Baptism…Foreward

I prayed and hoped
I lost and wept
I was found by a boat
I, by the Lord’s waves, have been swept.


Baptism…Afterward

I pray and hope
I loose and weep
I am found by a boat that helps me cope
I, with the Lord’s waves, will sweep.

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the wat to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher.
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I'll just sit
here, I'll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
foreward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.

Despite what even the most may modest say,
there is always an element of narcissism in art, the vanity of preference.
Be forewarned the parts of myself I want to show the most here are meticulously vain.
There is a whole lot of preference in my language.
In the way the carpenter is with his tools
I want to carve into you with some hardened truth.
Taking lines, forming letters, producing sounds and pictures

touching a place in people that exists
before words.
The closest thing to us being all
right here,
feet planted, on the same world.
Of course, then there is the sad reality of countries.  
Borders for what you belong to.
Tourist! Do not bother,
only the homesick may enter.

You won’t find this sort of thing on any map.
Pens aren’t so precise, our hands too clumsy
all our tools right down to the thumb incapable of enumerating glory.
What with all of it’s digits
tightly wound around it’s bigger stick
the only kind of glory that is heard of
simply because it kills.
But my kind of glory is dying to meet you
somewhere inside, under, between, around, outside,
after, during, before my language..

With that said,
Here is the mission statement;

I pledge to be right with this moment.
To cast myself out the furthest a mind can carry one in any given
instant and bring back more of the goodness that serves
instead of white noise that moves nothing
or clutter that just makes it hard to move.
As I realize we are objects being moved by all that is around us,
for instance;
thinking of the same person every time you enter a particular room.
Romance does happen to those who know how to look.
You do not look by containing anything with separation.
The walls must heave and collapse like lungs
because my body is mostly dead things that are just now
learning.

Ghastly lights of the lamp posts shine through pavements
And each steps burns the floor to engravement
as he drips drop by drop
the buses he takes, stop to stop
he bleeds and no one sees
he bleeds and no one believes

Watch his head he hung low
wayward to wayward he go
But what way was meant to walk though?
Stop by stop buses change
in his pockets are the crumbled change
his fare to the unknown
but forward he goes
forward he goes

I love how hard it is for all of us to accept ourselves,
Putting on elaborate masks,
To go parading amongst the phonies.
I love how we all talk to and about each other,
But never try to repair the broken relationships,
But what I love the most is
how we all complain about our position,
but never seek the answers to put our minds at rest,
To keep the past in the past and move to whats best.

You sit here reading this,
And think,
"What a hypocrite!"
"What a beast!"
But I see my flaws,
and I know who I am,
Im working to help myself,
on levels that most don't understand,
Because while most put on masks,
I put on war paint,
and march into battle,
facing the demons of my past,
to look foreward to that brighter future.

And the truth is
I love all these things
because I sit back and realize,
that im not a warrior,
that is battling alone,
that we're all going through the same situations,
Just different scenarios.
that we all have difficulties,
living with ourselves,
The same difficulty facing the monsters in the mirror.

But it's time for us all to face the facts,
To bring out the war paint,
and throw out the masks.
Time to smear it all over,
cover up the flakes and cracks,

It's time to march into battle,
to beat down our demons,
wipe off the shame and sorrows of the past,
walk triumphantly into the sunset,
head held high and soul held higher,
and never look back.

I try to will my hands to movement
but the energy that fails to stir them
is that of a dying spider

my hands are dying spiders
the weight of broken ballerina ankles rests on them
as one finger, one spindly leg reaches foreward with the fading pulsation of apathy and desperation

apathy pitted against desperation in a cage match thumping against the bars of my ribs i cannot funck fu k func function like this

i once saw a dying spider
she had been in the skylight for weeks
lights flooded the room and she floated down the middle
on a silver string, what skirts are made of for dancers
her legs slowly splayed as she turned so thin so light
in my head i heard played the last grand notes of swan lake
she landed her perfect pirouette to the end of her swan song
and dies to an admiring audience weighed of broken ballerina ankles

her spindly, skeleton leg reaches foreward
driven by desperation
slowing by apathy by starvation by stubbornness by fear
her legs curl unto herself
caging the match pitting apathy against desperation
she cannot fun...c..tio...n... like... this...

Silence falls on my eyes and creeps them closed as my hand
fails to reach the next letter
i desperately have to reach the next letter
but Apathy blinks and says
whats the point

I feel as if I might explode
Filled to the brim
Overflowing with emotion

Love, wonder, hurt, sorrow,
A lightness in my chest
A feeling in my heart
It is something I can't explain

All these emotions filling me
I feel everything
There are no words to describe
What goes on in my mind

This feeling in my heart
It fills me with want
I don't comprehend
What do I do to the end?

Is this to be my fate
Never finding the right words to say
Is this what it means
To have a poets mind?

I'm not very good
Not like the greats
Classics that eveyone knows

Or maybe
I'm just to close
To see my own greatness
For to me
These poems don't fit
I can't use symbols
Or discreetly criticize

Everything straight foreward
But is this feeling in my chest
The potential I have in me?

Why does death elude me
does it no longer hunt me like a lion to it's pray
the sweet sleep is so far away, outside of grasp.
The overwhelming feeling f reponsability impedes my plan
and my mind feverishly attempts to find a way to disolve the promise
and responsabilities owed.
To decide the way to face death is another decision
should it be peacful and fade into a quiet slumber
should it be quick and one painful
I find myself lacking the courage to take that final step, to pull that triger or take that extra pill
I ate my life and the constant strugle
I hurt everyone I know and can't keep the one's I love
I lose them to death and to my inabiltiy to look outside my of me
There is nothing to ook foreward to nothing that will change my life for the better
So I continue with my prayers to be taken from this turmoil and grief to stop hurting others in my life with one last pain and loss, the loss of me

and bed and closet
and solid wood dressers
and mirrors
hung on each wall
so when you stood in the middle
you could see who you were,
four different views,
spin quickly in a circle
and all four become one
dizzy smear of fleshy skin,
dark strands of hair
and constant brown pupils,
trying to focus. Spinning
and getting nauseous
this room's walls inch foreward,
closer, the ceiling lowers
the jagged plastered lines
and edges **** ceasessely
forming a cube condensing
and swallowing your form
up with it. A diamond
shaped prism with your
twirling reflection bouncing
off glass and your life
beaming from their lenses,
out from the geometry
and from the fake wooden beams. underneath white socks
as you fall back
through claustrophobia,
anxiety and time
and lie with your back
on the bed,
reminded of its emptiness,
with the room still circling
you, as a cube
with especially pointed edges,
and you think the dizziness
and headaches would stop
if only he was in that same
shrinking bedroom as you.

Well you don't know where I'm goin',
but I sure do know what lays before me.
The path is familiar like a friendly touch,
the buildings that sleep there are warm,
and there is no way of knowing who resides there now.
Maybe the faces of the past, or maybe not,
either way it doesnt matter all that much,
because somehow they got to be like me in more ways,
then I could care to share with anyone of these hazy days.
So don't pay me no nevermind as I travel foreward, and down,
down to the path I know like my lover's skin,
as I look for a dusty ol' inn with some stars as faded as the sign,
in the Town of Regret.

The place, you may know it well,
the name however may escape you like a snake,
does a deep ol' well full of stale water.
The neighbors, they all like to tell tales,
none of them fake, none of them real,
but the one about a guy named Zimmerman,
well that one you could buy with a penny, its so swell.
Now dont forget the old man at the butcher store.
If you bargain, he will give you any meat,
some say its because he lost his shoes,
others say his feet, in the war the world lost.
Though you get that without costs,
the cook, with her twelve children,
well she dont chop cheap,
shes got all them kids with mouths,
and they dont have brooms to sweep.
So after this, the name might be comin' back in now,
just look in the eyes of the sunset,
and remember those nights so ghostly,
that you spent in this,
the Town of Regret.

The windows are all broken,
and the kids have no mits or bats,
so there is nobody that knows who caused the glass to shatter.
The ol' man sitting at the train station has been there since I was born,
and on his collar he has worn,
the same flower of blue that his love gave him.
The gamblers they played it all,
even the names their parents gave them so long ago.
Seems like now they have no hands left to go,
and only a small smile to spread under their glasses.
On late nights, you can find me sitting on a porch,
usually its one by the hill, where the wind passes me,
just like the fingers of my love once did.
But after so many fights, I lost her to the foggy sea,
and theres a kid with his feet hanging off the roof,
he sings to me songs of a sweet child with a warm heart,
the one that was like me before my path was set,
the one that didnt have a hike here,
here in the Town of Regret.