Poems aplenty
~ 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,
not just from their completion, but 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.
It seems then, that 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
In every corner
Softly, it approaches, encircling,
gracefully lugging shadows that kick and writhe,
victims hidden behind its pretense:
“I’m on their side.”
The bed, your safe place, the haven
from monsters, real and forged—
only a paper sheet to shield yourself
from claws and hands;
only wits to supplant
the soothing pleas of devious plans—
guilt keeps you.
Manipulation hones the act.
Pinned against your safe place, you turn
without violence because your cornered,
trapped in the yoke of the present,
you say no to both.
Roll over and pretend it’s not there,
the hand between your legs, the plastic voice:
“You don’t want this? Are you sure?”
Reject the unwanted, repeatedly,
yet it finds you, again and again.
Grasping hunger disguised,
empathetic designs,
belie what you truly feel and know.
Right now,
you are a man or a woman,
a child or almost dead—
it knows no set role
nor lurks out of sight.
It’s there, in the base of the skull,
in the next room, down the hall,
outside, inside, with smiling eyes,
standing tall, basking in the sunlight.
“Until it finds you, evil is not here.”
Blink
Existence is but an extinction of the present:
You were here, now you are gone.
It’s a moment, relative time spent,
depending on the distance from the event,
whether you are an astronaut
or imagining this special speed
from the gravitational time brake
that is the earth. Both aspects
play a part in time we think spent,
generally or specially.
Note that one time dilating enormity
does not supersede the other
but certainly incorporates its time holder,
however misunderstood older sibling,
special yet necessary understudy,
possibilities advanced:
giving rise to an utter reconditioning
of what we grant absolute
yet implicating far more
than we thought to deserve—
a glimpse, an almost tangible deliverance
from the very beginning of time, itself,
the birth of the universe, if only
our telescopes, our perceptions
can peer that far back.
The essence of it
Never have I heard the utterance,
the blanket understatement,
“you’re so OCD,”
though obsessive-compulsive—
different—I most certainly am,
the spider scurrying from the light,
trapped in my dusty cobwebs,
interring my mind and spirit
in refuse I refuse to ignore,
others willing to withstand.
Joy killer
Nature does not promise balance
because it’s simply too human, too pretty.
If only one’s eye
could scoop out another’s.
If only our sins, a decade from now,
could encroach, consume our shadow,
our significance like midday’s rays.
With nature, cruelty we share:
envy we do not
because it’s simply too human, too feeble
in its biblical resentment, too toxic,
numbing our senses,
swelling our delusions of importance,
expanding our shadow
like the rays of dawn and dusk.
And if the light cannot save us,
then seek the darkness, I shall,
where no shadows may engorge us.
