Past our past,
Yours and mine,
My soul yearns,
As I walk by silver clad trees; 
A favourite parked orange vintage Saab;
And memories newly raw, too.

I

Then quite extraordinarily,
The Cosmic Whale,
Stirs in my solar-plexus,
And my objectivity dissolves,
As conscious consciously hears:
The song of my inner Gypsy,
And look!
My Narwhal,
Up among the stars,
Beyond days and nights,
Roaming free,
Scything milky ways in half,
Fireballs disrupting,
In infinite timelessness,
Beyond the pull of gravity,
Where no vortex holds:
The 'othering' whirlpool,
That keeps us compressed
- as a collapsed star -
Gone!
At last my Cosmic Leviathan blows
- ALL is released and falls away.

II

Such is my Cosmic Behemoth:
The funnel *****
And inside out,
Is turned.
As at last on course;
Whoo! Whoo! Whoo?
But no-one replies!
The navigation station is empty:
This is motion without traction,
And no acceleration,
Slipping atoms would only slow!
The flow,
No windows either on the view,
As even visual truths are but fleeting,
And words muddy the clear unconscious streaming,
As the journey beyond mind begins.

III

The worldly maze recedes,
A bird's-eye vision steers the empty ship;
No harbours are plotted,
From here on
- endless flight in night,
Without end,
Wings blaze occasionally nearby,
A host of fireflies pattern the cosmic pool,
A whole immensity in which to dance.
Space,
Growing,
Stretching,
Expanding outward,
Not as we would have it, but as it is beyond our eyes.
Where space is born,
Again and again,
And so!
Exults in nothing,
A self beyond understanding,
In silence thrives,
Where sense logic makes no waves.

IV

The Cosmic Whale is off,
All attachments gone,
Like a flake of skin,
A fold in time -
Falls off.
The anchor dropped,
Is not retrieved,
What use is I -
When the clock's monotony no longer counts!

V

The surface disappears,
The ocean depth submerges,
In the cabin
The lights are dimmed to monochrome,
As navigators know,
Blind sees the furthest.
Charts are soon forgotten,
The imagination leads:
Ueah, the Cosmic Mind,
Vast and free
In all directions!
No need to plot a line,
Instead like the humble earthworm,
Who in darkness fertilises:
Beauty, how unimaginable, how unknowingly,
Is by all that envelopes guided,
As from the cracked ***!
Which in Reality was suffocated,
The source is nourished.

VI

As my Cosmic Whale plunges the deeps,
Look to the expanse:

     The eternal behemoth whose flight
     Everywhere provides,
     Guileless and unobjectified.
     A subjectivity that knows no
     bounds,
     Is unto itself unknowable.

In brushstrokes.
The universe,
Is as it rolls Created.
Where logic has little to do,
As all,
Already simply is.

sound and fury
signifying nothing

yet here we are
kicking and cussing

to what end
the fighting and fussing?

to be determined
by unknown othering.

I fear me
Because I do
Not know me

Who is me
When others
Are not around?

I can be others
The son, the worker
The old friend, the lover
These are roles
I can control well

But when you
Strip the actor
Of his roles
what is he?

There is just me
And that scares me

and this
I suppose,
is the life I'm living;

bundled up,
walking through the snow
with a hundred and two fever.

handling money
all day,
more and more and more money:
never enough.

taking money from those with too much,
giving it in turn to those with disgustingly too much.

alienated, dehumanized,
I work for those who think of me as a number. 60 hours a week,
I sweat and sweat,
selling a product I could never afford.
alienated and dehumanized;
I toil.


there is no pride.
my eyes: they no longer sparkle.
there is no pride,
there is no relationship with my product.

there is no pride in barely affording rent.
there is no pride in not being able to visit the health clinic.
there is no pride in being exploited.

go ahead, vamanos comradita,
speak out against, you know the worst they can do.

add a black mark next to your name,
call you:
radical,
dissident,
extremist,
in a word: othering

you are othered because you wish to eat the fruits of your toil.
you are othered because you're a human, you're not a number,
you're not a spot to be filled when scheduling, you're more than the recipient of corporate pay checks.


toil, toil comraditas,
there will one day be pride

At night, against the pulsing embryonic black which could
Squeeze any number of untold horrors from it’s voided heft,
There sits a door; bright searchlights unmoving, having forever
Ago found and revealed the menacing target of their feverish hunt.
The lights, beacons of vision and revelation stay still,
Afraid to ever lift their gaze from the door.

The door; a crimson sentinel of conformity’s’ demands. A gate
To a finite space of infinite secluded terrors. It’s mocking facade,
Not the true foundation of the haunting visage, but it’s chosen
Illumination against the choking nothingness around it.
There is nothing else but it, and if the lights lose
Their oppressive gleaming, there will be nothing.

Would it not be better for the deep to win the ever waging war
Against our struggles to find hints of sight and recognition?
If the door were to vanish from the othering out there,
then it would be impossible to not turn inward. A forced reflection,
a mirror that’s presence is known, existence felt, but is unseen,
only available when the absence is absolute.

Nonplussed, the bastion remains, a gravity well pulsing
In and out the night, as if the darkness centered around
Maintaining the illusion of safety from knowing ourselves.
Do not be afraid, you will not be forsaken or alone with anything
Other than the beating of your quickened pulse, the edges
Of your vision shrinking until all that you are

Is mirrored in that crimson sentinel.

Self Righteous indignation, separation, and a flare for othering

the man who strove to bridge the gap between himself and the world

made himself an island to be safe from the chaotic trade winds

Here, he felt, hell, he felt stronger than he was accustomed to

but this only tempered his approach

kept his destructive tendencies at bay

and filled his time

His ennui and his thirst for consequence

His self deprecation, his lust for power, his empathy unbidden

He knew of his own privilege, he knew other's pain was greater than his

He knew other's success, and had tasted glory in doses unsatisfying

He was meant to be satisfied with stagnation

and was tailored to disapprove of the play by play

but was forced to place bets on the rat race

and to have his mind occupied by symbolism

while he realized the cross was only two lines placed adjacently

He was forced to explain to his lover, what love means, and how to believe

What it meant, how it was, and why it was held in such high regard

He comforted an ailing cherub, watered her roots with his own excretions

For in appeasing her, he cut into himself

All he wanted was to be big enough, to cut himself down enough

that when he gave of himself, he could give what would have been his all

while still holding on to what could be all he was.

This balance is unsteady.
I am  no wanderer.
This is no conquest.
“Would you rather have this moment?
Or that one?”
Othering myself into eternity.
Plop that in your goblet
And drink  it up.
Huge, cool gulps of consciousness,
Whirled creation.

I spend my freest time
Dancing in the stuff that spills out of me
When I’m just too full,
My soul confetti,
The lumpy fungus that grows  
While I’m not looking.
Undulating in the ins and outs.
Roll in it, rip it up, squish it together,
Choke it down,
The sticky glaze of “I don’t know”
Getting my fingers *****

I sleep in an acid washed dreams
Inhaling and exhaling every part of
This constant spin cycle  
That stirs my existence
And shakes me like a cocktail.
Rest easily, cradled in the fluff
Of all of the possibilities.
Eat them like Tic-Tacs
Smell the minty pleasure of it
On my breath
When I splatter my being against the walls.

My life is a lemonade summer
I dream in sweet bits
That sting my throat like sour candy
Back into reality.
From there,
I daydream to car keys
knocking the dashboard
Sing to my own chaos
And laugh to my drumbeat.

i am
seen
clear through
yet never sure
-ever torn-
by what i see
in you

sliver in my eye
grow grow
into clearcut forest taken from the sky

observe
you can see all of me

i am bark turned
inside-out
my core yours

see me seen

and you?
the cool side of a moon
spooning the abyss after tangoed tryst

we are cosmoses
apart

there will never be a day when
you will say
that's the day i knew
i would always love you

because

othering opacity foreverfizz

nobody poets anymore

because to poet
is

to make it strange again

admit it - if you stare long enough

your reflection in the mirror tickles
the ribs of 1-to-1

turns a laugh into a cry
a real hard good cry
washing the world of wry

to poet is
to show

the sheer

terror

that is
alive

it's not outside
it writhes
under the molecule

it tumbles the tumult

dear you
your tools will not will forever

the unfisted wisp now blurred
beneath word is curtains
for your House of Horror Maintained

it beats like a busybody
muscling and torquing just below the breastbone

of your
you

the i is not it anymore

it is
othering
peeking behind
the beat-up chair of your so-called

real

there's wires behind there

they lead some
where

Acceptable self-harm is drinking a pack of off-brand biscuits
through several cups of tea
every other evening.
Acceptable self-harm is binge-watching an entire season
of whatever's hooked it's tentacles into
the reward pathways of your brain
in one sitting.
Acceptable self-harm is buying into vicious ideology
because it makes you feel deep connection while
othering.