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.

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.

In a liminal space surrounded by aether
I came to see the countenance
of a lover long lost to me,
martyred by addiction and impotence
and ignorance and arrogance,
A love taken for granted;
yet undeservedly so


In her eyes spun a spark
I had since never forgotten.
She proffered a smile
I have since longed to see
and greeted me tenderly
with warmth and a kiss.

We shared some time in a
soft sweet way
as if again lovers
no longer estranged

In a steam covered pool,
playing chicken alone,
I hugged her thighs hard
and looked up
as she brought her face close

I said,

"I know this isn't forever.
I know that it's just for right now;
But it feels like coming home."

"I've missed you"


She said "I've missed you"
Kissed me again from above
A goodbye

Then I woke from the dream
and refused to open my eyes.

And under my breath I begged
"Please... don't go..."

But she was already gone
And the day began
and the dream
drifted away
And I fell back to slumber
and dreamed anew
of another time
later
Lost and wandering
Muttering to myself
A poem of love and loss
And learning to let go,
Rhythmically
to the plodding pad
of my wet bare feet on concrete
As I made my way somewhere
that would never feel like home

Ours was like fireworks
in the mid-summer sky
Radiant,
       Iridescent,
                   Incredulous,
                              Alive
but the finale came suddenly, unexpectedly soon,
& the band played on,
as if nothing had changed,
as if a fountain of sparkling embers and flame
had not just erupted mere inches away.
And now,
where explosions once seared summer's sky with crackling thunderous incandescent delight
Only whispers and wisps of smoke remain,
Scattered by the breeze,
Whithered, then, by rain.
And of the evening's reveries precious little can be found:
some soured beer in crumpled cans, discarded haphazardly
surrounding a threadbare picnic bedspread
rumpled beneath the branches of an ancient live oak tree.
Dew now wet where lovers once had lain,
staring up into the night
in wonder, ignorant of such banal things
like: masquerading lust in love's robes, declaring,
"I've never loved a love as deep as the love I have for you,"
and truly being unaware of the uncanny substitute;
Or the unbridled disenchantment unleashed by abandonment
and the inevitable transience of an insufferable pain.

We ****** on bar balcony balustrades, over looking city streets.
We ditched tampons into trees rather than wait to satisfy our needs.
We left your ******* in a planter
on a patio under an eve
On purpose, So that some poor, unassuming shop-keep
Would find them
(along with cigarette butts and an empty bag of ****)
and have no choice but think to themselves,
"Did someone **** here?"
and then immediately understand the answer is
"Yes. Exuberantly!"

We defiled. every. place. we went;
giggling with glee at all of our indiscretions.

Oh how many indiscretions could there possibly be?
We shall know;
All of them!

And so we did,

And we were free.



On new years eve I carried you piggyback in your peacock blue sequined gown through the streets of our ****-soaked-gutter-of-a-town.
You were barefoot, drunk, and refusing to be told what to do,
that you had to wear your shoes,
that the streets were far to ***** and dangerous for your tender little feet- you said "Just let me be, It's fine. It wont **** me..."
then, looking at the gutter, continued,
"probably.
And these shoes already are, so..." sticking out your tongue
But I couldn't put you down.
Not in that place, not at that time.
Nor did I even want to. I could have carried you all night
(which was fortunate, because for most of itI did.)
We were declared the city's cutest couple by a stranger on the sidewalk whom we passed while galloping down the street, you, giggling, alight upon my back, running at full speed. This declaration was reaffirmed by everyone met.

A pixie, you know, will always trip you up
(they're natural pranksters you see).
Their magic is undeniable, but oh what trouble they can be.

- My toothsome little faerie - You meant trouble for me;
but what a beautiful, beguiling mess you turned out to be,

You snuck pixie dust into everywhere we went, and
Dispensed it with abandon-
Spread it like caution to the wind.
Sanctifying everything and everyone we met.
That poor city was baptized in our joy.
It's sins washed into glittering gutters,
where we lay sparkling, genuine and loved.


We broke the records that night,
all of them, known and not.

We loved harder than diamond,
than a trailer-hitch to the shin,
Deeper than the fathoms of the trenches at the bottom of the sea.

We made soulmates seem like strangers.
We spoke nonsense fluently.
We shared mind and body, food and drink,
and careless wanton play.

It was

The most
     *******
          Fun
   I've ever had
       in my life...

Probably the most that I ever will.


Every moment I was with you had
the sizzle and the tease
of a bottle-rocket, lit
and held between my teeth.

I knew that I'd get burned
If I held it to the end,
But I did it just to prove I could;
To prove to me
That I was brave enough
To be unashamed
  To be unafraid
   To be.

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
and a Pair o’ boots,

Is man of means
(if only “means well”)

On sabbatical from livin hard;

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.

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?

Heading out west when I get my money right, got some people wanna see me, need some rocky mountain high.

Spent the last year being busted up and broke down by bad ***** bailing at just the wrong time.

Never saw the trouble coming cause it came up on me slowly from behind, and from the front, and from the left, and from right.

Never knew I'd need no night rider to hold me tight. Always thought my self a loner, nobody on my side.

Got my dog and my old truck and about 300 bucks, got a tent, a tank of gas, and no strings to keep me tied

So I'm heading out west, as fast as I can drive, going 90 miles an hour towards the dying light.

Spent my days thinking and drinking all the time, making mountains outta Mole hills so I'd have something to climb

Now I'm leaving all that ******* on the Alabama line. Leave it blowing in the wind, leave it hanging out to dry.

So I'm heading out west, as fast as I can drive, going 90 miles an hour towards the dying light.

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.

Breathe in
   The briny bonne odeur
   Of a damsel replete.
Remember the nape of her neck
   As she lay there beside you,
   Soundly asleep.
Relinquish your body,
  Your soul, to the rubble,
  Your heart, and your mind to the street
Wring your hands and curse the heavens
The fates, The Gods
On your knees

And what of these torments
   Of This regret
   What of these torments and regret
Lain aside

I’ve been writing an unending melody
About a woman whose countenance could set a thousand ships to sailing
Just to crash on the shore at her feet.

Porcelain skin and emerald eyes, silken hair like spun gold,  
The envy to Helen of troy could be mine were I but more bold

A goddess of perfection sublime, in her absence the world is but gray
Her beauty must Venus abide, yet abhor to this very day

So now I’ve been plotting and scheming
I’ve got a ship set to sail in the harbor; at dawn we are leaving
To steal her away from a king and his land
And she’ll be mine if she’ll take my hand

Ten thousand women could never change my mind
A harem fit for a king’
Tender, supple, and kind,
Could never draw my hand nor heart from her embrace
I’d give to her all of my days for a chance but to relish her gaze


And now I’ve been plotting and scheming
I’ve got to have her for mine; and no, I won’t settle for dreaming.
So like a thief in the night I’ve come to steal her away
And she’ll be mine by the break of day

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.

I thought of myself
As a phoenix
Set aflame

Now
I'm just
Ashes and Dust

Look at the mess that I've made.

(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.

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

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.

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

Everything is a Psy-Op these days.
Who knows what to believe?
Certainly not the mainstream media
or its blatant complacency.
Are we actually the "Great Satan?"
It's getting hard to believe we're still free.

Do you feel free? (I certainly don't.)
- And If so, do you have money?

I bet you do;
But do you have time
for yourself,
and Your friends,
and your family?
And Not just
A little chunk,
carved out of nights and weekends,
like a free minutes for a cellphone back in 1993;
but real time,
time you can invest,
that you can commit to you;
not just free-time, but
Time free enough just to be.
And even more important -
Do you have energy?
For all this free time
they give you for a fee:
Or did you sell your youth,
your dreams,
and your soul,
just to avoid poverty?
For a promise of "one day,
some day
soon,
You can stop working
And rest your weary feet
But not right now...
                                  (while you could enjoy it)
Not yet...
                            {the machine still needs to feed}
you must invest.
                               [it needs strength and vigor]
You can't expect to eat for free
                         /and to it, you look ******* tasty\

it's not like sustenance is out here
Simply growing on trees; does water just rain from the heavens into your sink? No, We have to make our ***** nature clean.


But yes – back to rest – after a while... sure
That is, however, only after:
once you've served enough
purpose to the capital beast.



- And If you do not,
do you long for quiet and peace and solitude,
Or joy and comradery?
Or just a day off
to get some things done
and then another one
where you can just be?

There's no freedom left
in the land of the free,
at least not for you and me.
There's some for those
That are in control
of the wages and the prices
of the commodities.
But for those of us
they rent by the day
or the hour
or the lifetime,
For a modest fee;
there's just "**** it up" and ****-sandwiches to eat.
"Now, Come on boy! Aren't ya hungry?"

Unless we rally and rage
and riot and fight
with fury and fire,
pitchforks and torches
Muskets and mutlitudes
Clawing and gnashing teeth.
To bite the hand that beats us back
The fight is getting easier to see,
That's why they are building cop cities and training facilities and internment camps.
But beating them is getting harder and harder to do.
Because they've know what they were doing, and when we were told
we didn't believe

(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.

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.

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?

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

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!

I've been meaning to say this to you,
but I've been biting my tongue for some time-
You don't have to be so afraid of me.
You don't have to hold your walls up so high.
I'm not here in siege, to tear down your defenses.
I didn't bring towers or ladders to climb.
I simply came knocking,
here at your gates,
hoping to be let in.
I caught just a glimpse of your garden,
and I would love to see it again.

It's my own reflection of which I'm most terrified
Because it shows me exactly who I appear to be
It may not look like who I think I am, but it's the only me the world can see

Now it's been years and years since the man in the mirror
Resembled the man I know I can be,
But it won't be long until that monster is gone,
And the world only sees who I know I can be

‘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.

Every Girl I've ever known
I've loved like a lover
Whether they knew it or not
Though
Only a handful
ever gave me a shot
And I hope that those
that did Don't regret it.

The ladies that
let me love them
Let me learn to love
so deeply
That my poor little sad-sack,
woe-is-me world-view
became wholly incomplete
And to the women who wore
my burden on their heart,
I apologize again profusely.
I was never worthy of such tender treatment,
a fact once unbeknownst to me.

I hope one day
you'll forgive my sins
as I have
forgiven those
who sinned against me,
(Though a precious few
those may be)
and to those I'll love
as yet unburdened
by the weight; just wait...
One day you'll see.

Friday 7/12/24
2:53am

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

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…

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.

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.

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
on 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?

The only line
I've ever heard that worked...

"Hey girl...
            Bring your fine *** over here and let me tell you some lies"

Honesty is always the best policy I guess.

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

• (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

There I was
- Alone -
in someone else's cozy home
(I didn't break in; it was open)
Watching home alone
With no-one home

... and I was ******
That's when you guys phoned
And now we're not alone
It's  me and you ... guys . . .
On Christmas Eve.

Jeez - should we just have a cup of nog and forget all about it? I think I saw some in the fridge ...

No?
Turn around?
Hands behind.. m. My back? Right...
Yeah I got it. I'm coming..
Take it easy!. Fella.
Jeez-us-merry-tap-dancing-Christmas
Am I right? ... No?
What's that... shut the **** up?
- Alrighty,
Amen...

If everyone just needs to be loved for who they are, then why the hell is finding someone to love so ******* hard?

Maybe its just me, but is it really that much to ask? Is it so wrong to say, "I think I might could love you if we could get past all the games."

But honesty doesn't work in these twisted troubled times, because we are all so accustomed to normalizing lies, but for my own part I'll continue to be direct and hopefully one day my approach will be correct.