Oooh~ I Caught the tail end
of the tail trail
back from the parade,
coming from Canal zig-zagging
back the back way,
(maybe south, no north…)
to Bourbon St;
and the tail trail promenade
was full of talent on display,
and temptation,
and it was passing
right. in . front of me.
A veritable smorgasbord
of bad decisions one could make.
A circus Maximus of humanity,
in Grecian magnitude;
this bacchanal goes rolling
through the streets every year,
and this year it’s encircling me.

^Rocking This Sweet *** Suite^

Boppin’ around the outskirts of town,
With bottle o’rotgut, a limp, and a smile,
Wearing a thin coat of mornin’ sunrise
to cover the patina of Stale *****
and gutter dew,
in his Gutter-Suit
with a Pair o’ boots On,
an’ a Fresh-Cut Gutter doo,
Is man of means
(mostly “means well”)
On sabbatical from livin hard,
And taking it extra easy
this very evening,
and looking for something to do.

^In the Big Easy^

“Take it Eeeeasy,
Take it eeeeaeeasy”
he sings to himself softly,
and then to no one in particular
in his purview,
“I been livin’ hard my whole ******* life,
trying to prove I ain’t got nuttin’ to prove,
and all I got for all it took
is a whole lotta ******* nothing-to-lose.
Man I gotta figure it out,” he muttered,
swaying slightly under the *****.
“This ol back’s only gotta a few seasons left,
dude. We gotta come up with something new.”
He reaches back with his right hand
and places his fist in his back,
knuckles to his right hip,
as he limps a shuffled cadence
favoring his unhealed broken ankle,
which lends his pace
a meandering sashay
of someone strutting,
and belays a a bit of class in its stance,
with his arm held out of view,
much akin to the prideful rigid reserve
of a French maitre’d,
but with a derelict sheik
uncommonly seen.

“Otherwise it’s broke street,
on the corner of no-go rd,
and you know what that means.
Yes you do…
You gotta big brain buddy,
why don’t you use it to maybe do something good for you?”

There is no response…

He looks weathered in a way
that only rough living can wear on a man -
leathered skin,
wrinkled brow,
creased crows’ feet at the corners
of his bright gray blue eyes
(eyes that seem unsettling, at first glance
• almost animal •
due in part to a golden yellow ring
around his pupils,
and a wild flitting movement
as if he’s constantly seeing someone unknown
entering into his view;
But this wild-eyed creature turns
uncannily human,
as soon as someone
willing to listen more than a minute or two
gets caught in his gaze
and locks eyes for the first time;
And let me tell you,
it does something to you.
That gaze is magnetic,
and his hard scrabble appearance
is softened and sweetens
when he’s looking into you.
It’s not something that’s common these days
(steady eye-contact, that is),
what with all the distractions
we’ve entrenched ourselves in
with our phones and computers
and near constant stuff to do.
But his eyes are soft,
and  welcoming and it’s hard to not believe
he means no harm.
So, despite his appearance,
most people don’t shun him,
as people are often wont to do
when confronted by poverty
and personal suffering-
but he doesn’t wear that as armor,
as many of the indigent community will;
he simply lived what he was given
and doesn’t complain,
“Cuz, what good would it do?”  
He’s profoundly joyful
in his demeanor,
and He’ll tell you why if you let him,
cuz he’s “playing with house money
everyday he wakes up”
and he’s “still gotta a lot o’ livin’ to do!”

As he shuffles along the the shaded city streets
Every now and then, he stops
And squats,
Puts his hands on his knees
And props himself up.
He looks
like he might be having a heart attack,
but his back just hurts
(like it always does),
and he just needs a second
to let it breathe.
Once it’s released,
he pops back up, and continues about his way, spry for a man his age
but still brittle and broken
and whistling the blues.

Hark and Come Hear Ye Here
Ye loyal subjects of the king
Reports from the borders of our principality
warn of a gruesome pestilence spreading unseen,
This devilish scourge of affliction is Coming!
Beware of the telltale signs of corruption
In the countenance of those under siege of this heretofore unknown malady.
It has been documented
by trusted physicians that certain aspects of one’s physiology
Will present themselves shortly
before the fever of madness and fear
Takes control.
Take Heed of thy neighbors
Behaviors and be wary of
Changes occurring in regards to
Their normal routine.
If boils or bleeding of orifices be
Witnessed report the citizen to the nearest authority
Once the outward expression of the putrification is upon them, it is but a fortnight until they succumb to the terrible fate of mortality. Those most beset by the pox of this plague are without exception in a state of aggravated nervous disorientation. Keep safe, keep your distance, and warn others around you of such individuals afflicted, lest ye contract the pox, for there is as yet no alchemical remedy

Be wary of these ghouls wandering the streets
Muttering manically, wreaking of decay, flailing and gnashing their teeth in a rage.
If one of the accursed creatures approaches, It is a mortal encroachment ye must evade.
Make right with the lord and keep the faith, our souls stand for judgment, ensure yours will be saved.

Take heed of these warnings here given this day.

They are not to be ignored if you wish to survive

He cried, “Out!”

(In the darkest corner of a small wooden landing at the top of the steps to the fenced back yard of a rented home currently occupied by a trio of underpaid shift workers whom, as a kindness and in response to the predicted overnight cold snap, have taken into their foster care a destitute stray, a man of roughly 40 clearly hard worn years kneels doubled over and wailing mournfully to himself, his head tucked in and down toward his chest in an undeniably penitent posture similar to the pious prayer of those who heed the daily call, and face Mecca. Apropos of nothing, he just so happens to be faced to Mecca at this moment. This is, however, purely coincidental, as our pitiful subject here is not a man of clothe, nor one of great or even minor faith, much less a man of daily prayer or mindful meditation. Quite In contrast, He is a drinker and a drifter; drug-addicted, disaffected, dissatisfied, and dismayed. Yet he is also a dreamer of the highest order, completely convinced of the attainability of a singular salvation of creative elucidation, a dream he has been chasing unrelentingly for more than 20  years; and which he has just this very evening seen how truly attainable it is. Merely moments ago, In a vision of clarity which came over him unwittingly, and uninitiated by anything within his purview, our vagrant interloper has seen a crystallization of artistic inspiration which envisioned all the interconnections within his disjointed philosophical treatises, which he has spent the better part of three decades  composing, and in that moment he was overtaken by the sudden uninhibitable need to bleed the pressure wellingup inside his chest and his lungs began to squeeze. The noise they made directed itself toward the realm of sorrow. It is a wail of a desperation; not unlike one you might hear from fathers who’s lost there cherished sons, from lovers who’ve lost their lovers, and from children having a tantrum who need to eat and then to sleep, but refuse. He was at that moment all of these things in essence; a man rejected and alone, beset by turmoil of his own making, and both exhausted and famished; but his noise came joyfully, as it was the expression of something deep within him which he had recently freed; and so no effort was made to sequester or quiet the cries that he now seethes. It is simply the gasp and exhalation of soul which desperately needed to breathe.)

A soft wail arises quietly from silence to an open mouth, a single note, unbroken and controlled as much as one can control such a sound. From this beginning after a moment, almost a minute but something less, if you were to count; the wail completes with a sharp cutoff instead off dying back down. It ends, from an open mouth to clenched teeth and the tongue cutting off the sound. It makes a word but he did not consciously say it; it’s just the only word that could come…

Out.

GET OUT!
GET OUT OF ME!
Go the **** away!
I do not need you
I do not want you
I will not hold you
You have to leave
There is no place for you in here any more
Get. Out.
Get out.

GET THE **** OUT OF ME!

PLEASE!

(As he spits these curses and pleads, something moves deep with in him. he convulses and every muscle in him begins to squeeze and he feels as if he’s imploding and but his eyes are about to explode out, and in this seizing state, he feels the expelled energy escape, physically, through the center of his mind and forehead, like a boiler valve exploding with steam in a movie. It goes out and up and away and silently it leaves. A calm settles over the whole scene as he stills his body, still convulsing, and then he sees swirling among the phosphors on the back of his eyelids, where it burns an impression when one stares at bright light too long, something coalesce: an impression of an Iris, pulsing and folding into itself but without edge, as if his minds eye were right in front of him. He stays there penitent and quiet and keeps his eyes closed, in order not to lose it, because whatever it is he needs to know it; what ever it is, he cannot deny he sees it. He stays perfectly still while it’s centered in his vision, as if it were a wild animal he intended not to scare away, and silently he studies it and stares and considers what has just opened in his vision and what, preceding that, had thusly broken away. Slowly realization comes, as it’s elemental name is spoken silently from behind,
         “I am the one who sees,
            I am that which drives
         I am you, and you are me
                 We are together,
                   A single being
                         but You
                  are part of me”

and upon the realization solidifying, without hesitation he addresses it, directly and in a docile tone…

I see you
I see you there
staring back at me

I know who you are
I know you are me

It’s good to see you
I’ve missed you
Where did you go?

He lifts his head just a little, just so he’s holding it with his neck, it’s the first movement he has made beyond the minimum necessary to say the words he had to say and to expand and contract his lungs enough to breath. As he opens his eyes, the vision persists and he’s now staring at it outside of him, nestled into his unknowingly cupped and folded hands, like one would make to receive the sacrament of communion, which is ironic yet somehow perfect for this experience is the only religious thing he’s ever felt or known or seen. Now, with eyes open it looks to be an orb of energy without a glow, and he folds his hands closed around it as if to hold it, and he stands up with eyes closed; as yet unwilling to lose the vision and let it go. He turns slightly to the north, away from the darkness he had hidden in before and opens his eyes hopefully for the first time in ages.

He stares distantly into the foliage of a few scattered trees that occupy a greenway next to a drainage ditch called “flood street” to the people
that know, and in those last late autumn leaves still hanging on with incredulity, he sees the inner eye again, still staring back at him, and in that moment he already knows- it’s not going go, it is part of his mind, which now he’s opened it will be ever-present, even if unseen. He shifts his gaze over to the corner of a house not too far away and again he sees it shimmering, superimposed. It’s not external it is like a lens through which he sees now, and he becomes joyful.

He lowers his eyes in peaceful pause and starts to take off his clothes, he sheds his jacket, shirt and socks, flinging them to and fro and descends the steps into the yard and squeezes the grass between his toes. He presses hard down through his feet, to let the ground know that he is there and he will not sink. His stance widens. He loosens his shoulders as he reaches down between his feet, and sets his palms flat in the grass, exhaling deeply as he folds. Then breathing deeply in and upward he raises up towards the sky stretching everything inside, reaching as high as he go, and there he sees the Cheshire smile and he greets the moonlight glow

Hi how are you, I’m glad you’re here too

And then he begins to dance with it, in Meditative and intentional movement. He makes a show for the moonlight and the minds eye and he moves every muscle under his control, twisting and turning in soft ecstasy releasing decades of unwanted tension; finally letting all the build-up go. He lands down in the sweet smelling grass on his belly, arms folded and in his vision are two small flowers swaying slightly and only them, no leaves rustle because no breeze blows. It seems to him that they danced with him and he will remember this for the rest of his troubled life, though it should be a little easier now knowing what he knows.

Why anyone,
who has seen the eyes of divinity
would ever think that they should leave
whatever space or place or mindset where
they found it, to deny intrepidly that,
without a doubt,
they sincerely believe
that they
saw nothing
out of the ordinary;
no mysterious magic miracle
meant to mean something
to the eyes of wonder
worn by children,
full of mystic revelry;
That there
in this world
with mind unmarred
nothing surreal occurred;
no mysterious light was seen
which no one else could see:
and (hold on)
dismiss that which is in his view of the world which he verily sees,
…and just … look away…
is strange to me.

Why would someone want to leave
the presence and the peace
of creation for some dream?

What motivation could there be to dismiss reality
…for some make believe world…  
that, in which, magic things - do not - exist?

I certainly cannot believe they’d look away intentionally…
Not me!

Aphorisms rarely confer the comfort they intend
                                    BUT
   “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

An antique wooden trunk sits languidly beside the road (Alabama State Highway 98 Scenic Route, Main St. Daphne, for those that need to know) atop a concrete culvert cover amidst a color-guard composed of an unused ironing board, and a mildewed duffel-bag (but the nicer kind- made of synthetic blend, with the wheels that don’t really roll, and an extendable handle that’s stuck “in”; not the heavy olive-drab canvas of the pop-culture cliche, found slung across the shoulder of the love-lorn/shell-shocked/long-lost soldier returning home unannounced in a lifetime movie melodrama) discarded haphazardly, and awaiting their diesel-powered trash-truck ferry to the afterlife of moribund things; but serendipitously and surreptitiously it is to be rescued from oblivion by the unexpected happenstance of a passerby passing by distractedly (gone out of his way though he really has no where to go, just somewhere to be, eventually) meandering through town, down alternate roads making his way to a rendezvous with a friend to give them a hand, for a minute, with some chores they’d like to get through before they leave for Atlanta, because he hasn’t seen them recently, and he had nothing better to do.

How many others have passed by the unmapped X, but never saw it for they were so myopic in their missions and goals: rushed and unconscious, on autopilot, en route, to work, or to lunch, to mid-day meetings with clients for paper and gold; How many missed the possibility of adventure passing by, the childish excitement that could unfold, if they had just looked up from their phones and coffees and looked around for signs, untold? How many noticed the slight shimmer of fantasy left sitting by the road, but couldn’t stop because they were in a carpool, they weren’t driving, or just so unimaginative that to believe, for a bit, that a treasure exists outside the storied pages of fairy tales was too much to do, or too much to bear, with a rundown, old soul. Did a child see, with impressionable eyes, the chest of treasure left by a fool, unattended, out in the open (not buried, not even a bit, barely even hidden from view) and instantly wonder, too, just what might be inside? Could it be shimmering, shining jewels, loose and encrusting golden crowns, and goblets, scepters and silver candlesticks, precious oriental silks, or bullion and pirate *****; possibly a magic lamp, or maybe some enchanted tools?! A flying carpet!? Perhaps A Ghost of some grim ghoul. Did they beg a guardian to stop the carriage, but were denied and told, “we have to keep going little one, there’s much to get to that you don’t know. You have to go to school.”
Well, the glimmer caught the eye of one beholder and made them think immediately, “That looks like treasure!”

Indeed!
It did look like treasure: a literal chest, built of heartwood with a carved arch-top, weathered paint, rusted hinges, metal bindings and filigree.

(It was obviously empty of value, scuttled, broken, and relinquished to the refuse heap; However, To one with a limp, and a bad eye, and a deaf ear, brandishing a homeward bound insignia upon his chest and an island luck charm in black ink on his leg, whom you’d easily confuse for a pirate misplaced, you can see how it might seem to warrant an inspection.)

Plus: It’s uncommon to find a treasure chest
in the trash, in this century. Perhaps hope got the best of me; but also I knew its fate was not to be buried under heaps of plastic and rot.

I’ve a friend whose proclivity one could describe as a collector of things, useful and abandoned... but not a “hoarder” like on the television - Unless you count Ariel as such- with all her jetsam, Knick-knacks, thing-a-ma-bobbers, and dreams.

We are “of a kind,” prone to picking up after others, collecting aesthetic driftwood- anthropomorphized or just architecturally interesting, finding faces in fallen leaves, pointing to leaves that look like bugs, picking up bugs dried up like leaves and or sticks and stones and broken bones of small creatures long left rotting, beautifully decaying detritus of modernity - deemed useless; but still WE believe a greater purpose lies within, undefined by its usefulness, to be determined by it’s form Rather than function, appropriated and repaired  or dismantled and “re-crafted” into art, by simplification. Driven by a simple inspiration; To make beautiful decoration.

I pull aside, let traffic pass, circle back, reorient and reclaim this bounty of the proverbial “spring-clean.” Its condition is one of slight disrepair: needs hinges re-attached; but otherwise in fine shape. I collect this treasured trash and return to my path, on course to its new home with my friend to whom I was already bound; But now I come bearing gifts.

His smile was worth the drive and the dumpster-diving and the the whole day.

A gift given is a love lived-in, and a smile
shared with a friend Is love and life for me.

Mysterious Paradoxes

I just watched a man
take a token from the hand
of a life long friend,
again!
For the power of relief
from poison and pride.
A marker of 31 years
in recovery
from the hell
of addiction and drink.

Face Fear
face first
fearless and thorough from start to finish


“When I face fear, I’m given courage;
When I help my brother, I help myself.”


A third life is possible if the second try fails.
Even then it’s still the first:
3 in 1 like the ghost
and the father and the sun.
From our mother we are birthed
and led to find a guiding hand
and to help others who are lost
find the path and the light
and the love of a life
free from the powers
of persuasion by the devil
and his friends.

A simple solution -

Surrender to Win!

Amen… again
And again and again,
‘Til it ends.
It begins
In a place
Among friends;
One day at a time.
Everyday can be mine
If I find what I found
the first time I really tried.



Common solution
1005 old shell
11:19am
2-23-24

Oh Joy!
Oh sweetest thing,
Blossom and sing!

Were you a flower,
You would ever be 
never picked, or plucked;
neither clipped nor pruned;
Rather, left unfettered,
Unsung, in the meadow.

Such is the love of a poet
for the words of a soul,
And the soul
never met
but through pages and text;

Grow Perennial,
Hopeful
Ambrosial intoxicant
Evolve and sublimate,
Evaporate
And precipitate beauty and truth
Before grave turns thy youth
Beset by passing days;
When the inevitable click
of the last tick of the clock
puts a stop
.
to the flow of a beatific mind.

Let time spend its days
flitting and frittering away.
Let me remain
standing here,
Ad infinitum, held hostage
to a moment
of refrain

Oh Joy!
Oh sweetest thing,
Blossom and sing!

The hymn sung of dawn
by sparrow and skylark
to meadow and marsh…

It was terrifying visceral scream
In negative color!
Nega-green and purple-blue shimmer,
cascading yellow dark
Upon a fourth dimensional screen,
But it was a mind’s-eye view of the black side of the eyelid, so it’s just a thought
A passing dream
But it was ugly
evil
vicious
mad
Vendictive
hurtful
and obscene

But you weren’t sure you saw it and you surely don’t want the thing.
So we’ll let go of the vision and forget it’s being
It certainly wreaked of hell in that room for a scene.
It scared me to think
How evil I could imagine
Might intervene
Chaos actor in shadows and driven by destroying beautiful dreams.
…



.“,’(@)’,”.

A funerary dirge
Blows in softly on the breeze
Distant and muddied by the
City Rhythm thrumming and thumping quietly between me and the revelry trumpeted bold and brassy piercing the caucaphony intermittently
Mixing melodies of bouncing horns into
A melodrama drawn in minor key

A black cat skulks the shattered streets around me underneath the shadows cast by broken rigs of steel and octane
Bouncing on dinosaur goo baked and shaped into ***** donuts filled with pressure almost explosive if released suddenly.

He meows softly from the street-
side of a broken boxwood promenade,
Unkempt and cracked, between he and I,
Sat upon the low steps of a split landing
Leading to the threshold, transom, and door of
1603 Rendon St.
Somewhere in New Orleans
during the week to be in Louisiana
- Mardi Gras -
(Deep Gras to those who know it)
the trumpeted herald of the Holy sacred Lenten season of self imposed sobriety
But here we are, all by our lonesome
just me and myself
And also Steve.


(Steve I just made up. There is no Steve. Well… not really.. kinda well. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing…
But that’s the thing)

I put my hand out,
“Are you familiar?”
                                         Mow

“Tsc tsc tsc… no that’s not your call?”
Pss Pss Pss

                            Mreooow!

“Who are you? Why are you staring at me” the miniature panther seemed to think. He won’t much come nearer, rather he skirts a radius clear about me, but he lays down lazily on the roots of a laurel oak not far, but no closer, and stares and stirs and mews a few times softly and then slinked away silently off somewhere,
as if magically, without me seeing
Him leave.


Him was familiar.
Him definitely seemed
to be a warning of something
coming;

“I hope it’s a good thing!.. “
I thought - intentionally naive -
“That’d be nice.”
“Something good, for once.”

(Like me behaving… That’d be nice to see.)

Good Ol’ Steve…

I wonder if he’ll come back later…
…and if his life is interesting.


A siren wailing in the not too distant city
Reminds me I still hear,
That I’m still here.
just out here in it
chasing dragons and meeting demons
Witnessing magical mysteries
all through the streets…

“How does it all end? You may be wondering…”
He said, solipsistically,
standing in solitude,
Aloof, upon a stage; lit by a candle
held in his left hand,
burning low and dripping wax
across his white knuckled fist
clenching it like the last threads of a fraying lifeline
trying to slip from the grip of a dying man
desperate to hold on,
for a just little bit longer,
while he waits to see
if the prayers he’s prayed
fell silent
upon deafened ears
or if a devine deity exists,
Somehow, and also cares
enough to intervene,
to extend a helping hand
to swoop in,
and save Him

- To save the day -

“…Well…
The cancer’s coming.
I know that for a fact.
It’s in there somewhere;
That’s safe to say.
I can feel it
growing
deep
inside me;
gnawing steadily;
Obstinate and tenacious;
Toothlessly teething; persistently
eating me away.
Trying to replace
as much of me as possible
with its black bleeding heart
and its horrible face;
Laughing all the while, quietly,
as it sneaks itself into everything:
every ***** interior,
every
           nook  
                      and cranny

- any open space -

Insidious,
as it is inevitable,
as it always is and will be.”

So to excise this darkness
Invading my mind and growing in my body
I’ve begun to pray;
not to God, or gods,
but to myself-
the only savior
not out to pasture:

I entreat thee,
Oh Spiritus Meus,
Come save us!

- You are the ONLY way -

I need this too bad to let you ruin it.
You can diminish it, if you need to,
But I have to finish it;
Or else
it finishes Me.
If it doesn’t **** me
It will be unending;
Because it has, as yet,
Never
             Gone
                        Away

- And I need it to -

Because I’m ******* through;
I’ve found the needle in the stack of hay;
The treasure that I’ve been seeking
Out here in the wild

- These streets and alleys -

Among the gutters and trash and strays,
with the animus that is lurking
inside the deranged and damaged
People with whom I spend my days,
and nights, and wee hours
muttering and laughing
and yelling and crying
and listening and looking
and losing and finding
and lusting and *******
and living and dying
and loving and failing
and flailing and flying
And falling and bouncing
and breaking and binding
And picking up all of the pieces and trying again,
and again
and again and again
just out here surviving as best we can
every day after day
after day after day
on endless repeat until a night intercedes
and we push back against
the dark days ennui,
and revel in reckless distracted abandon
while the clock ticks away;
we’re just striving to stay upright
to make it back home from the fray,
to see another sunrise alive
so we can be sure we see  

- another ******* disappointing day -

And people wonder why we do it
but we’re proving that we’re strong.
We may be stupid, but you can’t **** us;
and you know what they say:
“If you’re gonna be dumb,
you better be tough;
and you never can pray enough.”

- To the ones unafraid of the muck and mire -

That comes with wallowing in the pain,
it does not matter if it’s inflicted or inherited, self-imposed, or someone else’s to claim,

It all. stings.. the same…

And the barrel burn of whiskey
and the ***** of numbing needles
And the rush of powdered breathe
and the dreary dregs of hangovers
all do the same thing.
They take the edge of the blade-
the one that cuts the deepest
if it’s left unsheathed-
the one in our own hand
that we forgot to put away-
and dulls it beyond repair.
It fills the senses with distraction;
dumbs down a ******* brain
That won’t let the little things go;
won’t shut-up for anything.
It draws the focus off a soul that’s aching
to cry out its sorrows and
name it’s demons names;
To demand that they come forward
to their inquisition;
To have them answer
for their crimes of passion
and persuasion
and all the pleasure they gained
from seeing us consumed
by our self-inflicted pain;
To hear repentance for their intrusion;
To see their face carry shame:
So we can forgive them
And then forget them
and put them up
or down,
or aside,
But asunder;
The manner does not matter,
but We must
release them

- To be unburdened -

Lest we bury ourselves
underneath them
on our last day.

This satisfaction, for us, is deception, though,
for their judgement days never came;
and a more immediate solution
presents itself every weekend,
or every so often,
Sometimes it comes around
on say… a Tuesday;
but we always know it’s out there
for us whenever we want it,
and that’s usually every day.

Why wouldn’t we need distraction
from that achy old wailing thing
inside our breast and in our heads
clouding our brain?;
in front of us
impeding progress;
forever and always
in
      the
           way

- so we settle in -

to the maintainence method
that allows us to keep the days
from turning black under the shadow
of the unbearable burden
of our own crushing weight;
And you can’t judge
someone who is there
unless you’ve been there
and got away;
and if you’ve really been there
and you got away,
then you won’t judge them;
and if you judge them:
you have not seen
what they have seen;
and you cannot know
what they have done
and you dare not have anything to say.
You cannot understand
the means of survival
that people use
when you don’t need them;
and it’s easy to put a label
on something you define
without experiencing.

So don’t stand there scoffing at me
for being someone you pity and shame;
you’ll never understand

- The Beauty of Surviving -

Because for you,
It’s not a thing.
For you lucky few
Without the claws of demons
On your neck and opening you veins,
I give you this one piece of perspective:

If the demons do, one day, come hunting you,
Make sure
                     You know
                                         Their names.

- To banish demons -

you must call to them
To drag them out
into the light of day;
and only then can you be sure they leave, because from Light and Love 
They run away.

- It’s time now, for me -

to put the treasures,
and the troubles,
out on the table,
where all
                  can see it  
                                    on display.

• (preface) . Ante Up •

Never Gamble with more
than you can afford to lose

• Prologue : The Deal •

From the dusty haze
between hot mirage waves
in desert air
refracting red shifted rays
of the horizonal sun
bouncing off the highway
appears an indigent itinerant
who’s seen better days,
walking alone
at a leisurely pace,
west towards sunset
and night and escape,
without baggage or burden
beyond his distempered ways.

He comes suddenly upon an unexpected place- hitherto unseen by light of day


• I:  The Flop •
     LIQUOR IN THE FRONT!
     $ POKER IN THE BACK $

The flashing neon sign proclaims
From behind the dingy pane
Of a curtained window
By a door to nowhere safe;
With a sign that hangs
Beneath it saying

Open Buy, Table Stakes,
    No Limit Hold’em
Come on in and Play!

And just underneath it
Scratched into the widow,
In an unsettling scrawl,
By a steady hand
With a razor sharp butterfly
Switchblade knife…
It says

“There’s NO LIMIT to WHAT you can WIN”

That does sound tempting
So you do go in
Everytime…
And you’re greeted with a “Hello friend!”
By a bartender standing by himself,
in an empty room,
Cuffs rolled up and forearms wet
polishing glassware and tins with a towel;
One That’s seen too many rims
and broken glasses and spilled drinks,
and blood and tears and ***** sinks
It could NOT be clean,
but “**** it,” you think,
“There Ain’t nobody in here”
And either way, the alcohol is cheap…

“Can I get you something to drink;
maybe a double whiskey, neat
Or Tonic, Lime and gin?
The game already began.
You can head on back, if you want…
They probably only played one hand.”

And he motions to a padded door lit green with red light glowing below from under the jamb.

“Should I get a drink
and play a few?” You think,
“I don’t have much to lose.
And what if …

I win?”


• II..  The Turn •

It’s a gamble, going all in
It’s a big risk to take,
But if it pays off man
*******,
You got it made

And the hand looks good,
(it always does)
But this fella’s poker face…
It is uncanny, Man
You cannot read a thing
It’s like he’s made of stone
He don’t ever tell any kinda way…

And this ******* devil always calls.
He plays his hand in every game
Never sits out a round
Throws his money down
Folds his cards, then
Sits back …

… And he waits …

… And every hand he plays,
It seems the game is strange,
In some unexpected way -  
like cards you thought you had
might not be there when you look again
But you can’t remember if, or when, it changed.
It might’ve been you just ******* seen it wrong,
But either way, the ******* card you need
is gone;
And just when you notice-
He’ll look away,
And then back at you,
As if to say,
“I call your bluff kid, turn em up.
Let’s see this hand you played.
What’re you holding
That Made you think
you could win a game
I ******* made.”

• .IİI.   The River •
You’re playing too fast and loose …
         Like you ain’t afraid
            
But you should be …
         ‘Cause You ****** up
        
Too Bad the Bet’s Been Made


• IV.:.   The Showdown •

And then He wins
An when He wins
you can’t defend the hand you held
In any way
He takes his chips and stacks em up,
He doesn’t have anything else to say.
He doesn’t gloat, he just
… ******* smiles…
And He watches your face
As you sit and you stare
and you think good and hard
about the mistake that you just made.

“Read ‘em and weep”
It’s his favorite part.
It’s his little art:
Watching a soul
get crushed…
                                  …Ugh…
“…Again?”


• Epilogue - Wanna Buy Back In? •

Never
Pay More To Play
Than What You Stand To Win

Gabby Bayou

Man this swamp is haunted
I swear to god
You can’t see the ******* but you hear em say **** through the trees
Warning you to “stay away”


You just gotta deal with all the **** there
So much ****


It’s insane


But I don’t mind a little muck and mire
I love to stomp around the swamp
Splashin’ up mud and Makin’ waves
Besides I got these hobbit feat
That don’t sink
Cuz
I’m creature of the place
And so I make my way down
To the woods that surround it
every now and then ,
And set up shop for few days

This forest is my home, you see
You cant take it away from me
I’m rooted here and moving on is
A tough play to make.
But it’s not too bad
I like it here
It’s soft and warm most days
And as long as you keep an eye on your corners
Cain’t nothing scary sneak up close
And you can usually escape

There’s dinosaurs out here, though
You hear ‘em roar some times
sneaking ‘round the thicket parts
Hunting their favorite prey


But this old lizard-skin-Leather-backed
swamp-stomping’ dragon’s
Got claws and teeth
and it don’t seem to me
much like he can be
killed no-how, anyway

So you know I ain’t afraid

There’s something astounding
About our place here standing
on a planet circling a burning furnace
full of hydrogen atoms colliding
and fusing and slowly eating itself alive,
flaming into the light and heat and
imposition of a life giving god
casting countenance through the emptiness
and unfathomable distances of outer space
Until the day it decides it’s tired
Of All the effort it takes
to scream into the void for all time
and hold the cycle steady
so that something it’s never touched
can “count their days” and keep a schedule
based on dividing entropy
arbitrarily into increasingly small divisions
like eons and epochs and eras,
then to centuries, decades, years,
Months and  days,
down to hours and minutes and seconds, and eventually atomic rates of decay
so small and short and fleeting and transient
as to be inconsequential for them to be named.

It is the only star you see during day,
And when it hides away it’s shine
A vast dark void reveals its presence
Just behind the painted skies she illuminates with radiation from the chaotic energy that shattered atoms release and reverberate and it reflects and refracts and reveals the presence of the heavy elements it made that coalesced into small collections of elemental ***** spinning and floating and collapsing in upon themselves under minuscule but compounded atomic weight

And in its blanket black indifference
little signs of somethings distant and gigantic and ancient shine through the darkest reaches of infinite shadow and silent solitude

5000 years ago our ancestors took a rudimentary set of lines and scribbled simple symbols on the nocturnal symphony because they realized the points of light passed through the same part of the night at a given time, and If you knew which specks were in what patch of sky you could figure out how to navigate great distances because the heavens are ever wide and the same sky flies over every place, and no matter how far you had wandered into the wilderness or how far off course you’d floated away, you could always find a way back home, no path necessary, from any place where you had found yourself, whether you’d been trying desperately to find some sort of peace of mind of any kind, or simply running from some thing terrible or even menial, it’s all the same.

But moving south
Across the equatorial belt
Into the southern hemisphere
Sailing west away from land
Dancing north toward the horizon line
The heavens shift in subtle
Variations so the stars you might expect to find are in a completely different orientation that cannot easily be aligned
But you can always seek out the belt and dagger of the Titan Hunter of the sky. And it might confuse you as to why he seems to be there upside down or on his side. But do not worry you have not lost your bearing it’s simply a matter of of perspective from the angle which you find yourself considering your local night

And a flat earth theory would try to have you believe that there’s no such thing as an equatorial divide, but the fact that Orión Cartwheels across the horizon from the southern side, while  from the north he takes a strolling path across the southern horizon line, and yet he never changes his permanent position directly in the summer spring fall or winter sky, tells you somethings out there further than we can fathom and somewhere even farther is the beginning of time.

(In the darkest corner of a small wooden landing at the top of the steps to the fenced back yard of a rented home currently occupied by a trio of underpaid shift workers whom, as a kindness,  have taken into their foster care a destitute stray, a man of roughly forty clearly hard worn years kneels doubled over and wailing mournfully to himself, his head tucked in and down toward his chest in an undeniably penitent posture similar to the pious prayer of those who heed the daily call, and face Mecca; Apropos of nothing, he just so happens to be faced to Mecca at this moment. This is, however, purely coincidental, as our pitiful subject here is not a man of clothe, nor one of great or even minor faith, much less a man of daily prayer or mindful meditation. Quite In contrast, He is a drinker and a drifter; drug-addicted, disaffected, dissatisfied, and dismayed. Yet he is also a dreamer, of the highest order, completely convinced of the attainability of a singular salvation of creative elucidation, a dream he has been chasing unrelentingly for more than 20  years; and which he has just this very evening seen how truly attainable it is. Merely moments ago, In a vision of clarity which came over him unwittingly, and uninitiated by anything within his purview, our vagrant interloper has seen a crystallization of artistic inspiration which envisioned all the interconnections within his disjointed philosophical treatises, which he has spent the better part of three decades composing, and in that moment he was overtaken by the sudden uninhibitable need to bleed the pressure welling-up inside his chest and his lungs began to squeeze. The noise they made directed itself toward the realm of sorrow. It is a wail of a desperation; not unlike one you might hear from a father who’s lost there cherished son, from lovers who’ve lost their lovers, and from children having a tantrum who need to eat and then to sleep, but refuse. He was at that moment all of these things in essence; a man rejected and alone, beset by turmoil of his own making, and both exhausted and famished; but this noise came joyfully, as it was the expression of something deep within him which he had recently freed; and so no effort was made to sequester or quiet the cries that he now seethes. It is simply the gasp and exhalation of soul which desperately needed to breathe.)

A soft wail arises quietly from silence to an open mouth, a single note, unbroken and controlled as much as one can control such a sound. From this beginning after a moment, almost a minute but something less, if you were to count; the wail completes with a sharp cutoff instead off dying back down. It ends, from an open mouth to clenched teeth and the tongue cutting off the sound. It makes a word but he did not consciously say it; it’s just the only word that could come…

Out.

GET OUT!
GET OUT OF ME!
Go the **** away!
I do not need you
I do not want you
I will not hold you
You have to leave
There is no place for you in here any more
Get. Out.
Get out.

GET THE **** OUT OF ME!

PLEASE!

(As he spits these curses and pleads, something moves deep with in him. he convulses and every muscle in him begins to squeeze and he feels as if he’s imploding but his eyes are about to explode out, and in this seizing state, he feels the expelled energy escape, physically, through the center of his mind and forehead, like a boiler valve exploding with steam in a movie. It goes out and up and away and silently it leaves. A calm settles over the whole scene as he stills his body, still convulsing, and then he sees swirling among the phosphors on the back of his eyelids, where it burns an impression when one stares at bright light too long, something coalesce: an impression of an Iris, pulsing and folding into itself but without edge, as if his minds eye were right in front of him. He stays there penitent and quiet and keeps his eyes closed, in order not to lose it, because whatever it is he needs to know it; what ever it is, he cannot deny he sees it. He stays perfectly still while it’s centered in his vision, as if it were a wild animal he intended not to scare away, and silently he studies it and stares and considers what has just opened in his vision and what, preceding that, had thusly broken away. Slowly realization comes, as it’s elemental name is spoken silently from behind,

         “I am the one who sees,
            I am that which drives
         I am you, and you are me
                 We are together,
                   A single being
                         but You
                  are part of me”

and upon the realization solidifying, without hesitation he addresses it, directly and in a docile tone…)

I see you
I see you there
staring back at me

I know who you are
I know you are me

It’s good to see you
I’ve missed you
Where have you been?

He lifts his head just a little, just so he’s holding it with his neck, it’s the first movement he has made beyond the minimum necessary to say the words he had to say and to expand and contract his lungs enough to breath. As he opens his eyes, the vision persists and he’s now staring at it outside of him, nestled into his unknowingly cupped and folded hands, like one would make to receive the sacrament of communion, which is ironic yet somehow perfect: for this experience is the only religious thing he’s ever felt or known or seen. Now, with eyes open, it looks to be an orb of energy without a glow, and he folds his hands closed around it as if to hold itc closing his eyes again, and he stands, with eyes closed; as yet unwilling to lose the vision and let it go. He turns slightly to the north, away from the darkness he had hidden in before and opens his eyes hopefully for the first time in ages.

He stares distantly into the foliage of a few scattered trees that occupy a greenway next to a drainage ditch called “flood street” to the people
that know, and in those last late autumn leaves still hanging on with incredulity, he sees the inner eye again, still staring back at him, and in that moment he already knows- it’s not going go, it is part of his mind, which, now that he has opened it, will be ever-present, even if unseen. He shifts his gaze over to the corner of a house not too far away and again he sees it shimmering, superimposed. It’s not external it is like a lens through which he sees, and he becomes joyful.

He lowers his eyes in peaceful pause and starts to take off his clothes, he sheds his jacket, shirt and socks, flinging them to and fro and descends the steps into the yard and squeezes the grass between his toes. He presses hard down through his feet, to let the ground know that he is there and he will not sink. His stance widens. He loosens his shoulders as he reaches down between his feet, and sets his palms flat in the grass, exhaling deeply as he folds. Then breathing deeply in and upward he raises up towards the sky stretching everything inside, reaching as high as he go, and there he sees the Cheshire smile and he greets the moonlight glow,

Hi how are you, I’m glad you’re here too

And then he begins to dance with it, in Meditative and intentional movement. He makes a show for the moonlight and the minds eye and he moves every muscle under his control, twisting and turning in soft ecstasy releasing decades of unwanted tension; finally letting all the build-up go. He lands down in the sweet smelling grass on his belly, arms folded, palms pressed to the sof, cool dirt, grass threaded between trembling fingers, and in his vision are two small flowers swaying slightly, but swaying alone, as no leaves rustle because no breeze blows. It seems to him that they danced in response to his repose, and he will remember this for the rest of his short and troubled life, though it should be a little easier now knowing what he knows.

What If these were our last good days
We’d ever have to live,
What would be the purest way
To utilize their gift?

What if these, your last good days;
We’re passing by unclaimed?
Would knowing that you wasted them
Haunt those that still remain

What if you miss the last setting sun
Before the supernova arrives;
And in an instant, oblivion comes
To take up all our lives

What if you fall to endless sleep
in moonlit starry night,
never again to wake from sleepless
slumber to see the light.

What if these are your last good days,
Before feebleness takes your mind,
before your body breaks
upon the rocky shores of entropy and time?

If these are the Last Good Days,
Would you count them all well spent?
What if THIS is the LAST Good day?
Is wasting it worth the risk?

‘Cause you  never wrote any of the good parts down
You just lived ‘em
and let ‘em
s
 l
   i
     p
          
             a

                           w
                                               a                    y

You knew better
than to try to capture
the silliness in its hay day
because then you’d have
to face the facts of
the very choices
that you’d made;
and there would be no question -
whether it’s was worth it -
to waste the days by trading them
for nights of frivolity and frolicking -
Of frittering away.
What should have been,
and what is so,
and where it came from,
and who’s to blame
would all be there in Black and white,
instead of vanishing in the haze.

And in your own hand, no less;
your words,
a confession dictated day by day
of what, With your own eyes,
you did see
- All the magic and the wonderment of this tragic comedy -
through foggy lenses, bottle-thick and stained:
dreary ramblings in shadows made,
and heard and said
a many things
in drunken dangling reparteé.

Tonight, I drank
In revelry
To celebrate the life I've made;
The life that was not handed to me;
The life I was compelled to create.
Tonight I drank to you and I,
Despite the mistakes and the pain.
It's not the losses that I've suffered
Which remind me of the consequences paid;
It's the simple fact
that now,
Despite the effort that was made,
I'm left with only memories
Of days I treasured day by day.
I would not trade the ones yet coming
For any of the my other days.
But know that since you became my history,
The future will never be the same.

Sometimes we cant stop talking
Try as we might it’s to no avail
We've something to say about every little thing
And we've no way to be sure
that the other can tell what we mean
And it seems like we never can completely frame
The point we are trying to make before someone chimes in with a tangential observation:

     See I don't think you know
     what I mean. What I'm trying
     to say is that the very thing
     your talking about is what I
     believe but a little bit different
     in some semantic way and,
     hold on, let me just think and
    finish my thought

    and then you can speak.

And then we are coming at nothing 
from obtuse trajectories
analyzing angles of attack without regard for the whole and then there's a misunderstanding
and we start defending ourselves over a miscommunication,
your tone inflects a verbal retreat and mine strains from frustration, is read as antagonism, and then received as an attack
All of a sudden we are fighting over some misdeed that we've already tabled for the sake of you and me.

And sometimes we just can't stop talking.

I feel
like I died
a horrible, ****** death
at the hands of some great and terrible beast
with razor claws and gnashing teeth
that escaped its cage and pounced on me,
out of the shadows,
glinting eyes reflecting
fire from the wreckage left
by the mile-long circus train,
now derailed, after running into me

full speed.

How come no-one ever pulls for the bad guy. He's just out there doing what we all wanna do: Being self-interested, self-imposing, self-actualising, carefree, and ego-maniacle.

Really he's the hero- making destiny manifest by his own hands; the spiritual successor of the settlers and explorers, who just happens to have run out of room.

Is it not those do-gooder heros who are villians,  for real, by forcing these noble individuals to abandon their dreams and fall back in line, with threats of violence, persecution, and hard time. They are the very embodiment of fascism, through and through.

So lets here it for the bad guys who keep the world sane, by showing us were all humans, one and the same.
So three cheers for evil!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!

God, for me,
is a selfish thing.
I only want him there to blame,
Or to ask him for that
Which I cannot seem
To produce for myself by other means.

And yet, for me,
To disbelieve is equally
A selfish thing.
To pretend that I have come this far
Without some kind
Of Divine intervention...

How could this be,
considering
The sheer stupidity of my decisions
The risks I took
with my own wellbeing;
the utter disregard

So it is and must be
that god, for me,
Is looking out regardless.
There must be some plan
regarding me
or else I'd have been disposed of.

Does this mean
I am a chosen one?
Not just dust-
but a favorite son?
I think it must...
There's no other logical conclusion.

The music that lingers
in my mind when I awaken
is the rhythm of a life
of which I dream to live.

If I could get these symphonies
unlocked from the rooms
in which they reverberate and boom,
I would finally be who I know I should be,
but the rhythm's undone when I do come too;
I'm only ever left with the conclusion
that made my psyche break through-
A conclusion without the question,
a harmony without a melody,
a melody without rhythm,
a break without a build,
a crescendo undeserved.

I carry with me back to consciousness
no evidence of the brilliance observed;
no tally or tale or the things seen and heard.
But I know that I saw them;
I know what I heard.
I feel the rhythm inside me
and I hear the words.
I remember the beats
and the lost melodies.
Never-the-less...
they are incomplete...

just like me.

A clip of a phrase left to rattle around.
An earworm set to unheard sound.

"Dont be afraid
to get too wild"

These dreams are the compositions of some other soul
The music and musings of minds not my own
but I wonder in the early morning grey,

Do the people that I dream to be also dream of being me?

I awoke from a dream slowly
Sweet docile tones reverberating in my ears;
and as I came too with a rhythm and the words that broke through. I tried to hold onto them as long as I could do, but never can I keep them for more than a moment, maybe two.
It’s infuriating and frustrating,
because there is no way to capture the song that I heard: just the shadow of some snippet sneaking out the back door with the rest of the gang that got away already before getting caught in the midst of their thievery, when the man whom they are robbing walks in the front door

And there never has been.

I am no musical genius, but I know a good song when I hear one,
And I’ve heard such wondrous things
cascading through my dreams
Less now than before,
but I still find myself hallucinating wild bebop jazz
with muted trumpets and silky strings,
big band ballad piano swings,
deep-trance and euro-house dance floor thumpers, chaotic digital jungle themes,
indigenous rain-dance chants against primal drumming, Searing thrash metal with string burning sweeps of perfect improvisational leads, Merengue and Samba and Flamenco beats, with lyrics in languages I do not speak.

In my dreams they are full compositions, with layers and evolution and meaning; I just can't recall all the words and have not enough talent and knowledge of things to transcribe the notes in corporeal means.
Most importantly, the music of a mind’s eye or ear is not the music of the world, so I have no way to recreate the rhythms or melodies.

Mostly because I don't know where to begin.
Because the inception of the song,
in reality or dream,
is always a fugue of some other innocuous thing;
some music or rhythm that broke away from the meaning it has in the world
and echoed until it became a song I heard.

But I swear god once promised me,
In a vision unseen
that when I die, if I get to heaven,
The songbooks are waiting,
fully annotated, with lyric transcriptions printed up nice and neat, and not only can I see the compositions of these, but there are recordings of all of it. Everything!
That's the only heaven I want there to be:
The one with the words I lost in my sleep,
And the music of my hallucinations and dreams.

The soundtrack to my subconscious is something to be heard.
It’s too bad the world will never know of these things,
the mind music mingling amongst the mist of my dreams.
Such beauty deserves to be heard
By those here among us who love, live, and suffer,
who dance, cry, and sing.
But alas it is only a fantasy for me.
But it will be tremendous to finally free
the muses best work
when I inevitably meet
the maker of the muses and the music and me;
But until then the world will just have me to trust.

I promise.

It will be…

My Magnum Opus

It's winter now

                                Finally

I can tell by the presence
of two avocado trees
and a bevy of succulents, grasses, and weeds,
bamboos and air plants and dried-up leaves,
a snake plant thats also called mother-in-law tongue, one night blooming cereus, pencil plants, ginger, all potted and stacked.

She calls it "The Winter Jungle," and its my favorite time of year.

The already cluttered and cobwebbed chaos of crystals and minerals and Hodge podge is enshrouded inside lush green,
Jumbled and crowded.
The air is heavy, hot, and dry.
She'll turn on the shower, full heat,
to steam up the sky and the illusion is complete.
In clouds, the jungle blooms.
Its snakeskins and skulls and tapestries weave
a hypnotic pattern.
There is life here,
and death.
Her miniature tiger skulks lazily through,
while his pantheresque sister lays quietly.
A chow mix hound off in her mahogany cave atop a lanolin cushion, sits sentry.
Butterflies adorn the walls with beetles and moths,
paintings of wild women and valleys, of deities and dangerous deserts,
and soft simple illustrations
of various things,
bones and feathers and coins and dreams.

And feathered dream catchers have done their work it seems,
for I, like the great hairy ape,
sitting, quietly,
surveying from above,
cannot shake the uncanny feeling of love.

This atmosphere is enough to enamor, but the woman whose presence the the atmosphere holds
                                             is shamanic,
a healer,
              the oldest of souls.

And it is warm here
in her jungle,
but just through the door
is the grey cold of winter,
and nothing more.

Show me the secrets in the shadowy places that good boys and girls  should never see; like rock'n'roll rumbling in a dingy divebar-backroom, or lovers in a rain soaked alley.

Show me the secrets in the hidden places that only the lonely children can see: the shoe box treasure chests of broken shiny things, bric-a-brac in old tin cans, a cobweb covered crawlspace comicbook, or a lost love's lost love notes never sent and never seen.

Show me the secrets in the wilderness gardens that only the dreamers may dare to see: Dandelion promenades of pine needles paved over rotten leaves and treebark leading away to toadstool terraces among orchards of fiddlehead ferns and ghost pipes ascending to trumpet the day.

Show me the secrets hidden behind curtains that spirits and mediums only should see: the souls untethered and howling damnation at their veiled purgation in a dustless dimension forever unheard.

I found a boardwalk in the woods
leading, seemingly, to nowhere,
In a timberland swamp I knew from much younger days;
Decaying and rotten,
Most likely long forgotten.
I wondered how long it had been there, abandoned to its fate:
Quietly mocked by the still standing timbers,
As yet spared the sawmills blade,
For its needless sacrifice, useless decay
As its strength is silently weathered away;
used
but unrequited,
wasted,
faded and unmade.

I followed along its decrepit path
as far as I could make,
and so laughed to myself as I thought aloud,
"Such is life's disarray."

We agreed to call it quits when it wasn't fun anymore. And it wasn't fun anymore for a long, long while. We ignored the exit signs because an uneexpected love bloomed and so we redefined the terms of the termination because we missed the first by miles. And determination turned to depression bitterness and resentment, then misdirected rage. I didn't want to end on sadness pain and disillusionment, so I tried to patch and glue the last good bits back together But i kept ******* up and it wasn't possible to make another attempt.

All I wanted was a peaceful ending
A pleasant parting between longtime friends

We'd agreed that it wouldn't be a big thing,
A painful splitting, uneven without amends

But what I got was tragic, uncompromising static
Undeserved sadness
And the loss of my best friend

Im Sorry that I ****** up.
I thought I could do better than I did.

So
        This
-                         -
Is the one I don't like,
The one I keep tucked away.
The one that always ***** things up just to have something funny to say.

-This-
Is the one I was talking about when I had nothing else to say.

This
Is the one I warned you about back when we first got together and talked everything out.

This
Is the one I try to avoid
...
At least...
In my mind, anyway.

This is what I meant when I told you I was trouble,
I warned you before-hand to keep a lookout for mistakes

The more I make,
more I keep making,
I've lost control of everything.

This
Is what I mentioned might ruin everything

Will it or won't it?
Statistically its the same.
It seems the odds don't change no matter how unlikely is the thing.
Will it to be or don't, but don't wait to hear an answer.
To be or not to be
Is not really that important.
Its not even the question.
If "to be" was how it's supposed to be, how come "not to be" is an option?
So how do I "not to be,"
if I think therefore I am, and do I believe that I am even if I think it?
And where am I when I don't believe in myself and my convictions?
Does it even matter what I think when I can't be sure if I exist? And if I might not be then what am I still doing here, when I could not be?
Should I stay or should I go?
But could I go and no one know?
And why bother leaving
when I know that if I go
it might be that no one would even miss me?
Might as well just stay here where my odds are 50/50.

Well it seems that I'm up to my old tricks again
        But this time i know the consequence
Still I cheat lie and steal just the same, and then
        I wonder why no one still calls me a friend

somehow its always the same
why even bother to change
you never feel any shame,
If you never look back and you just walk away

Well I guess that I'm back on my *******
          But this time can we pretend its different
Then I won't have to lie about where I've been
      Or what I've been doing, or who I'm with.

But if the rules stay the same
then results will never change
And if you can"t win the game
why even bother to play,

when you can just walk away?

The view from within became suddenly fractured,
refracted and infinitely cascading through
a shattered kaleidoscopic perception
of diverging dimensional superimposition, 
spinning mathematically through all permutations 
of every possible configuration 
of atoms in all of existence at once;
resulting in fractals of all of creation 
and I found it unnerving, so I made myself lunch.

(A Public Service anouncment)

Ahem...

We, the creatures of the night, are the rattlers of chains;
The seekers of magic; the bearers of the flame.

Howling shadows beckon and shimmer with laughter in refrain;
and the screeching darkness holds terror and wonder waiting to be claimed;
In back alley juke joints, shitholes, and diners, down sidestreets and highways, we search for the thing that sparks and ignites us, that dances and delights us, that reminds us that living is more than just work interrupted by sleep; there's excitement, adventure, pleasure, and pain.


The sun burns too bright to see the light which we contain;
yet, in the dark but a spark is as bright as any flame.

What was it that i was going to say. I forget thing so quickly its kind of insane. Too often, it seems, I'm put out to shame when forced to admit ive forgotten the name of someone I've met, maybe several times, to whom I have just introduced myself again, who probably hadn't yet finished their name before I forgot who they were once again. Usually "Im sorry. My bad... I drink a lot." is enough to diffuse any awkward exchange. Still i know better, just as they do as well,and politley we continue as if nothing had changed.

They say, "third times a charm!" and with names this is true. I read somewhere doing so somehow can train your mind to the get through to the part of our brain which stores long term memories, which are physically much more permanently made, by tricking the architecture of our neural array, which allocates resources based on the way electrical currents pass though the brain, stimulating cellular structures to make proteins and lipids which then activate other part of the xell which begin breaking things down and /or mixing them up, reconfigureing the shape of some loose RNA which is read by a protein design to replicate the mirror string of code which determines what the cell will make and altering as little as a single subatomic partical of weight can then fundamentally alter what the neucleic acids say, and change everything about the properties of the gene that it was trying to translate...

But anyway, repeating the new persons name several times in conversation, or right in a row, at the outset will help you retain new information to the brain, either way it still functions kind of the same. The energy thesh-hold required to make a shot term memory important enough to save is 3 activations of the neural relays, then the neurons begin fusing together, i think, and the information is less likely to dissipate.

now i remember it was something about 'how maddening it can be to be forgetful," or something like that, but worded much better.
****, I lost it. huh... What'd you say?

Before the muses all esaped, their voices used to fill my mind with too many things to ever say. Interupting each other endlessly, yelling and screaming and making a scene, each thinking their thoughts so much more important than anything else the others could posibly ever have to say. A sea of crashing caucaphony breaking in waves upon the rocky shores of a mind siezed by trying to decide who to listen to, to decipher what to take from them, if anything at all, each and every day. But the voices now are but whispers uttered from the shadows of a bedroom on the darkest nights. They had been caged, then they broke free, still contained though now released, then they escaped, and now they're free- having slipped through a crack which never got filled back in after picking up the pieces and putting them to together again.

So now the words dont come so easily as they did once, back before. Before the weakness became the very thing for which i no longer have the strength to bear the burden of its consequences, despite the pleasure of it's mistakes. The pain of losing makes it hard to see the light of everything you have to gain. And the heighth to which you rose before the crest informs how long the ride back down will take. The steepest peaks have steeper walls, and you fall much faster as you tumble uninpeded by anything, approaching terminal velocity before stopping dead as reach your fate. When you hit, theres a chance for it to give a little bit before it breaks. Sometimes, like on a trampoline, you bounce back, and walk away; Other times the world goes crashing in, colapsing underneath the very weight of all the things you carried down with you, like so many a ball and chain, revealing depths as yet unfathomable before the breach was ever made. Depths from which to reemerge seems impossible from down below; And just getting up is hard enough;  And ever harder after every fall. Harder still To walk away, much more the climb yet to be made.

It seems I never bounce back anymore... And no matter how long the fall may take, when the rock bottom hits you in the face, your mind shuts down, then hits reset and just sits there... and it waits...as long as it needs to assess the damage and make repairs that can be made to the fragile psyche your skull contained, before it shattered from the blow. As the gears come grinding to a halt, and then shudder back to life a gain, theres no telling what might come unstowed, and bang around until it breaks. Once the rhythms fall back into sync and you get yourself underway, then you can start ot realize what action you need to take. The reset button can be hard to find, and sometimes it doesnt work, or it breaks, Leaving a Jumbled mess of memory scattered everywhere there is space. And sorting through it all is treacherous theres no telling what might show its face.

Now my thoughts are interspersed with emptiness, but when they do come they flood the gates; and there never comes a warning of impending chaos on its way.  Like a Thunderclap before a Summer storm, from out of nowhere comes the crack of a lightning striking far to close for comfort no matter how far it is away. Then just as fast the stormclouds break, unleashing a deluge over the landscape. Then swirling the slipstreams they cluster and condense: And rythyms reveal themselves composed of gravity and weight, but the rhythms that i often find even more often slip away. Rarely are they ever permanent, and they always seems to change, mutating as it gets repeated, reguritated over and over again. inevitably the beauty which I thought I recognised at first, starts to seem uninteresting, like a too familiar word which all of sudden seemed awkward to say after saying it too much, and no sooner does it disinterest me than it slowly begins to fade- and as they do, they leave a broken trail of breadcrumbs eluding to the truth they once relayed, echoing from the chasm black in bits and pieces then descending back from whence they came, never to be heard again as they were when frist composed: Their rhythm and their melody the victims of the very thing they had portrayed; no sense of repeating the same thing. Yet never are the bits forever lost; merely to far away to hear or see, but quietly they linger ever on, a wave endlessly perpetuating into the distiance searching for something off which to richochet. and return, unexpected to the point of origin, whereupon its arrival its replayed.

You should believe me when I tell you,
     "I can only break your heart."
Don't believe you are the exception,
Immune to all my charms.
I'm masterful in my deception,
In that I give away my play,
In a manner that seems endearing,
Like I'm kidding when I say,
     "Don't fall in love with me."
It's not hubris, or vanity
That makes me say these things.
It's a pattern; it always happens;
Every time its the same.
Dont let me in, beneath your skin,
Don't trust me to refrain.
Foolish girls get fooled
Only to get thrown away;
Tossed aside once boredom sets in;
After depleting the thrill of the chase.

As the sun starts to go down, I stop and take a look around to try to find a place to lay my head. If I lay here on the ground and maybe shuffle these old bones around I might convince my back I've found a bed. Then, as the colors fade away, I try to think about the days when I knew peace and I could get some rest; but I never get no sleep 'cause these old ragged runnin' feet run me ragged all night in my dreams...

And in my dreams there always seems to be the same old demons chasing me; and right behind me breathing down my neck. When the get their claws in me they always brings me to my knees, rip me open, and leave me there for dead; and, as the colors fade to grey, I try to thing about the days when I knew peace, and love, and happiness. Then the faces that I see bring me back up to my knees; they get me up a going once again.

And I don't ever need no sleep 'cause these old ragged running feet can run me ragged all night if I need.
And I don't ever get no sleep 'cause these old ragged running feet, run me ragged all night in my dreams.

Deep beneath deepest reaches
of the furthest recess of my mind
I found a craven creature, singing,
madly clawing blind into the darkness
desperate to find a shaft of light
by which to see its tattered tethered binds 
unbound.

Screeching at its unknown captor.
Screaming to the sky.
Shrieking like a banshee being slaughtered but alive.

Bellowing, bruised, and blackened beast,
best buried deep below-
you'll never see the light of day,
Nor freedom shall you know.

Claw madly at your cavern walls;
Howl mournful;
Be untamed.
But do not expect a civil birth,
born free of shackled chains,
without first being bested
by him to whom you belong;
whose nights you terrify;
who wrote your sorrowful song

Can you tame the unbridled misguided unrest, furiously seething, caged deep in your breast; devouring anything to come within reach. This ravenous, desperate, impotent beast seeks only release from the ******* of chains, to wander his cavernous, haunted domain.

Must you insist upon killing, in vain,
this animus spirit already restrained

The enlightenment that you so desperately crave lies buried beneath the beasts freshly dug grave. Exhume the remains, let it's death be unmade.
Resuscitate that which you fear you'll obey. The truth is the beast and yourself are the same.

See the beauty tremendous of entropy unleashed upon a life strictly structured to imitate peace. Embrace the chaos of your own destiny. Turn to the tempest, baring your teeth, and let loose the unbridled beast of the breach- unfettered, untamed, fearless and free.

I love how the contours
of certain words
are shaped like you;
How I conjure you,
in dreariness,
merely from a sound in my mind.

Simple little flower,
smiling in the sunshine,
face turned beaming toward the sky.

Creased, crinkled nose,
singing softly to yourself,
Searching the distance,
Seeking the next flower to find.

Gliding through a gilded forest, elegant and alluring,
unencumbered by the cares
of the world in which you reside;

Free, and joyfully for it,
and for solitude
and for time.
Radiant and lovely,
eyes dancing all the while.

Graceful as you fall
upon a bed of sullied sheets,
disheveled,
glancing off and back again,
biting your lip as if
to keep it from a smile.

Temptress, trouble, siren singing,
bless me with you gaze,
Caress my troubled, timid soul; enrapture me,
your willing slave.

Yet your spectre still abandons me, and I long for you by my side.
So I call to you at nightfall, and my dreams do so abide.