Perhaps a choiceless recording
An echo in the room
pressed and pushed like to straws on a broom

Set to simmer then boil
the plastic, the foil, bristles and coils
I'm like the tools of the kitchen

Used

I'm given a purpose without reason
There's a lock on the door without keys and
I just want to know

A relationship at its core
Combative situation for both
Choiceless awareness the approach
For maintaining the growth

Impartial and non judgemental
Flexible adaptable and pliable
What is is Changing and moving
Requires thought and action which is  flowing

Awareness halts projection
Dying to yesterday's thoughts the solution
What should be and would be  is wasted emotion
Awareness requires permanance and endurance

Fluidity of thought and action
Requires choiceless awareness
In harmony with the outcome
Nothing to worry or fathom

i was 15 when Kokopele knocked me up
and i was ripe, though unready --
every day i visited my spot
at first to relieve, but then to sate allure --
invisibly appeared,
mysterious pleasure day and night
throbbing at the thought
of that strange spot.
i clawed to sate in dream
what goddess women understand
in noontide reveries,
sultry swells of swoon
i don't know how my belly grew
was it at that drafty wall
or by the reeds..
there were several spots it seems.
i am ashamed
i was told to be ashamed
of this belly i love, and body
cravings carved into my soul,
covert sudden lusts
set in stone at 50,
children grown and making music of their own,
in tents along the streams'
comingled murmur moans,
he visits each in turns
to teach the spiral dance
and finish in the seeded womb.
flowers glow to settle racing heart with truth
infant recognition of an origin's choiceless birth
and now, i am in force --
become katcina cougar, proud Kokopelmana:
the role is taken by the horn --
eat my cornmeal cakes
with crooked somiviki smile while i make you mine
you can scatter but i will find you hiding
purring soft to catch you firm --
every boy and man will learn







.

You and I have danced for decades,
Stabbing me on the warpath as I giggled along,
You taught me to hate myself the most,
Way down to the vivisection of my soul;

Am I just shifting blame? Didn't I hold the knife too?
You gave it to me, I made it serrated and poisoned,
Hence why I'm venomous, uneven and stubborn,
Am I chaotic because I am or am I just unhealed?

I held your hand as you plunged it into me slow,
I thought you loved me, why else would you do it?
To be so obsessed and devoted to my destruction?
Isn't destruction just the beginning of creation?

It worries me that you don't leave, you keep the blade in,
Are you worried I'll bleed out or do you enjoy the misery?
Have I learnt to love you choiceless and mistaken?
Like the compass points north, the tall child feels comfort;

'A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort'
Was I after all designed to be harmed or do I have a choice?
I'm not alone anymore though, I have my moon now,
She'll guide me home across the dark and quiet :)

My heart sought a home, even when I was in one,
I moved here almost 9 years ago, I gave it my best,
To settle, to adapt, to overcome, to thrive even,
Instead I corroded, I mangled, I survived choiceless;

Through all your lush green and the rain,
I never found real comfort, just a respite,
I suppose I was stupid to expect it at all,
How does one find home in a war?

Nothing has changed, I don't expect it now,
I was just a city boy abandoned far away,
In an land, where I couldn't speak or relate to,
I'm supposed to belong here and I don't;

It's amazing how far I've placed my mind away,
I rarely live in that certain aspect of my existence,
I'm somewhere I don't belong and can't go back,
Where I used to belong no longer belongs to me;

I'm a nomad in a place I'll never understand,
I've grown accustomed to it's people and things,
The tailored familiarity often backfires into me,
I can't be in tune with them or them me,

I'm a child of the Earth, nameless and unbound,
Perhaps there is hope after all, I'm undefined,
Tried to fit in their boxes, gracefully broke all of it,
Maybe I don't fit in anywhere, the wildcard;

I do take great pride in that, it's a badge of quality,
The untamed among the tamed, blessed with chaos,
A mercurial maverick who desires rest and calm,
I'm only a person after all so I hope, I hope, I hope...

Perfection

Superimposed with self-perpetuating pollution

But being sustains all and won't mourn its loss

Clear as the sky

Untaintable

Delicious

Home

Forever

I am

The end is just the beginning

Shedding limitations

In spring reborn

A heart of immense power

Cares for all

No longer infected by the sick

For illness is a choiceless choice

That needs no cure

This is the good news

Rejoice

Has he not been beared
From seas to streams
Marked with cutlasses and ashes
Forced to swallow cowries
Why would he not wear down his face?

Has he not been living
On his choiceless delicacy
Concoction of gmelina roots
And garlic sap
Why then would he smile?

Why would he dance?
The voilent drummers in his skull
Were pounding thier drums
Like groups of carpenters
Driving pieces of nails
Into a hardwood

Has he not been marched
Round the village on pant
Bearing a *** stained with dry hen's blood
And rotten bones and stenching earth
Why would he not dash out his wealth
To seek a neater heath?

When I had no choice,I chose life.....
When I had one choice,I chose breath....
When I had unremembered choice,I chose my parents.....
When I had two choices,I chose to walk,
but when I had myriad choices,I chose you......
choiceless gave me choices,
and now I realized I can unchoose the blessed choiceless life,
through my sheer reverence and seeking thither my eternal maternal muse...

Oh, happiness, you know, is such a mystery to me
For my sweet mind, so nubile, now tempted and teased
In daisy chains constrained, becomes unflaggingly naïve
Amidst hopeless, hungry caricatures of a fresh, degenerate breed---
It is these sad amalgamations of cynicism and greed
That beg so caustically for my poor pauper’s decree
Wholly, humbly, in morally hazardous beseech
Reminding me that I will never be exempt from this disease

Because a bird that has for all its life been caged
Would know not, in freedom’s grasp, just how it should behave
And I imagine, most ignorantly, would haplessly spend its days
Flying in circles above the cold cell in which it was once contained
For it is the fear within that forbids us from ever wandering astray
Not, as we convince ourselves, those despicably tangible restraints
But the prejudices and prospects upon which we were raised
The unforgiving pathways of a pre-determined fate

Well, I’d rather die simply, dreaming wistfully instead
Because even the corporeal hand of freedom is ghostly akin to lead
The poison in my veins that leaves me ****** and unfed
It can scarcely compare to the beauty I’ve concocted in my head
And ‘fate,’ I admit, is something that I’ve come to quite dread
To think my end is not my own makes me wish that I was dead
To be voiceless and choiceless and paralyzed in my bed
A story that was written and never to be read

My existence will never course on a single, narrow line
And there will be many, many beds in which my loyalties lie
The destination may well be as crooked as the path the arrow flies
And for all of this uncertainty, I most assuredly will be fine
Because mark my words; let doubt not linger in mind
These cages and these pages will be now and forever mine
Just an arbitrary reaction to the hand-me-down destiny I’ve defied
The parameters I have made to covet all the corners of my life

i wonder how many sons
and how many daughters
passed on
before the phrase,
“Only the good die young”
became cliché.

how many had to grieve
before the phrase
lost its sting?
surely, i still feel
the potent scream
of its veracity.

“only the good die young.”
like all axioms,
we could unpackage and dissect,
trim away the fat
and try to understand,
but at the end of the day
it seems to me that we’d only be
helplessly clutching at straws
in vain attempts to try and make sense
of a reality that our human brains—
try as they might—could never fathom.

i cannot say
if the aphorism is true,
if only the good die young,
but i know that Jakin Murray Foster,
beyond a shadow of a doubt,
was one of the good ones.

to try and select
a single story
as exemplary
of Jakin’s life
would be akin
to plucking a star
from a constellation.

surely, that story
would shine like a sun
unto itself.
people would rotate
about that story,
anchored like planets
by the gravitational force
of Jakin’s compassion.
but to do so,
to focus on solely one story,
would be a great disservice
to the cosmos of Jakin’s existence,
all the lives he’s touched
and changed over the years.

instead, i will try to tell you
about the man, my best friend,
my brother: Jakin Murray Foster.
i will try to capture a portrait,
one that will, admittedly,
be woefully incomplete.
i will leave you to fill in the blanks,
the empty spaces
between the disparate stars
of his constellation.
the gaps in my description
can be filled by the memories
of his cheer, his integrity,
his profound humanity,
solid as steel beams
buttressing and bracing
in these moments of grief.

so, let’s reminisce:

Jakin was stubborn as an ox.
this quality stands out to me
in perfect clarity
because he was one of the only people
who had the strength of personality
required to challenge me
to become a better human being.

to check me when i grew cruel or aggressive or inconsiderate.
to encourage me when i became callous and cynical and unkind.
to love me when my heart was hateful
and wanted nothing more than to spread my own misery like a poison
before putting a permanent end to everything.

Jakin was silly.
take a gander at any number of the photos collected in his memory.
they paint a clearer picture than i ever could
of a man who laughed loud and laughed often,
but never at the expense of others.
who could lift your spirits
like a steaming cup of coffee
in even the most frigid winters.

Jakin was a geek,
a home-school kid,
a Jesus freak.
his personality was refined
by the teachings of a radical rabbi
executed by the state
for standing in love and solidarity
with the weak,
a man who’d change the course of history.

in brief, Jakin gave a ****.
until the end, he stood up for what he believed in,
convinced by the clarity of his conscience
and the fire that burned like a burgeoning nebulae in his heart.
i can think of no better way to honor his memory
than to hate what is evil
and love what is good,
to fight for a world that is in such desperate need
of the grace, charity, and fraternity
Jakin exhibited every day.

Memento mori.
be mindful of death.
i think of the end of all things daily.
for many, the end of a life is the beginning of something new.
to me, death makes life invaluable.
death is choiceless.
death is a cruelty, an injustice no one should ever suffer.
like a mirror, death shows us our own fragility,
it gives truth to the reality that our time here is fleeting.
death makes life more precious than any commodity ever wrought by humanity.
death reminds us that we are owed nothing,
that all we can do is seize every moment of love and joy afforded us
and build a new world in the shell of the old.

i do not know if only the good die young.
i know that my best friend, my brother, is gone.
i know with certainty that I will never see him again.
we will never laugh together,
bicker over philosophy,
or drive around listening to music ever again.
that reality fills me with so much misery
i can hardly stand or breathe or even think.
but i will do all i can to be a good man
so that when i too meet Death like an old friend,
i can say, “i lived like Jakin.”