A greasy cage, painted with chipped, faded gold,
Houses an individual whose identity is fastened by chains,
Silver chains rusty with the squeaks of a rat
Whose tail is pinched by the linked fingers.
The prisoner is taunted, with heavenly lights,
By one empty corner of the prison’s ceiling,
Partially freed to dream
Stars melting
On her skin,
Warm ice

Years ago, she had shredded and torn apart her wool blanket.
Its remains are piled in the far right corner
Collecting neglection and dust.

Golden eyes lined with
Black.
Pale shoulders hunched,
Slack.
Fingers cautiously
Cross
Across bruised knees,
Lost.
Lovers cross stars,
Loss
Of true lovers’ loves’
Cost.

Turn conscious grey hues into feuds,
Spin white and black into monsters of
Ambiguity and undeveloped negatives,
Mix colors of depressed clouds,
Brush the bound stolen hairs drenched
In blues against the mind’s reflection.
Distort reality, manipulate memory,
Exploit experience, maximize emotion.
Look at the soul of the masterpiece-
Magnificence personified,
Beauty and surprise epitomized.
Never have my eyes been blinded,
Reminded by thoughts’ image mirrored.

I have a lot to do
pack a box
pack a suitcase
write
record music
paint
make a one last goodbye to the people I will miss
and I have to get up.
Busy busy hummingbird

I would rather be
A star swirling in unconscious ecstasy, or
The air captivated by gravity, or
One single wave as it shies from the shore, or
A pebble cemented into the sidewalk path underneath a leaf
as it’s cracked and crushed under the heedless, preoccupied nature of man, or
A humble crease of a sick rose’s petal, or
One coffee ground stuck to the bottom of a yellowed, chipped mug,
Because it doesn’t matter, it does not matter.
Nothing truly matters.
Whether you’re privileged or impoverished,
Content or depressed, dispassionate or obsessed,
A ****** or a giant, timid or defiant,
Powerful,
                           Crippled,
Insane,
                Naïve,
Whether you’re green with jealousy or environmental tendencies,
Whether you Fight,
Fight for world peace,
Fight to end, to ****, Hunger,
It will not matter.
Because Man is addicted to conflict.

War is on the pedestal.

Hatred, envy, greed, lust, and hunger all

FIGHT

To ensure its power.

With every hand that scrambles for control,
With every eye that narrows to aim,
With every breath held for stability,
That pedestal heightens and heightens.

You might as well sigh for the butterfly who killed all those damaged, but innocent individuals.
Its gentle wings, essential to its survival, are to blame.
So you might as well accuse that abusive husband in New Jersey for the Iraqi War,
And that fisherman in the ****** Islands for global warming,
Or that little boy who's crying for the emasculated, shrunken, pathetic homeless man muttering,
“Hope is hope because hope is never hope. Hope like a rabbit, hope hope hope.”

Can you not see?
Can you even Be?

I can only hope for an escape, an exploitation of no conflict or aggravation.
just one wisp of matter with no conscious mind.
I can only point at all inconsistence with determination to prove that the only consistency in this entire universe is simply
ILLUSION.

The professor's voice fades away
As I notice a brown, flat-footed spider
Tiptoeing
Along our classroom floor.
I watch it,
Invested.
It moves closer to my feet.

I hope it comes my way,
But it moves to the ******* my right.
When I advise her to move her bags,
Spotting the spider, she and her empty eyes say,
"I kind of want to **** it."

I whisper, taken aback,
Don't **** it!
Her boot lifts,
Don't **** it! I say again.

I look away,
Opening my ears to Brahms.
I blink and glance to my right.
She's looking blankly at the teacher.
I can't see the spider anywhere, and
I demand, "Did you **** it?"

She turns her empty eyes,
"Sorry. I think it's sort of dead."
My eyelids tighten, eyebrows squished up,
"Why??"
There is no answer, and
I turn away with a heavy conscious.

Since the embryonic mental state
My arms have prickled
Tickled like mad.
Recently, post-punishment
Soft, white down
Feathers
Emerged on my back and arms.
A mix of fear and hope
So overwhelming.
As I have avoided
The resentful, the hateful
I’m almost fully grown
Six foot wing span.
I almost ran
So close
I almost ran away
Until I saw their strength

Let's share hands and fall,
fall back into this flowerbed
Let's watch the petals fly
drift downward again

earthly embraces clarify

let's traverse this tree
and the clinging sap
let's sit on this crumbling cliff
and watch the dirt tumble

earthly embraces clarify

let's hold each other close
and dance to this night rhythm
let's escape into the stars
and each other's life-sparks

earthly embraces clarify

as the hawk stares, sitting on a lamp post,
the white flower shrugs at all our questions,
the wind just rubs my arm,
circling the sun with prisms,
smiling rainbow teeth dance in the heat,
whistling and diving, soaring and gliding,
a hummingbird greeted me this morning,
arm's length from my eyes,
and then left,
tears welling, my embrace.

No one informed me,
During the days of loneliness and insecurity,
Of, the sun.
Of, the one.
Of, God’s true existence,
His brave persistence.

They failed to mention,
During the days of apprehension,
The possibility of the opportunity
Of safety, of solace,
Of rescue, of refuge.

Such days those were.
Blind, deaf, dumb, bound, tasteless.
Flat, dull, plastic, damp, soggy.
Days of no living.
The avoidance of death with
Mere existence.

Simple
And
Un
Interesting.
Painful
But
Un
Feeli­ng.

Oh, how I miss those days.
That misery, that idiocy, that confusion.
Oh, or rather, how they must miss me.

Said the poet-wanderer,
'Hear the bee inquire its complexity,
Hear the mountains yearn for their mother-star,
Hear the human heartbeat sync earthly rhythm,
Hear the lovers defeat the ego's aloneness,
Hear the aging, hear the ignorant,
Hear the sight of the infant blind,
Hear the charcoal moan into shade and image,
Hear the flowers revel in their beauty,
Hear the exquisite childish laughter,
Hear the dying, hear the born.'

Said the poet-wanderer,
'Hear your self whole, nothing torn.”

What is the sight of blood?
The essence of our mortality,
The horror of our brevity,
The factory of harmony,
Nourishment
            life
                awe
of, in the soul's home.

The Journey:
You can explore the extent of your boundaries,
Even transcend, but not without punishing balance.
Tipping, favoring a side, pulling it tight until
The Breakage:
Crevice filling to the brim, trickling to the depths of the
unknown,
awaiting, translating

Crystallization as the realization of the
personal scheme, the ego's circus, the mask-maker thrives,
the cultivation of sorrows contrives the demise of
Our own Evolution of sighs.

CRYSTALLIZATION
The process of modern self-identification.
We must fill a mold,
Originality must fold and
Collapse into a labyrinth.

Choosing to choose the options listed in front of us,
Never looking around or inside us.

What a clever game,
Self-aware while we remain ignorant essentially.
Climbing the hills, ladders, slides, and valleys
Without choosing to excuse ourselves
To a life without the conventional rides.

Perhaps, it can be no different...

The rose grows from the ground,
Some hidden, some found.
No ears, no sound.
We cannot fly.
To gravity, we are bound.

It matters
What matters
(it matters? what matters?)

For what exists has an opposite.
For what is freedom worth without captivity?
Where would passion be without apathy?
Wind, earth?
Peace, bloodshed?
Comfort, pain?
Fury, forgiveness?
Decay, fecundity?
Fundamentalism, atheism?

The world, our world, is a world of opposites.

Our building blocks are composed of
The Paradox.
A balance of what is inconceivable and actual.

Tip the scales, and Bleed.

Why do we want,
what is the driving force
the compelling, the why?

There is a one who wants nothingness
who doesn't want anything

convention's brow furrows
scolding
loser
failure
useless

freedom's light smiles
free
free
free

are you in want?
Ask
listen

As long as you are at the center of the earth
Or the edge of the universe,
Hell will never enter your existence,
Your experience.
Once, flaws embrace, sin sought with haste,
You can reject disgrace, attack commonplace,
But all were misplaced,

Without a trace.
Disappear.
Without fear.
Now,It is worth anything.
Other than avoiding fate.
It is never too late.

Face the sense evidence:
A blade of grass, a tender touch, a slice of sky,
One piece of sand holds billions of lives,
However fleeting, however insignificant,
All unending, all replicants.
The warm sun embraces your face’s unstable, tedious nature;
The earth steps on you as erratically as your feet follow you instincts;
The wind refuses to help you succeed in life
Except for a nice breeze;
The stars shine for your hope, for your passion
But they flicker.

The universe is relative –
Shocked crystal glass shards shared
Among the blissful crowd abusing the floor
With their tranced feet and ceaseless beat.

Or
Blissless Hypnosis,
Soul lost, listless,
Embracing shears and splinters
Of sneers and tears.
They merely bicker and snicker,
Trade fingerpoints and lies,
But forgive in time-
Who can bear to live alone?
And so, they retreat,
Return to the white strings of
Existence;
They compete
On who can fabricate a better
Phantom sheet.

Or
Slash the shoelace ties,
Fraternal, maternal,
Return all the beats, rhythms, revisions,
Riffs, myths, cysts.
Live on inflated lifeboats shrouded in mist.

Your haunting, taunting dark amethyst eyes with
Decorations of admiration exist:

As strong as –
As special as –
As much as –
As harmless as –
As constant as –

A grey, limp piece of neck string,
An empty swing,
A melancholy molecule of water dripping,
A monarch armed with thorn swords on its wings,
All of the things
Arbitrary and inconsistent
As existence.

The universe laughs at individuality,
The stars sob, pitying those persistent dancers
Who stomp their feet on sheets of glass.

The hypnotist smirked,
Phantoms never could resist the redundancyOf hell.

Your body’s on fire
Rising up on smoke
Don’t let it choke
You into submission

Your mind’s flowin with sounds
Surrounded by light
Breathe, relax, don’t fight
Your natural reaction

I know all this can be redeemed
Like smoothing out all the wrinkles in the trees.
Tangled roots untangling themselves
Simply for the sake of satisfying a salvation of souls.

But the roots will never leave the earth.
As much as I beg them to
REACH out to the sky
like their brother branches do.

The grooves in the bark refuse, too.
Too deep are they set in their ways,
Too reliant are they on their habits.
Too stiff. Too rigid.

Sad, cowardly roots, can you not for one moment transcend your assignments?
Are you so afraid to run that you crawl?
I'm trying to save you. I'm trying.
I'm trying.

But the soil is so damp with ignorance.
Deaf eyes
Blind hands hesitate before every procession.
Cripples who could fly if they but tried.

The bark remaining puckered,
The roots remaining shy.
Until one thing will succeed:
The Tree.

Who are you, Sarah Jystad?
You feel so lost, so aloof.
Lost in a labyrinth of clouds and smoke,
you are not even able to see your mind.
Your stream seems is evaporating.
You're longing, you're aching,
you're distracting yourself
with words, with sighs,
with laughter and compromise.

You feel so lost.
You spent so many years
climbing, toiling on a mountain,
up or down, hill or mound,
it is impossible to tell,
but so blindly,
so full of hope to transcend yourself and the fog,
so full of disdain for yourself and your peers.

Who are you?
Are you the hand you see shaking the other's?
Are you the light that decides its own dimness, its own brightness?
Are you the sobs of every past and present tragedy?
Are you the shaking sobs in the extinguished lights?

Who are you?
Are you independence, freedom, kindness, bravery, wisdom?
Are you fear?

Are you your abilities or your adjectives?

Who are you, Sarah Jystad?
Are you your name?
Are you what you feel at this moment,
Exhausted and lonely?
Are you what you felt yesterday,
Vibrant and joyful?

Are you your love
for the wind, the sky, the trees,
for the smiles, the embraces, the caresses,
for language, knowledge, and philosophy?

Does your love for your love swallow you whole and declare,
Voila, it's You!

Who are you, Sarah Jystad?

You are smart enough to know
that You are Everything.

You are a spiritual warrior,
your battle cries inspire your mind.
You are the uninhibited laughter of Freedom.
You are the kindest tears of Compassion.
You are the Strength of every passion.
You are the adventures of the Body.
You are the Comprehending Ego and I of Philosophy.
You are the inevitable paradox of Good and Evil.
You are the silent tears of this Instant.

You are Everything..

You are History, you are Future.

You are Time.

You are those Voids.
You are the Void of all Voids!

Nevertheless, it goes without saying,
You'd be upset if someone hit your head
With a smoking pipe.

The ocean sky chaperones me home
Where joy, embraces, and love await.

The waves of clouds shelter invisible life.
Our farmlands, kelp;
Our cities, coral.

Ignorant are we of the evanescent, fragile,
Temperamental passions of the Wind.

I wish with all my heart that
We could see, hear, and speak with the Wind People.

what happens when
the waves stop crashing?
when the clocks fall down?
What happens when the skies disappear because of fears?
what if I could taste the ocean’s tears?
what would have happened if
we had chainsawed that
nuisance of a Tree?
will I walk in a cage locked from the inside
until I die?
what if questions ceased to exist?

No one mourns the glory of the sky,
with its play of light and air and water,
that it is forever transforming from what it is
into what it is.
Indeed, it makes no sense to gaze longingly at a rose,
Grieving the inevitable falling of its petals.
No one fears the crashing of the waves,
Nor the melting of the snow,
Nor the setting of the sun,
Nor the passing of the breeze.

It only makes sense to not fear the Changes.

When you are so afraid of losing what you had,
the tenderness, the passion, the side-long glances, and the knowing smiles from the one who understands,
When you are so afraid of what is happening,
the confusion and aggravation, the sorrow and anger,
Every minor attackable issue exploited for a moment of attention and consolation,
You are only breaking yourself into pieces,
unrecognizable and infuriating,
down, into that ever-darkening spiral.

You are only digging your nails into your own forearms;
You are only darkening your own mind,
pulling grey clouds over yourself
when you are grasping and groping
to push them away,
falsely assuming there are any clouds at all.

we sit next to one another
and discuss
the pointlessness of everything

however

what's the point of pointlessness?

We play
and
we play the game

why not care?
Why not enjoy?

We can use a million words
to argue
to debate
to justify

or

we can smile
we can look in each other's eyes
and hug true hugs
we can climb trees and each other and dreams

it's difficult
it's painful
it's sorrowful

but

it's so much fun!

I do so enjoy
the pointlessness of pointlessness!

A simple, stoop of a man
Well-endowed with an ample brow,
Stood Encased
In a cage of frozen glass.
But fortunately,
The heat of his ignorant fire
Melted his shell of ice.
One drop dips, elongates with gravity,
Only to shatter,
Colder that the world’s soul,
Upon his introduction to reality.

Escape only the truth,
Walk sideways blind-sided,
Put your hands to your eyes,
No one can get a little armadillo.

The concrete bench demystifies the city landscape
The planted trees satisfy the war denied
Little fly, little fly, why do you try?
Little fly, little fly, why do you sigh?
Little fly, little fly, why do you die?

What a small world I live in,
Or, rather, how small it seems.
The motivations & intentions,
The disguises & identities
Seem infinite in their variability.

To fearlessly connect beyond
What is seen,
Is a cinch & a hurdle
Simultaneously.

10/20/12

don't ask the blind girl how you look
it's quite impolite,
assumptions are crazy trolls playing peek-a-boo with reality

whatcha gonna do about your ignorance?
will you read? will you watch? will you listen
to our words,
every strum is a pointing finger,
every sly look a hint.

don't ask the frozen guy to dance,
you'd break him in half!
melt the ice with hot kisses and
exhale finger wiped drawings

there's no use entreating the deaf
to listen to your woes and complaints,
but you should know, there really isn't any reason to be upset at all
what is there to lose?
nothing to lose, nowhere to be lost, no one to lose,
no matter what you experience,
everything is just fine, my dear
everything is just fine, my dear

Numbers are simply the ends and beginnings of fractions
each eye opening
each blink
all melds into one single
millionth second thoughts
identification exists and arrives with preferences
Everything makes me laugh!
Oh, the gods are exceptional jokesters.
Outloud, inside, cries of glee, confusion,
Me.
Oh, truly talented gods,
You are the best actors yet.

I believe they
learned the ways of
Simple living,
Meditation, and change
From trees' perpetual enlightenment.

What is the sight of blood if not tactile evidence
that we cannot live
unless
we pick ripe flowers and decorate our hair
with the nourishing caress
of petals and their precious fragrant hearts
and procure compassion providing possible sensual mysticism?

I was talking with the stars one night,
just as every night,
about existential concepts and other nonsensical things.

What is the reason for distance?
So you can feel emotions, so you may connect with matter.
So that you may be able to understand
the awe-inspiring essence of existence.
So that you are able to exist.

Expulsion of fear
Touching hard polished skin
Staring at distant glassy eyes
Yearning for glints of life
Searching, a step onto
An opaque sphere of
Infinite limitations

How I LONG
For which I have yet to experience
How my dreams enchant me!
Half-closed eyes flicker
with transcendent fantasy

Stuck in a tar pit,
A black hole in which I sit.
Sighs, cries I can’t swallow.
Streaked, pale yellow sorrow.
Whining and wiping,

Pity’s hand pulls my head back until
Truth easily sees my stomach.
She grimaces, the tears that crawled
Past cheeks and lips are molding.
They have eyes and fingers that

Poke, ****, pinch, and pull apart potential passion.
Pity of the mind sets the mindset.
I can’t see past the four feet tall walls,
My neck strains to see above infinite,
Poor me, poor me.

i woke up from a dream with weary, teary eyes
we were kissing and it felt so comfortable
a heavy morning, a passed mourning
i'm sinking in question quicksand

it's almost been a year,
but i don't think i've let go of the hope
that awake, you would kiss me
like you used to, like the dream-you does

i've drifted in the ocean, hoping you would run towards me,
i've put my hand down, exhausted from reaching year
but my fingers still stretch out, fan out to make space for your fingers

i found a folded piece of paper in the small wood box
curious, i started to unfold it and i suddenly realized
it is a love letter from you
i blinked and shook in my surprise
and read it and cried

i am so confused
after all this change,
i still miss you

my only cause of sorrow
my utter confusion

a year ago,
we soared in the wing-filled sky
tasting clouds and
crisp romantic clarity.

i can't ask you to help me figure this out.
can you have peace and sorrow?
I know I can't.

My heart misses yours

there is so much to say
that words cannot possibly do
can i please have some of your time?
i want to know why i miss you

Let’s see…
Placed among wisping green,
Between sea and sky,
Let’s have them swim
In paradoxical ooze
To see
Which see
Their ultimate intimacy
To see themselves
Sight-listening.

i sit.
i close my eyes and see the white spot between them.
would humans be smarter if we had a third eye?
a third source of visual information,
wouldn't that increase our brain size?

i sit.
i feel my tongue in my mouth.
it feels like sunflower sandpaper and
my gums feel tight - like someone's pulling them up and
molding my lower face into a tiger muzzle.

i sit.
i can't feel my nose unless i breathe,
every inhale brings a slight flare,
a slight awareness that
sour tastes are much more appealing than sour smells.

i sit.
i try to relax,
but everything is distracting.

i sit.
i want to do something ******.

i'm getting up.

Wipe off the ooze, the ***** of the blues.
Put on your shoes,
Or not,
You are free to choose
To answer your cues,
You've nothing to lose.

Finally, I am able to open my mouth
And Breathe
Without tension or stress.
No longer must I hold my breath and tighten my chest
And conform, appeal, or impress
The expectations, vanities, and stupidities
Of certain personalities.
Now,
I progress.
I have tolerated and waited,
Filling up the quotas issued by the blind
Outdated, unknowledgeable of the strife,
Of how many times we have broken down
And forced ourselves to shuffingly, reluctantly
Gather our pieces with disconnected, searching hands
And red-rimmed eyes.
For our will was to continue
Playing the game to be accepted into
A bigger game that offers
A paradox
Of freedom and responsibility.
I ordered the pocket-sized portion so
My portable paradox will have never have to leave my sight.

I'm standing in the ocean's waves,
Feeling the infinite encourage my serenity.
But the fisherking offers bitter acidity
To the deep realm,
Crippled by barren immobility.
But you and me, we move on.
We press on.
We cast off our shackles.

Wisps
           Clouds

Inflatable anchors
Lay in the water of
           the sea.
Shall we
               fish?

All that
Anxiety,
Distress,
Self-dissatisfaction,
Confusion,
Delusion­,
and Fear
have gladly disappeared.

the flash of lightning
stalked by the rumbles of thunder

I feel it is the right time to let you know that
I love him, but I don't necessarily miss him.
I wouldn't mind seeing him nor would I mind being with him,
But the distance between us does not bother me.
I'm not afraid of losing him, because
I'm not afraid of silly things.
I am far from regretting my decision to leave,
For I have learned and grown much since I've left.
I am in absolute awe of our love,
It's nearly incomprehensible, its purity and passion.
World, I wish you could understand.
I wish you could feel the same delight and freedom;
I wish, with all of my heart, that you could find
Someone that loves you for your every intricacy and quirk.
For if you did,
I believe you would be a much better person, undoubtedly.

Sincerely,
S. J.