Once the positive trending tags
outweigh the negatives,
we’ll find continuity
within our contemplation,
our emotional state,
and our existence.
But as the negative trending tags
outweigh the positives,
our continuity will be conflicted.

© Matthew Harlovic

People scatter the beaches street,
Like seagulls hunting their scrumptious prey,
Engulfing the happenings of mainstream life,
While ordinarity and friction stray.
Their blindful stares,
And mindful glares,
Induce a sense of
Frightful fares.
Children play,
While adults delay,
Their naive beliefs,
From ambiguous thieves.
Day after day,
Continuity stays,
Defending us all,
From genuine praise.

The more I do
The more I am afraid of stopping
Even though there is nothing to lose.
It is just a commitment
That no one will charge.
It is my self reference.

But I know my limitations.
I know I can change my mind.
Commitments reflect a time
That will lead to a different time,
Different characters,
Different backgrounds,
Different plots,
A different maestro to a different orchestra.

I fear lacking continuity,
To bend my own rules.
The more I know myself
The more I keep continuing.
I fear the inflection.

It is a terrible thing this flesh that wears us
Being makes us
Slaves to atomic thought
Particles possessing some consciousness
Dreams stream from the undermind
To undermine
All we thought we were

From the sub-atomic to the atomic
On into the protein patterns of our thoughts
Neurotransmitters flood and fulminate
Filling our minds with strange things
Receptor receiving impressions
Leave strangers believing instincts

Animals evolved to understand but ignore
The gifts we have acquired from millions years and more
A talent for analyzing then adjusting ourselves
And after the fact constructing a model
That makes continuity out of all of the chaos

Now most take it for granted
Become carbon copies cut in granite
They give in to the impulses
And waste said potential on fulfilling the illusion

The desire to be grander is subsumed
By their fear of non-existence
Which is what they become
Not after death
But as cogs in the machine
In a factory of robotic human beings

me and my sub-conscience fight over weird things

Torn space through the prism of a legend
where the dogs run through confused light,
where the twisted fallen trees beckon,
where the tracks of an old route laboured
by miners snakes, stumbling over
the rusted iron stanchions of an old gate.
There’s a glade where nothing grows-
it’s where the aliens landed.
Lights dancing through the confused trees,
sprites of old, peering around damp nettles
and piles of dog **** wet leaves; let’s dance
around the place from whence I had the
calling, dreaming of a new life
amongst the stars.

An Apathy for Effort

What happened to the world?
What happened to all of the happy people?
Drugs, money, *****?
None of the above.

I'll tell you what happened.
People happened to people.
Although, not others and to each other.
People happened to themselves.

Satisfaction became fiction
Men and women lost the grip on their vision.
Not eyesight, but people forgot the initial mission.

The concept of being happy
with what you have got
And worrying less about what you want.

If everyone would just shut up
And see how truly blessed they are,
Perhaps they would see
How truly blissful life can be.

Because what is bliss, but simply
A continuity with the whole.
And not a hole in the wall,
but the make of two halves.

If half the world gave half a hoot
We might experience bliss.
But we all individually feel deserving of more
As if we should get more than what we work for.

Yet NOBODY, is willing to give more
than a lift of a finger to attain.
It's too much of a chore.

We all expect the doors of life
To open to us, like a Walmart Super-center.
Where's the effort?
Where's that fighting spirit?

It's taking a nap with all of the hypocrites.
Those who spend their days feeling
sorry for themselves.

Those who left their aspirations
in a a Mason's jar
High upon the shelves, then claiming ignorance
as to what happened to their dreams, like lost car keys.

They know where they left them.
Hanging on the seams of their memories,
Abandoned when it became too hard
To work to achieve.

It's a sad state of affairs
When a man settles for his second choice of lifestyle.
Simply because his first choice was having an affair
With difficulty. Making it fairly difficult.

What is that man scared of?
Failing? You only TRULY fail if you don't try.
so instead he settles for second best,
While his heart sits idle and cries.

His heart cries:
"WHY?! Why won't you try?"
He is scared to lose,
That's why.

The sad thing is.
It's not as hard as that man thinks.
He simply needs to go out and do it,
and he will know happiness for the rest of his life.

But of course he's now too busy,
******* it all away.
Sipping on his bottle of sorrow drowning firewater,
somewhere when it's 5 o'clock.

As the whiskey burns and numbs his senses,
he attempt to consent himself with his settlement.
Living out his days with his mind and his heart
In constant battle.

Wondering what could have been.
What SHOULD have been...

So I beg of you,
don't choose to be another misfit or mishap.
Be you and always be true.
True to your heart and ideals.

Don't ever be frightened by adversity,
Be EQUALLY adverse.
Do not ever lose your grip on what makes you, YOU.

                                                -Nathan W. Smith

Life
          Happens so quickly
                                         You must divide it
Into                         sections
         Almost like a
                         Different fragrance in the air
              Another perfume or
         Like re seeing
everything you saw before
                               Through technicolor eyes
Only                   there's a new color
             A      fresh shade
                              of spatial light fragments
        Consuming your being
And                   warping you into
                     A new stage
                                   Hitting you with
        Intensities
                              Of our so called journey
            Turning
                       the dial on your radio
                     So
          the frequencies align
                    In a continuity of waves
                               Colliding
            amongst pink matter
              The insensitive intensities
               Present to me
                               A mystery
                    Or so it seems
                    A new light
                A dawn to the dusk
               Of my fragile fifth stage
                         But I lost count
                   And forgot the feeling
      
                          You'll know when it happens
                     It'll flow through you
          And you'll realize
                    You've felt it before too

Some say
That with victory – a continuity is required.
To win, you must, win, and win again
You claim each battle as your own ‘til life
meets its end.

I bask in these triumphs as much as the next
Relish the sick clang as the hilt gripped between my fingers
Wobbles with each and every blow
To an enemy’s weakened defence

As I watch rival fortresses vanish
In the smouldering chimney puff
That follows the blaze of the bomb

                        just like that.
Boom. Do you see that? Look. It’s gone.

Last moments in castle courtyards
As medals of valour are draped
Round the veins of my neck.
(Look what I can do. I am powerful.
                                                       ­  Or so I thought.)

No soldier is prepared for this.
The battle of the mind
Sharpened sword is useless
Throw your armour to the floor
No protection can be given
Clouds swell like balloons and blacken the corners
Of your brain
Eating from the edge like parasites
And this, I fight unarmoured.
Unarmed
And petrified.

So no.
I can’t say I agree.
To me
A victory
Does not entail an ounce of continuity.

For myself, any achievement
Is a success
No matter how large
How small
How scattered or random
Or spaced over time
If I can make it through the day
With a smile on my face
Sweet Victory, it’s mine.

I scribble on
With a half lobotomy;
A radar seeking Hell by looking up
And another dictionary
From another time and place;
An alternate timeline
Reaching right and left
As well as fore and aft;
The beard of a ******
And naïveté too;
Undiscovered depths of emotional manipulation
Unseeing, unthinking,
A new old structural familiarity
To abduct and probe
The time-honored, vacuum-sealed
Ineptitude of ideology
Whose meat is sweet
But suits the skeletons of standardized educational theories
Like a pair of jeans at age eleven that you expect to grow into;
In hope of justifying
Overuse of monetary resource
For the sake of bonus states of mind;
Scouring the depths of discarded everything
With hooks catching on to all the similarly forgotten names
Who live in fear of obscurity
Clinging, not unlike insects
To their sixteenth minute of fame;
Finding in myself no way but out
To understand that which lives inside;
With disregard for any thread which weaves past me and takes no hold,
And loathing for the ones that do but unravel before the eyes;
Lightheaded, ending any sense of continuity
When, prostrate in the comfort of another tapestry
I stand abruptly, let my dreams be drained from me through tendrils
Like the passing of a temporal existence;
Drinking in the dust and glue of crowded bookshops
In fear of losing inspiration
To the insatiable jaws of my consumerist natural state;
Rummaging in a bargain bin
In search of someone to tell me, “Stop!"
With heads in clouds and bodies in ice trays,
Stealing lines of logic and lyric,
Throwing down and hacking into
Elemental bits which fit into my own vernacular
Sacrificing beauty for originality and vice versa;
Choosing idols idly with the tides
Of knowledge and of art
Rising and falling without fail
Never apparent and never blurred by motion;
Searching for a style like an odd-numbered jean size;
Finding greater inspiration in waves of unopened mysteries;
Following examples laid by unsuccessful fictions;
Learning ethics only from the prologues of ****** novels,
Unsuspecting victims snuffed in interesting and lurid ways;
Letting technological distraction detract from the projections of psychological complexity
Which I, from atop the high horse of my own pretensions
Pretended to embrace;
Committing massive acts of thievery, fraud, and infinite lethargy
For the sake of juvenile, illegitimate art forms;
Seeking other seekers who exist autonomously
For the sake of personal independent credibility;
Leading unsuspecting, overreaching, overeating, understanding, undemanding,
Too forgiving, not forgetting,
Victims of domestic warfare
To a loveless watery grave
For the sake of my own loneliness;
Patronizing every segregated buffet
With courage enough only for a small taste of everything;
With the flavors of the day swirling around
For me to shoot them down
And pin their carcasses to elementary school walls
And Mormon tool sheds
And nature centers
And all the forgotten places of summers past
In the hope of rediscovering
Some old buried treasure
Be it wondrous or worthless;
With the uneasy insincerity of a rodent who pretends to understand a city;
With adopted methods
And repeated thoughts
And ideas which came to me in waking dreams of my own retirement;
Sharing, for a captive audience,
The formidable giants which
Inform our common denominator
Searching through myself for only the most indecipherable
With the fear of being understood
And the fear of being ridiculed
And pretensions of some preternatural predetermination for greatness;
With acceptance of predisposition for obscurity,
The cost of the inundation of the new airwaves.
The series of tubes that feed us intravenously
With information, information, information,
Having killed God and left material validation in His wake;
It could be that new gods are born in the minds of the innovators,
Those wonderfully wealthy
Whose social structuralism
Was a beacon to us all;
In the darkness of an architectural anomaly
Where lights extinguish as my body lies dormant
Alone and abandoned
Only by my own subversion;
Confined ever to a convolution of passages
While above me all my peers still carry on;
Overstaying welcomes
And letting emotionality
Color conversation
A sicklier green,
A green of a tree only just sprouted,
A green of a new recruit,
A green of an inexperienced schoolboy
Faced with the daunting and timeless act
Of copulation;
Somehow taking in the sights and sounds and smells
Of advanced mathematics
Even occupied, as I am,
With explaining my actions
Most eloquently;
Devoting myself to another cause,
Another, another, another
Always relaxing my grip by losing focus;
Desperately hoping not to let my fellow travelers
Lose their innocence
While I reluctantly, dogmatically
Keep mine on a leash;
Always keenly aware
Of the universe of worlds
Beyond my control,
And even my understanding;
On the increasingly frequent
Intrusions of risk
Into my significant reality
And the iota of explainable truth which guides the motion of my body but most frequently my mind;
Questioning the meaning of all words
Without thought or coordination;
Considering another restful journey
To clear my mind of human language
And in its place acquire thoughts and emotions from the street;
Without foreseeable direction,
Malice aforethought
Or noticeable signs of critical reaction
Giving birth to litter
Forgetting articles
And floating my sense of time up the Ganges;
Taking only seconds to counter the possibility of
Accepting more responsibility for myself;
Complicating matters with an interesting or bitter goodbye.

That pitched dark night comes back to my mind,
I somehow had managed to return from the gallows of death

A body, cold wrenched and tired
A food saltless seemed very tasty

Losing houses, money and property
Hugging my brothers happily we were

People black, white, hindu and muslim
Believers of one god brothers all today

Fear of death is such a force of cohesion
Humanity everyone's religion became to be

The elation of being alive
Of meeting relatives once again

An overcrowded bed, a cold autumn night
How peacefully and warm I slept

Eternal Anaheim

Somewhere in the dark back streets of the big easy this scene opens a dope addict slumps in the chair by an old filthy bed in an old
Seedy hotel this last hit was his last to many trips the highs that were no better than the siren call of the ****** of the deadly
Godless streets a mockery a disgusting counter life contrasted with having a loving wife and a family now the needle dangles from
A dead used up body and all the time the sacred book, open its cover the twin doors of grace and love outwardly they open the very
Portals of glory speaking of highs your first steps on arrival the mountains surrounding the holy city on the peak the great Sequoia
Down the mountain then the Redwoods then the Cedars they not only are in stands but they have designs formations each has an
Esthetic quality a mood some darker blends into lighter a virtual mosaic that reflects the thoughts your thinking you can walk down
The mountain enjoying finding the right footing or you can do a slow floating glide and take out the hassle at the bottom the foot
Hills begin again trees but now they not only speak to the senses of the mind and eyes but the heart feels an inner talking and aliveness
That wasn’t known about trees before flowers are dispersed there are a sea of them high ones short ones they have continuity of flow
Should I say mind blowing well this is a true high isn’t it then the low lands flat lands which ever you prefer also your choice they can
Be moors shires or better mist filled with the hint of Gwendolyn and Sir Lancelot Camelot awaits my dear friend beyond in rings and
Diamond splendor gardens on the order of the hanging gardens of ancient Babylon or the royal gardens of Leningrad or Paris touched
With living scenes of Monet, Matisse, Renoir or Van Gough’s french country side then the orchards every fruit especially Pomegranate and figs apples
So sweet you can hardly resist dancing along as you enjoy its heavenly taste then the fields where the heavenly corn grows that they
Make the true angel food manna from the corn as high as the angels themselves seven to eight feet tall just a hint of green left here
It is translucent clear as glass to your ears comes the sound of mighty tumults of water coursing ever swiftly to the Crystal sea follow
It to the walls this bejeweled linear spectacle bluest Sapphire reddest rubies gold leafs they appear as strawberries Grandma should
Like that Emeralds now I like Onyx first its bands or white then it has practically all colors for you to view these are all the size
Of a locomotive is that Walt Disney at the throttle all the children will say it is and then the gates of perfect pearl the streets that start
From them is translucent purist gold feel left out sometimes I’m writing about your inheritance its in his last will and testament what is a
Place that isn’t defined by the wafting smells the Jolon Mission is made special by the wafting scent of Lilac that pervades the grounds
Here Manna cakes and cookies for a start but it says the master will feed the bride with a masterful banquet just go in your mind to
Grandmother’s kitchen or the smell of pancakes when dad used to cook them but you really have to stretch so the restaurants you
have visited with closest friends and loved ones add them all up then multiply by a thousand your getting close now for the city’s
Infrastructure the shops I mean I can’t believe that they will not have at least some that will be dotted with the whimsical huts and
Fiery tale feel like those in Carmel California then throw in some adobe architecture from New Mexico some Italian bistro or just stands
With pizza as the roof why not well the mansions are left and the most important the glorious throne and He who will set there as we
Lay our crowns at his feet joy singing his look of love and acceptance will be worth everything I have tried to describe back to our
earthy home there are prisons full of our children friends that are prisoners of other vices just as bad as the ****** they are going to
lose not only heaven but their souls that have been paid for in blood, agony and undying love reach them it’s a little bit of heaven down
here Merry Christmas

Distance has a particular way of hurting:
It begins slowly, and is self-contained.
Because our mothers would often speak about Love,
and how everything falls helpless in Love,
Distance becomes a housebroken dog.
It is powerless, and whilst I love, I am powerful.
On Sunday, our fathers would teach us to put our faith in things unseen,
and so we grow confident and complacent.
Just when you think you’ve understood it,
It sinks its teeth in hard and deep.

An idealist tries to make it out light and easy
They will often write poems about finding
ideal love in the real world.
But I will write about knowing
real love misplaced in an ideal world.
It’s a world where comfort could come in binary files
filled with digital empathy and memories.
Where typed words and numbers that form
black and white promises could replace
the real and organic voice of reassurance.
Where wires between my webcams and your headsets
could entangle themselves in ways our fingers
used to be intertwined.
Where waiting for an email meant as much as
waiting for you to return home to me.
Where the strategic positioning of your punctuation marks
could transform these passive symbols
into active symbols of love and concern:

A comma, like a shared pause for when our eyes meet
Exclamation marks for when we wave to each other from across the street,
or as a passionate gesture from underneath these sheets.
A question mark for when you’re sick and I am by your bed
Worried, because you wouldn’t eat.
A semicolon for when we argue,
and a full stop for when we finally give in.
A parenthesis for containing moments of vulnerability
that only seem to leak out late at night.

You won’t know it but,
I dream mostly of an online conversation,
filled with time stamps that affirm your presence.
If I’m lucky, I will find an ellipsis
Small creatures of continuity with
heads heavy with hesitation.
…
And - if I’m really lucky,
I’d undo those black buttons of suspense
and see you once more.

i swear that rain,
tasted sweet from that sky,
as if kissed by the sun,
spun like cotton candy,
to melt on my tongue.

i swear the wind,
speaks more than silence,
the calls of the distance,
echo in its grasp.

i swear that smile,
seemed to stretch further then,
across your face,
when in my vicinity.

i swear the chill,
of winter, common,
burns now like icy toothpicks,
on skin.

i swear that grasp,
tight, never fleeting,
felt impenetrable,
a barricade to outside blows,

i swear the pain,
overfills the brim of comfort,
leaving one lost,
maps, compass in hand.

i swear that second,
of breath, in sync,
heartbeats, identical,
fingers, interlocked,
mouths, pressed together
with perfect pressure,
ticked slower than time
could allow.

i swear these hours,
of moments, recalled,
eyesight, scattered showers,
breath, short bursts,
concentration, struggling
to find continuity,
time's course runs slow,
just as before.

but i swear that rain
tasted sweet from that sky
as if kissed by the sun
spun like cotton candy
to melt on my tongue

Doing unto others
as we do with ourselves,
we manipulate
and conceal.

Power -- poorly understood,
absent autognosia --
seeks gratification
and little else.

Bewitching
and unscrupulous
hypnotic pageantry
holding sway.

A visceral magick
used cavalierly
by vampires
on the hunt.

Rapt in the Promise
of continuity,
the world
watches on.

He suddenly felt a sadness that only a letter might lighten. Thoughts of her he carried variously in and from the spaces and places this hot day had taken him. The morning had been warmer than in previous days, and even at 6.0am there was a heaviness present carrying a threat of thunder and rain.

He knew she was not at her best in the leaden heat of this hemisphere, whilst enjoying the dry, brittle heat of Africa and beyond. He remembered a hot train journey and a busy day moving boxes into a studio space. They were fond memories because in such heat she took on a delicacy about her. He would perceive her features and movement to be finely drawn, and that perception revealed her profound beauty. Such recollections were foundations in his love for her.

Today he had decided to avoid that daily confrontation with the project that lay invisibly on his desk, locked up in his computer, though unsorted sheets of graph paper, populated with planning, were evident on his drawing board. This project was a ‘book’ of studies for an ensemble in Chicago whose performances were marked by such energy and virtuosity; the music was growing steadily, but he felt suspicious that it had been contrived. He hoped his precise positioning of pitch and rhythm would have brought forth a surface colouring and texture. It had not. He would often imagine symbols and words he could not yet define lying on a transparent sheet over the rather bland matter-of-fact notation of his scores. He had known only occasional moments of such graphic invention, and when they appear ‘right’, they enlivened and enhanced his work.

He had put aside today as a listening day, an opportunity to listen carefully to a group of new compositions presented in a series of broadcast concerts and available to re-audition over the Internet. Didn’t Van Gogh write to his brother about the need to rest during a period of intense creativity and spend a day copying another’s work? This was an equivalent to his ‘active listening’, listening with a pencil and paper, taking a shorthand of the music’s action and journey.

The first piece on his listening list was a four-minute composition for chorus and orchestra. He had been intrigued that the composer had set words by Richard Jeffries, a 19C author who had written children’s adventures about a parochial natural world and had become admired by today’s new nature writers. It was said Jeffries had instigated Henry Williamson’s closely observed prose. He had set about finding the words – hardly discernable in the rich sonic accumulation of voices and instruments in the broadcast performance. Eventually, thanks to a brief comment by the composer in his introduction and a line that leapt with clarity from the music (the butterfly floats in the light-laden air), found a passage in a book called A Study of My Heart.

Recognising my own inner consciousness, the psyche, so clearly, I cannot understand time. It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life. Here this moment, by this tumulus, on earth, now; I exist in it. The years, the centuries, the cycles are absolutely nothing; it is only a moment since this tumulus was raised; in a thousand years it will still be only a moment. To the soul there is no past and no future; all is and will be ever, in now. For artificial purposes time is mutually agreed on, but is really no such thing. The shadow goes on upon the dial, the index moves round upon the clock, and what is the difference? None whatever. If the clock had never been set going, what would have been the difference? There may be time for the clock, the clock may make time for itself; there is none for me. . . . There is no separation-no past; eternity, the Now, is continuous. When all the stars have revolved they only produce Now again. The continuity of Now is for ever. So that it appears to me purely natural, and not super natural, that the soul whose temporary frame was interred in this mound should be existing as I sit on the sward. How infinitely deeper is thought than the million miles of the firmament!

The text chosen by the composer did not appear to follow the author’s words only weave a way in and around the paragraph, pulling out key words and phrases, creating a poem from the images. He could imagine doing this himself, making a poem of the text.

This business of time, and how it was to this author,  ‘all about me in the sunshine’, was the same for him. As he read it, he would think of the warm early morning light on the stone façade of the building across the road. He could turn away from his desk and see a quality of glowness that all but stopped his own thoughts of time. This quality of and in things that nature could bestow, even to the inanimate, held a wonder all its own.

And so he had listened several times to this bright, newly fashioned work, enjoying the sustained and acoustic beating of more than eighty voices (he thought) singing in close clusters. And with and against those clusters, were flurries and cascades of high woodwind, as though such figures were birds flocking into the sun on a summer’s sky. This music seemed to be about immanence, existing in the everything of itself, but unlike Jeffries’ reverie music was governed by time, and when finished, with an inconclusiveness that surprised him, would rarely, he felt, ever be performed again.

And there she was
A rough scab on a smooth perfect knee
With a chalky cigarette between bony fingers
Chipped red painted nails
Matching crimson accenting glossy white walls
She knew she was dreaming
Because of the ****** sun in the middle of the room
Chapped lips crack with scarlet, staining teeth
Surgical gloves reaching out from her beating heart
Held in by pale marked skin
Needles pricking gums, calling upon beads of ruby
Incisors and canines fall out one by one
Heavy tongue tastes gory wine
Indifference and apathy sistering one another
Stitches hold right-handed fingers in permanent crosses
Though an opal ring falls through
The shattering crystal lights the room ablaze
Intangible flames lick the ceiling as it rises and the floor sinks
An ever-expanding room flashing over and over in endless continuity
Like a repeating reel of film catching on fire
And then she was gone

One by one
the list gets longer.
Promises of continuity
turn into emotional tourism.
The word "goodbye"
has built a permanent home
behind my teeth.
But despite the familiarity,
I am still left with a bitter taste.
Alone, I choke on the silence
as I sit in the presence
you once filled
wondering what the hell
is so wrong with me
that no one ever stays

I closed my eyelids.

a unique space-time I've
created. A new world with I
               and you,
and in it we're us;
pseudo pagans
               adjust
in my multiverse of could-have-been's
wannabe's and forget-me-not's,
there's a million wormholes back thru

it's a glittering new world
where we're happy forever
               (embalmed)
present-perfect continuity
we'll never need to question or worry
               of it
because it'll be ours to [edit]
a spiritual instagram. sorry for the link.

I'm a believer.
our story is brick-bound & pyramidal
it's worthy of true realness
I'll never let that faith fade.

and all I have to do is stay asleep
seal myself, artery by nerve, in this bed.
eyes closed but moving underneath
               (forever)
and here I'll lay; 1,000 years on
entirely petrified. a fossil of trust.
everything/everyone I had known - gone
               forever.
fleshy eyes, solid as stone now. Blissfully
(always) unaware of their end. No matter the time,
my (      ) still eternally & happily
               in dream.

temples of time
coloring my hands
my apparatus for creation
of things seen in the mind's eye
catch what falls from the sky inside
juxtapose yourself for once
make yourself symmetrical

we are a continuity of memories
we are a one of many chains of events

my protons
my codons

copies
self similar
life creating life
an ever sprouting flower
and waiting on the next turn
is one more glimpse
at the great mystery

think large
you are spiraling towards
an event horizon
every end result of every action
will be held on the surface of a point of no return

what do you do?
with your
drop of a
drop of a
drop of a
drop of a
drop of a
drop of
time in an ocean?

well for starters learn to swim
then remember you're water

go towards the shadow of true beauty
an arrow of eros to guide your shine

light in the sky
catching an eye

eros in the wind
ethos in the mind
body aligned
i'm not confined
except the lack of ethos in my mind
and the lack of eros in my heart
and the lack of courage in my will

find it in everything around you.

As the mediums
between ideas and sensations
we have a responsibility
for that which the gods can only be objects of.

And we carry it like wishes on the wind
towards the point of no return
never forgotten,
never gone to begin with.

Something always sends me back to that town.
I never know what I'm looking for
or why I always take the same road.

There's something in the journey
in seeing the same path ahead of me
only changing for the seasons
it's continuity, it's endurance,
it teaches me great strength.

She died in the fall. Now autumn leaves
cover the gravestone.
That October I planted seeds in the grass
surrounding you
pink peonies brought themselves to live life
two years later
it is as though they knew a grieving period
could only bring me acceptance.

I too, had to develop rooting in my new home
grow my own foliage, of sorts-
to find a way to protect me from the frost.

In those days of cold darkness, where my body
is frozen ice incapable of moving,
waiting to wake up, I would listen
to the last voicemail you left me.

You were by the sea on your morning run,
telling me again, as only you could,
how you loved the winter months closing in on us;
"There's a bright blue sky, the sun so low & hazy
the migrating swallows look like they're chasing its rays,"
you say.

It is those snap shots carrying me
through the days I'm victorious over,
which bring me into blossom.
I remember, nature trusts its processes.
It trusts the seasons bringing change.
It teaches me, again, great strength.

© Sia Jane #76
18/9/15

The burn
that breaks
the clouded mind
the home
the love
the guilded shrine
the dove
the lines
the 
you are mines
the climb
the fall
(you once
were
mine)
[you once
burned
my cloudy
mind]
mind your 
mind
and
you'll be
fine,
you will
find
you will
prime
with 
time
sublime;
not I,
with my
denied
assigned
resigned
state of
slime.

poisoned well of the antichrist littered with ground cover
picking out ****** flecks of gravel
blacktop kneeskin
patience pieces of scattered space time
to go back to the future of continuity
lack of genius ingenuity
and the suckling of the pig entourage

riding in a flat top hatchback
cadillac of the daily grind
upperclassman japan onii-chan
brother in arms from anotha motha
hug from afar colliding with crackpot theory

terrible fantasia cooling bricks in soggy sun
swallowed his pride with a glass of self-worth
and these ***** don't cook like they used to
I don't look like I used to
warped veil of camouflage chameleon leather
with a ****** level of automobile salesman

tried to get closer to god
ground him up, picked out the stems
twisted him into thin paper
touched flame to his finger tip and a son of Adam was born

gum shoe gaze
or the emptiness felt at the end of reasonable doubt
correctional text messaging system
sent from hoarse corpses
tenderly poignant in their ****** coffins

will think for food
cries from an outdated MENSA
over ***** and under-appreciated
siting on hunched shoulders to get a better look
to be a martian in a plain port

wharf warehouse whaling boat
red tide in a Shanghai *******
floodgates made of bitter premise
that last bit of purple yam
**** Okonkwo
Things Fall Apart fell apart due to faded highschool ambitions and bloodshot eyes
cruel like the shade of off-cerulean

champagne fizz tickles at the soft meat of his tarnished throat
and silver tongue
as the matchstick framework
so fragile in comparison
fizzles out on drenched sidewalk
while cigarette ash floats by
like gray gnats

a museum casted shadow
variegated in hues of history
envelops the hour of the dog

a street paved with memory
adorned in May nuptials
whispers a toast to continuity

a cafe table ripe with potential
lost in studious consideration
brews eternity from lavender latte

They say it's cliché,  writing
a poem about being alone on your birthday.
Cause how could you be alone, with the not-so-faux paradise of the gently swaying lush greenery that sprouts tweety-bird yellow over your head,
complete, with the insistent ca-caw of the Red-throated beak that doesn't let you sleep on the anniversary of your birth.
How could you be alone with the contrast beneath, the contest of of somnabulism between the rickshaw and the great grey suzuki, that perfectly encompasses the colour of Europe.
The barking stray dogs in the Pune streets, the rustle of the parakeet palms in the monsoon breeze.
You're stuck in a shell of unending continuity, howling canines and Hindi beats, honking cars and the buzz of your mind.
alone. and old.

Made your reservation fifty years ago,
we waited 'til today,
at the time,
it was so far away,
now we go,
long, long ago, back to when we guessed

this was where we'd seem today.

So far away, grinning still, happy as
the fool on the hill,
sees the story unfold, a thousand voice
choir of messengers going up and down
and back… this continuity in perifery,
ifery were, and ifery was, and ifery at all

times, songs we listened to high,
in the winter of '67, long before
the Eggman died.

When the band was so young,
when the world was younger,
but not much
we kinda
lost touch, after the scariest part.

It was a trip.
Not everyone found their way,
nobody had GPS back then, few knew
what the Grateful Dead were happy about

and nobody had coordinates…
for Blue Jay Way…
seems, we've been too long coming,
Yesterday is with us for constant review.

Critics believe it all leads here.

A hit before your mama was old,
a long, long time ago…

The tune inspired, da-did-dada, she
should call it all art, and we are
all together
after all these ****** Tuesdays,
assure us now that Fridays come.

Ordering chaos to line us all up,
getting reverb in return for echoes
after all's said now another way,
we laugh along with
jokers who do laugh at you,
to push you through the portal,
taking all your time apart in instants.

Noise of others, noise from then,
puke into this mic.
Black hole of best intentions.
Good bye and hello, across the decades,
did we not meet once on the street?
I caught your eye, you smiled,
a long, long time ago…
remember?

I smiled, yes, as I passed,
you did not notice, I passed, it happened.

I smiled. hey, la, ha-hahaha, and took
Kesey's invitation, goodnight, Irene.

I did do the dive into the sea,
with drowning on my mind, going down
beyond the buoyancy, of anyone in my tree.

Realizing nothing since we lost touch,
I thought you all realer than me,
as my shape lost its original intention,
time distorts from
formative decades conforming
affirmational automation, to corporate
clean machines, still a source of pride.
Meanwhile,

we find it easy recalling toe tapping
impulses, now that you know who you are,
have you traveled
very far… further than any magic school bus?

How does if feel to be,
after all this time, to find today, the same old songs.

Never got rich beyond the satisfied mind
I found in a sack behind the opera house.

Nothing you can do that can't be done, it's easy,
say it true, believe it true, prove it makes long term

sense, after fifty freaking years, the laughing trombones
continue laughing at the simplicity past essentials.

Love needs a better definition,
all together now,
everybody, repeat the mantra,

or grow old and never get famous, rich and miserable,
live on with the will to grow older
still, knowing better and worse, at once...
one more time.

Made your reservation fifty years ago,
we waited until today,
at the time,
it was so far away,
now we go,
long, long ago, back to when we guessed

this was where we'd seem today.

So far away, grinning still, happy as
the fool on the hill, and nowhere man
see the story unfold, a thousand voice
choir of messengers going up and down
and back… this continuity in perifery,
ifery were, and ifery was, and ifery at all

times, songs we listened to high,
in the winter of '67, long before
the Eggman died.

When the band was so young,
when the world was younger,
but not much,
we kinda
lost touch, after the scariest part.

It was a trip.
Not everyone found their way,
nobody had GPS back then, few knew
what the Grateful Dead were grateful for

and nobody had coordinates…
for Blue Jay Way… or Penny Lane it
seems, we' were too long coming,
Yesterday is with us for constant review.

Critics believe it all leads here.

A hit before your mama was old,
a long, long time ago…

The tune inspired, da-did-dada, she
should call it all art, and we are
all together
after all these ****** Tuesdays,
assure us now that Fridays come.

Ordering chaos to line us all up,
getting reverb in return for echoes
after all's said now another way,
we laugh along with
jokers who do laugh at you,
to push you through the portal,
taking all your time apart in instants.

Noise of others, noise from then,
puke into this mic.
Black hole of best intentions.
Good bye and hello, across the decades,
did we not meet once on the street?
I caught your eye, you smiled,
a long, long time ago…
remember?

I smiled, yes, as I passed,
you did not notice, I passed, it happened.

I smiled. hey, la, ha-hahaha, and took
Kesey's invitation, goodnight, Irene.

I did do the dive into the sea,
with drowning on my mind, going down
beyond the buoyancy, of anyone in my tree.

Realizing nothing since we lost touch,
I thought you all realer than me,
as my shape lost its original intention,
time distorts from
formative decades conforming
affirmational automation, to encorporate
clean machines, still a source of pride.
Meanwhile,

we find it easy recalling toe tapping
impulses, now that you know who you are,
have you traveled
very far… further than any magic school bus?

How does if feel to be,
after all this time, to find today, the same old songs.
Knowing I'm a rich man, who never cashed out.
Never got rich beyond the satisfied mind
I found in a sack
behind the grand old opera house.

Nothing you can do that can't be done, it's easy,
say it true, believe it true, prove it makes long term

sense, after fifty freaking years, the laughing trombones
continue laughing at the simplicity past essentials.

Love needs a better definition,
all together now,
everybody, repeat the mantra,
The peace you make is equal to the peace you find...
living longer than children can really imagine,
growing old, never famous, not too rich and miserable,
to live on with the will to grow older
still, knowing better and worse, at once

-------- who are you to ask of me a reason to be?

Run the numbers, inquire costs and benefits.
Rest in peace today,

every child knows tomorrow and yesterday
are not simply more of the same aimless instant.

-------- who are you to ask of me a reason to be?

Run the numbers, inquire costs and benefits.
Rest in peace today,

every child knows tomorrow and yesterday
are not simply more of the same aimless instant.

<!>

Four Irises tall & gallant, looking though
slighted worn out, a tad bedraggled
they are springtime survivor stragglers
of the Great Spring Weather Battle.

living in an open trench, battle conditions,
wind-whipped by constant strong breezes,
raked by intermittent machine gun rain,
familiar weapons of the “handover” season

loyal guardians of their pinpoint position,
remaining on duty, standing at attention,
dignified amidst the serene, nearly summer, now,
accepting quietude & gratitude of surround soundings

arrow-straight, in dress uniforms of royally purple,
four lead a cohort of unbloomed green fellows,
protecting their charge, an ancient marker of time,
rusted-green bronze sundial, symbol of continuity

these four, boon companions to human and animal,
shall persist long after I cease to dabble in this art,
they greet their admirers in full regalia, every year,
long, long may they live, die and be yet reborn!

here, in place, when we arrived four decades ago, a tiny forever,
changelings heading a processional of the summer season,
greeting all with a simple story of constance of change, of beauty,
leading our Summertime Commencement Exercises

May 26 ~ 27, 2023

Time erases time defaces
You and I were endless like the sea
Such galaxy
Escapes my subliminal thought
I can't grasp it like the way I couldn't
     grasp you
Your soul
Running on the loose in search of
     a home
A body to reside where my fingers
     have not lain
Rampant through the streets touching
     where the sidewalk ends
Where our hearts met and corrupt the
     virtues of the innocent romantics
Screams into the night traversing the
     foreign cities' walls
Bouncing from side to side
At least I could say I tried
We at least thought you didn't die

A forgotten poem by Henry Brooke ( Irish Dramatist/Novelist)

Taken from poetrynook.com http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/universal-beauty-book-3-lines-301%C3%B4%C3%A7%C3%B4400

Or cool recess of odoriferous shade,
And fan the peasant in the panting glade;
Or lace the coverture of painted bower,
While from the enamell'd roof the sweet profusions shower.
Here duplicate, the range divides beneath,
Above united in a mantling wreath;
With continuity protracts delight,
Imbrown'd in umbrage of ambiguous night;
Perspicuous the vista charms our eye,
And opens, Janus like, to either sky;
Or stills attention to the feather'd song,
While echo doubles from the warbling throng.

Here, winding to the sun's magnetic ray,
The solar plants adore the lord of day,
With Persian rites idolatrous incline,
And worship towards his consecrated shrine;
By south from east to west obsequious turn,
And moved with sympathetic ardours burn.
To these adverse, the lunar sects dissent,
With convolution of opposed bent;
From west to east by equal influence tend,
And towards the moon's attractive crescence bend;
There, nightly worship with Sidonian zeal,
And queen of heaven Astarte's idol hail.

" O Nature , whom the song aspires to scan!
" O B EAUTY , trod by proud insulting man,
" This boasted tyrant of thy wondrous ball,
" This mighty, haughty, little lord of all;
" This king o'er reason, but this slave to sense,
" Of wisdom careless, but of whim immense;
" Towards T HEE ! incurious, ignorant, profane,
" But of his own, dear, strange, productions vain!
" Then, with this champion let the field be fought,
" And nature's simplest arts 'gainst human wisdom brought:
" Let elegance and bounty here unite —
" There kings beneficent, and courts polite;
" Here nature's wealth — there chymist's golden dreams;
" Her texture here — and there the statesman's schemes;
" Conspicuous here let Sacred Truth appear —
" The courtier's word, and lordling's honour there;
" Here native sweets in boon profusion flow —
" There smells that scented nothing of a beau;
" Let justice here unequal combat wage —
" Nor poise the judgment of the law-learn'd sage;
" Tho' all-proportion'd with exactest skill,
" Yet gay as woman's wish, and various as her will. "

O say, ye pitied, envied, wretched great,
Who veil pernicion with the mask of state!
Whence are those domes that reach the mocking skies,
And vainly emulous of nature rise?
Behold the swain projected o'er the vale!
See slumbering peace his rural eyelids seal;
Earth's flowery lap supports his vacant head;
Beneath his limbs her broider'd garment's spread;
Aloft her elegant pavilion bends,
And living shade of vegetation lends,
With ever propagated bounty blest,
And hospitably spread for every guest:
No tinsel here adorns a taudry woof,
Nor lying wash besmears a varnish'd roof;
With native mode the vivid colours shine,
And heaven's own loom has wrought the weft divine,
Where art veils art; and beauties beauties close,
While central grace diffused throughout the system flows.
The fibres, matchless by expressive line,
Arachne's cable, or aetherial twine,
Continuous, with direct ascension rise,
And lift the trunk, to prop the neighbouring skies.
Collateral tubes with respiration play,
And winding in aerial mazes stray.
These as the woof, while warping, and athwart
The exterior cortical insertions dart
Transverse, with cone of equidistant rays,
Whose geometric form the F ORMING H AND displays.
Recluse, the interior sap and vapour dwells
In nice transparence of minutest cells;
From whence, thro' pores or transmigrating veins
Sublimed the liquid correspondence drains,
Their pithy mansions quit, the neighbouring chuse,
And subtile thro' the adjacent pouches ooze;
Refined, expansive, or regressive pass,
Transmitted thro' the horizontal mass;
Compress'd the lignous fibres now assail,
And entering thence the essential sap exhale;
Or lively with effusive vigour spring,
And form the circle of the annual ring,
The branch implicit of embowering trees,
And foliage whispering to the vernal breeze;
While Zephyr tuned, with gentle cadence blows,
And lull'd to rest consenting eyelids close.
Ah! how unlike those sad imperial beds,
Which care within the gorgeous prison spreads;
Where tedious nights are sunk in sleepless down,
And pillows vainly soft, to ease the thorny crown!

Nor blush thou rose, tho' bashful thy array,
Transplanted chaste within the raptured lay;
Thro' every bush, and warbled spray we sing,
And with the linnet gratulate the spring;
Sweep o'er the lawn, or revel on the plain,
Or gaze the florid, or the fragrant scene;

i find this mentioned success found and expressed in the parameters of life,
nothing more than a philistine’s interpretation
of why la traviata resonates more profoundly than madam butterfly
when a girl does not use rhetoric to see the latter opera
but bows to the former in a sort of cognitive neglige,
so why do i find this mention of existential “success” so unprivileged
as to require a deviation from it and complete the individual?
think of the existential “success” as nothing more than:
a zoological phenomenon, the one chance to zoo-keep the dodo not executed,
most people will live in this safeguard,
they will forever remain the one example of continuity undisputed,
they will be safeguarded by the fact that countless examples have & will follow
them, and they will be petrified into ranks in a soldierly fashion
without moaning, for they are indeed the ones who reaped
the safeguard in the first place, the continuity must persist,
individuation must known nothing of what individuation is -
that process of self-depreciation as a worth in the worth of isolation -
they do exist in this safeguard not for any amusing qualities,
it’s the quantity of the escapade that’s amusing, amusement
based upon its success!
there's mr. and mrs. with 2.4 children,
and there's mr. barney and mrs. barney née barnacle
with an only child and a ticket to jerusalem.
so i digress now on the whim - if i were a sufferer of a medical condition,
a psychiatric one at that... would i have great or no insight?
i find it hard to concentrate on the theoretical side of things
without giving a chemical idle wave of the hand giving full
trust to the chemical cure... rather than a theoretical cure...
if i were truly a sufferer of a condition... would i theorise?
i guess i’d button up do my trouser zip up and take the chemical answer
as the “cure,” instead i decided to “cure” myself theorising,
which can’t make me a sufferer for all reasons stated by
an abstinence from the hippocratic trust... which isn’t really there...
hence the need to translate all this as: a hippopotamus oath,
the nearest noun next to dinosaurs... hip oh oh...
for why would anyone being a sufferer of a diagnosed condition
suddenly decide to theorise the symptom as a cure
rather than accept the cures given?
no sufferer of a condition accepts theory as a cure...
most just take the force-fed mechanisation of excessive use of
chemistry as if it was a choice of a beauty product...
yellows olanzapine and blues some other anti psi psi...
in summary... if i truly suffered i’d suffer without theoretical escapades, i'd take the cure and not bother theorising:
but since i don’t suffer from a false diagnosis i theorise...
sober enough to do so... even though drunk enough to enjoy the silence
and the holy lack of conversation...
i guess in depth, the migrant's ambition in me to be content with
arbeit macht frei... translated from doing construction work
with my father, or my specialisation in chemistry into
industrious writing patterns... a poem a day... let's
you throw an apple at a psychiatrist every other day.