secondary derivative < 0

 

hell and heaven sit by each other, their toes in the warm sunshine, their bench cold and clammy. fingers linked, heads bowed, as if in church, for a greater cause. they understand perfectly only one or the other will grow at a time, they will feed on each other, there will be stretching, breaking, blood and scars. they will feel every breath of the other with their ears so close by.

heaven's a taste, an intangible hint of cinnamon, that bites just before it leaves. a fleeting allowed awareness of ecstasy to keep us afloat. with an aftertaste to let us know hell exists nearby.

heaven is a voice so pure it turns into powder at a touch, into tears in a song. a delicate precious creature of vast imperfect delight and negligible time. that is swaddled in white noise, loud and bass, to make sure it doesn't get too loud. to protect it, to showcase it, to breed it.

hell is harder, it is an absence, it is a denial, it is seen only in the stretch of space around its contours. it is not, as we imagine, loud painful and hot, more plain cold and closed for view. more like heaven ought to be in all the rulebooks. its an easy mistake, we most of us can only see one of them, the one we choose to grow, and we all like to name things. its hard to understand how close they are to each other.

hell isn't a prescience of weather, it's the feature of a heart that cannot be explained. it's a strain of poison, plaintive and endless, that cannot be quietened without feeding on your voice. and cannot be quietened after your voice gives it new strength.

all it takes is one life to turn hell into heaven, or otherwise. we can fire it off quick, rocket launcher, covert analogy, quick, or we can drag it along fifty sixty years and try to have some fun with it. either way either side, we're here to choose. and of course, we can be fair, move our wrinkling hands back and forth, back and forth, and hope with our fingers crossed, we're living right, we're growing only one, the right one, we're growing both, we need both...

this hell, this heaven, this is life, there is no rulebook, there are no choices, except the ones we make.

sometimes when the day is cloudy and the signals crossed, we have a chance to hear beyond the white noise. and other times, we are meant to leave ourselves the hell alone, for heaven's sake

 

open larynx night

 

The episodes are growing, my solitude is getting incurable. More and more days dawn when I don't want to be on the scene. Any scene. To keep human contact to a bare minimum. Day after day it multiplies, the social spackle, more global villages lined with duct tape, the masks, the lies, the fear, the growing growing numbness, like a giant cloud over the world. Maybe just over myself, what difference does it make? I am my world.

I hate the grinding bones, the necessity of cleaning up into something frighteningly presentable and adjusted, all the corners neatly tucked in, all the edges carefully filed away, blunt bleeding stumps of who I really am.

I hate all those price tags so loudly displayed, because of course, unless there is a price, how can we know the value of what we see? Until we are denied, how do we guess what the hell we want?

This is the digital age, and I need to get real, isn't it ironic? The world is fourteen to eighteen inches wide and tall, the logo on the jeans on the ass of some random male, attractive very, adjusted to fit my screen, sent by someone he doesn't know, sent by someone I don't know, THAT is what I feel. Sums up my day, mild lust for a well pixelated image, isn't that more than slightly pathetic?

Oh yes yes we are supposed to define reality by what happens to us and not the other way around, but hell, don't these bones and bodies rebel? marching in perfect coordination and responding as expected, to the correct stimulus. ugh. How are we not disgusted or even aware of our growing invisibility, how dim we aspire to become as souls on a mission?

And if I wanted to see in you, endless love for an intangible object, all I would do is raise a flag, draw a picture on it, nice and pleasing, teach you it was your beloved, and blow wind on it endlessly until my lungs collapsed. And I will be a martyr, having given my life for another. I will have made the ultimate sacrifice.

But, the intangible object, its me. The flag is me, the picture is me, I am your beloved, I want to be. And my lungs are never free, to spare that single moment, to open my mouth, and just say it. I'll do it, later, someday, right now I'm too busy

 

about a girl

 

who graced a time
I had the luck to be in
grew more beautiful each day
made my breath catch
every time I looked
who glowed from her marrow,
visible, clear and simple
in all our colliding confusing worlds,
needed no explanation beyond childlike wonder
made my eyes tear up
my heart lift inexplicably
sneak glances at the door
guess when our time was up

about a girl
who could not last forever
would barely last a moment
with no defense to poison
who I wanted to save
from the world
from herself

about a girl
descended from her chariot
shy and warm
just to see how sorrow lived,
opened her heart
gave her soul to all who asked,
never knew it was the most precious gift
of all

about a girl so priceless,
she sold for a mere pittance.
chained by the world,
so we could look every day,
feel glad she existed.

about a girl called hope
who wore sorrow like a good luck charm
died a little each day
for somebody else
anybody else
but herself

about a girl,
a prelude to something unimaginably vast,
who lived meanings
asked happiness
of a world that knew only fear
gave her sorrow instead
called it an honest mistake

about a girl so young
smiled without knowing
what havoc it caused,
so old,
forgave without question
the sins burned on her body
made oxygen and a garden
inside her prison cell
and I can no longer tell
which way is paradise

 

up, up and away

 

Distance. To see ourselves as a whole, to see the street next to the blind alley. To turn around when a wall looms, and move faster, further. When child ran across the street, he didn't want to be hit by a bus. He only wanted to go across. In the distance, a big blue bus with a glass vignette grew. He lived but all their hearts started running a little faster, like his little legs. The driver, the passengers, his yelling mom, the shoplifter in the department store across, the homeless man forming a cliche on the street.

Tomorrow, lil boy will wear a leash, lest he run too far away too soon. The time for great distance is not yet here. Today lets pretend he just won't grow.

I saw you in the street, you came right up to me, I reached up, further and further till my toes hurt, and yet, I couldn't reach you. Then you bent over me and the darkness returned. And you were gone, like you never existed. I stood in the severe daylight thinking, was it all subreal, was it a trick of the light? How many tricks does light play in one lifetime, in one imagination?

I dreamed of you, that night, I didn't sleep, I couldn't see for all the restless darkness around. You were a woman, standing opposite me at a counter, one I could never cross, no matter how hard I tried. And I have no idea why. Why you were a woman, why you stood there, why I stood here, why I couldn't cross this perfectly ordinary polished wood, waist high table top seperating us.

And I was afraid, so afraid, that we were born to expand. Like balloons and corporations, to breathe more every day, and keep growing. To put distances between us and all we need. We used to think we need. We don't need.

Someday my dear, I'll wail for hours from across the galaxy and all you will hear is a faint, I miss you. Meanwhile, lets lift our weapons, walk back ten paces, and run away together. Meanwhile lets dig a hole underwater, slow down our existance and breathe loudly.

Meanwhile, lets spin the wheel a little faster so our destiny can race through. Lets solve that puzzle that echoes so many times before my voice reaches your mouth. Lets walk our hips a little closer and wait, until the wind blows away.

Our skins have already agreed to shed and slide away, if you would just make a little snuggle room for me on the couch. Just for now, lets hold two different hands together, before its time to grow again

 

new circles

 

Warning - This piece is a load of self-indulgent hooey interspersed with big words, getting older y'see

Always after meditation, the first thing I want to do is write. I get ideas, I connect with my animal inside. And it is usually chatty, if a little unpredictable and a lot uncivilized. So it scratches itself reflectively and says to me

I dislike profound art, gut-wrenching accounts of stark humanity. And no, it wasn't, as I had feared, a fear of stark humanity

I blink, it continues, biting off the head of a passerby

No, great art time and again reveals a certain shallowness of the darting human mind, and reveals my fear of how ephemeral our decisions are, and how capricious our decision making process is,

It swallows with a wide gulp and burps, I listen

As Bob Dylan sang, the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. Makes me ridiculously afraid of asking any question at all. So in my typical retardation, I oppose ephemeral decision making with perpetual uncertainty, back and forth and back and forth, back and forth, until either bores me cynical

It rocks on its heels, almost falling forward at oncoming traffic, I steady it

But that isn't the end of it. The lil decisions inside our lil minds made with our fantastic reasonings, they get ... reused

My animal slurps up a big ball of cud and starts chewing, I look away

The umbrella for instance, for the head, for the skin, for the clothes, for the dog, for the guitar, for the twirling ballet dancer, for the rain, for a precaution, for a picture, for forgetting in buses and shops, for a dash of color, for folding, for unfurling, for shading a stolen kiss, for drying, and wetting, and drying again, for moving droplets of water around ...

It spaces out, I start moving

 

cowardry

 

From the age of 5 I have known deep within my bones that I was born to save someone. With age and the wisdom of others (be safe) I no longer know if it was one person or many, if I was to save their mind, body or soul. I knew then, now I can only think I've already failed, or I will definitely someday. I don't have the skills for anything but the safety of my worthless skin.

The girl today will haunt me, two kids, just following her, badgering her. I don't know if she liked it, I don't know, there is so much I don't know, mind boggling. If a man ever tried to block my path I would simply hit him and walk over him, or run away, never try to reason. Drunk ain't a good excuse, it ain't.

And one kid came up to me and told me, it was fine, they were drunk, it was her birthday, he was her best friend. And then she came halfway toward me and he went back to her and led her away, I didn't see any force. Why would she trust me anyway, a lone woman against two guys.

And here are my sorry excuses

1. I was just one person, what can I do
2. She didn't really need any help
3. They were just drunk
4. They were just flirting
5. The other guy was her best friend really, he would take care of her.
6. They were just arguing, there was no force
7. She chose her company, and she didn't call out for help
8. Its not my problem
9. Ah im overreacting, forget it!

I'm not fond of God illusions but I pray for her today, I pray with whatever I have that she is ok, because its an ugly world, on beautiful rainy nights, it is a very ugly world indeed.

Today is a very proud day for me. Mommy, I am safe.

 

shadow woman

 

materialized
when she fumbled for a catch
at every darkened door
strained to listen inside
for a distant song sung
by the river by moonlight
whose sorrow drowned the nights
slipped from her feet
flowed from her eyes
flew from her sadness
then waited for her, outside
danced with trees
with rivers with wolves
built oceans around her moat
shadow woman who cried
for a fortress
was answered by her tears