Metempsychosis

"I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars,

and a little world all to myself."

- Thoreau

Red lights burn and sear the edges of impending dusk with hues of raw flesh. Pale light writhes its last turmoil on the windswept ground as shadows cast by naked trees lash its fragile skin. Concrete strips lay in unease and the wind is cold and unkind. Here I trod, walking beside myself, completely present and utterly gone.

My heart feels pierced by something so very distant and alien, yet elusively familiar. Like that proverbial glimpse in the corner of your eye that you think you recognize. The shapely silhouette of that some kind of someone tiptoeing upon the open range of your memories, the one you can almost, almost - almost make out. A puzzle box wrapped in enigmatic knotwork sown into the abdomen, begging to be resolved before something bursts out in vivacious technicolor.

It is a bitterly rousing mindset, driving thoughts to dart and skeet with furious frenzy like a black cloud thick with winged beasts. All the while my outward appearance is subdued to that of a shadowy sulk. I am completely centered in the moment while utterly swallowed by oblivion. This strange chrysalis needs shade and shelter from the wilds, lest it fall from my grasp and find itself strangled by the cilice of sunlight. Its destiny is to wither and perish, this I know, but there is bittersweet nobility in the futile effort of preservation. A musical measure of strength, if you will, fleeting as it may be. So here I stand, engulfed by the dark while ravaged by wildfire while petrified in ice. An exotic standstill.

In the eye of this silent tempest I yearn to take a step further and plant my feet on fresh soil, but therein lies the dare. Solid ground, a pit, the abyss? Only the moment after the leap knows. My world yearns for change, thirsts for it, but that desire is a dangerous place, deceptive in its lure and filled with hidden teeth. I carry too much scar tissue to be anything but soberly conscious of the peril, but curiosity is the poet's lifeblood. The spear of imagination pierces through a thousand moments and a thousand arrays of emotions, racing through the endless spectrum of the unknown like a wild stream of quicksilver, spitting droplets of illumination into the darkness of lost moments. Like scattershot pieces of a time traveler shattered into endless plains of existence, living anew in split-second, breath-long lifetimes.

But for all its iridescent bravado this is so damn draining. Sometimes this burning heart is just that - searing pain - and nothing more. It is times like these when I find myself hoping I could step outside my skin just to breathe a little easier. To quiet the howling storm inside for a moment and find clarity upon the stillness of the sea, or at least a moment's respite. To dwell in that tender emptiness just after waking up when I know not who or what I am within and without.

To have a heart that isn't so... overwhelming.

So many of my yesterdays carry the fragrance of withered fragile things that I sometimes wonder how much ash from those pyres is imbued to my very essence. Sometimes I wonder if I could even hope to lay out a map of my life without all those signal fires that continue to burn violently in the night. I don't know how else to take note of the path my feet have dragged behind me lest with the blood in my footprints.

And yet I wish I could recall a single triumph as vividly as any setback. I wish my heart wouldn't beat so fiercely for hopeless things. I wish I weren't so keen to greet resentment as an old friend.

I wish I knew how to... be.

Periphery

The blank page casts a terrifying shadow.

Foreboding and ominous, like a midnight ocean against the bleak loom of tomorrow under a moonless, starless sky. Who’s to say where the sea ends and the sky begins. One can only bury their eyes in the distance and hope for shadows or lightning.

We are all thrashing about the shoreline, excluded by whim or perchance from the rows destined to drown there tonight. In the lightless vastness where solid ground’s sanctuary and the gaping maw of quietus are but a measure’s mishap and a fumble of a tumble away. From moments to and fro, a whisper’s wingspan out of reach of oblivion’s lips. It is a comforting thought.

Strange things comfort me. I know.

All this flows through me because it is my gift and my curse, and because I need it to. It is life force beyond equal. This conduit draped in skin and fortified by bone is not infused by creativity by mere happenstance. In this I believe wholeheartedly. I do not breathe living fire because I enjoy the taste. I am an amalgamation of bizarre, reciprocal abilities and bestial creative desires because there is always a slant in my periphery edging me onto unknown trails as the mischievous wind pushes, pulls, invades and extrudes, keeping me off balance just well enough that I lose my bearings all too easily. Then I merely… continue.

Those fleeting glimpses dangling haphazardly upon the precipice of disappearance are gentle as butterfly wings and as commanding as a cast-iron anchor around my neck. I will be edged, nudged, thrust and torn asunder. Such is life in the eye of the effervescent storm. Boundless in marvels and horrors.

Windswept and worn, I drag myself onward upon the shore to catch a glimpse of starlight dancing upon the water’s still face. The carefully constructed masque of mundanity I wear dissipates like the last breath of morning’s mist and I am alone again. In a world so devoid and so rich. So worn and yet so untouched. Grandiose beyond compare while so bleak it crushes the heart.

Oh, to be enveloped by shadows! To learn what it is to feel the warmth within their embrace as they suck the air from my lungs. To know darkness as a mother and walk her mysterious lengths with determination and fearless abandon. To see lightning split the sea, take fierce chase after me and shoot through my spine like smoldering violent purity personified. I yearn to drink greedily from all that is vile and from all that is sacrosanct. Why else should I exist? How else could I exist?

I draw fierce breath from the very notion of grasping all these strange, terrifying sights I’ve been bestowed by this jilted, tilted viewframe and grinding it all into pearlescent whispers and echoes. To erect memories as monuments; as vivid, vivacious mausoleums for all these magical inhales and exhales. My heart races to dangerous heights at the mere thought of once again embarking upon an expedition like no other and to return altered and transformed. These are glorious days.

But they require the sanctuary of solitary moments.

We stand upon the cusp of so many a wonder only to halt at the brim and remain petrified upon the precipice. True connection to the outermost would inevitably cause contact with unexplored reaches of the innermost, so we hesitate. Falter into place and wilt into stagnant husks. Embroidered with names and decorated with faces, but still no more than standing stones. Adventure dies under the weight of frail ether like a somber remembrance expelled from stilted lips. Comfort zones are pretty prisons painted over with the gold hues of sanctity and safety, locked from within by trembling hands. This is the world of man in my periphery.

Very few things beckon me as succulently as the simple desire to leave it behind.

The Ether Dome

Nothing should ever own you or possess you. This sentiment grows stronger and stronger as the years pass by. I cannot rid myself of the longing any more than a bird can chew off its beak or a worm grow claws. The act of spreading roots and allowing them to burrow into the earth greets me from afar like a pale horseman wielding a bag for my head and a scythe for my wings.

The thought of complacency and stillness lunges at me with aggression and I feel like I'm being strangled by the vines of an old sickly tree. Pulled down into the dirt writhing, thrashing about in blinding horror. My nostrils burn from the stench of charred skin and thick amber. I long for unfamilliar streets and strange faces. To disappear into the white noise with my feet bound by nothing beyond the simple, singular desire to keep moving. To advance. To halt at the brim, stagger at the sight below and then resume the journey. The direction is a moot point.

But now, I am at a standstill. Trapped in ice. A strangulation of the senses. The world trudges from dawn to dusk like a rust-covered mechanical beast and I feel like I've lost a vital piece of my soul upon some long lost subway ride into the concrete grave that once resembled a rabbit hole. Some days I look into the mirror and realize - with profound, glaring dismay - that I don't know who I am anymore. The man in the mirror has a dour, grey glint to his gaze and his weakened voice rings tiresome and hollow. His back is arched and his head held low. The air around him hangs petrified, rife with the scent of defeat. How did this man come to replace the one I distinctly remember being?

There is an unkind but sobering truth to realizing how many times you've spread yourself thin at the expense of so many dreams and aspirations. I don't know if I'm rushing towards something or just functioning like a machine unable to turn itself off. No one sees how far I drive myself, but I'm used to being the one not seen coming. I'm not racing against the sunset for accolades. But I just don't know what motivates me at this point beyond the impetus to remain in motion. Something needs to snap into place.

For all my efforts you'd think I'd have more to show. That's the real punchline here. I've broken my back on numerous occasions trying to wrestle things off the ground that are limping on the windowpane to this day. I wouldn't take back one minute, but the growing pains of the present serve as a painful reminder of the eulogies of yore. I've conciously let myself lose count of how much faith and fury I've poured into endeavors that eventually withered into the wind, but no matter what anyone tells you, every setback takes something out of you. The notions from others as to how this or that didn't amass more traction has always served not only as a mirror image to my own sentiments but as a poignant accusation lodged smack-dab in the middle of my forehead to remind me that I was the one who failed. I was the stalwart captain saluting the reaper between bulk heads caving in to the roar of the ocean. I feel like it's all my fault. There is no one to blame, but it's my fault.

Faith and fury. I used to think those resources were in endless supply within.

I sit here and daydream of a better tomorrow filled with exploration and excess and creativity and fertility and triumph and meaning and belonging, all the while painfully aware that I will wake up to a dreary, monochrome existence that thrusts me into a mold so unbefitting my bones are crackling under the strain. I draw from the handful of joyful moments and the few friends I have left like a vampire to withstand the grind, ever watchful and hesitant in fear of crumbling before unprepared eyes. It's no wonder my phone never rings. And it's my own damn fault.

All I've ever needed is space to breathe and something to write or play on. I duck my head down and get to it. I can survive on very little if left to my own devices, the gears within are perpetual and self-sufficient to an alarming degree. But it's a very lonely process. Sometimes I worry if there is anything I wouldn't sacrifice in the face of the creative impulse that grants me license to breathe. It is a daunting thought, I know, but you have to know yourself to be able to elevate yourself above your own shadow. Whenever doubt arises I recall the most poignant lesson life has ever granted me; I am not part of the machine, merely a rogue component masquerading as another point in the row. But I am slowly losing myself in the crowd. I am losing the sound to guide me home.

Time is disappearing at an alarming rate.

I am constantly surrounded by noise. Faceless, nameless noise that shrills and lunges about, tugging at my perception with bared teeth, demanding acknowledgement. The want is all-encompassing. The howl of static swarms and swells in all directions like a miasma of flies, spraying the air with a nauseating cold ring while slashing echoes reverberate throughout every bend and crevice. Through it all I know the loudest is my own voice. I feel like I'm ushering baubles from one grey eminence to another with as much skill, expedience and dedication I can muster, yet without exception remaining an unnoted, shadowclad subordinate. I turn my back on another day feeling unappreciated and worn. Sometimes I feel like I've tried to give so much I forgot to check what I was leaving for myself.

Watching the seconds bleed into oblivion brings into view a crushing truth: I haven't been able to record a note or write anything of real significance in months, save for this whimpering testimonial of my inadequacy that stands before you. Something is severely wrong and the fact that I can't pinpoint the cause is staggering me down to my very core. Ambition leaks out of me like drops of spring water from a rusty drain, in tandem with my instinctual need to create that has driven me so fiercely through thick and thin for decades. Days pass by in a hectic blur and my hands are too heavy to seize even the smallest moment in my grasp. I am lost, aimless.

My meager accomplishments fall by the wayside like pebbles of sand. I used to think they elevated me higher, grain by grain, but I'm not so sure anymore. My legs are burning and my pace is slowing down like I'm treading quicksand. Perhaps I'm sinking into my own mess. The milky mounds of sand crackle under my bare feet as I take another sluggish step towards whatever the fuck I'm walking towards with persistence that's beginning to resemble blind obsession. My head aches with the endless cacophony of disparaging thoughts and some days all I can hope to accomplish is enveloping myself in some trivial, featherweight distraction to grant myself a measure of peace. But the noise remains deafening. The same grandiose accusation engulfs and entwines my waking hours with boiling breath and molten words: I thought I'd be somewhere at this point. I thought I had enough of something to achieve something.

When the grey dawn finally emerges after another dreamless night, I awake to find myself feeling like a maggot at the bottom of a glass jar. Every day I race towards the top, desperate to break free of this worldly incarceration and to fulfill whatever there is to fulfill outside this transparent enclosure. But my grasp is frail and the road too slippery and too steep. I arise, climb, tumble down, catch my breath and try again with renewed vigor. The act itself has long since lost its concious motivation beyond automation. It simply must be done. But one day! One day will signal this maggot's reckoning as it miraculously emerges from entrapment, armed at last with the gift of flight. One day!

But that day hasn't come. My role remains that of the larvae stuck to crawling on cold glass, haplessly reaching upwards. For what? Redemption, reassurance, recognition? I don't even remember anymore. It feels like the jar has slowly been filling up with ether, separating me from my senses and drowning the view in milky indifference. I may not have sprouted wings and the lid looming above may be as far as it ever was, but something is numbing the impulse to ascend and advance. It terrifies me beyond words. Never in my life have I felt so... sedated.

In the end, all I can hope for is a sight or sound to guide me through this austere landscape bereft of landmarks or even the vanishing point of no return to strive towards. It is lightless and lifeless, and no matter how hard I try to convince myself that I don't belong here, it's still the place I find myself in. In a glass jar, filling up with ether, drowning out the music alongside the noise.

This is no place to live.

Illumination

This is a strange place we are in, you and I. But I'm glad it's shared.

It is a room of hidden things and words left unsaid. Whispers lay softly afloat like smoke in humid rooms, lazily drifting above tension draped in lead gowns. You in one corner, I in another. I don't know your face, but here, I don't need to. We are skinless here but braver for it. The air between is awash with warmth. We catch only glimpses, yet smile wittingly and suggestively, as two people sharing a secret often do.

Who are you? I am dying to know.

There are many words to be said in this room, if only we could escape ourselves. Words to send shivers up and down the spine, words with the power to melt all nearby faces and surrounding vistas to a faded blur and then dissipate like content gasps from satisfied lovers' lips. Abstract signals so concrete, ripe for the plucking from but a touch, a smile, a secret shared. From moments of togetherness so far removed from the clutches of description that the mere attempt would rival trapping sunset in a bottle. A captured series of seconds woven into the tapestry of lonesome hours in the dark, when but an eyeful of those sacred sentiments brings you mysterious joy.

A cold flow washes through me and I awake from my daydream. Smoke lingers on my lips. My weary eyes follow the footprints in the soft earth, trailing back and forth like lines burrowing into an old man's face. I contemplate; how many is the tally for today? How many times have you tamed the desire to touch and steadied your lips before a smile's gift had a chance to escape? How many times did you let sunlight escape beyond the edge of the earth without so much as an trailing glance? My reflection in the glass concurs; times aplenty, always aplenty. This is the way of the world.

We swallow so many sweet words back down our throats, back into the recesses of the heart. They become entangled with veins so dark they resemble leafless branches against bright midwinter skies, veins clogged by all that we leave unsaid and undone. These words are so difficult to set free, so hard to let loose upon the air. Their wings need air beneath them, but the path they choose when airborne can never be determined. Chaos and communion are always a feather's sway away from collapsing into one another. An outcry, no matter how pious its aim, would surely devour levity and leave us defenseless in each other's company. The words stick to our teeth. We dare not dream. It makes me feel older than I am.

Gently, with a reserved hand, I draw the curtain aside and observe the secret place from afar. Time stands still and runs through aeons in an instant. All is perpetual and frozen.

This place is so vibrant. So fierce. Impenetrable yet completely weightless. Drenched in milky darkness yet pronounced to the finest colorful detail. But above all; it is secret. It is an impasse we all willingly confuse with reciprocity. We will over-exert our control over ourselves unto the grave, only to gasp a final grand sigh of regret on the deathbed for all that was left behind worse than was needed. We empathise with the world by finding common ground as cowards, because our feral virtues have been drawn from us like blood from a sacrificial lamb. We are bound and subjugated by our instinct to suppress the purest forms of dialogue we possess; we strive to be strangers. It is irony at its foremost finest.

Still this place finds us. It envelops our minds at a whim, for it exists in a space of longing beyond our control. We are all searchers, are we not? And so the light will thrash and struggle for release like a caged animal awaiting an unsung tomorrow where it would be set free. It is so bright it numbs you with fear. So prone to overflow you grip it with both fists so tight your nails puncture the skin. You greet it with anger. The thought of but a single beam escaping is terrifying, because it would tear a hole through the darkness and drag you into the midst of something unforeseeable and unfamiliar. Something uninhibited. A place devoid of shadows, exposed and with no place to hide. In the wake of this dread we are all brother and sister.

We often mistake our gifts for burdens. Of this I am guilty from every sunrise to sunset, and a lesser man for it with each passing day. Perhaps this makes me a bigger fool than most, perhaps I'm merely a more insightful buffoon than most. I dunno. But I fight to conceal this luminous force with a matched if not a stronger hand. Even when my heart swells with indescribable savagery, beating like a wild drum. Instinctually, I wish to give more than I have and receive only what candour grants me, but at the apex of fruition I halt. This is a world for the takers, where currency requires currency and nothing is free. The act of granting grants nothing by default, and it is only through bitter mercy that we close our palm when more than our share is there for the taking. This is what I've been taught by harsher hands than their possessors would care or dare admit.

So I hide so many beautiful things in rooms within rooms, stuck behind heavy doors and bound by thick chains. They meet, flow into one another, painting all in their wake with deep red and glistening gold. They explode like fireworks and spontaneous laughter, smashing hardened, sour sights into countless glimmering pieces. But they are locked away, left to wither. I curse myself for being so terrified of such wonderous things. As should we all, for we are all equally guilty of such transgressions. This you know.

I find strange solace in the thought that all this will fade away, in time. A dishonest sentiment rotted from every corner by the acidic nature of denial. But the weight of emotions is so often so impossible to overcome and endure, and love above all things feels most unbearable to me. It encompasses my very being yet I fight it like a taint, for it renders me defenseless. That is why every woman I have ever loved & lost remembers the ironclad taste of gridlocked resentment whenever my memory invades their thoughts. I would describe loving as others might describe bleeding; beauty, pain, dissonance, wonder and foreboding all in one lingering jolt of blinding light, stretching into the evermore like a frozen river without a creek or waterfall to break its neverending journey. I find strength and clarity in knowing that it all has an eventual end, but I also recognize the thought for what it is: rejection. It makes me cherish the agony as an act of welcome penance.

Yet I am a poet. As much in love and awe of these heartscapes I am illustrating as with any creature of skin, flesh and bone. As enthralled by the secrets of sensuality as any conoisseur of puzzles and enigmas. Too restless to leave passion without note, thus risking withering all beautiful and delicate things through exposition and exposure. Words paint my world alight, but they disturb the play of shadows with their pervasiveness. I am easily swayed by the rhythm and melody no one else can hear, often forgetting whether I'm the player or the pawn. With the lines already blurred, the threat of losing touch is ever present. These sights offer a succulence too tempting, and with their whimsical direction, I often misstep. But to know me is to know this. To love me is to welcome the horrors this wild heart harbors.

We do bad things. To ourselves, to one another. Inconsiderate things. The paths we've left behind are paved with good intentions, cracked open by insecurity, decorated with disregard and littered with casualties. We race feverously towards the snarling jaws of the world to prove that the spit of the grey sky hardens our skin into a stronger shell. Yet the lashing we endure extends from our own hands and the blood we spill is only incidentally someone else's. We bleed for resolve and strength, yet the drive to inflict pain stems solely from fear. What silent souls we've allowed ourselves to become.

But in the finest company - that which we should seek tirelessly as our numbered days tick away, I believe - we would strive to ascend into a new breed. That is, if we should be so lucky to find such company, insightful enough to recognize it and brave enough to embrace it. Thus would begin a hopeful blind stumble on the ladder of evolution to new, unimaginable heights. The marching advance of renounced thespians no longer able to act unwavered by the tremors our crossing paths leave in their wake. The visage of such a tomorrow is quite delicate in its simplicity; indifference completely and utterly destroyed.

Perhaps all that we are now is all that we will ever be. Reluctant passers-by on our way past this strange place into a safe haven devoid of threat, meaning and renaissance. Perhaps surrender will come to weigh upon our scales but lightly if at all, and in hindsight we shall reminisce mournfully yet detached upon the day we allowed this yearning for higher entanglement to still, succumb and perish.

Then again, perhaps not.

This is a strange place.

Kindling

My thoughts tear asunder, run amok. En garde! Parry! Riposte! I am spread thin and thinner, granted no true measure of release or rest, with my own uncaged mind leading the cavalcade of disharmony to and fro from the ever expanding fray.

I battle secular sentiments of self-loathing each new dawn my weary eyes greet the ceiling above, but it is not because I lament the passing of time; it is because I mourn for all that could have been accomplished and achieved during moments now lost to the ether, for every breath drawn without aim. Sleep is of course not the enemy, for it is the playground of dreams. But no dream will come to fruition lest its tail is caught and its body tamed during waking hours. Though forever free, it needs to be commandeered, straddled and made to serve as a steed for the journey to take form and be drawn to its conclusion.

Every so often life unfolds like an expedition through perilous badlands. The destination, if set, is beside the point. Some curse the cruel sun for stealing the rain as the desert abyss slowly swallows them. Others, however, cherish and celebrate the sensation of lingering thirst, for the rapture of release is multiplied exclusively by the weight of the struggle that precedes it. I belong to the latter category. I chart across this treacherous landscape on all fours with a roll of parchment for a tongue, but the journey is my own. My legs have given under me and my mind has melted into madness, but the journey is my own. Pain is beside the point, momentary musing upon the frailty of life. It is a given. A dab of ink on an endless canvas. This desert belongs to me as much as I belong to it.

Words, to me, are more bloodletting than typing. There is song and melody behind every syllable, untamed orchestration behind every seemingly steadfast structure. Stone walls built upon feather beds. A poetic bounce beyond form and function. Always so much more at play than mere communication or exchange. In many ways these exercises of lyrical expression are a very real extension of the endless sojourns I'm thrown into when the thundering flow of music under my skin takes hold and pulls me under. I fall in and drown, again and again, only to re-emerge with another savory drop on my parched tongue. I emerge with another short lease on life.

It is the rhythm of these roaring waves that I so desperately try to pour upon strings and keys and whatnot, mirroring and mimicing each water-soaked tingle via melodies and harmonies and thus forth, with my own unevenly balanced loss and gain of blood being its own reward by ensuring the flow remains unclogged. Drop by savory drop. It is not so much a ritual of rebirth as it is a long, arduous clarification of self.

The music within is a furious flame, a wall of violent poetry between the world and its witness. The bane of my existence yet its most bejeweled crown. The finest reason to keep breathing yet the most unkind of foremen. Hard as I try, the work will never be completed. So I will spend each day of this wretched, joyful life under the whip, struggling and striving. Enduring. Succeeding if such is the hand I'm dealt, but without any conceivable means of measuring the worth of the work. But I will never utter a single complaint for this gift of strife. Exhaustion breeds strength.

All emotion is wood for the roaring fire, freshly glimmering ore under the tip of the pickaxe. Every heartbeat sways in the wind like grains of wheat before approaching jaws; never fulfilled, never released from hunger. Every sight, sound and experience is kindling, so eager to ignite. The world burns in my eyes with violent, eloquent beauty. I have but these words to describe the sights I enjoy and endure and subsequently try to re-envision through artistic enterprise. Mere lettering is a shoddy substitute, I know, but it is the best I can muster.

This fire will never cease, never cease to devour. It will never die out from starvation, for there will always be mass for it to consume. I will make certain of that. All I have to do is feed it, watch my world burn and present you the ashes. Whether you hail the afterbirth as an accomplishment or crushing failure is, again, beside the point. In the end all that art needs to portray to warrant its existence is to give you a glimpse into the soul of another. The cycle is endless. The fire negligent yet willful beyond imagination. All it needs is oxygen and time. All we truly have is oxygen and time.

To create is to burn, willingly. It is to watch all your fortifications engulfed in flames as you tinker away at the next pyre of your own design, oiling another rope around your neck. Sometimes I have to drown out the noise and endure the quietus of silence to grant myself a measure of serenity. Even then I lay above embers. Sometimes all I can do is bide my time in pockets of numbness separating me from the cacophony. But it is a charade, a thin curtain. Awake and thrashing or succumb to slumber with baited breath, I am a beast in a cage. It is a strange existence.

If anything, it keeps me honest. My past reads like an old, forgotten battleground overrun by moss and weeds. Only eyes that were there to witness the carnage can spot the mortar craters and bones picked clean. I will not let myself forget, for I have a lot to answer for. The best I can do is take my past mistakes along for the ride like a roadmap of misfortune and simply try not to cause as much of a mess. Not much of a plan, I know, but I never said I had one. Then again, if this self-inflicted penance has wrought any reward it is that I've gotten to know my own wretched self well enough - warts and all - not to become destabilized by people trying approach and untangle me like a puzzle box with a given ruleset and mechanics. If their efforts succeed in depressing me, it is because my heart goes out to them, for their benefit. I gave up on trying to fit in many a sleepless night ago - and emerged a better man because of it.

To live as I live is to suffer just a little bit from each tick to tock. A drop of blood for each bellowing slam of the hands of time as I engage in a lifetime's endeavor of chasing after shadows. It is a life of thirst punctuated by seldom victorious moments of gratification. Drop by drop. And it is a struggle worth every second. Above all things I fear waking up to the sensation of being completely fulfilled; may such a day never rise, for it would be my last.

I am blessed to live in this haze between dreamscapes and physicality, blessed to see inspiration where others see mere alleyways and creekbeds. Blessed to know there is no difference between moonlight dancing upon spring waters and diamonds forged in imagination's foundry. I don't have time to be too busy for anything worthwhile. I don't have time to not have time.

Sleep is not the enemy. But it is a terrible, terrible waste.

Conundrum

I fit in well, yet I will never belong. I adhere to structure and discipline, yet my home is built upon chaos. I know how to love and what it is to be loved, yet all forms of this sensation remain trapped in an ever-shifting caleidoscope. I walk in the footsteps of others with delicate ease, yet I loathe the day I set foot upon the trail with each passing step. I know what it is to discover priceless monuments of sanctuary, yet by each new dawn my heart yearns to conquer another unattainable landmark, shifting its stance across the horizon like a mirage trapping a siren's call. These words hold true for us all.

We all know the abstraction of walking as unanswerable riddles on two feet in a world of answers, wrapped in gowns of pre-filled questionnaires and squeezing ourselves through strict, unforgiving molds while the ironclad ink of accountability dries upon our sensitive skin; and we are worse for it, day by day. And we suffer because of it and suffer great pains to attain it, day by day. Our obstructions number in the infinities, and they are all man-made monoliths we've ironically enough placed ourselves to guide our collective focus.

Herein lies the puzzle I face each morning, noon and night. I watch passers-by watch me, lend an ear to their commentary, letting their staunch bewilderment glaze over their eyes like dawn's first light tingling upon frozen waters, then react with straight lip and clenched jaw. To friend or stranger I owe no explanation, my mind declares, and my heart concurs. A novel reaction, I know - and dangerous. The imp of the perverse, as it were. There is so much room for exposition, so wide a pathway towards clarity and the forging of new bonds of communion. Enlightenment, even! But I am not a puppet, chauffeur or orderly. An occasional, happenstance leader by default. Not a guide.

Yet the question remains. Its answer - if there is such a thing - aloft and joyfully elusive. Am I nothing but a self-strung marionette upon a stage of my own making, pulling at my own ropes and winding up the broken music box again and again and again for all with a thought, a minute and a penny to spare? Perhaps so, but at the very least my strings remain untethered, the song flows through the air uninhibited and the stage is my own handywork. That accounts for something. It has to.

What a specimen I must make. The winged monkey, led to center stage by cuff & chain and met with sounds of awe, yet by nightfall nothing more than an ape in a cage. At least the cage is my own. So I fly around my enclosure, gnaw at the scraps I'm given and watch spectators enter and exit my abode none the wiser through each encounter. I watch them place rectangular shapes in front of me, then cylindrical, and so on. I do not fit, which is a given of course, but they continue the endeavor. But I don't fit. Of course I don't fit. Do they? Does anyone?

Admittedly, it is no more than pride fanning the flames of these tirades I entertain within. I can withstand few things worse than the incessant, obtuse perseverance with which some elect to drive the heart, soul and flow of another into a neat little box to service their own disassociation from the scolarship of depth, as to fit the construct of humanity gazing back at them into their constrained mental collection of neat little boxes. No one ever fits, so some things must be clipped off. What you leave severed upon the floor is a choice you're given freedom to carry out in whatever bloody act you choose. Quite the priviledge, don't you think?

We peer into the depths of one another with shears and scythes in hand, the call of the norm ringing in our ears as a deafening wall of white noise, ready to dislodge artistry from reason and sight from vision to service our own needs as one-eyed insects racing towards the top of the anthill we so scarcely and sparsely understand. Our eyes would burn through so many obstructions if we only allowed them the chance to peer into the ether without our own hands as shields in between.

Dress the aura of another in heavy chains and feel the weight press down on your own ability to fly like an iron anchor. The strangling hands of convention are universally indiscriminate in their grip unless you simply deny them your throat. Yet so many - so many - grant them access. We are so quick to dip our drive, desires and even our spirituality in the tar of structure to render our aspirations flightless and stilted. All things must adhere to dogma and rulesets, lest we all fall into a maelstrom of waterlines and discovery. It makes me sad. We are capable of so much more.

Every poor wretch under the sun owes a hefty purse of blood to every other poor sod in their sight, if for nothing more than for the solemn oath we've all taken upon the altar of compromise. None of us peer at one another without the bars of the cage obstructing our view. We search for common ground and end up constructing prisons in our minds. Prisons for neat little boxes. As gatekeepers and wardens we are amazingly steadfast; as escapees mere amateurs.

The struggle of the civilized world is to walk as a shadow in a land of shadows, but the quest itself is a disservice to every hope and dream we harbor. A blade pressed upon our ankles. Chains cackling in the dark, beckoning us to wear them for safety and parade them as jewellery.

Our gift of strife is to remain evermore challenged and hunted by the rays of light devouring all stowaways upon the vessel of life, burning away all recollection of the unremarkable with relentless, unmatched force. Leaving no sign or headstone to remind us of what once stood there. To leave this world without having burned my initials into the earth is the one true horror I carry inside; and one that I carry with not only dread but pride. It is healthy terror. A beast at my back driving me onwards with gnashing teeth and a constant pace.

A shadow will never forge its mark on the sand; it will merely pass over it on its path towards oblivion. I consider this parable every single day of my life.

A good question

There are evenings when I catch myself wondering how it is that another angel-faced antagonist has leapt from the page or screen, twirled the room around their finger and, having effortlessly taken center stage, seems to now mime words I keep hidden yet are none the less my own. More often than not these figurines of fabled flesh are artists of monstrosity. Prime examples of blunt force precision locked in a masquerade of human interaction. Tortured masters of mimicry, toes dangling off the precipice. Your Patrick Batemans, Tyler Durdens and Dexter Morgans. You get the jist.

They do not come from a world of monsters. Nor do I. They function, emote, empathise and retort through a blank, hollow chamber of echoes inside. They project, but not from a place within. They are like mirrors, blank slates. A swayed tabula rasa of puzzles and reflections, a boneless contortionist endlessly shedding his skin. Every encounter is like determining the trajectory of a ball based on where its thrown and where it will bounce back from. It may land a feet or two amiss, but the general area is close enough. It suffices.

It is a constant exercise of scripted clairvoyance and eloquently enacted foresight in a theater of predisposition. I understand both the triviality and the necessity of the charade as much the anger and the disdain stemming from its constant upkeep. I understand how demeaning it is. Survival and suffocation in plain sight under the blazing sun. The perspective of a caged beast through the glass, de-toothed by convention and chained by the illusion of normalcy. Kept at bay by the simple desire to keep breathing.

How truly brittle the shell of perceived safety we wrap around ourselves when the winter winds come a-callin'.

Perhaps my world is overwrought with introspection and I simply gravitate towards notions of self-indulgent wolves among sheep due to my detached nature. But I can't help but think that perhaps the butcher and the poet have more in common than most would dare to admit. At the center is a crooked parallax and the trek into the arms of others is through a treacherous, misaligned gateway. Perhaps I can simply appreciate the macabre, the majestic, the brutal and the bravissimo in equal, mutually inexclusive degree. Perhaps it is because I understand what it feels like to be weighed down by a world of masks, facades and glimpses - being splintered into tinier and tinier shards - that the notion of losing one's sense of self into but a glimmer of static feels plausible. The walls melt and the light bleeds out as the blank canvas where emotions should have left their trail disappears into the white noise. It is the cold room I've known since I was a child.

Secrecy and self-preservation are dangerously similar. Fraternal instincts sharing a bloodline. They spill onto one another - into one another - and form a dark pool bereft of flow and reflection. I do not feel like others feel, but I've learned to quell the noise, drown out the storm. Isolate the particles. Nothing is ever enough and everything is always too much, so I funnel the oceans roaring inside through the smallest straw and spit out the trickles through a smiling maw. Sometimes I feel like every word, every letter I write is a speck of blood dripping from my fingertips. I know fully well that not a single drop is truly appreciated, but that's pride talking. I consent to the ways of the world and reject them wholeheartedly. A life of banishment to a kingdom lost and stacked with riches. The melting room in the bleeding light.

This, then, is perhaps why such blood-thirsty jesters and I seem to speak with a common tongue, if only occasionally. I appreciate flamboyance and bravado when fused with purpose and lined with meaning. My world remains organized, sanitized, alphabetized, compartmentalized... and evermore but a finger's flick away from burning to ashes. The soft bed and the hard floor are a nightly choice. I revere the allegory of golden ideals draped with rotting cells, quilted with dead feathers and gloriously embellished with dabs of blood red. I celebrate the poetry of petrified flesh and the vibrancy of unquenched desire. To be complete is to be dead inside. To deny breath - to take where others would fall limp and passive - is not only a means to an end, but a test of the heart.

It is peculiar passion that drives one to slave over a creative endeavor only to watch the completed piece burn. The art of love and the insurmountable ends of destruction. I've done it so many times I've lost count.

I reminisce about a dream I've had many times over since early childhood. I come across a campfire along a dirt road in a forest. The devil - a devil - sits beside it, dressed as an old man, warming his bones. His eyes rise to greet me with bitterness and resentment. I sense danger, but not projected danger. Its body en masse, its aura. I ask the man questions of worth, greed, ambition - and loss. He responds, yet I do not understand the words. But I feel them, one and all. They reverberate through my very essence. We understand the mud is an angel's wing and the stone is a demon's grin. We hear the heartbeat of the earth and the song of the water and know - know without question - that not a single word, chord or trinket of wisdom could ever evoke this spirit into essence. We talk until the dream disappears into the flames.

A kind gesture, a faceless advance, a warm palm and a cold gaze. Some days it's all the same. Above all things I regard the brew of artistry mixed with routine the most nourishing. I constantly arrive at crossroads between calm precision and animalistic drive. My world is meticulously in pieces. Some would call it a clash of sentiments, but such words stem from a place devoid of vision. I am most complete when completely chaotic and compulsively systematic. It is how I operate. A carnivorous cross-breed of the melodical and the methodical. A series of absolutes and antonyms. A pieceless puzzle swept up by violent winds. The dead calm beneath storms of contradiction.

I enjoy thoughts like these. They keep me sane. To test the excesses of imagination until I become fearful of my own mind is to vanquish the self mirrored in others and find serenity in the throes of solitary solidarity. The pedestal beneath my feet disappeared long ago, but so did the ground. It is a calming notion to realize that under all this cool, collected control lies an unsightly labyrinth of insanity. Were it not for my creativity, this veneer would shield the machinations of a truly vile, unscrupulous person.

But the question is... would you know?

Black coffee

Winter's grace. Fierce, empowering and above all cruel. A fortification against all things bathed in heat and dipped in deliverance. A cold room for a cold man.

And so it goes. Faces form in the howling rain, have their laugh and disappear, evaporating into cold steam when met by but a warm human breath. Poetry drowns in a river of spit, helpless to find reprieve as frost nibbles at its tail. We are rats in a coffin, squealing helplessly as the air grows thin and our options thinner. The only way is down, through the ribcage of the corpse. So we dig. We devour.

We burrow through rotting things only to lose ourselves in the cold ground.

Here stands the jester, drenched in his own blood and weighed down by other people's spewage. Freshly foul from another swim in the sewer. Growing more and more defiant as the fingers turn numb and the face drains of color. These blue lips are colder than you know. If my efforts are constantly undermined and subject to the whims of petty individuals hunting for yet another pound of flesh, my facade of compassion will eventually shatter and I will assume a stance of combat. Ask and ye shall receive. You have no right to act wounded in the aftermath.

This airless space has no room for good intentions. People flash their fangs at me, because they assume they can get away with it. Spewing belittling, hurtful things. Attacking, because they assume that's what they're owed. By whom and for what amount, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. They seem to retreat back into their hole before I have a chance to clear the issue.

I've done my best to be more approachable and less of a frightening figure, as much for my own damn sake as for the benefit of others, only to have cowards spit in my face as my hand reaches outward. I've let them have their say, take the measure of blood they so covet and stitch up some unnamed tear in their ego at my expense. I've taken the sticks & stones without a snarl or growl, but to what end? I've played myself down and taken backward steps like the man I thought I should be, like the man I truly tried to be, only to watch as cancerous, contagious beings advance in tandem with my withdrawal, trying to steal back something they've lost from my pouch. Enough.

People take whatever they can get as long as you award them that luxury. Flash your teeth back at them and watch them scatter. I'm using two thirds of my strength not to punch through a wall just to watch myself do it.

I don't want to know, I don't want to say, I don't want to be involved. I simply can't play the benevolent confidant if I'm expected to comment approvingly upon self-important fumbling over other people's feelings. I recognize the marks it will leave better than I care to admit. My pleas fall to deaf ears as people chart their unsuccessful attempts at draining each another dry while debating with themselves which embrace can offer the most warmth until the next pair of tempting arms appears. Pondering whose blood is most nourishing. I have to bite my lip not to lash out in anger at their profoundly disgusting behavior. I'm burning gallons upon gallons of fuel just to lull myself into believing people are worth even a shred of respect.

This loveless, violent world deserves no more than a cold heart and a hard fist. I am nothing if not a believer in fair dues.

There is no reciprocity, only the push-pull of one giving and another taking. This I know now, and will react accordingly when approached by those drenched in fear and frailty looking to ascend a step higher by standing on my back. Trying to fit into this cardboard cut-out of a cordial, good-willed individual has grown far beyond tiresome, for the results it yields are nothing more than providing a patch of fresh ground for fools to trample into decay. My efforts, upfront and clear-eyed, are met with disdain and malice that equal all my meager attempts at taking others into consideration with warmer sentiments to a tee. You want the indignant, arrogant and withdrawn asshole you all seem to want me to be? Fine. You can have him. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Friendly fire - ain't.

The surrounding vista is a bleak sight. Pompous, passive aggressive tricksters all around. Mouths wide and words asunder against menial tribulations and the wind against their stride, hands drawn and fingers erect as they scour the room to find someone to pour a little misery on. Sharing is caring, isn't it? Their fists shake wildly at whatever nameless adversary or mildly draining aversion they're currently addressing, just so they can clear the air around them with a mouthful of stale bitterness. But it is all a show. The dog's bark is loud and fierce for his teeth are soft and his jaw weak. We are rats in a coffin.

So I will drink my coffee black, black like the winter sky on a moonless night. I will address your arrogance with indifference and your anger with silence. I will disappear into the smoke long before you have an opportunity to inflict another itty bitty wound for your perverse pleasure. I will repay threats with tooth and nail. I will close off my heart from thieves. I will spit venomously and vehemently when spat upon and watch you deflate in the face of true strength.

Believe it or not, I tried so very hard to believe people were worth more.

Samsara

This is a place of leaving. A place where skin departs from skin. Wounds tear open where there once was a touch. So I will leave before I arrive. It is all I know.

Everything feels pre-chewed and once digested. A miserable merry-go-round for a weary soul lost in his own nomadic footprints. Cyclic and in perpetual motion, filled to the brim with rotting things. Nothing brings fulfillment, not even excess. Especially excess. A vacuum to fill a bottomless pit brimming with emptiness. I don't know who I am anymore.

This is no kind of life. A form of existence bereft of inspiration and grandeur, breathless loitering on the airwaves devoid of electricity. I look into the crowd through glass and see absolutely nothing reflecting back. An insect in a jar, wingless, denied escape, devoid purpose. What does that make you, I wonder.

Even among friends I feel like I'm being watched. They don't know what to do with me. Discomfort is met by discomfort and we find ourselves wingless. Denied escape, devoid of purpose. Minutes turn to stone as words become discord and static. Noise cascades up my throat and through my teeth like a river of pointless palindromes. As hollow and witless as the flesh that uttered them, for they carry no substance to warrant their existence. It keeps getting harder to convince myself that I am welcome, that I belong. I am growing mute and completely detached. This is truly frightening.

To ignite and burst aflame! To be burnt by passion and be instantly rejuvenated! To have something worthy of this heartbeat, to pull it close and feel the drumming in tandem. Against the blood of another fine beast, running wild. But these are words I whisper in the darkness long after my feet have carried me away from warm smiles and soft touches. I am in love with images drawn in waterlines and drowned in fallacies, an idea, standing as a barricade at my door and a hand over my mouth.

I try to explain, to expel, but sentences evaporate into echoes and syllables crumble into murmur behind this glass enclosure. So I turn to silence. It isn't right, because I see true affection and worry in people's eyes. People who care. I can offer them nothing in return beyond more distance. It isn't fair. But I don't know how to end this quiet withering. My heart is bathed in acid and my eyes dart across every room with but one aim: find an exit. All I can do - all I should do - is walk away. I'm not the sort of man to burden others with his struggles. At least I try not to be.

The notion of faith makes me cringe, because I remember the weight of its hand on my shoulder just as vividly as its disappearance from view. Whoever lives in this skin now does appear to look, act and sound just like me when viewed from afar, but upon closer inspection turns out to be a faceless, voiceless marionette. Ashes of a bygone fire. So many pieces of me have fallen by the wayside, hacked off into tiny bits and hidden in pockets of time I can scarcely remember. A slow death or a painful rebirth? Who knows.

Underneath the dirt is just more dirt. I can't remember what being whole even felt like anymore. Perhaps I've never known.

Confession of concession

A scent of familliar yet exotic flavor grips my senses. A touch warmer than three suns, enervating and igniting beyond words. I see a silhouette approaching these two weary eyes stapled to the thick, headstrong skull of your storyteller. An approach fargone, for it had already happened. Time was left to stand still ages ago. Ages? Minutes? Hard to say. My cluttered viewpoint is cleared by pearly limelight, encircled by hues of fragrant azure. We are surrounded by warm shadows swimming in vibrant green. A seashore, perhaps? A haven, a sanctuary, a hiding place? I will never know.

We are in a dream and so we shall remain. She is a dream and so she shall remain. I awake in the arms of black stone and feel deprived and nourished in equal degree. Given aplenty and viciously stolen from. This was what I craved for and needed to replenish of, this is what I was drained of and left without, no more and no less. Acceptance is half the battle - winning and losing are unrecognized concepts on this battleground.

Rainbows burn through the skyline where words once took to rule, and with the passing of their reign, all is without as all is overabundant. I am fire and water - striving higher and running further. Red as my burning blood and blue as my dreamscapes. Balanced by complete chaos as the stone I was set in weathers all storms, every minute upheaval we fleshlings come to awaken. You can cast a stone, break the water's flow, but this river will always run, it has no home. Written upon succulent melodies and sung in heartfelt harmony supported by rapturous rhythm - a crude confession none the less.

This is how I see the world. Through colors. I see it in the music, the note upon note upon thought upon a foul growl of the soul upon the wind of sin of your kin, of hearts aflame hiding the shame that cleanses us all like neverending rain, defining our domecile like a painting's frame surrounding each grandiose spectre of passion and bliss plagued by the neverending and never forgotten kiss, screaming songs of lost beauty and a secret world never bested, in the fiercest fire tested, no matter whose yesterday calls for your tomorrow to rise in whatever way. My world through my eyes, wide and warm, frail and worn.

There is disharmony and contradiction in all that surrounds this house of shadows and savagery, but I am nothing if not a skilled sleeper in the fire. Catching a glimpse of beauty beyond comparison fills me with strange sentiments and release beyond reprieve. Disappear, says my soul, and I agree without hesitation. Run run run away from them, run run run away again. Heart sinks deeper, edge grows steeper. By twilight I will swing at the gallows of my own creation, clutching the executioner's cowl with a death grip equally severe and serene. This I accept.

Acceptance is key, for it grants me clarity without needless embellishment. Strikingly beautiful skin draped over foul flesh - and worse - is an entry in the beastiary I know all too well. Those decorating its pages will no doubt have a chance to bury their fangs in the marrow of 'morrow should I step over the treshold, so to bother with the trivialities of shadowplay would be to dive into the pit like a witless waste of air. The languish of disappointment stares back from the void beyond the everclear in every direction, so I will simply forge a way through the pitfalls as best I can as I chase strands of sunlight to whatever end this earth has to offer. To journey to the end of a path only to discover more affliction is a laughably fruitless endeavor. A lesson already learned. Ahead and around, my dear entrapments - know that you are noted in my journals, marked with an X of glorious sanguine and reminded to steer clear from each new dawn. I will do my best not to deter.

The winter is kind and gentle to those who embrace her touch rather than reject it with scorn. I am an agent of winter, serving but one goal, dedicated to but one end. One you need not trouble yourself with, for its machinations of manifestation are shrouded in secrecy I protect lavishly and forcefully. Ostara may have scolded this stone to red-hot splendor during her brief stint of bewildering dominance, but her throne has shattered and the spirits of Samhain now reign over the land. Frozen in the bittersweet honey of this everlong enclosure I will remain, endure and flourish.

I will pass, passively, in passing. Reveling in revelations cruel and mournfully truthful. Thoughtfully fruitful, even. I am no one, for I am no one's and no one is mine. A faceless world. It is both a poisoned dagger as the wamest embrace, the soft hand of the most tender murderer before feathers fall and the killing blow is struck. Questions remain unanswered, but the questionnaire remains hidden and its rich veins untapped. A quiver of arrows flies high, one by one and side by another's side, seeking fresh flesh to penetrate and end their skybound travels in, ascending against a backdrop of skies bathed in darkness. But they are one and all denied. They will find a home in the hard earth.

Simple and mazelike, tattooed and pierced, loud and proud. Here I stand. Simple to comprehend, mazelike upon closer inspection, awaiting a touch to burn through this thick skin, pierce the surrounding glass, smashing the slumber of loud and shattering the veneer of proud. Were it never to come, I would accept this cruelty with a bold stance and plow through to whatever lonesome destiny I am able to craft for myself. The possibility of the impossibility of contentment has been vigorously considered, I admit, but I have too much faith in the undiscovered to succumb to such bitterness wholeheartedly. Closure of any degree is always denied, but it is a fate one learns to carry with strength, clarity and backbone devoid of the bittermost sentiments. Believe it or not, my optimism is hard to quell and impossible to extinguish.

As noted time and time again, I seek comfort and release. Though often denied, I am a traveller who settles for meager surroundings and humble nourishment. But among friends I feel like a king, the highest of servants, an unassuming enricher of the better in us all and virtues hidden so deep. For what are we if not gophers and kings, each role we take filled in spectacularly mundane fashion as we stride upon the grasslands of perpetual sorrow and momentary bliss. Gleeful jesters and harbingers of woe one and all.

Love saturates and envelops even the world of mine, but I recognize warmth's deceptive nature with a keen vision and respond to its advances with cold forethought. I can't change who I am, nor would I want to. We may share a palmful of water at this oasis, exchange a story or two with a wink and a smile, but we will all leave to chart this desert alone as night falls. Taking or leaving anything substantial from our momentary exchanges feels superficial at best and were I to allow them a foothold, I would eventually find myself burdened with yet another quiver of questions. So should one who knows better partake in the masquerade for no more than a pauper's pay for a attempt at mastery? Of course not. There are enough lies and deceit in this sorry world. I will say what I mean and mean what I say and let the downfall concern those who find such concerns the least bit inviting to begin with.

While some poor wretch may call the undersigned a wordsmith of some note, know this: in the company of people whose light shines amidst, afar and through and through, I am at a loss. When words of praise and promotion should fly unhindered and become specks of illumination left to linger in the recesses of another's memory, I am at a loss. At a loss for words and appreciation, unable to push through to the surface. The toymaker lost in his own puzzle of senseless elaboration and eloquence. For that I can only apologize.

Yet who is there to speak to, to share with? No one. An absolute, an abhorrence, an absolution. Argumentation upon discertation for the weighty sum of butt-fucking nothing. I have acquainted myself with distance once again, tied myself down to detachment and burned away the desires that plague most others, and find immesurable treasure within the deceptive depths of solitude. In service of this I will succumb to being the buffoon, the scribe, the incidental. Some say they wish to know me better. To them I say: you do not know what you're asking. The measurements are sound and encased in crass reason - it is better to be alone. I am not weary like Miller, depraved like Bukowsky, enraged like Carr or bedazzled like Thoreau. I haven't been tested like Lawrence or strengthened by strife like Henley. I am excluded, estranged and erroded like the Ward that I am.

There are sentences and sentiments that will never escape these lips. I know that now and appreciate their clandestine nature such as it is, indifferent and irreverent of how much is left without utter or approach. Perhaps I am a lesser man for not being able to conquer the elusive nature of what I keep hidden and refuse passage to the light, but perhaps these cracked jewels were never meant for this world. I wasn't. This, if anything, I've come to know and accept beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Heed these words not as a manifesto of ego or self-indulgence; they paint a picture, yes, but one of vanquish rather than vanity. I have played the games of others to the absolute ends of tedium and come out a sore loser, so from hereon I will create my own pawns and boards. Unconquerable puzzles they may be, but only my fingernails will leave a mark upon these hallways stretching to immesurable lengths under a concrete sun. Entrapment can be a choice.

All absolute. All devoid. All fulfilled. All empty. What a life. What a lie.

Shadows and spotlights

Light is aflame as the night begins to bleed inspiration. Trickles form like river mouths, stretching every which way like spiderwebs, like illuminated highways leading to the hallways of always.

The evening sports a cold whip, but rage keeps me warm. Creative, fulfilling, molten rage. There is sustenance here, an undending banquet. A boundless aura of imagination to pluck from. But there is emptiness as well, carving its way to the surface from within. Gnawing a path.

Trickles stall and coagulate only to reanimate as the humidity rises. The storm chugs forward like a stampede in slow motion. A bellowing choir; fierce, angry and so serene. Stabs of singular breaths sluggishly swelling into an ocean of voices. Here I stand defiant, ferociously alive. A single breath, a swell of voices. I am alive.

The skyline cracks open only to soothe itself into milky serenity. Raindrops and haze form playful angel wings before a backdrop of sleepy blue and wounds of dirty white, slowly engulfed by brilliant purple. A burning red evening to welcome a colorful night overcome by the struggle of brilliance upon black.

In the wake of all this my eyes burn and my soul finds a second's sanctuary, yet my body rejects slumber and the warm fabric of a motionless moment, even while tested by perpetual unrest. I am devoid of all, yet nourished beyond parallel.

I strive. We strive. Let us strive.

Let us cultivate and concoct whisperfuls of meisterwerks as we sit in opaque rooms painted over with ebony. Let us grow smaller and towards disappearance in oversized cashmir chairs that flow over and around us like a velvet womb of quicksand. As laughter softens the murky walls of these wildly twisting chambers, painted over and left to bleed with the pulse of the city. A heartbeat that churns and thumps like the belly of a great beast.

It calls, beckons, mesmerizes and saturates. I reply with a joyful roar, a vivacious howl, a speck of thunder from a tempestuous soul. The echoes skeet through cacophonous rooms dripping with slithering, wet, heavy air; rooms where time is idly swallowed by treacherous shadows and burned to a crisp by brilliant spotlights. Where golden crowns and silver linings are drenched in tar. Everything enveloped by overpowering hues of crimson and blood red. We are dripping with treacherous shadows, exposed by brilliant spotlights. Full of crimson and blood red, we shine. We breathe in the heavy air.

I feel a pair of lips graze my ear. A calming yet petrifying revelation follows: my lips won't grant my teeth and tongue passage. Language is amiss as conversation falls victim to rigor mortis on the cold ground, flailing about lopsided and misaligned. A wingless bird. I sleep among drowsy ghosts and slowly writhing apparitions upon succulent black waves, under caleidoscope skies of lightning and fire, but in the presence of the living my stance becomes frozen and unwelcoming. Fervor drains as we sit enveloped by mutual misunderstanding. I am slowly growing mute - another sad truth to grow stale upon a pile of so many others.

Ghosts will not quell this flame. They lack the lips for the job.

And I am the buffoon indeed. Fearless to a fault, friendless to the end. Staggering drunkenly across heavy, greasy terrain, through obtuse encounters and mastication, I object and abhor - regurgitate and reiterate and reform and reformulate - but in a gentlemanly manner. With thought-through phrasing and the poet's gilded touch, you understand. I was raised to be one, after all. A gentleman. Undeserved and undeserving, perhaps, but a chauffeur, a charlatan and a charmer none the less. It would be a shame to lose sight of one's pedigree, arduous as its implemetation was, I'm sure, so I withstand. With gentlemanly perseverance, of course. With backbone, poise and meticulous wording. I persevere.

So let us be burned by sulphurous flashes that tear through our hiding places in darkness. Our legs are flaccid and shivering, far too weak to support our skeletal corpses. Let us skulk away in corners that seem to stretch on and on, strangled by grey walls seething teardrops of frost and putrid black smoke. We take shallow, desperate breaths as we gnaw at our skin and flesh bereft of moisture and vibrancy. Angry weaklings one and all. Let us become dust.

Yet... who would let us, if not ourselves?

Grayscale

The clouds run the gamut from end to end, but are no less imprisoned than you or I. This I know above all else as I watch the morning storm roar its waking breath. The slowly sinking lump in my throat is on a destructive downward sojourn and I seem rather helpless to halt its sluggish advance. It will find a comfortable resting place in the chest region, no doubt. There it will weigh down heavily, laying motionless upon a blanket of flesh and sentiment, a crushing monument.

We are all so much more than we allow ourselves to be. Shrouded in loudness, burdened by wooden veneers, angry and so goddamn terrified. We tone down the luminosity within with parlor tricks and blind reliance on obtuse interaction to shepherd us from one meaningless encounter to the next. Growth is a destabilizing, dangerous transgression against the flow of the norm. Ascendancy is an act requiring feet firmly planted as the endless gray sky spreads its jaw above, so wherever shelter can be found, it will already be full of cowering weaklings. The fear of the colors fading will turn us all into a rainbow of grays.

I say this with no blameful finger erect; I admit this with a shameful nod and a baneful prod to the chest of the man in the mirror. For I am no better; perhaps even worse upon closer inspection.

Whitman wrote of your very flesh as a great poem. I feel those words in every step that vibrates and reverberates through my spine and soul as the streetlight paves the concrete with golden hues, ushering me to another secret world. Yet I can't take you along, no matter how much I dream of it. I taste hidden pearls in your breath as lips stretch and teeth flash at the apex of florescence under bleeding light. Yet I can't cultivate or even convey a single echoing glimmer in return.

Wretched and supreme beyond comparison, to inhale through the heart and exhale through inspiration, torn gloriously asunder by all that ravages this twisted world. To be nestled by the womb most inviting and stumble with curious, gated gasps through rooms upon rooms of carousel passageways and shadowed marvels. But there is no one to share this with. No one to take along. So I close the curtains, pry open the roof and carve these little stories into the canvas of stars. The blood on my fingers may be dry, but potent none the less. How about yours?

A strange existence indeed. Horrid and beautiful in equal degree. Darkness is a fickle mistress, yet infinitely more engaging and intriguing than all those gray, cold eyes that meet my curious gaze in the night, reflecting little else than worry, frailty and dissatisfaction. Autumn is a cold shoulder to rest upon, yet its warmth is unmatched by any vivacious vessel of flesh and skin oozing indifference and perspirating distrust. A poet scavenging the junkyard is a fool on a fool's errand, especially after one can no longer bullshit the poor brain into thinking this thankless job is but a grimy alternative to pearl diving. People are so tough, so hard, so bitter and so brittle. Try as I might to avoid it, it's taking its toll while rubbing off on me. Can't say I'm enjoying the drop in climate.

To partake in the march of the ants offers the safety of the mass; the welcoming arms of acquittal and disappearance. I am growing tired of hunting for miracles in the eyes of others and finding nothing but the charred remains of unfulfilled dreams. The pyres burn so bright against the black milk of midnight that only blinding contrast is left to reign. The wind spirits the violent, unrelenting screams through bone and conciousness, but I can't help anyone find deliverance or retribution in the wake of this massacre. I can't even find reason within myself.

I am once again falling deeper into the stormy seas behind my eyes; flowing rapidly into rivers of formless inspiration so grandiose, so rich with fever and rage. But at what cost? I am falling back on palindromes and thinly-veiled mystique to safeguard others from the recesses of this hungry, ferocious fire I harbor. My tongue grows dry and stale with hollow words concocted to disorient and distract. An illusionist stands before an audience starving for magic yet offered but a rabbit from a hat, but what can you expect in this theater where magic is no longer welcome?

The noise of the world drowns in the distance as the door closes behind me. The action is sound and fluid: arm stretches, fist tightens, fingers grip, wrist turns. Click. The motive, however? Clandestine. Obscured and in endless flux, ensnared by the ceaseless whirlwind of metamorphosis. I can't subject others to this no matter how amicable my motivation, so the lid stays shut. The can will continue to roll downhill with equal if not exceeding velocity, regardless of the ever-growing pressure within.

At least there's momentum.

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.