The enduring ephemerality,
Strung together moments of blissfulness,
Each fleeting in its temporality,
But feeling infinite in wistfulness.

The hands of time spin circles without end,
While memories live in moments discrete.
Some moments blur to a nondescript end,
Moments with you time will never defeat.

Events live so long as not forgotten,
Life’s meaning breaks time’s continuity.
With each breath a new time is begotten,
So time gone lives in perpetuity.

When timeless blissfulness is in the past,
The paradox of time still makes it last.

ok, so this is the upswell
of wheeling free without wheels--
you taste the unknown on the wind
and endless vigor vibrates in your bones.

sidewalks, dumpsters, fields for beds,
star-gaze drowsy thinkings, underfed

but overzealous of an openness we'd never seen, we'd never see again! the planet turning magical in unexpected
ways of wanderjest--
consummate rest of freedom undenied, joyful celebrants of every day!

the strangers sudden friends stop
to gather in the journey up 'til then--
tales of kindness or of danger
sharing in some facet part

integral, shining, random and forgot--
we each diverge in thanks
or so it's been with me
despite mass fear of ****** sprees
we help each other's spirit's free

some begin and end with sore feet soothed,
the destination moved;
others with a steath-pipe harshly clean:
ember throat-smack numbs the breath
and giddy paranoia settles in
as 'the white house' sailing by perverse
-ly urban planning plotted bums who smile missing ob
-ligatory chili dogs in crowded bl
-are full to frighten morning parking lot we pitched
our tent and woke to soaking feet and sleeping bags submerged in runoff corner-lake

another time we simply waited at a truck stop,
piles of the rigs just running ready there
and one for us, he said he'd bring us north,
and more, he told us of his brothels,
his debt-collecting days, the cokehead legs he shot
for honesty, he said, and sang us poems (he wrote)
of foreign women loved, some with pictures,
pickled eggs and cooler-hotdogs stale,
my first menthol cigarette: inhale and fall
into an understanding outlaws have
of skipping all the weigh-stations, of
friendship gleaned by chance, ephemerality
in strength of truth to last:
he took our picture on the exit ramp,
gave us hugs and left us waiting there,
more than just an ex-**** trucker,
hired gun for pushing coke, but a human
sentimental in a context undefined
like justice in the sense of kindness to rewind

the rain... a joyful merciless accord
of being in the storm of open-ended
waywards torn in being home and on the road
life untenable in farther reaches worn of ages never understood

but standing in a trailer whipped with highway gusts of water-gratitude
though slipping in the bouncing hay and horse manure fertileness
we joke eternal swinging backpacks soaked and knocking spin on balance play

meeting lovers simply known as such
for nights or only one, talking into dawn
at random campus dormroom sheltering
when sober, high, tempted into impulse act
afraid or pleasant easy unknown facts
just passing by she offered for the night
his first intoxicant beyond the ***
surrounded puffing passing groaning
in the rooms above below i'm listening
smirking at the undeserving joy i swallow in her eager kiss
to throb the floating line of destiny in endless acts of freedom's light

though a ride can be a head-ache too...
piled beer cans on the floor,
clanking with each swerving,
the driver even stopping for a ****,
thankful? to be riding, not walking,
but observing when we're there, the ground, this time, i bend to kiss

Sam was the most generous:
he brought me to his home, his father took me sailing, swimming with the family
serving food on lakehouse dock and later
reading with the kids, dinner bonding
then such sleeping    deep    peace
and in the morning, after breakfast
on my way with lunchbag tastes of kindness never lost

there are many more
tucked away in word-gifts, also
blueberries to pick along the roadside, more
than i'd ever seen or thought to see
cows to sleep by, horses randy for an audience to claim the pasture for

the offer is a type of gift you question to refuse,
not to lose your wits
some are quiet, kind,
most are liberal in ways they couldn't ever elsewhere be:
snapshot saints in momentary boons of spontaneity and love.
some cross lines.
so, grateful i'm ok, but never worried otherwise. i run the 'risk' it's called,
and run it still: i ask the random for assistance,
in upturned eyes discern the weather
as in ancient times the host and guest stood cultural across
in making kin of unnamed walking in,
gifting company for company along the way
trusting always in the limned choices traveled, with a existential grin

Rules disintegrate between midnight and when dusk hits horizon

Ask someone, anyone, to run away with you. I dare you. See if they’ll say no
Shrouded with the gentle miasma of sleep just out of reach, a half-step towards the unknown doesn’t seem so risky
Only when the sky is swathed in dull orange does logic start to kick in, 70 miles from home with nothing but a broken compass and a fond companion

Spit bitter regrets at a nameless former lover
The one who scoured every inch of your body and eagerly delved in every crevice of your fragile heart before you even knew the true definition of naiveté
Naiveté: (noun) the scared, nostalgic hands that innocently cling to a forgotten yesterday while prodding us towards the blind plunge of tomorrow

Declare love to that unrequited forbidden fruit
Sleepy vulnerability cracks away at the protective walls we build
Besides, what could the ramifications possibly be when come morning, faintness of memory won’t be able to distinguish fantasy from reality?
So seize the opportunity; be horribly candid and nakedly honest
Feel the transience of the night and relish the fleeting moments that rest between your fingertips.

time
was purely a four-letter concept with you

you made hours alone
discussing the universe and its secrets
feel like fleeting minutes

a year passed by
in an ephemeral glance

reality completely deliquesced
with the touch of your lips
and your love was marked as transitory

                                                     ­  ...but those eyes were infinite


x.

The sharpest intellect
cannot pierce the screen;
the fabric remains
but a hair's breadth away.

To pursue
brings endless folly;
to remain
brings more of the same.

You've been atop
the highest pole.
You've stood tip-toed,
and stretched.

But can you return
to the modern world
and still maintain
your breath?

If we had more time I'd

_ _ , _ _ , 2 0 1 9 is a day gone to the ashes of kismet’s pages

the midday zephyrs and wino meditations that ran through streets like rainfall now live in the hippocampus

the bright side’s gone with the dark
the whole day, for what it was, is no longer
and it bugs me out

that through any endless combo of permutations and planetary rotations, the same circumstances that built the ground of yesterday
will never repeat
or will they?

I’ll never know like the licks that reduce a Tootsie Pop to crumbs
I’m not intelligent, I’m dumb
because it took me 27 years to learn the value of 24 hours
to learn that a lotus bloom is something to treasure ten times more than scraps of pure gold

we are the children of nature
what does that make our creations?

Humans birthed a cosmos
of currencies and chambers of computer generated concoctions. . .

are they not descendants of the Mother?
In some abstract way?

Idk, dude, I’m out of it,
if you know me, you know exactly what that means - -
but I digress - -

It’s just that I never got the chance to tell the day how grateful I was to have it
and I now know that wasting time is a luxury modern civilization can enjoy after epochs and eras

this day and age is as far from perfect
as the brain is from perfection,
tech grew faster than the collective consciousness
and we still limit worth and love
to skin and heteronormativity

but at least
for a small sliver of time
things were, in a single moment
.
.
.
pretty good.

I catch glances
As I walk through town
Daughters
Out with their mums
Who pretend to look off in the arbitrary distance
As I scan them
From top
To toe
And then the glances of their proud mums

Old women who huff
As I have the demeanour
Of a stargazing ******

The odd freak
Who cheers me on with his eyes

Machos, who like to hold the gaze
Which I like to hold right back
Thinking of my father in a coffin
To return a calm, worrying stare

Sometimes a fleeting beauty will appear in a metro window
And both knowing of the ephemerality of our encounter
We **** with our eyes
Before she is whipped off
Down the dark tunnels

I can hold a gaze with almost anyone
People are fascinating

I can hold all these gazes
Until
Some men stare back
And I melt

Seek that you do not fear your Mortality;
for it seems rather foolish to fear anything
but especially so such an inevitability;

fear not Mortality;
Mortality is a question
and the answer is Life;

many fail to respond;
they may indeed live
but they have no lives;

they sacrifice their time
to Pantheons external
rather than devoting their fleeting time
to the one internal;

fear not ephemerality;
it is an opportunity
but like any other,
it can be, and often is,
overlooked- ignored- misused-
squandered.

Fear not your Mortality
for it is an opportunity
to transcend this reality;
life is a sacred and holy opportunity;
(and these words, from an atheist!)
it's up to you to make the most of it.

we did what we could that night
and a supernal being is ashamed.

this is the drift of thought
in the vast ocean of gilded gold
frothing at the edge of rotund:
giving back a silenced enigma,
spewing the answer in an exhaust
of white rancid smoke
dharma burns plastered to cigarette.
burning and burning, afloat are the high-pouncing embers looking for fleeting shades and dagger-ambulations
of a shadow's swagger in tectonic soiree.

we did what we could that night.
like a flash of lightning at the back
of hoarded hills,
or say, something brutal and brash with
modern sensibilities we never jell —
we come not with softness or life
peering out of our eyes like little girls
serenaded by mad men in the eve of
forlorn nights. we did what we could
and some god cringes, winces away
like the erratic dance of candleflame.

the leviathan black spreads its parasol
and we are no strangers.
when our veraciousness starts to pierce
the veil, the populace should start
to worry of their trapped conditions.
we came here for something:
be it flesh, be it wisdom, be it plain inebriations — we will never flinch
at the squalor of tomorrow's sobering.
keep in mind, kaibigan.

    it's all levitation and transcendence.

the darkness wept as the car
groans near the end of its immaterial life.
i flick the last cigarette into the grey-faced pavement.
all oceans drowned,
all shadows burgeoned,
all fires emerged plump,
this silent radio rivers
through the wave of this ephemerality,
the onomatopoeia of strangeness,
the   thud
      of the senseless head of metal
     on the body

the   clackety-clack
       of hours thereafter!

ayeayeaye! the streets sing no mild
  appendage. the solstice is lost
    in the length and precision of all things.
bringing ourselves to the brink of absence,
    our pallid selves set ablaze, emblazoning
the quick life of matchflame or rumble of    
    thunder — the steady phoenix of
       that night! this is learning
  to breathe again, o, what currents purloined in vicious swarth as we keep
     this river flowing into our throats,
  jamming our souls to compelling music.

   remember kaibigan,
it's all levitation and transcendence.