Cobwebs

in

Opening feels like a cobweb of cracks around my soul.

As if I am a piece of glass and I have dropped myself onto concrete.

Not out of carelessness but because I am living and the risk inherent in living is breaking.

Light leaks through

Widening the gaps but also filling them in with the possibility of morning.

Who will I be today?

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Great heights

in

Should I discard the compulsion to do?

Break out from the shell of expectation

Shed this comfort of protection, this belief I'm doing fine as long as I'm moving

Could it be about finding stillness instead?

Like the tree whose great heights come from standing still.

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The work

in

Stop and start and stopfickle compulsions of the head making night-time final decisions based on a lucid dream. You think the work has feelings for you like a lover who leaves not love notes for remembrance but withered hopes and layered cuts. Flowers blossom faithfully in spring but never when we're looking change only perceptible after it's changed everything. It's a miasma of missing things even while doing everything it's never enough of anything stuffing holes with beautiful distraction. Pressure chips away at the beauty no one ever saw the potential we forgot to use the hours we'll never get back.

I Want to Catch on Fire

in

Why do we wake upTo days just like the last How do we slice them Into shapes that fit together To make something pretty Something worth the minutes Pieces to satisfy the cravings Fingers to play with my hair Winds to manipulate the senses Because I want to exist in a way That matters, I watch to catch On fire, not the kind that combusts With the force of a freight train But an inferno that triggers passion Like the sun after a bitter winter The rain after an oppressive summer A single moment no one ever forgets Even after we have faded Into the great nothing.

Bleached by the Moon

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I am youngThough I look old More silver than brown Imprinted with non-linear Focus, non-stop worries Tattooed by UV rays And the stretching Of time, volumes of Blank books loaded With my affairs Collections of change I never saw coming Obligatory trauma Because easy costs Something I never Could find, now I am Quarantined like a Leper or a hermit Though it's not Contagions I seek To contain but risks I call blasphemy Selfish and ravenous For the youth I once Possessed in spades Bleached out by too Many super moons Emptied by too many Chances shriveled Like dead orchids No matter how much Water I drink in dreams Of a resurrection.

Climax

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Perhaps we have reached the endForsaken by everything trustworthy Starved by our own prerogative Festering into odious spunk Never mind the shelf life lasts Forever. Our toes point behind us Our fingers point somewhere in The distance, an arabesque into The future, two uneven halves Divided with nothing left for the Now. We mow our grass though It never stops growing, we pay For superfluous insurance just To be safe. We spurn safety For money, we declare war on Life by spraying verdure with Poison, we hedge the present With gold and still moments captured By the lens, immortalized by the Screen, because we matter and Those smiles will someday climax And though we prepare for it, we Will never be ready for it, so what I pray is the point in trying?

Addiction

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It tugs on your lapels like aNeedy child needing you and only You, traveling through brain mass Finding new spaces to fill, breaking Your life into two neat pieces. One for the addiction, another for Everything else, everything that matters. You hold the pieces together with your knees, Careful not to move your hips, gambling on The outcome, the hit, the blow, the shot. You reel, you breathe differently, you feel The new space where the cracks have widened And the vapor rushes in like epoxy or Super glue, which always does a better job sewing Your fingers together than the fractures.

The bullies.

in

I see the bullies. Two boys. Their victim is a little girl whose chromosomes are all mixed up. “What are you doing?” I bark in the exact tone my father uses with me when he’s disappointed, the voice that taught me how to fear. I recoil at the coldness in my heart, and everyone, including the pig-tailed girl, freezes as if paralyzed by an icy wind blowing across the tropics.

Without a glance in my direction, the perpetrators drop the girl's ratted blankie and disperse. I shake my head until my world becomes a blurry mess, mourning the death of innocence and the birth of evil.

Back in the classroom, the boys behave well for the rest of the day, returning to their usual disruptive selves by the next. If they had seen my stare, the sorrow they spawned, the good behavior may have lasted a week, but you cannot force someone to look you in the eye.

Written for Trifecta.

Adapted from the manuscript of my first novel.

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image via

 

What if those were rocket ships?

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(Some thoughts on the events that inspired the poem: Beyond the end of the world.) Although I marvel at the Blue Angels air shows, they leave me with some unsettling questions. How much money do these shows cost? How much pollution do they leave in the air? What is the true intention of the US Navy? Hint: the answer is just one word.

Recruitment. They do it to recruit more bodies because more bodies mean more power. More power means more separateness. More separateness means more war. And it's all because we still look for power on earth instead of setting our sights inward.

There will never be enough power to go around, but there will always be enough power to fight over, tempting man to allocate his resources to killing and controlling rather than growth and exploration.

Like I said, I love watching the jets fly over. After a particularly close call with an F/A-18 Hornet, I updated my Facebook status: Every time a Blue Angel flies right over my head, I squeal and my heart beats faster and for a moment, I am, all at once, high and humbled and awestruck. Now I remember how a toddler feels about EVERYTHING. 

But what if we were watching space ships take off into the galaxy instead?

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Jimi Hendrix

via kwout.me

Beyond the end of the world.

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The end of the world happens every day

Babies forget to breathe, bombs dive.

I kissed a tree

And sat down to write one thousand words.

Armored mechanical angels swooped by in formation

Creating traffic in the air

A celebration of freedom, a spectacle of man's wit.

Here, we laugh at the angels.

There, we cry.

World peace remains hidden beneath ego's shroud

Because we look for power on earth

Instead of setting our sights on the moon.