It's not often when a man meets a woman
Who makes him feel better than he'd feel on his own
This woman is a testament to motivations unknown
But a testament nonetheless to feelings kept devoted
to the idea of another to forever kiss and hold

Now these sentiments might sound sappy
to those without a love both sad and happy
But it matters less than little to those who have
endured the peaks and the valleys
in order to reach the ebullient plateaus of contentment

Life’s an upward struggle, and it makes it so much rougher
when the ladder you find yourself climbing is beset by lonely weather.  
When every other rung is off doing other things,
the solitude and altitude bring to mind desolation
and the emptiness that brings.  

No matter the genius emanating from ivory minds,
the smartest man among us often finds
that brilliance unfiltered clogs up the system,
when others must consume the lonely perfume
of conceits kept alone,
while the common thoughts stay collected
like so many sheep in a pen that’s separated
from self-same lonely thoughts,
that genius oft encounters,
left only amongst the happiness
that fills up life’s happy coffers.  

So it goes that lofty ideals become frostbitten
by snowcapped mountains of emptiness.  
Others seek the heights together only during pleasant weather,
while those who trounce through snow-packed trails
must brave the climes alone tempted only by fate,
to descend to summits more frequent
than the peaks of accomplishment.  

Gangrenous lips cannot utter
the chilled revelations of those left above too long.  
So it is left to those below,
not inferior from the altitude,
just more likely acclimated to the difficult, dull journey
of those who spare pristine slopes
for the sullied, muddied slush on the tourist trails below.

It’s the damndest thing when attentions focused
on one thing beget the focus of another
Like the rooster crowing the sunlight
in the cold, ungrateful weather,
My eyes scan the ups and downs
of those digital stand-ins for those I’ve known
Seeing mistakes, my own and in others,
Seeing perfection, in other’s imperfect successes,
wantonly rubbed in my eyes

As I springboard from the travails of those
with whom I may never vocalize my adoration
I drop out of the air of a life far from mine,
I see mention of a passed on spirit
Who I truly adored,
no digital fakery of half-true fables necessary
to express my love for the ideals implanted in me
by such a tongue so supplicant to the truths in that vast ether
where I used to swim in the light,
never thinking of the dark climes below.  
What choice do I have on an accidental evening like tonight?
I no longer can mask disinterest for other’s soaring narratives
when my true care has been discovered,
been pried away from that dark corner of the airborne pool so ethereal.  

My care, my pride have been torn asunder,
by a mere errant glance on a mere sideways mention
Of a massive, earthly idol, who, if only for a stanza of years
held my full gaze with hopeful smiles and ecstatic promise
for bright futures now gone into grey pastures.  

I lay here an imposter in authentic skin
if only for the sight of words on screens,
with scant meaning in between.

Her baby rolls away with her youth
But all the while lengthening her earthly remembrance
For the days and nights to come
Her life will dwindle
While her memory continues to be kindled

As her daughter grows
She will fall
As her daughter succeeds in life
This mom will gain strife

She will lose that bond
And her connection with her baby
But her heart will now jump
If daughter only says maybe

So these two lives split
As one branches and
The other decays
So little room for both to remain

As the mother comes to her end
The daughter finally realizes
Her growth is the reason
For her mother’s late season

But that’s the way it is
And never will it change
The daughter will steal
What her mother gives away

Something so cruel
Can only make sense
In the eyes of a mother
Who gives it all to a daughter

I remember the jelly bean jar
perched next to the owlish librarian
in my school when I was younger.  
One lucky soul would win a prize
for pulling the right number of jelly beans
out of an air still filled with fancy.
I can’t remember who won the prize,
and I can’t remember what the prize was.

But I guess as selfish minds are wont to do,
I remember the act of guessing.  
It was a childhood of guessing,
and I wonder if any of those guesses were truly wrong?  
When the engine of innocence toils away,
any solution, however fanciful,
can’t be false in a world that finds falsity
in far more veritable places.

I digress back to that jelly bean jar,
packed full of sugar,
and to a young mind,
full of promise.  
To a mind such as mine,
a mind akin to my classmates
who shared my sugary desire for that jar,
any guess was as good as the other,
as long as any guess was your own.  

We clutched ordinary pencils
scribbled on ordinary paper
with our own extraordinary numbers.  
In the basket went these figures most accurate.  

Days during the week passed
with those store brand jelly beans
mashed against each other,
childhood memories turned ordinary pages
wrote with ordinary pencils
until that singular, self-sure number
mashed against pages turned against it.  

However strong that memory of numerology
in a room full of words is etched in my mind; no trace
of the end of the jellybean contest remains in my ledger.
No trace of the disappointment of losing out
on such a treasure trove of tooth decay.  

But I guess this is the way of the mind,
it tends to trace out the positives
while it remains filled with youthful levity,
no weight is imbued in innocent minds,
and so tragedy, loss, and disappointment
float away past untroubled eyes.  

But time rolls on and much like the crushed growth
under an ever-rolling stone,
our lives start to fall harder on softened memories.  
Our lives harden with our heads,
and those days of living out short-lived fantasies
fade with jelly bean guesses.  
So as we mature and feign to seek the truth,
a small part of me keeps a singular page earmarked
for a time when the truth no longer weighs
                                                                              down the air with half-true deceit, and a mind long
abandoned
will return to grasp fanciful ideas
out of an air that’s still light enough
to evade our youthful fingertips.

Ants crawl across this floor we’ve fallen on before
Crawling away from painful light meant for death
It takes time and height to view this bitter facsimile
Of the life that was when our legs shortened and
We carried righteous angst in disaffected thoraxes

We lived such a life chased by light unrepentant.
So it went with soldiers straying and fraying
Under the stress of the chase by cruel illumination
While those on the scent of something sweeter
Managed to stay out of the heat and find salvation

Truly miraculous things are these
that have no future but cocoon just the same
poor souls that should be outshined by time
find reprieve enough to shield timid bodies
long enough to find their own legs stilting

No feat of glory to any still around
But to those scattered by the wayside
These hulking creatures are visions of
Promise, a promise that one’s own feeble feelers
May one day cast out into oblivion and latch onto
The stuff dreams are made of and close their eyes
With open mouths for serums of wonderland

Such a shame then, when the hopeful
Can’t be afforded the lofty visions
Of their grindstone nose counterparts
And the wayside entraps them in whorish
Promises of paid-for pleasure

But life digresses while the underbelly
Digests the stumblers of chance
So we have you and me, and the world
Feeling inadequate legs stripped bare
So superior parts could be strapped on

This machination of imagination
Is how we get by that heat of life
What once incinerated futures
Inflicts faint unseen blisters--
Reminders of humility rising

At long last our earth-drawn eyes
Draw level with this glass half empty
But magnified with the intention of more,
More, more, more, colors filling prisms across the sky
Gaining beauty and color from the heat of long ago

But who would care about the minute minutes
Of suffering felt by those not bold or quick enough
When compared to this veritable Monet
Blessed with the gift of chasing pasts away
To be replaced with this gilded new day.

So it goes and so it must be in the minds
Still intact, kindled not hindered by the heat

                             ...

Towering over this glass of possibility,
Our focus is intent, not missing a thing
You and me, and the world all focus
On this contrived concoction of color
Bewitching that betwixt reason and love

All our eyes and all our thoughts
Gather power by the hour
Drawn from this pool of glory
Not a thought dropped into
This wishing well

While we sate our psyches
From this languishing pool
We forget how the same spark
That defined us, as we grew above the fray
Is now returned earthward

Isn’t it entertaining to contemplate
Life in the context of those wretches
Blessed to have the power of immediacy
While we sit serially still, no purpose
But to make these poor ants run.

I sit alone in this connected world,
separated from the selfishness I see spreading
amongst everyone around me
with everything to gain by filling their hands
before filling their hearts,
by silencing their inner voice
and shouting out loud.  

It must not be hard to live life in the singular,
letting words and sounds crash against guarded ears and eyes.  
The true trouble starts when a mind becomes a collective,
letting in every thought, every notion,
leaving judgment to fend for itself.  
It becomes harder to keep your identity in an overflowing sea of mediocrity
from not allowing any idea to rise above.  

How does one feel empathy when living life in the former,
cast away on an inner island?  
Is it a feigned truth to goad the soul
into cooperation with a strictly selfish mind?  
Is it the weight of expectation crowding out viewpoints and virtue?  
I can’t tell because for once in my life,
I stand staring at this alien concept
and see no wisp of familiarity floating in our shared air.  
So my lungs seize at this ether bereft of merit, and I collapse.  

Only to wake in a suspended reality,
one where the naïveté of my mind
rationalizes the incongruity of the external world
long enough for me to delve within.  
In these cloistered rooms of society,
I find sparks without kindling,
wasting away into ash,
I find whispers discarded from distracted diaphragms,
but most importantly, I find recognition,
recognition of this middle ground,
neither reached nor acknowledged by that strange outer land.  
It is in these discarded thoughts
stowed far beneath consciousness that I seek my own truth.