This smile that makes your day...
This undaunted smile that seem to say.
Show me yours too so we both could play,
On a plane where everything is fine...
Everything's okay...

This smile that reaches out to you...
With nothing but invisible arms.
Caresses your eyes and draws you in.
Entices you with the sweetest charms.

Whispers you tales of a brightly lit future;
Where we're trapped in dance with each other...
Supporting...
Leading...
Lifting and,
Seducing one another...

Let the music ring clear,.
Over the thumping of our heartbeats...
Aggressively segmenting, framing the dance into seconds that would elapse.
Like two duelists entranced into committing tender jousts and retreats.

But know that...
This smile screams only lies.
For it is but a routine mask.
So well worn and adequately rehearsed...
You'd never see the need to ask.

Instead you'd just allow yourself be taken,
To a place where the tide gently beats...
Upon the shore our two ailing hearts.
A place where earth and sky would meet.

When in fact,
It hides the turmoil and agitation.
Guarding the storm that brews incessantly.
Continuously threatening
To breach this shared sanctity with me.

A haven would've then be erected.
That very instant we allowed...
This dance of smiles
From time of first contact to the time we bowed.

This smile... Only took a second
To paint a peaceful picture upon my face.
Free from the pressures building behind my pursed lips.
Just take this smile so that in that second,
We could get lost in the promise of a heavenly place...

A new day
with immediate choices
Time
segmenting and expecting
mapping a day
fine tuning with
polish
becoming the map?
a shadow lengthens
Rewinding the day
silence and light
breathing
Light
a map unfolds
a shadow fades.

Before, I couldn’t see you
I would write about your eyes
Your smile
Your hair
All cliche, all flat
I couldn’t write
How I tried
Now I see you...

I see a green mantis
I see your freckled patina in that photo with the perfect light
I see you engaging the waiter in conversation
I see your long limbs loosely crossed
Cradling your herbal tea and segmenting your orange
I see you

The soft nape of your neck is in my dreams

I see you swimming ahead in the river,
I see your joy in that, and remember me needing to turn back
I see us crouched on the railway sleeper,
The last of the sun crossing us
While the washing up waits
The beer dries on our lips
We sit looking back at your home

I see the young and sexless person you told me about
Your nose in a book on the family holiday

I see the flicker of self-doubt
the slow rising tear that doesn’t spill over
being all things,
mother, worker, friend, lover

I see all the things you are not
that I projected onto you
Now I see you

open a book and the words shoot
off the page, each letter a photon bouncing
off an orchestrated universe, illuminating
a world that wasn’t there
seconds before.  
i am in a chair,
and then –
riding a tram through 1930s Berlin,
black-and-white photos turned into
black-and-white words turned into
black-and-white as ends to a color spectrum
filling in sights and sounds and scents.
and then –
sitting at a dinner table in 1890s Ireland,
witnessing an alcohol-infused christmas
dinner go up in flames,
petty remarks and self-righteous politics
the tinder and faces like embers,
pulsing with heat,
breath stoking the fire
and then –
soaring in a flying car, london
below, the thames a
serpentine ‘s’ winding through the city, bridges
segmenting it into a divided
snake that calls on ben franklin; buildings
sprawling every which way,
swarming with lives.
and then –
i am in a chair.
the clock’s hands are
on its hips at four and seven,
scolding me. my legs are
staticky and unresponsive, on
strike at having circulation severed.
the book is shut but
the words live within me.

a picture is worth a thousand words, but
a reader lives a thousand lives.

It was a beautiful day. Some might say 'perfect'. Others would disagree, as they always tend to do. I say 'WAS a beautiful day' because as these words are read, the moments they describe have long passed. Not only that, as I experience these moments they immediately become the past, since the present moment is partly an illusion, partly our liberation. The only moment most people are ever able to experience in our dimension/universe is the present. Yet the very structure of time becomes the ideology that binds us most: segmenting and amalgamating to create a false perspective of continuity, but more detrimentally to us, of finality. Reggie Watts once sang that:

"We're only living in the memories of our future selves and its funny to think like we're here right now, but we never really are 'cuz we're somewhere in the future controlling the options, giving lots of hints to ourselves in order for us to understand that choice is still important in a world where we gotta figure some stuff out: yea".

That's a pretty consuming thought, but most don't even have the self-awareness to figure out the most basic concepts so hopefully, this alleged shift in consciousness better brings some swift wisdom to those it can and solace for those it can't. How did such dark thoughts come from such a beautifully perfect day? Because beauty is pain and nothing is perfect in life except perhaps life itself in/or the multiverse we inhabit (potentially). Always full of ups and downs like waves... of sound... of light... of energy... aka EVERYTHING! That's enough pseudo-philosophy for now. Take comfort in life's uncomfortableness.