When Nature Sleeps

If everything could bend like a river well
There'd be a million more like you who register so well
-On target; is a connection real or indefinable?
And some yearning heart would ask you to tell
Whether or not the world is temporary or sustainable

They'd have eyes like rock beads on a riverbed, I think, sparkling with one white dot underneath the sun. I'd watch the sky rush over as the water sled down into the forest, behind the shade of a thousand leaves. Everything would melt and bend, wouldn't it?

Or the sun above with fructose stars?
Cheery red or sun dried like golden wheat?

I thought that, if I opened my eyes, it would all disappear. The smell of coffee brewing would wake me surely, wouldn't it? Or the sounds of popping cherries, smoke filling the air, the wind smashing leaves and Spring flowers against my window; all of it was coming at me as if to wake me from this sleep. Before I woke up I wondered if it would change anything, to see this world instead of the other one, instead of any other world. I turned over.

In great light: the sun beamed past my eyelids and painted my unconscious orange. I told myself that I had no choice but that was a lie: we all do, and that's the truth. Choice to choose which would, choice to rise out of bed. Fatalists would argue different, but they've chosen what to believe. Everyone does, and that choice effects how they live. Maybe they chose to believe they have no choice, that the way the stars aligned made them do what they were going to do, or everything is just being played out and they're stuck in this inescapable world of cause and effect.

Would we ever be able to know? Science has told us several stories, each one against the last as we revise ourselves into higher forms of logic. What I wanted to know, really wanted to know, is whether or not it's all a moot point. To try to overcome our limitation in perspective, that is.

I chose to wake up, and all the silly little things came ringing back into my face; red against white fabric. To get up and continue despite the absurdity of our situation. And all that seems left to hang onto in the world was left in the budding leaves outside of my window; the nature that grew despite itself.

One day, maybe, I'll get to awake to the reflection of the world in some one else's eyes.

60 Seconds in the Morning.

In a way I saw only the beginning. Stars that poured from mouths in the dead of night, or how their faces all slightly twitched. Every thought that was in my mind seemed to speak too truly to me, too honest. In my mind streets and trees rushed passed and the wind whipped me in the face; the sky was our ocean and we rode the waves of the land on and on and on. For once I didn't know where I was, only the it was earth and that I was a pure human. For once I felt no doubt of what was real and surreal, no doubt about my projection to others, nor any fear of failure, misguidance, or simply being wrong. Everything was merry and yellow like the sun, and our faces beamed on the highway. School again until it would never end. I never saw myself or my eyes.

For once I felt as though I was just inside of my own body.

Being the beginning, the sun came over and spilled it's light into our apartment living room. Beautiful people sang through our speakers and people cooked food or tried to write and draw and paint. Study for tests, go to school, quit a job, and cleaned up messes. As human beings, people are entitled to small meaningless gestures that, for whatever reason, still effect them despite their meaninglessness. Maybe it's because everyone is an existentialist even if they don't know it, displacing their own ego and soul into things to give them meaning in their own sense, whether or not they actually created it themselves. It all comes back into them raising their awareness in some imagined way, shifting their universe a few inches to the left or the right. Screams subside and the woods whistle as the wind blows through them and I

I feel it come through me and wash me clean, and like everyone, I am born again.

Untitled Song

Seems to me i desperately
Need a face to set me free
Words like water from her mouth
Telling me i should head south

Though the ocean overflows
I see no one who speaks or knows
Of any fields or brooks or groves
Only boxes, sinks and stoves

Seems to me i'd rather need
Heights of blue and a hit of speed
And yet nothing will ever be
Like something we cannot see

In applying all my thoughts
I saw the trees lose all their leaves
(There's a just a few that became lost)
Fell to the floor and swarmed like bees

Seems to me i want to be
Only everything endlessly
If i held the sun in my palm
Id' be with you
And i'd be calm

If I Die

"I think... Lowen was the one that said it, finding your own bliss. Mine isn't so much bliss as it is serenity, comfort. It's inside of me like a sleeping bag for my soul, and it's there so that I can stay comfortable if I want to, despite heat or cold or physical discomfort. It's alright, a phase that will pass, and in the end it'll be alright. Even if I die, even if I never do fall in love or die alone, it'll be alright. And if that happens, the last thing I want to think about is the sky and falling into it, becoming part of the sky and spreading out until I'm only air. I'll think about all the people that are happy, and all the people that are sad; I'll think about everyone I think is smart and everyone I think is stupid, what their lives will be like. None of them will end unhappily, and they'll all see something different than me in the end. But it'll still be beauty, whether that be Turner, Picaso, Constable, or El Greco. Dirt and gold will be equal, and it won't matter if I'm face down in dirt or in a sea of grass. Everything will effect me, and I'll decide how it does.

"One day it'll all be there, and despite seeming like nothing, I will have been."

If I Left

There's no telling in the stones, only people and their words. No definition without creation, and no creation without destruction. Is it our reality that is so stuck in equality? The eventual balance of everything? If everything were reduced to equations, and all of them connected, all of the destruction, creation, love, hate, care, apathy: if it were all added up, would we be left with nothing but this intoxicating gray stain of the world? A stagnation that would not only subdue us, but sublime our souls until we are nothing more than one penetrating note that simply exists forever in it's own, it's only splendor?

If I left today, would the face of God be nothing more than a still pond?

Several seconds later it's as if it all left, as if it were all never there to begin with. Are we not only the end and the beginning, or do they exist to any concrete extent? To believe in nothing or everything, the same result comes to mind: the fact that only the individual can fulfill the individual. If nothing would matter then that would be it and if it were all up for grabs then everything would be alright because everything would be existence, and as long as it continued existing everything would eventually sort itself out. Maybe the seconds were sunsets, one after another, sun rises, moons changing as the leaves fell and grew back again, as everything kept continuing despite foggy eyes or tired arms.

And so what? We're all here, some sitting on the train tracks and some diving off the waterfalls, everyone with a face staring out at something, expecting something from what comes of themselves.

Anyway, as it happened the sun did rise again. It came through my blinds when I didn't want it, painting my carpet a little whiter than it normally is, and slowly it crept up into my bed, stretching it's shining arms around me until I n my eyes and acknowledged it. But it's not a one way operation, in order to be we both have to see each other, and without each other we're both nothing or might as well be nothing. The morning music soon filled the air, and smoke streamed up into the lamp where it rested in a cloud of amber light. Everything had come back just as it had left. The trees below still rang with a droned out "ohmmm..." and the wind still came in smelling like rain. The sky would go like this: dreamy lavender to cheery peach until it was nothing but light sky blue, and morphing into the sea until it was once again light sky blue, then oranges came until it was the coals of an old fire, deep red to blood and black again. I looked up at the ceiling wishing I were somewhere out west in the rolling hills, in the desert, someplace where the sun would shine and reflect off of something orange or yellow, crisp brown and amber; I had it in my mind that my body had to be surrounded by a calm dryness. Outside the trees and ground were all green and everything was pristine, but there was no serenity within something so ideal.

Another day to smile and cry and all.

Old Scenic Route

Do you remember the balcony to the chapel opera house? We'd run and jump and scream and play on it as the church commenced, as toddlers graduated waving arms above their heads. They'd dim all the lights and our faces would be shrouded by shadows, but underneath our eyes still burned, still do burn with a hunger for life and mystery. And the plays would come and go, our parts switched and everyone clapping- everything was only beginning and yet it felt as though we were all set in place for the rest of the future.

And now all that belongs is what there is: several coaches colored a velvety-red, a rug from the Middle East over the wood floor, and a round table with a candelabra on top of it. To think of it as having permanence wouldn't be right, though the phase itself felt as if it were years. Every new life experience was thought to have belonged inside of that place, and we didn't consider the possibilities otherwise. At evening we would have the light of both the bloody sun and the warm candles, and everything else would fade until the shadows were demons at our feet. Every night the nightmares chase us, but we can't be afraid to sleep.

Tonight is only tonight, and tomorrow itself is beyond our grasps.

Seaweed

If you want to see me, you can try coming down to my resting stone, but you won't find me there.

There's only the sky to stare at now or these days, whichever outlives the other. It's pasty all over and colors sometimes swim by, diluted as they are we still call them rainbows, though they're more like clouds. No one has a body or a voice but we know each other and what dwells within. I'm not sure what happened at first but at the end is another horizon, simply fading back and back until we're back to where we started. Isn't that the cycle Buddhists see, to a degree? Some time or another a field came by; I sat in it for hours staring at the sun. It also sat with me, and we spoke of all things, which in the end makes up nothing and itself at once. We spoke about the inexistence of duality, but only of harmony, whether that be chaotic or organized. He sank underneath some hills, which in time turned to mountains, and the moon rose over me in a sea of stars.

Darkness fell upon everything, and it was finally clear.

Trips Through Images

I saw the leaves of my better rot and fall to the ground in autumn. They were all laying on the ground; everything around them shook when you looked at them from far away. I don't know why. The entire field itself was silent it seemed, and all the wind had stopped blowing. It made me feel as if I were dead, as if everything were dead and there was nothing that I could do to revive it, to make them all stand up again and dance, sing, laugh like they used to. No, everything had fallen on the ground and it wasn't going to get back up again. Maybe things like that are meant to be repressed or forgotten, and maybe all of our ancestors are better forgotten for the sake of moving on and growing old yourself, being forgotten yourself.

I feel as though I keep remaining stuck in a world that keeps moving on. I can only see outlines of people, as if silhouettes in foggy rain.

It's February and the water is cold, the air is cold, and peoples faces seem to blur until you can't tell if they're feeling anything. It's been months, or years. Every day another one comes and goes, thoughts passing casually as if people through a mostly unused alleyway. Everything seems cold and empty, as if the inner warmth of the earth were slowly waning away into nothingness. Where does consciousness take us anyway?

If life has a path to it, then I'm in the Wilderness.

Fingered Ears

Oh, if the quivering of life like a candle
wind blew and came screaming by
-out

but the woods still remain
dark and blue in the pre-morning twilight
and in there, faces brooding sensations
"eyes closed and we still know You,"
but never catching the end

a ray from the dawning sun crashes down
the leaves part ways
an animal somewhere inside scratches absently
anxiety like a product of a contemporary mind
each glade behind the leaves already known
all space before you unfolded
every God, saint, and messiah lined up in rows
we look and search but find no shadow

a ray of light pierces through, wires that tell us all
heat into the air, smoke stacks and helium manifested
chemicals like rainbow cauldrons
the water fermented with chlorine

lips to a river, underneath
-danger...-

as we are taught with the infinite of knowledge
and the systems of communication
they tie our wrists with wire


outside the sun slowly roams
and behind the leaves a glade, it's gut, amongst the grass


a flower I knew nothing of

In Years, to Hate and Love

Empty, there were silhouettes against the wall
outside the air swept through me
A vase, and static on the television
momentarily we were lost
a seated man with eyes closed and wrinkles
a car drones by, tires on black and wet
everything is sharp

My face is on a carpet
the walls race up above my sight
there is no spoken knowledge
conditional
can i decipher.

Eyes closed- there is moss here, everywhere
and the dirt crawls up my ankles
branches enveloped my form, and we are thorns
There is darkness, and with it stillness
no one moves
as if it were all fucking opiated

A man crucified on the wall
his head is above my eyesight, and around his ankles

Chained.

Embracing freedom
I step outside into the forest
and dissolve into my womb
naked, the thorns fall away
naked, everything is embraced

To Enlist

pennies in a porcelian Money Cat
(a klink, car horn in the distance)
steamy sun
bleached the sky white
stained the clouds cream

(i agree, the sun, a mindless god
and where were we when the world was created?
bathed in glorious, light
surrounded by Nature, part of it
our brotherhood, our common link
have we abandoned humanity, abandoned ourselves so?
but with hope, animalism creeps back through
but more-no, inside of us something,
at least a one truth)

it's Sunday, and so the fort is filled with smoke
linens like lungs
we're children waging and imagined war
a cough and a curse breaks through the thicket
in a box, isolated, away from the river
it's slow moving waters-clear and reflecting infinity
(deny!) the ground still wet with dew

i look out my window
a gull floats by, croaking along the way
more enlightened than most

today is honey,
where are you?

In me, a Demon

Behind me, a mirror,
and on my back are the demons
fingers like yarn and strings against the back of my neck
(an itch and hardly a thought of it)
A man walks in and the awkwardness between us
Eyes met, our minds staring into each other
We are naked, i see Him, he sees Me
a skull, or hands around a throat

"You're going to die soon."
it tugs at me, though i think nothing of it
and still we become like angels and demons
men with families and corpses


On a road at night, fur in the headlight
two bumps
the accidental desecration of life
(the sky is still blank, and no one cares
stars like vague smudges on the velvet of the sky)


Einstein believed light to be the new God
and with it, we blot out the sky
while Neizche, in his grave, offers nothing
black tonight underneath nothing
off, gone, away, or never was


us with no way of knowing outside of ourselves

Black is Henry

I remember, it was before Christmas and I was out buying gifts for my friends. Henry owned a small antique shop that was smashed in between several other small shops, all lost behind tan walls so that you couldn't see them from the road. Once you got inside of the labyrinth, though, you could tell which shop Henry owned: every day, as long as the shop was open, he would have an old phonograph playing old jazz, or opera, or big band music. I had visited the shop for two or three years without buying anything.

The day wasn't special, but it was the first day that I ever bought anything from my favorite shop. Henry knew it, and commented on it when I came up to his desk with several items in my hand. They were all small trinkets, the only thing that I could afford, and even then just barely, but he smiled at me. "Are we buying for people we choose to love, or people we're obligated to love?" He asked me. I told him they were for people I choose to love. He nodded back with an air of old-time wisdom.

"Those are always the ones that matter." He told me.

I had bought a deck of playing cards, a fountain pen, and an old hand-mirror from 1925. It was for a girl that I liked who liked me. It was secret. This was about a year after I promised myself that I wouldn't hold anymore of my own secrets.

Like all of my promises and vows, it quickly fell through.

The main point is this: while I was buying my gifts, Henry was on the phone with his "dearly beloved," as he put it. (He joked about the one time I decide to buy something, I force him to ignore his dearly beloved.) But while he was on the phone with her, I took down every detail of his words, his syntax, the tone of voice. Not that he was anything special, I almost always took down details, but there's always been a certain interest in me when it comes to how people talk with their dearly beloved's.

The way Henry talked to his that day was jokingly harsh. There was some problem of some sort, nothing important, but one of those small little things that bother people everyday, and are usually complicated in the process of fixing them. I presumed that the same tone, syntax, and word choice had been used before numerous times, and after I left the shop I thought about how his dearly beloved put up with it.

It took me about three weeks to start thinking that being in love is made up of about one-half of putting up with whomever your in love with. Who knows.

Hope and Hope

Hope and hope and hope and hope and hope.

My friends are here, I'll survive and live and love and dream, dream, dream. No longer away from starburst suns in the ocean staring back up at me, or the air alight with such color and beauty that it sends me reeling back into them, arms everywhere; I see you and you see me and with our smiles we join together. Brother, brother, you whom I've known for so long and for so little. Are we so together that I can sink my teeth so softly into your heart, or your mind. Rejoice with me and rolling waves as the moon comes and the sun comes.

Hope and hope and hope and hope and celestial beings; you're beautiful, we're all beautiful; mud and grease and gears and roots and oil, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty!

Do we die tomorrow, dream again, act in such a way to drive others mad and revel in our own fortitude, our own conviction? Or do we dabble in our own fears tonight, release ourselves and forget, forget completely that we're anything but the appendages and the ideas that float seamlessly around our minds?

Live by the bait offered to us and escape before they even catch a glimpse!

Hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and long.

Thoughts on a Saturday Morning

Yes, I exist as the wind. Maybe that's a bad thing, but for the most part, comforting, and where I find home. We all seek something.

Nothing's there, am I correct? Are any of us correct at assuming our surroundings? Do you love me?

Am I mad?

Sometimes I look into the landscape and just feel as though it's not there, has never been there, that my eyes are actually looking at a wall and my mind painting my life onto the wall. I change. The me last night
nothing more
but a vague memory
inside of me today.

(This is my story:)

I woke up; my ceiling, white crystal dots, an ocean of them, the light from my closet refracting off of them and shining down on me. If I looked long enough, they moved and breathed with me. This was my room, my morning. It would fade from me in minutes along with the memories of my dreams. I will forget, and time shall be taken from me, leaving me ignorant of my life, and every life I simultaneously exist through.

The only reasons I get out of bed this morning is to check my phone and my IM to see if you've tried to contact me, and to get dressed for my brother and his new wife-to-be. You haven't, and they aren't here, but I'm still out of bed.

I remember pieces of it: There was the Sun Shoppe and there was House of Joe, but there was also another place. I went there and met up with four people from my past that I did not expect to see. They used to be Christian and would only listen to rap, but in my dreams, they were atheists and they listened to trip-hop. They were glad to see me, and I didn't know their names, despite knowing who they were. They didn't mind and never told me their names.

I remember climbing on stacks of goods, and I told Trevor that the only good thing about us evolving from primates is that we could climb. That's the only complement that they'll ever get.

When I was a kid, I could climb better than any other kid. Higher, faster. I dreamt of space, as every kid should. Of the void and the everything inside of it's emptiness.

Will today be any different? People and face smiling, beaming, relaxed, content. Content.

Do you ever make yourself sick? Or wonder where you stand? If everyone is walking forwards and backwards
I'm walking perpendicular, along a line. Changing without progressing or declining. It's not that I'm done living or content, but that I need to explore every spot of where I stand in the now.

I don't know why since I always end up forgetting, but I have a thirst for knowledge and the unknown.





We don't grow up, we only pretend. Maturity is just about as easily forged as lust, or honor.

I've nothing to worry about, it's life and life only.

(But I don't learn from my own teaching, and it's killing me.)