Poems...
~ in their final stages
Seamless
Insanity. Often, I hear the fancy
that one knows their mind to be broken glass;
yet, that is a lie of the most fractured—
unfamiliarity with our strange, ignorant
of complexity’s tapestry, the mind’s wavering.
Convinced, the deranged believe themselves sane:
This we know, and we are not afraid.
For many, the darkness, the unknown
is enough to plea for comfort, for security;
but for me, the few, it’s not the unseen
that bleeds horrors into mind’s ether—
I can’t see the chipped recess,
cracking past the finger of a dollar,
past the simple grotesque toothed dreams,
past depression and anxiety’s
misplaced, fleeting break of sense
because those quaint slips are forgotten
when compared to the voices:
whispers of betrayal, rage, and excitement,
nattering from the cracks of the floorboards—
of not one chip, chipping from master’s spiked
hammer, but of four chips spidering together
—the mind raving against its own matter.
For one cannot fathom madness unless
torment knows them first, with intimate lust,
senseless laughter, wild fits of anger—
all frothing at once—overwhelming our hope,
our senses, now betraying each other.
Time has a manic sense of humor
Perception, now and then, and yet to come—
Alone, when and where time cruelly extends,
the mind tries to woefully personify
nameless impressions because the pain
has coalesced, from seemingly every angle;
under considerable duress the lifeform
plunges into despair, seeking an end,
to find rest, without a care
or so we believe.
But if one feels such pain, extremes:
heat of black absorbing steel or cold
of windswept stabbing zeal, then pain
know it intimately as any care.
To be truly free, the mind sheds extremes,
the immense pain and overflowing concern;
but in that drastic mind-popping release,
all cares, emotions astray, blink
out of existence, making one question,
not the world that is now so clear,
but the trigger and the result: Have I
lost my mind
—sweltered under the blaze,
only to fall beneath freezing rain. Have I
climbed beyond anger’s steep terrain
to freedom’s clearing, achieving,
for a time, a greater awareness seemingly
far beyond me, only to lose it slowly,
when time now, cruelly contracts,
diminishing this enlightenment,
enslaving me and others for its own
unthinkable end?
—supposing that thoughts occupy space
and that the mind is, after all, time’s musings,
events distinctly strewn amongst galaxies.
nasa.gov
It sleeps in the mind
Jaded, overeducated, eloquent, wordy nonsense
without practical applications—these are the words
that hamper the witty and bar the bold
from completion and our benefit.
One must wonder if a plot is at work;
yet, the exuberant, the quest-seeking youth,
are want for answers to the uncertainty
that is their fate and their children’s future.
One needn’t delve into reflection,
hydrous contemplations
of profound depths, to find an answer:
One merely needs to type a question,
hit enter,
and be satisfied, if not for a moment,
then for a coinciding view, inevitably
granting what one desires,
for the wish-fulfilling void.
Seemingly then, poetry is needed after all
for the search, the answers to matter;
though many may have forgotten,
forgotten the dream that dared anything.
Yet, they will indubitably recall
their favorite line, the verse that had awakened
something strangely ephemeral, yet long-lived
that poetry sleeps, waiting for completion,
the acknowledgement of existence,
present in all.
Correspondence
Love
is to drive a cliché through one’s home,
to flatten the walls like paper
and to collapse the roof like straw,
and most of all, it is to delve
into history long forgotten;
because this cliché, this yearning coupling,
this tired sentiment
given our longstanding mortality
is, I recite, ancient, explored
before words had formed, sought
from our mothers and fathers,
and their mothers and fathers,
three hundred thousand years ago,
and their ancestors,
millions of years ago;
and yet, love endures,
though attaining it often eludes most,
whether one painstakingly waits
or conversely chases it for all
the right and wrong motives.
And if one’s lifetime should be filled
with love like a child born of a lie,
or a man who falsely professes
loneliness, know that love is more
than perception. It’s awareness.
It’s there just out of reach,
yet, somehow it’s the offered hand
that you refused to take
because love has no place
in your tortured past.
Love does not care,
only the present, the now, matters.
It’s an invitation, a personal letter
I write to you, for your hand, from the future,
clasping my hand from my world, the past.
Zero
Seize it. Free it,
the imagination, the dream
and dangle one’s impermanence.
Let go, relinquish control:
Discard your pet art
where the audience would have it—
so that you may refute
trajectories scarcely understood,
unlike the layman seeking
the design of all,
eyes shaded, nerves numb.
And the struggle
that is your condemnation,
dream closed despite time’s insistence,
you attempt to simplify
and balance what can never be
irrational or rational,
reducing the error margins
until the nines become negative one.
So, bask in the life claimed:
squander time until your art
becomes regret, fixing resolve.
And dust off the medium that once contained
all your hopes, tomorrow after yesterday.
Find your mechanism.
Pick up your tool and craft,
twist and form
the night
or the light
(whatever impedes you)
into the sum of zero,
from low entropy, compact immensity
to life-dispersing energy, increased diversity
something resembling a dream,
when you destroyed everything
before you had lived.
