AS IF
the curvature
of the
earth
were enough
to let me know
there were another side
to this great continental shore,
a side
long
distant
at which you will soon
find yourself
clasping
the base
of infant trees
and gnawing them
deep
into the soil floor
as if finally
wage-labor
employed its own services
to stave off
the further destruction
of our single biosphere.

"Does distance
make the heart
grow fonder,
or
does distance
cause the heart
to wander?"

All I can say to this is:
I hope that while your body wanders,
my heart will be beating
alongside yours
beneath
the soft blemished skin
of your chest
and as
they hold each other close
below your rib-cage,
you will hold
mine close
as you freeze
and ache
at the end
of an abandoned
back-wood
workday
as if

we can


never



truly leave


each other's

orbit


so

long

as



gravity



persists.

having a seizure
is like
having the rug
of
basic familiarity
in life
entirely
tugged out
from beneath
your mental footing

as your perceptions
whittle themselves
into
sharp
sensitivities
and a
strange penchant
to mistake
the place
you find
yourself
in

for
... another ...


or start
mixing memories
and
perceptions thereof
as if both
must
have always been
one
and the
same

(which,

granted,

perhaps they are.)

This proves
there really is
no difference between
the observer
of the universe
and
what is actually observed

...except relative to the ubiquitously shared
sobriety of the
rest
of the
human race
reinforcing
its own
cognitive-perceptive bias
through a never-ending
feedback loop
leashed and tagged
with a label that reads:

'Radio Normativity.'

"Tune in to have your bias confirmed!"

so everlasting love was what we wanted,
a universe that sank into a
self-same
observation
of itself
like a child
into the pages
of a
well-written book.

but in wanting it,
we admitted to our
great
                    collective
                                               dissonance:

we didn't have it.

and so,
as we sought,
the copious

bLeEt-ing

of our
sheep-like

humanities

repeated

the very same
angry

mantra:

"   serendipity
                                          has really got me
                                                                                          by the *****.   "

there was never much left for me to say,
insofar as I didn't know how to articulate it or,
if I did, I no longer possessed the energy to do so.

Hope comes stranded, like a helium balloon
left to wander the skies once released
at a city parade.

A child not yet wise to the knowledge
that helium
is lighter
than air
imagines she can let go
to weave her little shoes
into secure knots with
both hands,
so by the time she looks up to find this renegade bulb,
it's nothing more than one of what could be
ninety-nine red balloons
floating in the summer sky.

In this sense,
it could be said hope comes
from all angles,
regardless of whether this
little drip of serendipity
is gifted by accident,
intention,
or
simple curiosity.

Existence always hurts.
But it's our challenge to choose
how it hurts:
will it be a chronic sickness unto death,
inspiring moroseness and jaded apathy?
Or will it feel like gym pain,
as if liquid gold has pooled
into every open crevice
of bone marrow
so the ache is nothing
but
a
friendly reminder
of our living vitality
through having
expended
the body,
mind
and soul
in satisfaction?

Far too often the past few years I've felt as if I were C3PO dragging my robot-feet through the parched, endless dunes of the Tatooine deserts in the opening salvos to A New Hope.

"Oh R2, it seems be our lot in life to suffer."

The past 2 years, though it would be impossible to say each and every contiguous moment was terrible, has, in the aggregate evaluation of retrospect, been the worst 2 of my life so far. Two good friends have lapsed into the realm of death as a result of drug overdoses, I've slogged through episodic epilepsy which has precipitated a full return of my anxiety and major depressive disorder, seen the end of the longest relationship I've ever been in after 3 and a half years following which my ex-girlfriend (probably legally a civil-union 'spouse' by the point of departure) immediately leap-frogged into the newly committed arms of someone I thought to be a best friend less than 2 weeks after our termination as a couple, my compression-of-self to manically pursue academic ends, some of which would never reach fruition regardless of my best efforts, Donald Trump's election to the highest office of political authority in the United States and all that is contingent on this terribly seminal event, my manifest inability to accept that I am perhaps affected heavier by the loss of these two said friends than I often actively feel myself to be within any given moment, aaannnd.... where has it all lead?

This is perhaps the $64,000 question. I feel it is most certainly the reason I write today.

I have been, on many levels, classically defeated by forces of life known to human experience since the beginning of time. I am emotionally, intellectually, and physiologically exhausted.
I desire nothing more than the ability to take a period of hiatus, to retreat and regroup for a few months, let all bleed to paper, a catharsis permitted as energy levels allow. But I'm afraid because I don't have the money to support such a retreat despite my knowing exactly what I need. Rent will still rear its ugly head to guillotine my unprepared neck and truly substantiate a hard, physical contrast between the 'body' and 'mind.' This being said, it is only the dissonant forces of economy which maintain this illusion as a practical necessity.

If economy can't let go of me so I can let my soul soar to express, I often begin to contemplate yet again the only third option between a rock and a hard place: that of suicide, the ultimate and final release. The 'greatest' final "Great Escape."

Just let me go, or I'll do it for me.

Please, convention. Give me the space I need. Because I know, I know, I know I need it.

Castles in the sand, or
Castles in the sky.

There's a whisper of tentative potentials
wafting thru the air like mill smoke.

It keeps us withered and wondering,
starstruck, mutilated in spirit & empowered
in mind.

We chant, "I don't mind. Terror
is an error but no error stems from
a terrified wolf," simply reacting
to the terrain like a Ghost
losing the ghost of its mind
in these very same whispers
as they morph into a melody,
a whistle, a beautiful problem
ready to be solved.

(ready to be solvent.)

Test the prefix, nasty "the,"

"the end," "the task," "the mannequin's

freakishly piercing magenta gaze";

What's the MaTtEr?

is matter the MaTtEr?


Don't twist my arm

like a twist-off beer cap,

twist & shout, perhaps

because the void needs us

to scream.


We exist as the amplified feedback

of the Universe-At-Large,

& if sound isn't made,

there can't be consciousness,

or confusion

without the screeching feedback

loop of time.