The smallest grain

One thing ends, another begins. Such is life on its simplest terms.

The wind blows, the lion roars, the butterfly spreads its wings. All part of an intricate, ever-expanding web of arcane vibration. Motions of ebb, oceans of flow. Cyclic, stunted yet a helix in every which way, through and through and beyond for just a bit more exposure. Just enough to dip over the threshold above the endless and below the unimagined. The hydra ignites the swell the halcyon, in turn, soothes into sleep.

I am no more significant than this puff of smoke I exhale. We are each endlessly engaging and miraculous in fashions both mundane and absolutely impenetrable by thought or dialogue. There is a subtle yet overpowering comfort in thoughts like this.

I envision myself the smallest grain of sand, contemplating our significance as dandruff digging into the scalp of a being whose mere existence stretches beyond the borders of what we fathom and envision as the frayed edges of reality's flickering light. We are specks of dust upon specks of dust buried under the fingernails of gods outgrown of monickers and deity, engaged in conversation our reverberating lips can mirror no more than a poem could capture sunlight disappearing behind the crest of the moor.

Tapping away at this keyboard with a faulty M key, the air around me floats by with a heavy pulse, a feathery haze of sensual sentiments. I sneak a peek from the edge of the surface, the outstretched arms of the sea cluttered with thoughts of soft skin and hard bodies. What are we if not angelic bastards and bastardettes, bereft of wings, bleeding from our backs with fresh blood drying on our sore claws. Yet so beautiful.

My knuckles drag across the lining of this brazen bull. Sweat forms only to vaporize instantly. I can feel the flames rising from below, melting my skin and flesh as the copper heats. Through the ordeal I consider if laying in the fire is merely a small price to pay for the deathsong I might be able to expel as the soul vacates its shell. I suppose that's faith in something. They say your bones would shine like diamonds after you'd been roasted to death. A fitting end, regardless of what must have been unbearable agony.

Still, pain remains uninteresting. A blunt instrument devoid of melody. In this golden cage I call sanctuary pain is indistinguishable from stillness. And vice versa, of course. Thoughts are bullets, words form projectiles and music is an armada on the prowl, but all armaments are rendered powerless by the strength of suffocation. I need all tongues animated, all posts manned, yet find myself frozen under concrete skies. Time trickles through the cracks and contours of the wood, sluggishly charting passageways nearly impossible to navigate. My cage is perilous and deceptive; as endless as it is narrow.

A land called Nowhere. A place I know all too well.

Child of the city, child of the night

Everything is aloft, adrift and askew, yet nothing is out of place. A strange balance amidst storms and dead calm, between perfectly severed and intricately interwoven. Noise is merely harmony in bloom.

I look good and I feel good, walking alone on black tarmac in the arms of this wonderful city. The poet in me sees all things as things should be looked upon; trivial, menial, dreamlike, ferocious, intrusive, inclusive, corrosive, heartless, heartfelt... on and on. Beauty in all things - the subtly brilliant schematic in the eye of chaotic turns of motion melting into motion. The mind wanders aimlessly yet with cutting precision. A sword bereft of its sheath, glimmering wildly against the burning flashes of streetlight, replying to each electrifying reflection with a gaze of pure silver. Of the night I drink and she nurtures me so tenderly.

A truly grandiose existence, to lay one's head against cold stone and feel so completely at peace. As I replied to a curious friend when prompted; I have absolutely nothing to trouble me. A long-time sufferer of my less publicized woes, I swear I could hear her heart going into cardiac arrest as we shared a mildly uncomfortable laugh. As she picked her jaw off the floor I felt somehow vindicated and vilified at the same time, yet could muster up no darker sentiment than a ferret-like little grin. Should people know me, their insight would likely come via my output and my output is a jigsaw of unfinished glimpses, a puzzle of shards as broken as any, but a better alternative to, well, anything else. I'll take the mosaic of incomplete images written in poetic morsels over most alternatives.

Yet I do wonder where the road below is ushering these two feet to. I dislodge myself from events and scenarios before the gleeful tick of the tock has had a chance to turn sour, scampering away from warmth and vibrancy for I am afraid, truly afraid that the laughter will die a horrid, unforeseen death before its time is due. Not that even with scrutinous foresight could one predict anything of the sort coming to pass, but as a sort of preemptive disconnect it's slowly becoming second nature. I dare not linger in harbors of happiness for too long for all things under the moon and sun are fickle and frail and quick to disintegrate. I recognise this pattern of behavior from past experience. I've been here before. Didn't fare too well then, either.

If my tongue is tied, it is to thwart the spitting of bullets even before the hammer's been drawn back, lest there even be a hammer, trigger or indeed a weapon of any sort. There is no one to trust in to trust me without reservation, for the world is full of crooked daggers and poisoned arrowheads, crushing great stones and prickly thistles. If time has taught me anything, it is that I am at my most destructive when at my least ambiguous.

But there is a balance here, a true bountiful of aplenty from a meager selection of ingredients. Sleep is less of a slippery salamander these days, as pockets of serenity pepper this wasteland with more regularity than before. Why that is I couldn't really say.

Something nameless and formless beckons me, I admit, and my humble bag of tricks is nowhere deep enough for this ailment. A nagging little scrape or a mischievously tickling itch, something or the other. Strings of unnamed desire pulling at this poor puppet.

I walk in blessed solitude as my heart dances in secret rooms, yet with even more secrecy I await the confrontation to end all confrontations. Loudly exclaimed in select company, yet thoroughly, meticulously buried under layers upon layers of thick skin. But I wonder... am I slipping too far beyond flesh; can she ever be real? Perhaps I will breed her from the smoke upon my lips and the waterlines against a desolate shore. Pluck her eyes from the blanket of night and kiss life into her with the sweetest song evermore unwritten. Perhaps? An Eve of perplexion and animal blood for an Adam of impudence and riddles? Tomorrow never knows.

Embraced, revered and glorified be all beauty that falls before my gaze, but from arm's length. The move and motif to break this guard, I fear, will not stem from the momentum of the undersigned. I am jaded but comfortable in this cast of amber, unwilling to crack the surface for a mere soft touch. Let that be my shortcoming most forthright for the time being. I've entertained worse.

Rhyme of reason

You are the love of my life, filled with upheaval and strife. You are the life of my love, war's first bullet on the trail of the dove.

Cast a stone into waters unknown and send a ripple to this awash cripple, so that we will have loved and lived, been of things unseen, shaken and awake; taken down the beast and partaken in the feast. So that the skin I live in and the fangs I hide within are draped upon the trapper's wall before my rage devours all. A token for the broken and a burn to soothe the yearn, a key to make you free to make you see to make you bleed to make you breed to make you fly so high you'll never have to ask the sky for a reason why. To relinquish every lie and make you born again only to forever die.

You neglect the wonders of your mind and question why I disavow your kind?

The fluttering heartbeat flickers like neon upon a soaked street, rough to the touch and never enough and always too much, where up is down and the world is in freefall. In the rain I call: believe and receive and revere upon the absolute of here! Matched will be the stature of mine, for I am absolutely thine. A legion of one for you, a heart pure and true. You are love's worthy companion and I am the companion worthy of your love. Never deserving, yet never without worth. And what is worth if not the heart's girth.

You are that which you say you are not. You are not. Not is what you are tied to, a knot. The knot is what ties you down to the not, y'see. To tie the knot is to say you are not. Tied down, sporting a frown, dressed in a heavy gown, hung and strung upside down. Go around and never make a sound - your loss is our shared cross. Do not say you are not. Never dare say you are not. For then the knot you will be. See. The knot you say you are not is the knot of your not. See?

It strains and burns as the timepiece turns, tied and bound, evermore lost in mind and sound, and we are quaint with screams abound as we dance around and around and so on and so on... We sacrilege and retort to no end, leaving three words without counter or friend, yet luminous beings we remain and easily we would extend. What a waste. What beauty lies in you, in us, in the fire that makes us glow, we waste it so. The knot of the not.

Of fulfilling things we know yet unfulfilled we go; we could growl yet we scowl. We could command, we could be grand and in demand, yet we dare not even make a stand. Cowards in the waking sun, substituting blandness for fun. Bah.

We are all maggots to one and faggots to the other. Heretics to the third and ticks to the rest. No thought for the consequential best, for all that truly shines resides in the chest. That's where I waste away to find a safe haven for these thoughts to stay, play, sway, lead astray... Frail as falling autumn leaves yet sturdy as the gladiator's greaves. Gray mass encased in glass, these sullen eyes and my grand goodbyes. Time to laugh. Now the heavens are weeping and I won't be sleeping tonight, retorts mister Jones - evermore burning in my chest as his guitar illuminates my unquiet rest - even as a coffin full of bones.

Let's take you and I, for argument's sake, winking as we agree this exchange is far from fake. We are estranged strangers light on our feet, no less than wildebeests in heat; soft tissue protecting softer bones, flesh in rapture while our souls bleed out against rough stones, scavenging the world before our punctured eyes upon the broken altar of Athena as we parade like hungry lions before the arena. You, a shell of naught against your own draught. I, a scribe of my own demise. Time to laugh. In the face of lions - yet lions we are, from up close and from afar. The cold offers us release, which we accept as the olive branch to appease; our pound of flesh and skin a penance for inconsideration and reckless sin.

The rhyme ends. Forgetfulness overtakes us as we disregard the desire for equal payment. We cultivate and copulate, seeking forgiveness for our shared sacred calf of gold. Where indeed did our allegiances lie? I forget.

Even in victory we fail to claim the prize.

But we are not without sustenance; never without strength of spirit; strength of will. You are stronger than my dreams and I stronger than yours, yet we dare not draw the hand further, afar, beyond. But we probe and procure. Blind children enveloped by fog, starved by stagnation. That is what we succumb to; that is what we adhere to. One last valiant surrender. That is what we strive for and ultimately starve for. We stagnate while painting those views we behold; further, afar, beyond.

We are worse than our worse angels. Better than all, crafty scoundrels a step ahead of the jaws below.

We are the love of our lives.

The accidental Longinus

We are written in enigmatic morse code and placed upon the seizuring tongue of a foul-mouth clown locked in a loop of stuttering revelations. Spectacular jewels hidden in the downpour of violent rainstorms.

These are my thoughts among vibrant bodies and mouths aflame, all of us locked in a war of attrition that rids us of our better angels. But I digress.

Bursts of noise are followed by sudden overflows of silence. The fear of mistreatment and advantage-taking lurks behind even the sweetest gesture. We repent past transgressions and await the fall of the judge's gavel in the fist of a friendly arm. We reminisce upon past betrayals and await the opportunity for a thrust of vengeance through a friendly heart. Face value is considered fool's gold and handled accordingly. Hesitation is a shade under every word and motion. We are skinless, left to fend for ourselves under dimly lit skies, surrounded by spears. So we attack and react. Protrude and retract.

Words appear and advance via rhythmic blur before synapses have a chance to ignite reason's flame. Substance diminishes in equal measure to the rise in volume. Judgement takes over the airspace of the room, masquerading as insight. What began life as narrow perspective turns into a mosaic of abstract absolutes, shifting wildly. Truth disappears into the mix, leaving but a whisper of the world five minutes past, now translucent and twisted beyond recognition.

This stumbling spectacle is no longer anyone's to conduct, but for everyone to endure and withstand.

I am loud, but I don't know the language. Where there was once blood in these veins, only white sand remains. But I am not indifferent, only detached and partly switched off. Foolish and foolhardy, but far from malevolent. Regardless, my words are mistaken for another spear. Repentance hasn't enough fertile ground to blossom, so the weed that pierces through the ground suffices no one. Apparent intrusion is countered with another pertrusion. Oceans of noise rumble under a blanket of suffocating silence. This will not end well.

Time runs at a frenzied pace, then freezes, then runs and freezes again. Chaos ensues, widespread and growing in droplets of miscommunication. The atmosphere is helplessly adrift and writhing with anger, worry and anticipation. But I am not Longinus. Not by choice at least, lest my motivation truly does lie buried so deep I've hidden it from even myself. I doubt that very much.

So for the benefit of everyone I disappear with a loud click signaling the shutdown from within, considering withdrawal from all and everything. As always, I come to contemplate a journey. By foot, train, pogo stick or plane, doesn't matter. Direction is the key - away.

But you can't escape your own mind. Whether overpowered by noise or swallowed by silence, all that you leave behind is everything you take with you. No demon of your own design will leave your side on its own accord, never mind yours. They need to be cut, torn and pulled like a soft tooth dripping with gangreen. Otherwise they will be left to spread the disease and infect all they come in contact with.

Still I try. An aimless wanderer. Thoughts and emotions become an unintelligible tangled web of roadways and beltlines crossing through and through a rough, insurmountable landscape. There is no end let alone safe passage, only another crossroad to counter the one before it. Loss of direction has no time to grow into a concern - it had happened before the mere thought had had a chance to appear.

I am afar, yet the echoes linger. They leave a rotting imprint on lost moments that refuse to stop ringing in my ears. I contemplate surrender, but to what? In the face of what? The buffoon staring back at me from the dirty pool of rainwater is soiled and soaked, but only on the surface, not from within. For what it's worth, the settling dust will leave us all unique yet indistinguishable from one another. It will leave us covered in dust.

The girth of the fur may change, yet strange beasts we remain.

No final resting place for the mind

There is a stone in my hand. Twigs and dirt in my mouth. My knees are bruised, my legs strained. The prevalence of dry sensations. My skin is smeared with crystallized droplets of petrified sweat and blood. The pain makes me smile a little easier. Here I lie, motionless. The morning dew clouds my view, entagled in a strange dance of bright haze. In the midst a man much like me, much of me, a reflection yet more so. He rejects to note the thin veil of my staggering hubris. My petty woe is met with oversight, and rightly so. Words are extinct and thoughts shall follow. Presence within and beyond presence. Where there was once defiance in my eyes, a strange dead calm now resides, and takes precedence. Whether it is serenity, surrender or stagnation, I cannot tell.

There is a stone in my hand. A hard form for a seemingly hard man, soft in all the wrong places. In all the finest places. You could spend a lifetime looking for the openings, but here their appearance relies on happenstance. This anger stems from such bizarre qualities it's easily misunderstood as indifference, arrogance even, rarely leading curiosity to anywhere but further away. But there you have it, there you have this man-like figure. A jester of absolute truths in a deceptively unambiguous guise, nailed by his feet at a crossroads, issuing another ponderous and futile attempt at guiding you forward with words perceived as misleading. This unfathomably upfront figure before you can be no more than clever deception of course, thus your rapport must remain one of mutual caution. His form is cracked and misaligned in vulnerable places, giving apt opportunities for exploitation. Perhaps, then, it is equally plausable to assume he is apt at expoiting vulnerabilities found in others. Untrue, yet unsurprisingly an effortless leap of faith. Still, the jester he is and remains, easily invaded. By the good-hearted or the ill-willed - it makes no difference. The tissue is exposed and begs to be punctured.

There is a stone in my hand. Held high and ready to strike. Trying desperately to keep in line with two ferocious eyes darting across the room, evermore surrounded by foreboding shadows. What they hide, one never knows. Best to keep wary. Best to relinquish trust and extinguish love. Best to grip a final means of protection with white knuckles and bleeding palms until the fingers rot off and contentment can be found in failing to defend for one's self. Release through absolute forfeit. A subtle compromise between warring instincts for one so quick to flare and so easily burnt to ice. One who knows not when temperance is the key, regardless of whether the impulses it would tame were tender or malignant. One who dreads of being misconstrued, yet stands in its face daily.

There is a stone in my hand. Pressed hard against my chest, offering a cold casket for a raging heart in exile. Drowning out the beautiful noise to give way for the choking hands of silence to do their work. It was an obstacle buried in the dust, yet high enough to stumble upon. A petrified tongue for a mouth of quicksand. Its accompaniment a nagging voice sticking to the air, reminding me of overlooked foresight and how the leap before the look left its mark yet again. The humble pair of eyes wide and heart beating could never lead one through this terrain unscathed. A small rub nonetheless, one that will eventually disappear into the bowels of the earth should I find the strength to release it from my grip. I can allow myself to believe in that much at least.

There is a stone in my hand. A swell of rage that makes me question the purity of each passing moment. A sliver of a shiver, sending a chill through my chest in the face of any kind of release or absolution. Release from the clutches of a burning heart and a fickle mind; absolution from the liquid fire that fills me as the breaking dawn exposes all the gnawed bones you've hidden in the darkness. I crave for both and desire neither from hour to pulsating hour, stagnant and stable in the fading mirror as my face becomes smoke and my name an echo. Remembrance lies cracked upon a broken altar strangled by overgrowth, a moribund god-head of yesterday and yesteryear. L'homme que j'étais, je ne le suis plus.

There is a stone in my hand. My hand is stone.

A midsummer night's dream

Her eyes pierce through the dark. The milk of black hues is no match for the ferocity in the gaze of this fine beast. I find myself weaponless. Her lips offer an escape, her tender skin a world beyond this world. A haven of impenetrable qualities, draped in bleeding sweat. I steal a kiss. We are in a place free of weight and tomorrows. A scarless safe haven trapped in but minutes and hours of bliss unbound. Every touch electrifies my spirit. I steal a kiss.

She has me at her mercy. Vulnerable and aware. A wolf by any other name, shielding its tongue with an angry snarl and jagged teeth. She defies my worry with but a tender touch. Here, I know only the excess of ferocious gratitude; to overpower by absolute relention. The burning inside grows to uncontrollable, unknown heights, into a boundless fire to disintegrate the world around us. The walls melt as the shadows swallow the light. The whispering wind forgets its talkative nature. I am nowhere else. No one but the man in your arms. This is all and everything.

My fingers trickle like drops of burning water down your spine. I feel you shiver. We smile in secret from one another. Another secret to share. Do not move. Do not speak. This place is as deep as it is soft; as delicate as it is fragile. Succumb to the tickle and the tingle. Be forever devoid of words and allow this moment to pass without description.

Yet I am a poet. Never without words, never without elaboration. Never without a song in my head. Under constant threat of ruining many a beautiful and delicate thing by overexposure. But you know this as an afterthought, as a foreboding flash of things to come and no more, for in this place of disappearance and succulence there is but skin upon skin. Oceans of truth behind the smallest of gestures. Your eyes against mine, the combat of raging breaths escaping through opposing smiles. Our hearts in fierce tandem.

Rapture finds me without a fist to shake in its face. Words are lost in a maze of scents and sensations as spit becomes fuel and sighs build to a thunderous roar. You exhale with a whimper as your trembling body yields under my hand. In turn, I yield before all that is beautiful in this ugly world. In another place this moment will never end. It will play on and play on without end as the needle jumps back insistently, with defiant determination.

The air is heavy and wet, yet effortlessly we twirl it around our intertwined fingers. You are all too soft and tender to devour, so drop by drop, trickle by trickle, I will drink you. Drain you until you are mine. For tonight and forevermore, until the dawn looms and to the end of days. Before the bell chimes its final toll and after we've become nothing but sand and dirt. For whatever it is worth in the annals of time after time: no one can ever take this away.

Well, damn. Good morning.

Iridescence

There is a fresh breeze blowing through. It has a sting, a bite, which gives it even more allure. It is uplifting and perhaps a bit deceptive. Playful. I'd rather give it the chance to knock me down than deny it passage.

I have this ritual I undertake every time I get on an airplane. As it is taking off, I look out the window and let serenity wash over me. A sobering sensation. My mind filled with nothing but the best of moments and the most impactful of people. Of times when all was liquid fire and the masks melted off our faces. Of light, uninterrupted and uncontrollable light. Then I embrace the feeling of helplessness, recognizing my reach of control to be nonexistent should steel and earth meet at lethal velocity. I make the pact to leave this world with levity, with my soul in joyous uproar, should the journey beyond flesh come to pass. It is a rainbow of emotions one should come to enjoy on a daily basis, if not more often.

Scars be damned. I grow tired of ambiguity. Tired of flying low in my thoughts and disallowing the world to surprise me. Perhaps this oasis is but a mirage, but I will never know for sure unless my lips touch the water's edge. We will all pass through these moments and over piles of bodies on our way to a better tomorrow - the warmth of the day at hand will disappear unnoticed only if you let it. My skin is thick and in no need of constant shelter. Better to let it breathe. The risk is worth the gain.

This sea is a fickle beast. Harmonious yet quick to anger. Deep. Immensely deep. I'm glad to find myself charting its unknown reaches with an open mind, no matter how far I may drift without a compass or a base level sense of direction. My understanding and appreciation for my own crooked self is somewhat growing, and in turn, my understanding and appreciation towards others is on an equally ascending trajectory. My time is well spent, so I am well and spent. A lucky fool in spite of myself, becoming better at making distinctions; not all things under the sun are quips of great poetry. That doesn't make them any less heartfelt. They have value.

The impact of the iridescence within each day and night is twicefold if shared. The dark is perhaps a more inviting entity for all the comforts its sanctuary can offer, but the permeating black devours all colors in its wake. I don't really believe anyone gets me beyond face value, but perhaps they don't need to. It's not as if I make that easy. But there is joy. Honest eyes and good intentions, with at least a measure of common ground. It is enough.

Yet therein lies the rub. All that is good in my world often feels so fragile I have to fight the urge to step back from it to thwart the threat of shattering the surface with these clumsy digits or my sharp teeth. An emotional contact beyond skin and spit is a deterring notion for all the destructive qualities such a bond can wield. So I backtrack. I put beautiful things upon pedestals and disappear from their presence. They can't fall to pieces if I'm gone. Granted, that's not a very fruitful way of embracing the world around you, but it serves me well enough for the time being. Tenderness within distance, in your honor.

All of this could end in a heartbeat. Every construct could burn down with but a spark. I am every bit as fickle as these seas I'm charting, but mindful and cautious of my volatile nature. Of the power of this burning heart. The flame is savage and unpredictable, but a source of immense warmth and illumination when controlled by sweeter impulses. I try to remind myself of that daily. I try to be mindful of the quiet words I recite to myself as the plane leaves the runway.

Be glad, be thankful, be at ease.