(history)

Quell the bard was silken-clad and ever young.
her flute connected earth and sky,
tamed lightning in the higher notes..
her ancient horse would winnie to her song
of endless breath she blew her story even into stone.
having borne the stigmas of a *****
her martial prowess struck,
trampled disrespect to cacophonic dust
while over hills and vales he carried her--
a love-sick equine heart at peace at last upon the road
between her thighs, commanded loyalty of beasts and men.
none claimed her for their own,
though some risked instant death to try

..stirge beaks tap on bones and rock
to seek corrupted blood of elven kings,
who having reigned and fallen
to a royal troglodyte of dragon times,
paint each eon with ambivalence...
i conjure what my heritage beholds
--reclusive double-tongue to hoard all words,
reinvent religions for a lark

what legend am i privy to the making of
that hasn't had its underwires stripped,
hung about a square in lewd display of Fact
to purge a sense of mystery awry?

i am alone within my fantasy.
its symbols still mythologize my i.
i will not bare it here, or anywhere--
concealment is its freedom, and its boon--
in which a frame of tenuous material appears

where antidote addictions cycle musically,
the timeline's summoning
a game of recompense, compensating wanderlust
won by whim and licorice for thought;
it finds familiarity untamed--
adolescent anchorage aweigh--
adventures into wildernesses lost




.

i stick the plaintive letters
of friends and family amidst
the pages of my favorite books
they mark choice passages
concerning our species and the
fate of this ancient universe

one desperate plea for me to
return to the hypocrisy of Christianity rests in my copy of Camus's essay "the Rebel"
tucked nearby Dawkins'
"god Delusion" and Bakunin's
"god and the State" which share
a space with unholy texts on science
art and philosophy on the top row
of my overflowing
alphabetized bookshelf

on a silent Sunday drive home from
church some years ago i
once asked why it was such
a crime to believe in myself
my father imparted it was
an insult to my 
invisible creator
well here’s a ******* to 

my mythological maker
i don’t need you
i’ve got two feet 

planted firmly 
beneath me
i stand strong beside the ones
who resist a culture of misanthropy

i am what i am
a wanderer waylaid in the chasm
of gray matters
i no longer see the world in
shades of black pitch and white snow
your absolute truth is sharp
and out of tune with the
empirical realities of nature
i am not a zealot inculcated
on the drug of elitist predestination
i refute the elixir of everlasting life
heaven is a dream that keeps
us numb to the hellscapes around us

i face the unknown sobered by a
measurable cosmos which wasn't
made just for me to see
but spawned all we call
reality in the throes of a fourteen billion
year old eruption that flung planets
and stars into existence

we are amiss upon a floating rock
adrift in outer-space and instead of
utilizing our capacity for ingenuity to
cultivate a sustainable community
we looked towards the skies
and fashioned gods in our own image
we made god compassionate—a benevolent  
creator who breathed life into nothingness
we made god hideous—a malevolent
dictator deciding the destinies of the unfortunate
we engineered division where once was
sanctity and instigated violence on the
premise that one faith was better
than the other but
they all ring hollow
if you ask me

i am not a sheep and your Christ
is not my shepherd
i am not a timid and pitiable creature
stumbling along after some imaginary master
Jesus of Nazareth was a revolutionary
executed for instigating rebellion
against the Empire of Rome
he said nothing about waging endless war
in fact he urged his followers
to turn the other cheek
i imagine he'd be rolling in his grave
if he could see them know—provided
of course
he hadn't so famously vacated it

riddle me this
why do you hate two men who cherish
each other when your savior said
the greatest commandment was just
to love and be loved by one another
if the etymology of Christian is
Christ follower why not cherish the
lines of red in your holy book
your god bled and died for

even the most progressive of faiths
pale in comparison to the certainty of
evolution or the terror of global climate change
why mythologize that which we don't
understand when history shows that
we only learn more and grow with time
when we question everyone and everything
why dwell in circumstantial metaphysics
when we can just as easily admit
we don't have the faintest clue

i arraign myself against any warped faith
that privileges bigotry and arrogance
i reject the religion of atheism and
buddhism and Christianity
i stand apart from the ethos of
Hindus and edicts of Islam
i have no gods and no masters
my conscience is my only authority
i'm the only one who can
save me from me

in my father's latest letter
packed safely away in Carl
Sagan's "the Demon-Haunted World"
he informs me that i'm
the prodigal son that some
doting deity awaits me
at the gates of heaven
to put a ring on my finger and
slaughter a fattened calf for my
welcome home dinner but
how did an omnipresent god
not deign to ascertain
i'm a vegetarian

"I enjoy wearing weird clothing.
Sometimes I wear it when I perform.
It's been reaching a point
where all I have to do is show up
and play guitar on stage
while everyone else mythologizes for me.

Though I tend not to care for it,
some of the more inspired remarks can be rather amusing."

in another time there was an old man
walking around the woods behind the house.
no one believed me when i said i saw him walk,
quiet, graceful, with divine ease across ground-up leaf.
the color of nutmeg we swallowed just last week
stupid-young-and-pretty
too pretty,
too full of effort.

obvious pencil thick outlines,
**** us for our method.

maybe we were brilliant once
ripe and full
to the brim, even.
so the overflow brushes down our sides,
making you whimper sweetly,
****** again underneath the weight of two,
three,
back to *******
leaves a ring on the table.
should have used a coaster.

should have done a lot of things.
but it is what it is, as you said.

i wonder if you mythologize us as we do you.
look at me.
feel my marfan, thai-dancer fingers under each eye.
what will they look at in two,
three,
back to two years?
I don’t dare tell you this,
but one night when I heard your heart beating
I knew you’d out-live both of us.
and on another night you’ll ask me what happens,
but that’s no where near the right question to ask.

i can tell you a last minute and a half as I recall.
you lie with your hands, flecked with the tiniest boulders
each one a marker of where she laid her own fingers on you.

the thin lace veil flutters violently over each of your orbs,
when the the sound of the wind flowing through them is deafening enough,
it gets up from the seat by your bedside.
“where are you going” your lips are so dry
and we haven’t been here for sixty years to moisten them.
“you are a miserable old **** and you will not have the satisfaction
of being exempt from dying alone.”

I am a ballpark moth.
a buzzing light is made my home tonight

in time it dries my wings and takes my flight
but for now i live aloft a peacetime game all
shouts and metal.

If i could say,
i know i can’t,
Like a broken arm cast in sound aluminum,
Unmoveable
                                        but highly mobile.

Soon enough you’ll hear a mother’s admiration,
pride by proxy someone taught me:
Aggression   in sublimation.

What makes a mother fly i’ll never know.
I refuse to help mythmake America’s obsessions.

smoke or dirt or metal war

mythologize

and I’ll wait forever for these wings to dry.

I smile at my everlasting loyalty
I laugh at my ridiculous behavior
I search your name on Google
I locate all your accounts
I browse through all your twitter things
I find your videos to be obnoxious
I fixate on your photos
I see you've stuck with the short hair look
I ask people if they know you
I cringe when they talk about you
I wonder if you are bad
I grin because I am hopeless
I sigh  because I am helpless
I hope I cross your mind
I guarantee I don't
I mythologize you on accident
I pretend that this is not that serious
I see people act like this  sometimes
I regret starting this poem  
I dream about you frequently
I create you to be perfection
I own the setting, the dialogue, and the personality
I wake up feeling desperate
I contemplate contacting you
I remember the last time we talked
I think it went so-so
I bothered you many times over the years
I got out of hand
I fear that there is nothing I can change
I wish sappily when I see shooting stars
I met you a decade ago
I figure you still act the same
I bet I still would tense up around you
I love you unconditionally
I want you to know who I am
I doubt you ever will

23,190 days ago,

Yours truly got hashtagged
as the 2,975,075,410TH
person alive on Earth
according to website
https://worldpopulationhistory.org/
my-population-number/.

Come November 15, 2022
(a little more than
four months from now -
actually one hundred twenty days
after today July 11, 2022),
the world's population
projected to reach eight billion.

The latter date underlined
and iterated above
recognized as World Population Day
according to United Nations
World Population Prospects 2022.

Though prone to espouse Malthusian theory
(the idea that population growth
graphs potentially exponential curve
while the growth of the food supply
or other resources remain linear,
which eventually reduces living standards
to the point of triggering a population die off),
I tend to embrace more optimistic forecasts
encompassing number of people
livingsocial cheek to jowl
upon oblate spheroid
also known as planet earth.

Throughout mein kampf and hard times
(spanning three score plus three years)
the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) prevails.

The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR)
constitutes a fusion of advances
in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics,
the Internet of Things (IoT),
genetic engineering, quantum computing,
and more applications with microchips
implemented in almost every electronic device
we use today, including smartphones,
gaming consoles, cars and medical equipment.

I feel excluded amidst radical transformations
upending long established paradigms,
and hanker with nostalgic tug in my breast
when civilization linkedin with humankind
reliant upon sweat of their brow efforts
cultivating, harvesting, oiling tired muscles
xing off daily, weekly, monthly... chores
until the morrow beckons hours spent
physically engrossed with labor of love.

No doubt I characterize, fantasize, idealize,
mythologize, romanticize... woebegone time
that only existed within the outer limits
of the twilight zone, where dark shadows
presaged the approach of an alien nation
seeding colonization courtesy
super intelligent species
employing exploitation of innocent naivete
characteristic of yours truly
suitable as key personality,
whereby intergalactic entities jump/kickstart
regime trumpeting other worldly credo
gussied up as faux capitalistic enterprise.

Deft cosmic management utilizes
extra terrestrial workshops
that inculcate transparent
lgbtqia2+ friendly principles
plus reproductive rights
no matter ****** orientation
trends atypically heterosexual
imposing zero tolerance policy instituted
to accommodate divers
creed, ethnicity, gender,
nationality, race, religion, et cetera.

Such far out hypothetical scenario,
whereby once self important **** sapiens
become plaything of all powerful universe force
able, eager, ready and willing
to mutate into any terrestrial animal or plant
can even shrink down
into bot size unit and embed themselves
inside body electric
of people like you and me
ultimately regulating ability
for us to procreate
eventually relegating humankind
to the dustbin of history.

Not to mythologize myself
And not to catastrophize

Just daily life
Step by step by step

Just the best I can do
For you. And you. And you.