts of every man or woman
That is in possession of a mind
Such as "what is the purpose of life?"
Knowing the answer is "to be kind."

As I wake to a new day, a new me arises
Different yet the same, a fresh reset
Retaining those values, fundamental
In defining one's true character, absent
The previous outline of my whole.

Confusion takes hold, for now I am half
Like folded tracing paper, overlapping
Complex lines in gesture, ever moving
In an attempt to remember, who I was
Before peaceful sleep took me under.

Stubborn I stand tall, looking around
To my surroundings, searching for meaning
Amongst a newly minted world, glimpsing
A single picture, mirroring my sketch
Standing next to the only reason I wake.

...

Only your beauty can complete my art.

...

You, my heart.

As it dawned,
The Golden age of man
A wonderful group was assembled
To analyze the Sands

Grain by grain
Hands that they shook
Forever questioning the meaning of life
Remembered only by books

Yet for the men of Philos,
Quickly did they die,
Were criminalized by the people they loved
Mourned by those that cry

Since wisdom is a trade
Surrounded by weightless fences
The spiritual, the ignorant, the arrogance of all
Left Philos nigh defenseless

For there is a price for everything
Just ask the great city
To tell the tale they all forgot
About Philos and its fee.

Blood lashes in the rain as the wind buffeted the Plains of Detritus.
Fetid smells plagued the air in torrents of swirling effluence.
The red moon shone beyond the bending and bowing trees slashing the horizon.
A lone figure stood awash in the downpour yet firmly unaffected by the gale.
"Stay" said the statue.
Unmoving in his conviction that all trespassers be swept away with the storm.
White lighting struck the ground mere feet from his outstretched palm.
The explosion reaping a cacophony of destruction resulting in smoldering craters.
Glare obstructed the morosity but did little to extinguish the rotten fumes of death.
As sight regained clarity another flash lit the scene to reveal a writhing mass
Emerging from the rent earth like the oscillating arms of a millipede.
"Come closer" said the Devil.
In a blink a thousand wails descended on the land.
Baring teeth and grabbing hands.
Reaching...
Reaching...
To grab hold of the light of the last soul holding claim to its life.
Stubborn, it resists the touch of darkness by force of will alone.
Until even the last spark of hope became entangled within the putrid hellscape,
Winking out of existence and forgotten;
Consumed by evil.
"Such is the price of the blood moon" cackled the fallen angel.

Breathless,
As we are bled dry.
Philosophy,
Our lost art dies.
Sadness cries,
At remorseful goodbyes.

Greatness,
Now gagged and bound.
Lost,
Never to be found.
Speechless we sit,
Competent to admit:

That we have to quit,
Lest we remain,
Silently content.

"Everybody loves notes"

Its the way we convey
In written words
What can't be said
Through spoken tones
Or relay those feelings
Which can't be expressed
Through candor and verbatim
Alone

No,
Its more complex
To add a style
Rich with syntax
And double in meaning
So I can draw you in
Then repeat again
After every time you're reading

In this way
May you never forget
The moment in time
I'm after
Immortal is the scribe
That can contrive
A letter of the soul
Forever

P.S.
...
A Post Scriptum endeavor
Intending to highlight
This memory
Canonized together
...
(Everybody loves notes)

Upon the banks
Of this little island inlet
The waxing light of sol's solace
Blanketed the horizon
For mile after mile
Casting a cool warm glow
Like a candle in winter
Slowly waning at the stars
Descent
When at its apex
The water began to shimmer
Ruffling our image into bright
Ripples
Replaying our landscape
And our facade
Into countless ruminations
Of the single second
That marked twilight's ascent

This reflected memory remembered
In the twinkling sky
At night

I wish we could have stopped
To catch our breath
And consider the path to which we now travel
I feel guilty
Guilty that my behavior
Became a tyrant
Dictator
Focused solely on the oppression of the "I"
So consumed was I
In my hunt for supremacy and success
That I lost you within my own hubris
Thinking that it's my way
Or the highway
Just because I read a few books
Doesn't make me king everything
The way I smothered you
Makes me king nothing
For this I am broken
I did not realize the burden of proximity
Until the erosion of your character was complete
For this I apologize
I did not intend
For it to end
In such a way
I loved you
You were my balance and muse
Yet I threw you away like you were old news
Until that's what you became
A person lost in the complexity
Of a prison I built with words
Not your own
Forever reducing you to a mere shadow
Of the woman
Living in my home

My actions
My fault
My heart
My vault
My
My
My
Never you

I'm sorry