You've been here before.  You woke up today and realized that the stress, the angst, and the foreboding that you've allowed to rule your life is there by choice.  You've gotten lost in the spiral of anxiety, again.

If it's not your health, it's your money.  If it's not the money, it's your kids.  If it's not your kids, you're worried about past life choices and how they will affect you tomorrow.  Your fears line up at the door, wrap around the block, and await their turn.  Your door is open to them all and you don't deny them.  You let them in.  

Once they are inside, you wrap your fears around you.  They’re a welcome smothering; a wearying security blanket of trembling phobia.  They are as familiar to you as they are distressing.  These constant, restless, companions are more comfortable than the unknown.  

Today, though, you stare at the line of fears and realize that something is missing.  Happiness.  Contentment.  Acceptance.  These are conspicuous in their absence.  And you remember an old Cherokee tale.  You have two wolves engaged in eternal battle inside you; one is fear and anxiety and the other is peace and serenity.  The strongest is the one you feed and you've been feeding the wrong wolf.  

You've done this your entire life in a self-centered, selfish, guilt-ridden, indulgent, fashion.  You wallow in the darkness because you're afraid you don't deserve the light.

You know you’ll feed the right wolf today.  But can you do it tomorrow?  

  mighty river;
the fish navigates
​as it will

a hand raised to cut out some of the glare. still only see glare. worry stalked my thoughts while hunger rattled on my ribs. Time being beaten out by the slap of tattered sail against the broken limb that should be stout skywards not right angled into the .... glare.

i am a fair sailor on a regular day. today i am a burnt out wreck foolishly adrift after capsize. ok foolhardy but who would not wish to be in the blue on such a day. a day 5 or 6 ago on a whim and gentle wind to gather me into nature. She has done with me now and I waft away into sleep.

There I am carried away from desperate thirst and pained imagined goodbyes to a place that seems cool and if not dark it is at least bare of violent light. I blink. I did, it hurt. All is grey apart from land-born angels pointing home.

flat grey sky
is hiding seagulls
with rain on wings

I thought you were my life. I grew my life around this life.
You and them were all I had.

Lost home when voice broke,
now this wind that scatters all -
peregrine again.

How do I start anew? What part of me do I say is not me
now and where do I find the I was before us?

What part of the mist
is mountain-tears and what part
the last monsoon cloud?

The heart is a hollow of the bowl-song, an unrung peal
of the untolled bell, sullen tree laden with loss

First snow of deep night,
silence has a colour now -
a hue called longing.

But I must let go. Transitory, the joys of our life, like
the distant lights disappearing at dusk behind the hills

Go, larks, speeding east -
all my ***** loves set free,
now rises the truth.

I was free, always free. The receptacles are gone, but love
finds new vessels, new vehicles.

Emptiness is full:
the shell has all the colours -
gone the jezebels
but still rich the air in hues
that more can dip in and drink

I can feel you, restless, in my dreams, or mind, or heart.   tortured by thoughts of nothing in blackness in the noise of a crowded room.  There is no peace tonight, in my very being I feel it,  There are no meds to remove the screams, no drugs to escape the torture.  The numbness of self medication keeps your sanity hanging by the strongest of all threads.  Can't think too much, or ponder on what ifs.  But music looks beautiful dancing in the air, and time is a concept of man that serves no purpose other than to **** joy and draw boxes of conformity in thick black lines.

the color of sound
permeates cracks in the void
tolerable life

Existence without reason,  alone in an ever-present crowd, there are no rainbows in nighttime storms, I can feel your quick breaths as you are dragged into sleep unwillingly, though in desperate need. the trepidation runs deep, silenced by normality, fear of separation of mind tethered to others by soul alone.  Pretense in surface honesty, which is perceived as truth.  But the core of it, the fear of it, the whole of it cannot be hidden, for I feel you to the depths of who you are afraid to be.  There is no loss of sanity in being who you are,  Those colors sound beautiful as they dance in the smokey air, and the math is art incarnate, science is the symphony around which all things are born and oh the music.  Yes the music that dances through it all is the very air in all it's swirling hues of blissful perfection

two halves of self dance
tangos of darkness and light
beauty in all things

                    *in wait of nightmares
                    there need not be loneliness
                    joy in one who knows

With all the innocence of old friends, wrapped in silent hoping, knowing but afraid to believe.  The heart beats a bit faster as the words become free. No longer chained in what came before. Transformed by insight, a vision sent to each of us alone.  And in those words were hidden truths that underlay what came before.  A true affection melts in heat into a fire that burns free.  

With a breath was lit
What had always smoldered there
Ablaze on a wire

Tentative in this new-found freedom. We touch delicately, lingering on the words that electrify the flesh and liquify defenses.  Steam wafting in the air as emotion meets desire.  Intoxicated by the ethereal beauty of it all. Left reeling, hearts traded, souls tangled and the lascivious nature of what was once hidden ravages the senses.

They are nine and seven, men and women, brothers and sisters all, most of them married, two or three wishing they were, and all burdened by the test their instructor has laid upon them without notice.  
Anxiety, in such cases, is a quick companion, ready at an instant to stand at your shoulder, and to whisper every conceivable fear into your heart as a certainty from which there is scarcely a chance of escape.  If anxiety is a house cat, then a pop quiz is a can opener.
  
A cough from one of the women…   a pen rolls on a table.  A page is turned.  The class drags on…

A cool summer night;
the blades of the fan echo
a passing airplane.

What a cold day in England! Snow covered the whole atmosphere.Every being is shivering in cold.It seem the whole London is locked in a deep freezer.Our blood got thick.Nothing is moving,no sound is heard except the quiet tick tock.The hooting owl is dying.Then we saw.....
      Some pieces of snow
      melting before the sun rise~
      Twenty-first february.

Not far from where I am, the King fire rages.
Ruling, man-made, it tames the dry wilds
and rakes over our cradles and gardens.
It was waiting a long time to happen.
Conceived in a summer sky unforgiving,
sparked long before any September thoughts of arson,
the blaze was born of the need for renewal.
Brightly alive,
the King eats each and every bird nest and evergreen.
Blinding and blinded alike,
it is a mouth, devouring blue egg and seedling impatient,
eating and feeding, change incarnate,
all the while whispering
ten-thousand times over its
snap-crackle mantra,
the declaration of a wide-eyed being,
seething, like its victims,
reeling in ecstasy.

How many homes are caught in the blaze
not two valleys over?
Is it the instinct of the fire,
like us passing animals,
to turn anything to
FOOD?
All I can see,
and can't help but to breathe,
is the smoke left over from the heat beast's meal.
Soon
ash will be raining
in place of the water
now so needed.
As I pray for rain and watch the grey
drift like fog banks,
like foreboding ghostly hills,
the sun is lighting through the dense
in the afternoon,
in a slow waking morning.

Through the smoke
an orange beam of sunlight
falls at my feet

Draining Hell-fire through fingertips. Fully immersed in emotion, not just the memory.  Reliving the feeling of tortured souls while bleeding ink into words.  Slinking from an ashen past into a jet black future. The present lost, forgotten, left behind in transition from shadow to darkness. Shattered souls resuscitated and shared for the mere pleasure of others.  there is no time to wallow, no self pity. That is not found in this place, burned off as sulfur in the brewing of a demon.  

She comes alive
Through yesterday's ashes
Succubus divine

Such a pretty little package. Sugar and spice and everything that isn't meant for human consumption.  Poison mind seething, searching for the vulnerable, the gullible, the innocent, and the sweetly vile.  Spewing forth honesty in liquid courage.  No need to lie when eyes believe what they see.  Beauty in the moonlight, sweetness in a smile, desire in a twinkle of Hell in the eye.  Oh, that bit of Hell is a lot to chew.  Take a bite and choke.  Lost forever are pieces of you, your heart, your soul feeds her beautiful demons.  Her flawless imperfections beguile and betray the mind, as those demons consume her divinely

Entranced by beauty
He stalks his prey in music
She absorbs his soul

Honeysuckle perfume taints the air.  And the honey will never again taste as sweet. Swimming mind lost in those ruby lips and laughter like cracking glass heard as tinkling bells.  Ensnared in the thorns that hook the flesh by surprise. The warmth of the fire masks the sting. All part of the dance.  Writhing, hypnotic friction disguised as emotion, disguised as desire, disguised as love.  Motion so fluid whispers depravity behind the eyes of an angel.  There is nothing else.  She gets what she wants. You believe you have her right where you want her, but it is she who has lead the way from the first whiff of the stench of you as you entered the room.

He believes he won her
She devours his essence
vanishing at once

As she is craved, she burns your soul.  This demon who drains Hell-fire into words.