Joined End-By-End

Mutter,
Listen in the heat for stillness
Quiet is creation
Disgusted, destruction stops
Halted by the force of - change

The power of change is
The power of the silent
Slow, manipulation seeks a wedge
A silent edge
Slices like no other
Subtly dangerous
Wantonly creative
And always,

Cuts like change
Exchanging hands
Only becomes fouler
More putrescent
Eventually luminescent with filth
So can it shine again.

Advertising Takes Precedence Over Common Sense

Today I saw this on the back of a truck:

"My USA supports our troops whenever we go, no aid or comfort to the enemy (No Way)."

Are they implying that popping open the back of a truck belonging to another trucking company would yield hostile Arabs lounging in jacuzzi sipping fruity drinks?

Automatic of Observation

Del memorandum in tandem,
Sprachen en mi choleric sum
Don't you know fun?

All others see in kaleidescope periscope scopes,
But I see in gray skies and clouded eyes
Blue of the water and sea
Appeals to me.

Imprecision

Swing down,
Sweep me off my feet,

God knows I need it.

Don't hesitate,
A moment lost to indecision,
Is a moment lost to wisdom.

Wait, that can't be right.

If in caution lies wisdom, and wisdom caution,
Then where do I come in?
When do I get my turn at bat?

Coming and going,
Back and forth,
Taunting me from my position,
Firmly affixed to the back of the cage,
Like a well-worn wanted poster,
But all I wanted was
A chance.

I think in life it’s important that, every once in a while, we put on the high beams and watch the night light up like we’re on a roller-coaster through the New York skyline.

The Conductor

He who demands quality will receive quality.

He who demands participation will receive participation.

Therefore . . .

Do not be so arrogant as to presume that you will sacrifice nothing and gain everything.

From One Without Romance

“My soul is a passionate dancer; she dances to hidden music which only I can hear. . . . Whatever police the world may prescribe to rule the soul, I refuse to obey them.”

- Bettina Brentano

For my soul dancer:

I have fallen in love. This love may not be for you, but it was brought about by you, for it is you who inspired it. You, my muse of romance, you have caused my mindless attraction; for, I have been overwhelmed by the deep, sharp, shadow of what you signify.

My love is for you, my emblem, my motif. You do not know me, and my heart bursts with aching for I do not know you. I know only of you. I know of your desire for the objective and intellectual, your search for significance, and your longing for love.

Perhaps it is only coincidence that I share your vision. I have no great fondness for fate, either in theory or in practice. My inclination then is to communicate my thoughts so that you might know me more, and be inclined to return the sincere, if somewhat banal, gesture. In this way, we might not lose sight of one another too soon, and we might learn to know one another, both through pleasure and pain.

I have noted your inner calmness. You hold to pretenses of machismo and roughness, but you carry yourself with a natural grace that few have mastered, yet so many attempt to attain. You have shown yourself willing to be open, but seem to have difficulty expressing that openness, reverting to a baser demeanor and avoiding the conflict of inner and outer attitude altogether. I empathize with your predicament, for I too feel the opposing pull of social expectation and intellectual desire, like the twin forces of heart and mind.

I understand that this letter may change nothing, but at the very least I feel a great burden lifted from my shoulders, for at least now I may be honest. I do not know you, not in any real sense, yet I love you. Perhaps not in a romantic way, but in the way of the soul, that eternal being that prods us ever forward. My soul seeks the companionship of similar souls, but how can I know they are similar if they are veiled behind guise and guile? I ask not for your hand, or your heart, or your mind, or even your soul. I ask only that you grant me the opportunity to discover these things through my own effort.

I know you may fear a wound that cuts deeper than most if you allow me, as a surgeon, to peer into the vast inner workings of your very self; however, how can healing take place if you refuse the doctor access? True, the body heals itself with time. Likewise, the heart and mind, with the passage of time, may mend themselves. But the soul, oh the soul, that song sung to heaven with every breath we take, that cannot help but gravitate towards the light.

I fear not a wound, only infection. I fear not love, only life without. I fear not rejection, only the death of my avatar, of that which I love.

Labyrinth

Why do I retreat?
To clefts of holy sanctuary rock,
Harbors where I rest my feet.

I would unveil my logic,
Like a rigid painting,
Fascinatingly beautiful.

Still, transfixed not by passion,
But by oddity they are kept,
Like some grim commodity.

Awareness of the human soul,
Therein lies the key,
To the puzzles I lock myself with.

True, my prose is excess,
The labyrinth before the laboratory,
Intertwined with superficialities.

But realization would dawn,
Like the inverted sunset of morning,
Were you to comprehend.

For my back-written prose,
Precludes me from those,
Who I hide myself from and side-in.

True,
My prose is arrogant.
But humility disguises only,
Holy pride,
And who may determine what is holy?

Nocturne of Hidden Mystery

"What the hell were you thinking? You know how she gets when she's left alone!"

He cradled her in his arms, and my inmost depths sighed in the way that only the deepest parts of you can.

"Yes, of course. Next time . . . I'll be more careful. I'll remember." My throat was suddenly dry. "That is, there won't be a next time. I'll be here. With her."

"I'm certain you will" he said, his grim pronouncement accompanied by the iciest of nonverbal melodies, a frenzy of minor harmonies twisting and gouging their way through his features. What a surprise, I do think I've heard this one before. Yes, yes I have.

Groupthink

How compelling is
Existential light?

And how unfortunate
Is nonplussed clarity?

Foolish wisdom is neither foolishness nor wisdom,
But some third party,
For:
As two brilliant minds condense
Nothing prevents
Another from entrance.

Dine

Fine,

Over all the dinner I could be having,
I will choose to dine.

In deference to your habits,
I must incline.

For mine is a sadist's fuel,
Morphine,
Cranial stimulation,
Fingernails . . .

Collected throughout my rule.

Yes!

It's true, I do prefer the finer things,
But those that throne me,
Have ensconced their bigotry,
So I will desist.

Deceased,
You'll be the last,
On my past line,
Writing a fine design,
Between ether and sky,
In cloud lettering entwined,
My face, immortalized,
Desensitized,

In and by

Time.

How can you steal my thunder,
When I'm only snapping my fingers?

Motor Heavens

So long I
Rest



Long dead
Wake


Lucid I am apathy
Entranced I am apathy
Apathetic I am asleep

Long sleep
Wake

Sleep now.

I Walk

Where my feet wander
I feel compelled to follow.
Like the subconscious ramblings of my inner mind
Are a road that leads from roughed trail to clouded sky.

So my unconscious and conscious become one,
As my eyes follow
The delicate leopard-skin of shadow and light
Splayed across the grass
Like a giant throw-rug
With all the comforts and atrocities that are attributed
Both thereof, and
To one less majestic.

Fear was farther than I wanted to travel,
So I stayed home and watched television.

A hovel is still home,
And is safe.

The mind is psychotic enough,
To slake the need for psychadelia.

Young Man, Fast Food, Slow Brain

Every ounce of energy has been overplayed into my evening. Here I am, overwrought and rejected, hand on the windowsill, wishing I could see past the reflected light into the star-ridden darkness. It's so hard to unwind sometimes. I could swear there are little termites in my head trying to chew their way out through my temples, and yet my feet feel warm and fuzzy. Hilarious. It's like my own body is rebelling against itself.

I wish I could lay off the stimulants, they probably only make me more exhausted than I already am. Still, I can't fall asleep. There's so much left to do, so much living to get done, that I feel vivacity flow into me, where it mixes with my tired blood into a cocktail of delirium.

I can hear you, stop shouting at me like your lips are a megaphone! I heard you the first eight times, and I hear you now as you blather on about current events and why I should care. I still don't. These times are just for living, just like all the times before. So many people miss out on that. They call it wisdom: I call it sacreligious.

Wisdom is living, not ordering a double-bacon-cheeseburger, large fries, and a diet coke.

Deutsche

Strangely my fears,
Erupt not in tears,
But dull complacency.

I know I've lost,
A presence dear,
But here
She still holds sway.

Like a queen,
Of a feifdom,
That in my heart lay
So she rules
For now and ever, today.

For tomorrow's dreams,
Are cold, it seems,
And fill my feet with lead
So rules the duchess,
Of propaganda,
"Fear not, do not dread!
For tonight we fear,
Tomorrow we wed!"

It is queer,
This presence dear,
That leaves my heart to ponder,
Whence ever came,
My propensity to grow fonder.

Still, I know now,
That I've learned how,
To live without its call.

But then . . .

What keeps me awake,
When sleep calls me
From 'neath my pillow,
What holds me as a thrall?

Education: A Response

BleedingHeartCommunist: “What you attempt is not educational if it is not difficult.”

Kabri: No

BHC: No?

Kabri: No . . . some things are terribly easy and educational too, like leaning against a tree and watching the clouds . . . making pictures out of them . . . daydreaming is another educational endeavor that is quite delightful.

BHC: But if it is easy then it comes naturally to you - therefore, you are not learning you are simply engaging in activities that stimulate you mentally or physically.

Kabri: Is not education supposed to stimulate you entirely?

BHC: Who says? I always thought that education was supposed to acclimate you to things you would not normally do, thereby widening your horizons.

Kabri: I always thought that the basis of an education was to let you know there were other options to explore . . . and where to go looking for information.

BHC: To me a truly educating experience is one that changes you forever – maybe not drastically, but in some way. In this way, education is the beginning of maturity.

Kabri: I know a few educated, pathetic, pitiful, persons that I wouldn't consider mature in any circumstance.

BHC: Then I would assert that they haven't really been educated. Education is not the memorization of data, but the taking of action that is for a greater good.

Kabri: A greater good for whom?

BHC: Oneself or another . . . some would consider greater good for another to be more mature, but I think that the greatest good affects both self and the object, if the object is available to be acted upon.

Kabri: Thinking about that statement.
I would have to disagree with you on that point . . . an education is the way we find out how little we really know. It isn't for the good - greater or not - it is to force us to use our minds for our own purposes.

BHC: But forcing our minds to do something is forcing them towards something they are not accustomed to, thereby causing some manner of friction. If the mind is not already tuned to that frequency then the experience is, by my reasoning, educational.

Kabri: You can learn something that you are not interested in and it will last only until the final test - then it will be relegated to the back of the brain where it becomes covered with cobwebs and totally useless junk. Learn something you are interested in, and it will stay with you for life . . . so forcing your mind to do something it doesn't want to do is not educational . . . it is torture.

BHC: You are correct in a sense . . . torture is a life-changing, mind-altering experience . . . it is educating.

Kabri: Educating? I suppose (I'll never have to do that again!) kind of educating.

BHC: I agree, and this is why to me there is a difference between temporary memorization and actual "learning.”

Do you agree?

Kabri: Yes, I agree

What you attempt is not educational if it is not difficult.

Someone Has the Moody Blues!

Dark,
Darkened darkness ensues,
When I feel the
Blues.

Long,
A great length of time,
When I cannot
Rhyme.

Feel,
Feeling fear of my own feeling
It leaves me
Reeling.

Left,
Now I am gone.

A Minimal of Repetition

I could faint if,
Faint could read,
Could hold my hand,
Hand me my slippers,
And say: faint!

A Minimal of Insomnia

Waking/sleeping
Sleeping/waking
Lineblur
Wakesleepsleepwakesleepwake
All the same
Dream you can't sleepwake up from

Wakesleep eternal.