Adventure

You have no idea what I've seen.

The icy winds,

the thundering waves.

You have no idea the places i've been.

To have been free,

on the wings of adventure.

Even in You

My loving of you

does not make me weak.

My loving you,

despite your withheld love for me

does not make me foolish.

My loving of you,

despite your lack of respect,

and your deep ignorance,

of just how profound and amazing

my love really is,

even this,

does not make me stupid.

In fact,

it makes me incredible.

That I could find something to love

still,

even in you.

Assumptions

I have to be practical.
I have to be clean.
I have to be efficient.
I have to be on time.
I have to be rational.
I have to be measurable.
I have to work hard.
I have to apply myself.
I have to achieve.
I have to succeed.
I have to excel.
I have to contain.
I have to explain.
I have to be smart.
I have to be thin
I have to be pretty
I have to be loving
I have to be kind
I have to be a good person
I have to go to yoga
I have to medicate
I have to have a family
I have to have a dog
I have to love my parents
I have to have a mentor
I have to travel
I have to do thing better than you
I have to compete
I have to get good marks
I have to provide for myself
I have to save trees
I have to recycle
I have to have an opinion on politics
I have to vote
I have to get in line
I have to stand in line
I have to pay my dues
I have to struggle
I have to be grateful
I have to love myself
I have to feel great
I have to have fun
I have to be fun
I have to get up
I have to be a morning person
I have to eat healthy
I have to be strong
I have to have friends
I have to have a partner
I have to be loved
I have to be social
I have to know culture
I have to be witty
I have to be cute
I have to smile
I have to wash my face
I have to brush my teeth
I have to read
I have to write
I have to play an instrument
I have to plant a garden
I have to clean my house
I have to rise to the top
I have to know geography
I have to learn new languages
I have to say something useful
I have to help you
I have to examine my life
I have to spell properly
I have to do math
I have to hear my heart song
I have to be loved by attractive people
I have to be loved by smart people
I have to hate the wrong things
I have to love the right things
I have to nap
I have to get 8 hours
I have to push through
I have to go to bed earlier
I have to get up on time
I have to do it anyway
I have to put my nose to the grindstone
I have to pay attention
I have to play the game

I have to
be authentic. 

I am a series of ongoing, incomplete assumptions.

Aurore

Pierced,
by warming dew,
the dripping leaves
fall,
like the tears of trees.

Echoes of a lonely night,
lost rays,
of dead sunshine,
nothing left but steam,
and cold water
to trickle down gutters,
along with,
the debris and hubris,
drunks,
and disease. 

A diesel engine roars,
and nighttime flickers,
casting an auburn stare,
of panoramic golds,
an inspiring obligation,
for a few old bones,
who quiver and ache,
from the bitter taste,
of daylight.

Oh the the moment,
between night and day,
to be up in the rising swell,
witness to the turbulent parade
mixing our before and afters,
on a timeless interstate. 

Of all the things there are to see,
this is the one,
that will always be precious to me.

Until She Does

The night mocked me with its' shadows,

soul-less herds on parade

down the boulevard.

Keeping time with the doors that smile 

that crooked smile,

in the false luminescence

of a wayward street light,

sickly orange hued madness

that pierced my eyes,

and turns my guts into;

a sleepless madhouse.

It's easy to believe

we're all broken in the night

and to find yourself wandering,

amongst the miscreants.

I am haunted by,

what I cannot achieve

but more so tortured;

as those empty promises

ring the bells

of half past three

and go echoing down,

these empty concrete corridors.

Her eyes spoke to me the words,

which hid from her mouth,

as she cast about for meaning,

in the din and hollow,

staring into

one good eye,

begging to be seen.

Here's to an internal life,

straight from the heart,

of the universe's ocean,

Where nothing will rest,

until she does. 

The Feel of Summer

the sun's golden rays
upon my face,
irrational and innocent
like that summer night's,
first kiss.

that humid air,
the slippery breeze,
which sits beneath the trees
and inside me.

tumultuous clouds,
asunder in an afternoon storm,
weak with excited exhaustion,
from one more swing
in noon day shadows. 

and those nights!
illuminated by a twinkling tapestry
that spreads on towards infinity.

where vulnerable skin,
meets cool inky darkness
and promises are made
that layer themselves so thickly
in the recesses of your mind,
that you'll loose yourself
and the rest of your life,
trying to peel them off
with the rational application,
of obligation.

it's no good. 

even love's most most passionate embrace,
cannot replace,
the feel
of summer.

The Man Who Stands

There is a man

who stands all day

lurking in the city shadows,

asking for nothing from anyone

except

to grow older alone,

on the city street.

He does not curse or whisper 

he does not follow or lead,

he simply is

everywhere. 

Worn-out,

he's all shut off

except for the feet

that keep him upright,

through worn-out shoes.

It's all the same

one corner to the next 

suffering from

abject apathy,

for all the things a man should want

 to live 

never crossed his mind.

A Funny Lament

I'm glad

I know the taste of a cigarette in the rain

fluttering tobacco ash

that hot, burning ember

racing towards

tight lips

the way it

mixes the cold
and the loneliness
in empty space

the way it 
comforts your soul

until its gone

the last breath out

as you open

the door

again

I'm glad I know it

but maybe more so

that I don't know it

anymore

A Change of Place

The dream can live
if you let it,
in this familiar shadowy light,
and the way it plays amongst the leaves.


Besides,
all memory's the same.
one picture,
of a million moments,
caught together,
in the decaying net of time.


And as one,
after another,
slips away,
more things,
than could ever have been imagined
are seen,
felt,
and lost;
while waiting for the time to come,
when it doesn't hurt anymore,
to see all the beauty
that we cannot have.


If you wish to live,
you must feel.


Everything.


But if you wish to die,
you must suffer,
and not realize,

they are not the same.

A Change

I get it, I get it! The whisper of pleasure in forevermore. 

The dullness is alive,
With the sounds of silence. 

Post-Extentiential

I could yearn for a thousand ages,
beg for a millennia and then,
still have nothing to show you.


No die to cast,
no road to follow,
no proof,
that this even exists.


I could haunt the orchards of the past,
scale the cliffs of prophecy,
and still I will fail you.


I can give you no proof,
no validation,
nothing but experience,
succumbing to repetition.

For the Last Time

How many times have I written you goodbye. How many times have I said so long, farewell, all the best, thank-you. As many as there were days that we were together I have missed you; and then some. It seems that there is more life in you, after you, than was ever going to be between us. It's a haunting of sorts, a longing like a sliver under my tongue. With every breath, with every bite it's there, just a bit of pain, a shred of sadness. No matter how great the moment, no matter how far the body comes to healing; tu existe non plus.


It is the strangest kind of loving, the loving I have done for you. So long after there was any reason to go on loving I continue to live out the memories of what it meant to be loved by you. What it meant to love. Long gone now are the smells, the looks, the tears, the memories. It is not they that call your name in the night, but resonate the din of true love. Deep within the core of me there is a truth which calls for an equal. It was truth I believed I was looking for, a different kind of truth, one that resonated unfound harmony with all that I am which I still cannot explain. And now? The truth is that despite all the could have been, or would have been, this is exactly as it should be. It is not missing you that haunts me, it is not the desire to be with you, or to have you, but the knowledge of what is, no longer. I am not that girl, you are not that man, except but in someone elses eyes. I can still hear the mercy of your love, it rings out disembodied like those stars we sought in the inky darkness. Just glimpses of light I see when I remember too look. A love, lost with no anchor, set adrift on hopes into the future.


So I suppose this is why I continue from time to time to lick the rawness and taste the sliver beneath my tongue. The realness of it, a memorial carved upon myself. To experience even just a glimpse of the pain again it to remember how it was once real. Inherent to the daringness in which we embraced each other we were cursed and rewarded. I wouldn't have it any other way. If knowledge of you creates longing, than longing is the gift I carry to know that such a love exists.

Haven't Done This in a While

My story, my life story that is, was so absent of a hero, so unceremonious in its creation that it grew-up like a tree twisting around a neglected fence, begging for inspiration. Such was a life lived in isolation; sub-step on a pathetic rung of existence, in the small mining town of my adolescence. It was the pits. The epitome of nothing and everything. A place where you are never truly wanting, never truly having and always wondering at what's above and down below. Such is the curse of the middle-class. A place more abject in its oblivion then the deepest trenches of poverty. As imbued with guilt as it is hero-less and wasteful. A selfhood of preachy armchair agitators and the grotesque, maligned by a lack of integrity inherent to having nothing integral at all. Suffering wasn't real, so neither was anything else. Except of course for those unregulable moments one passed locked in the upper branches of the trees. So alive with the naive passions of childhood that one-hundred thousand suns could burst from the sky and they only question on those tiny curious lips would be; why?

And on it went, the days and nights and years, and in each the wish more forceful than the last for it to pass quickly and release me on to the echelons of adulthood. That ephemeral place of absolute autonomy, freedom and prosperity. Where all painful unknowable truths would be known. Where all injustices righted, all transgressions fought. Where the tiny becomes large–in stature, mind, and body. How smooth they looked, those adult folk, with their self-assured poise, their knowledge like missiles in the silo, ready to fend off the attacks of selfhood at a moments notice. So filled with agency were their cars and pocketbooks, as to sear into me a deep shame for my ambivalence and lack of understanding. Shame for my apathy to the adult sense of priority and togetherness, a strange obsessive custom of always doing the 'right' thing at the 'right' time. Get up, brush, wash, fold, eat, repeat. Feverish adherence, like Aztec sun-worshippers, to the delusion that these rituals, these 'life customs' as it were, would be met with a  conclusion. A congratulatory telephone call perhaps at the end of a hard day, the grace of the gods echoing through the airwaves. Everything that could be done, should be done, at least for the sake of doing it. 

Before self-realization I spent my days counting pennies and delivering them to convenience store employees in exchange for the good stuff they kept behind the counter. In each distinctive piece of gelatinous, hyper-neon, artificial ooze was the antithesis of white middle class insouciance; taste. A Fuzzy Peach was not merely a Fuzzy Peach but a melange of sweet and sour, crunchy and soft, orange, red and yellow dyes that seeped and caked the unbrushed teeth of 10 year-olds from one end of my block to the other. Mr. Freeze and Hubba Bubba, were the professors of our summers and the keeper of our dreams, a dream that could be lived by the pound, through experience from a bag.