A Dialogue: the Wick and the Carpenter

(1996)

It feels as though it is going to rain. As follows from that fact, it is also cold and darkly silent. A man in a grey overcoat steps out of an unremarkable grey house in the suburbs and walks briskly down the driveway, led by a little black dog that is trembling with excitement. The man stops suddenly and looks up at the overcast sky as if sensing for the first time the imminence of rain (although he obviously knew beforehand, as shown by the overcoat). The dog pulls impatiently on the leash and whines. The pair walk down the street together hurriedly, most likely trying to avoid the rain before it hits.
“Red! How goes it? Looks like we got some rain coming our way. Did you hear about the collapsing of the bridge? The collapsing of the bridge? All the children have gone insane. The flowers are melting into pools of wax too hot to touch. The rain is just what we need, just what we need; hopefully it won’t get too rough for the repairman out there.”
A bird falls lazily out of the sky onto the sidewalk. Red jerks his dog away from the bird and waves to his neighbor and continues walking. The sky grows darker and the silence grows pregnant with expectancy. Red threads his way carefully around pools of hot wax.
A child runs out of some hole in the sky and approaches Red with a smirk on his face while stomping gaily upon wax puddles as if they were mud. “Hey, mister,” the child shouts before turning abruptly into a piece of string sticking upright in the wax. Red’s little black dog whines and begins to lick at the string. The strings shakes and quivers and then finally pops back into the child, who promptly begins giggling, “that tickles, cut it out!” The dog’s stumpy tail waggles furiously in delight. “Animals always break through appearances,” the child tells Red in a matter-of-fact tone, the kind of voice children use when they are trying to be grown-up. The little boy scampers up onto Red’s back and seats himself comfortably with his arms around Red’s forehead.
“Now it all makes sense!” the little boy says cheerily, looking about at the world from his new perspective, “Everything is clear and simple. If you people would just let us see it from here more often, we would be able to understand everything even better than you could.”
“You don’t seem so insane to me,” Red replies, continuing on his walk as before, down the sidewalk.
“Who said anything about insane? If anyone’s crazy here, it would be you. Like how about that blue vase?”
“What?! How did you . . . “
”And the smoke rising out its translucent belly? With the cubist yellow background? C’mon! Who else would think of such a thing!”
“I . . .”
“You . . . always distorting things! Always hiding behind abstractions and intangible walls! What are you trying to get at? All you do is confuse me!”
Red stops as the little black dog does his duty on a little square patch of withered grass. Red mumbles something incoherent to the winds and then his face lightens up suddenly. “It’s like when you look at an ocean at sunset or . . . or when you want to say something but you can’t, like when you wake up in the morning and remember your dream and you know that there was something there, something that you knew while you were there . . . do you know what I mean?”
“I guess so,” the child says grudingly.
“And your throat gets all thick and you clench your fist and you know, you just know that something is there, is behind everything . . . and your soul, you soul gives this little leap . . . ”
“Wait just a second! Your soul? Your soul!”
“I mean, your heart . . .”
“No, no no! Don’t try to slip out of this one! I heard you say quite clearly, ‘your soul.’ You said, ‘your soul!’ the child says triumphantly, “So, getting a bit spiritual now, are we?”
“Well, and so what! Alright then, your soul, damn it!” Red yells as he begins walking again, “Your soul feels as if it were trapped within that infinite nutshell and it feels as if it were happy and sad all at the same moment!”
“And there you go again! What kind of contradiction is this? Always distorting things!”
“What do you want, the devil take you?!” Red splutters, fuming, before he catches himself and shakes his head about–much to the chagrin of the child, who hangs onto Red’s ears. Red helps the little boy off of his shoulders and they walk hand-in-hand. Thus calmed, Red walks in silence a little further before speaking again. “Well, I know what you want. You want happily-forever-after’s and Disneyesque epilogues. You want the redemption, the infinitely merciful judgment, the darkness and the light. You tell me that we separate things with abstractions–well, you separate things with simplicity. And so what if I do think of a translucent blue vase with smoke rising from its belly, with a cubist yellow background? Stevens had his blue guitar; Bishop had her volcanoes; Dostoevsky had his Karamazovs. We are all struggling in our universes within glass walls, forming our own realities based upon distorted perceptions.”
The child stomps his foot and whines, “But it’s because of you that we are simple! If you would let us see instead of covering everything up, we would know everything! It is you, you who have made us this way!”
Red stops and turns to the child. “But you and I cannot see the truth. Sure, you can see the hazy glorifications of innocence and the puerile basement upon which we are all built. And I can see the moody debasement of experience and the jilted heights to which we aspire. But none of this adds up into one, meaningful, absolute equation. There are always the spaces between our selves and each other for which we can never quite account. We all see through our own lenses, and everything is the struggle to bend it all into as broad a reflection as possible.” He lifts the child and kisses him upon his forehead, and the child turns into a string again, then falls down into Red’s mouth.
The rain begins to fall. It is a cold rain, a sheet of polished metal slamming into the ground like nails. The man in the grey overcoat scurries quickly back the way he came, tugging the reluctant little black dog along. At the foot of his driveway, the man pauses and scans the distant, gloomy horizon. “Ah, the bridge–it’s been fixed,” he murmurs, lost in thought.
A bird flutters like a flame through the rain and slips across the smoky blue sky like a dribble of hot wax. A yellow glint of sunlight arranges itself somewhere beyond the clouds, preparing for the post-storm flash of unburdened calm. The warm scent of flowers begins to wend through the air.

Babel

(1997)

And the Lord came down
to see the city and the tower,
which the children of men built.
And the Lord said,
Behold, the people are one,
and now nothing will be restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do.

The tower rises in the midst
of the destitute city, reaching
out in one solitary tendril stretch
to penetrate the heavens.
Like an infinite flower it builds,
striving forever for perfection
as a line struggles for the asymptote.

A river runs by the bright city,
its flowing surface reflecting
a million points of light.
Slime and trash shiver darkly
upon its pitted face–polluted
by the very lives its virile waters feed.
Deep from within the churning river,
where the glaring manufactured lights
cannot reach, where the corruption
cannot penetrate, comes the Voice.
The Voice speaks through movement:
in intangible whisperings of leaves,
in glistening cries of budding flowers,
in the incessant gurgling of the river.

The inhabitants, blinded by their
artificial lights, deafened by their
loud machines, can only hear the river
speaking at night as they lie
curled naked in their beds.
But even then the Voice is indistinct
and detached, and becomes
distorted into extremes.

Chaste and eager boys
with rapt eyes and ivory hands
grasp at the high notes in the Voice,
twisting their tongues
in pretentious articulation
and drool, dreaming of perfect worlds.
They write dry manifestos of idealism,
and march, singing fervent songs
of victory. Fill the void! they cry, aroused
by thoughts of fulfillment.
Fill the void! God is dead.

Seasoned and wrinkly women
with sagging breasts breathe in
moist whispers behind glass,
their stained faces pressed
together in dread, their tongues,
dried and withered, licking their
crucifixes in devout resignation.
They hear only the low notes.
It will fall, they murmur, excited
by masochistic thoughts,
It will fall, and He will return.

And always from outside the city gates–
if you listen closely, deeply, quietly–
moves the trembling notes of the Voice,
the stirring indifferent notes of the river Euphrates.

O beloved earth the river cries how I love thee how I adore thee how I love the mist that rises in thy morning’s breath and how the wind so delicately brushes back the hair of thy leaves and o how so true so true thou ist o earth thy sunrising heralds the fires of a new day and a new day glistens in the morning air and this and this is time slipping bubbling and frothing over into waves that tumble and race for infinity only to fall back only to rise again and again and again endlessly endlessly gurgling like a baby in innocent ecstasy.

And why dost thou strive so for climax?
And why dost thy wind and waves beat
steadily into the soft earth?
O nature, O conflict, O mother of humanity–
because thou must, thou must fight forever,
thou must–to become passive were to die.

The actual fulfillment is not the point,
no–that apocalyptic end of everything
leaving only emptiness–
one final, meaningless, apathetic
resolution where the world means nothing,
where you are nothing, where the tower
stands for nothing but as a reminder
of barren dreams and faded hopes.

It is rather the heat, the spark, the friction,
the continuous rhythm of brick upon brick,
the eternal beating of two restless hearts
melded together in a molding fire,
that keeps the fire burning.

Believe, believe in my mystery,
in my endless offering of hope.
Babylon the Great–
even in your abomination and filth
you have risen this tower.
Have faith in what once was,
now is not, and yet will come.
Perfection, destruction–love, hate–
stillness, movement–you are two and one,
melded together in a molding fire,
fighting forever, yin and yang.

So the tower stands like a phallus
without a head, rearing its
senseless shaft of creation, craving
enwrapping folds of consummation,
aching to penetrate the universe.

And in this lies the brutal splendor of life–
the whole ecstasy of it all
waiting patiently within that simple swelling
of emotions, that building friction
between two embattled worlds–
not within the hopeless burst,
the trembling, shuddering screams
of selfish pigs over slop.
The whole meaning of life
dwells humbly within
drops of anticipation
that dribble out of a word
or a look, or a touch.
The whole beauty of life is
that pulsating heart that pumps
heatedly, the fire thickening
as swollen tongues battle
endlessly for that perfect,
profound revelation of the universe
building up inside like a tower.

To Live

(written in 1996)

I

The drip, drip, dripping of time runs in rivulets down
the gaping wound on the side of the eternal boy.
The scabs continuously rub against themselves,
pouring forth new pain from the deep caverns within,
from the hungry depths of resentment and anger,
cutting away at the corpse of the man,
eating away at the decaying walls of the man,
the pain possesses, the snake entwines the host.

His bloody eye, ever roving for release,
settles upon a passing child, a little girl
who reminds him of a forgotten part of himself–
and the storm of suppressed feelings
rages into his mind, the winds blowing past
into his hands–beating, beating, remembering now
the anger, the hatred released upon his head–
he feeds upon the pain–hers–his. To make
another feel this pain, to release, to fill
the hollowness inside with another’s heart
stolen, ripped out with his bare hands–
he flies away crying hoarsely, a dying boy,
a living man.

II

I brush my hands–lightly
against my bruises,
feeling the vestiges
of another’s hurt–I
have always believed
in god until now–now
it is a hollow steel image
nailed above my bed.
I hate him.
I see strange things–
in my dreams–
barren landscapes,
charred by the fires
of wars, ruined
by the havoc of storms.
I hate myself.
Why do people turn
against themselves?
I rub my hands together,
feeling a warmth
only outside.

III

Time, the eternal lacerater, flows forever,
washing the wounds of the injured
in the blind waves of deceitful memory,
leaving restless scars in the belly
that must be stoked with the fiery touch of hope.

But what is the world without hope, where
does one fall to be saved, what is the world
without hope but emptiness and death
and pain and pain and endless pain?
Cut off from herself in the past,
she tries to reunite the shards, the pieces–
blood seeps out the cracks formed
by the forced union–never to be whole again.
There is no hope for one who has already died.
She casts her hands out into the dark space,
groping, and feels the cold rigidity of the crucifix
above her head–the hollow steel image that is him–her–
sparks fly and she wonders if there is a chance–
tobe reborn?.canI. canwe. . .
No–there is Nothing.
But a fire once started cannot be stopped
except by time and time and death.
She looks in the mirror and sees nothing–
and that is the world–everything, anything–
beautiful, the world is horrifyingly beautiful
and it was there all along, before and after
the snake–it takes death to know life–
a shattered image, broken to emptiness,
is life itself in truest form: piercingly aware
of death and its encompassing futility.

IV

I am nothing, nothing,
but part of everything;
I am nothing, nothing,
but the world, the universe;
I am nothing, nothing,
but life and death–
I have tasted the blindness
and now I can see;
I have touched the judgment
and now I can sing–

I am nothing–
nothing–
and I am beautiful.

Moon Shore Sonata

There is a rocky shore illuminated by the moon on its rocks, & the water choruses up against it, an alien form inevitably integrated, for the water is unforgiving & completely compassionate. I sit on a high tide inscripted bench, witnessing this primal interaction & trying to understand. A language beyond translation. The birds bob unperturbed on the crest of waves, their rotund opaque eyes capturing everything. Clouds coagulate on the horizon, enlightened by the moon and its reflection. & I am lost in the possibilities I missed this day. That beautiful smile leveled at me that I let go like an unharnessed sail, shooken without change. & here this water mocks me, for its armies conquers all, yet it never captures anything. So who am I to deserve grace? The rocks are hewn by relentless love. My heart is soft, & I am missing you. This moon & its ocean music mean nothing to me.

A Love Song

I loved loving you, pretty princess of the slipstream, come to me out the abyss of the unexpected. But like a breath, I’ve let you go, slow, so slow it hurt, the emptiness so close, it hurt when I drew back new blood into my heart again. I am sorry to have lost you, but I cherish the knowledge of the space you once filled. I am growing from your transference of primal understanding, the metaphysical data that has passed like your wind through my reed. We crafted together a song, an art form that was so powerful that we could only wonder in amazement after it had been passed, after it had come out of us and stood hung before our minds. I am still amazed at your memory, glazed into my skin. There is a loneliness so deep within. There is a hunger you fed that nurtured the flame. Do you know this light that comes from my heart? It is my mind and my body, thirsting for you in this unreachable void. It falls, it travels, it spans into a million stars in the nightsky of our dreams. I loved you, guapa. See the evidence written in the darkness? It may take forever to forget this–for every breath I take is an echo of the birth and death of this love.

Life, the venture of inevitable failure–we live for the fullness of balance that can only be achieved through death. In between there is the beauty, the spiralling movement forward and outward and toward the door in the sky that lets into the space. We love, we love, we love, and we understand, finally, that each and every love is the ultimate purpose for which we have been placed into our bodies.

And now I can sleep without fear of tomorrow, because I know what I have left behind.

Economics of the Corazon

True riches, in any sense, are not a gift of happenstance. They are the accumulation that comes from the denial of waste. Gaining age is a lesson in economy. As youths we waste our energy, spitting it out like radiation, seeking immediate gratification. If we learn anything at all as we grow older and less prone to outbursts of hormonal activity, it is the conservation of our energy, putting our time and love into that which we know is worth the investment. We learn to act in interest of self-preservation, rather than self-destruction; in light of longevity, rather than fleeting release. We learn that the highest reward comes with patience, concentration, and a consistent, diligent trimming of personal desire. When we want nothing, only then are we ready to receive.

Out In

What brings me higher–when my heart is widened with new, unforeseen love–also breaks me open to a new realm of emptiness, a deeper, rawer despair. Even in the midst of a bliss I had forgotten could exist, I am falling. I imagine that there is a point where the depths meet the sky, a point where intense ecstasy and intense pain are indistinguishable, a point where I am rising and falling and torn apart and left with nothing, nothing but a sweet residue of self that sits empty in the midst of the universe, filled only with the sonic wind of the sun, a puppet played but by god. But right now, my heart is strummed and snapped by the eyes of a woman, by her touch, by her lack of touch. And the penetration of her desire takes me to a level of beauty I had not known for so long. Beyond the blinded eyes of the world, beyond the compromise of daily need, beyond the groveling hunger of loneliness. Here in this place against her body, there is no such thing as victory or defeat–there is only the holding . . . and the letting go. And I pull back into myself further, feeling yet more the incredible, unfathomable distance that lies between two hearts, and marveling that this could ever traveled, and wondering, and wondering, and hoping, and despairing, that this road could ever be found out of the darkness again

Me In A Lonesome Mode

The world revolves around the space from which it was created, the word of the godhead a formless first sound breathing into the horribly beautiful noise of the many worlds crashing together in escape of themselves; the gravity of the unknown bends all of this mess of thought somehow, gathering the light back inward. Hunter S Thompson shot himself on the phone to his wife. Such is love, perhaps. A giving of the final, terrible glimpse of emptiness that huddles within all to another. Displaying naked the inhuman terror that is truly love: everything, everything, everything. There is irony in all of our efforts to communicate ourselves to the world. Our words are petty, defined by a tradition of linguistic patterns, barely capable of offering more than a momentary commentary of our incapability to look beyond ourselves. Our gestures are habitual, we grope at each other as if in the dark, desperate to reassure our minds that the world beyond will feel as what we have been taught. There is horror in the night; we lie awake looking at the blue shadows cast by the moon, meaningless without us, but all meaning lying far past comprehension. Our animal selves long dormant within us tremble into adrenaline, awoken yet unseeing. It is all right, it is all right, it is all right, you tell yourself, sensing an incredible danger but unable to locate its source. It is not all right. All of creation sparks within your mind. And there is no one to wrap their arms around you and cradle you into oblivion, not here, not within yourself, not so deep that no words could penetrate, no mind know. Not in the incredible vastness that takes the light back even before it has left. Shining into nothing, the moon, the sun, the reflectance of nothing. The naked spark of a beauty too powerful to be seen. Love shows you the way into this place where no one can enter. You leave yourself behind. You leave it all behind. Everything. Everything. Everything.

You’ve Got A Valentine From Mark! (Shoot it up your ass, Cupid)

So have you found that one who completes you yet, your “soulmate”? According to all pop music and Hollywood movies, this should be the defining purpose of my life. I sure wouldn’t mind finding some chick that somehow resolves all the inner and outer dilemmas of my existence. But from all my experiences thus far, women only complicate things. I’m about ready to throw in the towel on the quest for the Holy Girl. Not that I was really stressing myself out looking for her, or anything. Not that I ever really even tried, in fact. But still, just feeling the possibility of any such a thing existing exerts some kind of unnecessary pressure on my brain. It’s like if you think Santa Claus or Satan exists–you have to craft all sorts of confusing tangential myths simply to address the movement of getting out of bed in the morning. Let’s be blunt and to the point here. Basically, if you do not “possess” someone, if you do not have “someone to love,” then in this society you should be fundamentally ashamed, there is something wrong with you, you should desperately seek to find someone to claim and you should post an ad on Yahoo Personals or something. I mean, it’s almost like if you don’t got nobody, then you can go to the supermarket or the club or the bar or the Personals and buy someone and try them out. Me: I’m smart and funny and rich and I like to lick perineums. You: Bovine and well-endowed and can type up to 80 words per minute. In other words, based on things completely unrelated to anything having to do with divine intervention, you strive to formulate a bond based upon the ideal of simply being claimed. Because once you are claimed, then there’s no more need to stress out about being “one of the losers.” Who wants to be alone, unhappy, unpurchased? Buy me, buy me, buy me!

Who is my soulmate? Who will buy me and use me forever and recycle my soul? Who will complete my fragmented, insufficient self? Who will take my useless days and give them meaning? Who will understand what I can never say? Who will endure my stacatto farts? Who will look beyond my heart-stopping good looks?

Guess I’d better just devote the rest of my time to Allah . . .

Involvement

Sometimes the world, the wide sea of circumstances wraps you up in its tentacled coils and suddenly you are acting and watching yourself act and having no idea wherefore or why. There are forces within yourself beyond your immediate knowing. Your life is indeed a mystery. Every new situation posits a crumb trail of clues to your heart, but the central motive must remain hidden, like dark matter, exerting an inescapable pull towards your omega point–by the time you have awoken, you’ve already stepped out over the edge.

I looked up at the stars tonight and knew their light within me. My life is incredibly beautiful, and it is a song I must sing. I don’t know what note will come out of me next, but I can feel it birthing itself in the barricades of my innermost being, and it feels good, it feels fucking good. And I enjoy this stillness that listens.

who are you?

introversion–the folding within yourself, the witholding of immediate definitive information of your feelings from the world. in the daily, moment-by-moment, play-by-play, press conference of your life, sometimes it is wiser to wait for events to fully unfold before offering up your honest analysis of the situation. it is nice, of course, to vent your feelings in the form of gossip, to feel reassured that your current assessment and course of action are supported by your friends and peers. but you are role-playing then, are you not? you are staking out a position, strategizing, acting the part of victim, or of hero, or whatever you may deem most favorable to your career as a human being. but who are you, really? did you stop and ask yourself that before you spoke in judgment?

yes, politics is a tricky game–even when you claim to not be playing it, you are playing it. we like to think that we are untouched by the ivory halls of justice and boardroom policy making–just as perhaps silver-haired men in suits surrounded by secret servicemen may like to think that they are untouched by us, the underground individuals–but those are thoughts bound by convention. for our every movement, thought, and manifestation of ourselves is political. politics is about more than power, despite what Chomsky may say–there are more to the dynamics of law and order and commerce than simple mafioso maneuvering and slick, shifty-eyed lies. there is also the fact of human interaction, in the marketplace of the everyday, in the information of the flesh passed subconsciously on the subway, in the gaze of the enlightened upon the statue in the park, in the brush of words sputtered out of my inversions–there is no escaping our connection to each other through ourselves. so look–look at yourself, take a good look at yourself and reflect on your ephemeral beauty. what is the use? what is the value? who is this that determines your worth? the eye of the beloved is in your mind. the light of the sun is in your spine. the music of the ages issues forth from your mouth. bow to yourself, and everything else. and let the movement of the world go on around you in its endless chorus of need. because there is nothing that you can take, and there is nothing that you can give. so when the reporters come up to ask you, Who are you?

You can answer them with a smile, and point back at them, and wait, patiently, til the end of the world, for their reply.

An Early New Year’s Sacrament

a new time–according to our inconsistent calendars–is coming, a new year, another age to be added to our accumulated life span. the years pass so fast now, it seems faster every year that i grow older, my memory can barely keep up with my birthdays–i have to think to remember how old i am–mostly because it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. time, what is time? i measure time more accurately by the ups and downs of my relationships with others, and the development of my self–how we grow, how we move on, how we hold on, how the light slips through the cracks into everyday everymoment communion, how love holds my mind high through the bullshit. some of yous i haven’t talked to or seen since buddha knows when. but i can feel you here with me as i stand on the precipice of my life looking down into the future, ready to witness a world i have never seen, ready to experience things i’ve never known, ready to fall to my ever eventual death without the fear of losing what i have never had. yes, another year, another calendar to be crossed off. i look back at this year, and all the years before them, and feel supremely grateful, and blessed. i think of all of the love i have felt and continue to feel. i think of the turmoil, and pain, that i have caused in others, and that i have caused in myself. and it’s inconceivable to me that i should be so blessed. how i try to tear myself down to mold myself into the suffering i think that i deserve, only to find rays of light coming through my heart, only to find my hands taken and gripped by the most beautiful people i could imagine–and how i have been raised to heights by you, by all of you, angels to my mind, bathed in sharp light, spiralling forward endlessly crying out in the name of that which we cannot possess–this joy, this sorrow, this communal know-edge–this is why i live. this is why i struggle to press my heart to words. this is why i send this now to you.
happy new year.

hesitant thought flows in the spider-house in Austin

I
the minute of sentence is to speak this essence of what i see, what i seek, in the connection of infinite possibility that lies in the loss of what cannot be held anyway, to fly, as it were, into a space of play within the elements of what are, to sail with a given wind in a given direction ever always beyond my control; there are times in my life when the current eddies into a swirl of whirlpool stasis, when it seems that i cannot even feel, let alone express, the emotions which bestir the depths of my conciousness. and i act in ways that would appear to me to be counter to everything in which i thought i believed. but here is this spark, catching, fanning the flame of my fingers against the keys of a language that at times is like scratching against a wall, inert, cold, laden with rhetorical adjectives. . .
II
where is this deep place of integrity within you that lies so unknowably beyond language? in the flurry of drunken information that passes so swiftly in the form of money, you wake up into tomorrow half-way spilling over into endless gaps of a nameless suffering, like batter on a waffle-iron, burnt into a patterned shape molded for consumption. it is from the depths that emotions rise, filtered, bubbled eventually into expression, displaced, floating like the plastic piece inscribed with words in a fortune-telling 8-ball, the writing on the wall on the backs of your eyeballs twisted into your mind into an image that platters out of your tongue to be served into a wind of breath and sound into the space of the world. you project an image of yourself onto a plane of endlessly successive images, in the hope that somewhere out there in the darkness there is someone who can pick you out and understand you, and look into themselves and discover a language of themselves in which they can craft a response back to you, into you, to build a platform of a new perspective out of all of the emptiness that surrounds. . .
III
what i am trying to say is that i’m fumbling like an idiot in the darkness with a pen, trying to write myself into everything i come up against. but there are these feelings that i have in myself that i haven’t learned yet how to define. and i come stumbling across these vast new fields of perception in other people, and i suddenly no longer know who i am again, and i am like a child, struggling to place my flurrying emotions into articulation. where am i? who am i? my tongue flutters in my mouth like tree leaves in the breeze–ultimately untranslatable, more of a momentary feeling that passes into the next block as you drive by on your way to your destination.
and yet. and yet. there is definitely this light in my gut that i can feel emanate out my eyes, despite the endlessly blind progression of passerbys: i find it in the dive bar smoke stippled scene, in the live wire plunge of practiced instruments attuned to my attention, listening to the formations of what i have never before heard, i find a sense of redemption in the patterns of loving, brave people who have left their societally defined selves behind, who stand before us weaving strange new threads of wonder, a multi-colored universe in which we are fully embraced if we choose to be, if we can let go of our fear and plunge forward into motion: a place in which there is no judgment, there is no holding back, there is no dissociation of beauty from that which is all around and here and now. i strive to reach this place with my haphazard happenstance words, with my frantic urgent need to connect to you across this physical distance, to reach that within me which is most true, most beautiful, and most worth sharing with you.

Road Trip Chronicle Installment II

becoming an alien visitor to new worlds is a matter of learning acceptance–if one is to do more than the prescribed touristy activity calculated for maximum drainage of your pocketbook. acceptance of standards of living and ways of perceiving people that are outside of the box of what you are accustomed to. eventually, the habits and customs of your history dissipate into the constant adaptation that is required to meet the demands of an unknown and spontaneous universe. anything can and will happen, for there are no ways of sustaining reductive expectations in the face of what you cannot prepare for. yes, in the heartland of America, it is easy to pigeon-hole the people into Wal-Mart herds of banality, to hold up their strip-malled, colon-clogging comfort food overeating ways as representative of everything which is wrong and thus, to be immediately dismissed. but when you are in the midst of that which you would from a distance define, you find yourself talking and relating to people–no matter their appearance–as what they truly are–sentient and intelligent beings struggling to live and find their own winding paths to the light. it no longer becomes a matter of relating to people based on things such as political views and consumerist habits–it becomes a matter of relating to people based on how they actually live, and taking into account the whole context and environment of their situation, including all the problems so evident on the surface. this is not to say that all criticism must be suspended–rather, to say that one has to take into account how a people view themselves and their world. for if someone can find beauty and ways of existence in a world that i would perish in, than i want to try to understand what it is that they find in it that allows them to sustain themselves, and i want to try to relate to them based on how they relate to each other. there is indeed a lot of shit out here that is pretty fucked up. but i haven’t found anything here that is fucked up in a way that isn’t just as fucked up in a different way where i’m from. and so i am discovering new perspectives on myself and what i have become accustomed to, as well. for what we often use as judgment of other people are things which those people take for granted, and do not even think about, so ingrained in their culture it is. so really, learning my way to an understanding of other people is a way of learning my way to an understanding of myself.

Road Trip Chronicle Installment I

in the accumulation of mileage there is, for a while, a sense of loss of self; distinct formations of place and circumstance become washed under by a flash flood of constantly shifting information; there are squatting hulks of red desert rock; then there are trees, pines, aspen, fire-charred, green, yellow, barren; there are haphazard stones piled on stone like giant rock piles against the rain pregnant sky; there are giant windowed edifices of neon built up out of the promise of money; then there is just road, curving endlessly to some point known to some strange people simply as home. where is your place in this? you stop to gather pictures to study and make sense of this wonder later, or perhaps simply to share with others, to point at what you have seen and give it name, as if it were something you have known. but there is really only one wordless moment of perception, where the thing in passing becomes defined in your mind, before you could ever capture it, or claim it, or settle into its city limits–and this moment exists only in juxtaposition and knife-edge balance with the cosmic extremes of non-existance and eternity. how could you hold onto a stream of water? i stood at the ramparts of the Hoover Dam and looked down at the massive construction of concrete to which so many underpaid workers had given their lives–and i did not feel overwhelmed by the ingenuity and brute power of money and technology. no, for water can perhaps be dammed, and re-directed, and bottled. but it is in the end the water which controls us.
so it is that the journey defines us. we craft our narratives and drive our vehicles out through the vast stretches of mountain and desert, passing like flies through the stationary lives of small towns, through the electrified grids of cities, through the barren rock strewn remnants of sea-beds, through the winding snow dusted mountain passes, through the on-going daily struggles of life and death and movement.
who i am is a constantly shedding piece of everything. i am a window, sometimes reflecting the sun of the world outside of myself, and sometimes, in the night, you can look inside and see the sun in my lampshade, where i am studying myself here to learn my way into now.

Contemplation Next To The Fire Drinking Wine

I
why are we withheld from the world? why are we frightened of each other? why is it that the one whom you greatest love brings you the most suffering? there are no answers to the wounds we take, and inflict. the only hope we have is to find a solitary peace–to discover wisdom and bear fruit and cause no more suffering to this world that tries continually to draw us into this chain of neverending violence.
II
after a while in life you come to realize that there are no expectations that can be met–and thus, you learn to let happen the things that will, and let what will not happen go. ah, yet still, how i clutch to my thoughts as if they might change anything, as if who i am devolves around an ingrown desire to center everyone else’s eyes upon me. how barren, how bereft must my heart get in order for me to love, to simply love? what does it take for me to reach across myself to find my way into understanding of another’s needs? how much must i break myself down, and let myself be broken, before i can share this light i feel with you?

everybody feels the wind blow

i will tell you what i have discovered of love. it opens up your core and your eyes can see so deeply into each moment that before were veiled by fear of pain. you can look at the impassive beauty of the sunset on the lake and truly experience it, because you know what gives it meaning. i am like an alien in your bedroom, baring you to my curiosity. yes, there are walls of suffering everywhere trying to stop our bodies from knowing eternity. but despite all insecurity, we cross into each other like boundaries were the dream, and our freedom scientifick reality. when i fall through space to find my lips on your surface, i sense shimmering waves billowing from far below what can be known. hunger to get there, to get to that place that we spend all of our life to remember. i would wait forever by this emptiness just to feel the gentle quiver of my heartstring plucked from another universe, breathing for the moment when my deepest self is hooked into you.
love is the verification of everything that you have become. love is the refutation of everything you have been. love is here. love is now.

I Still Clear

are we gonna step up and dance, or are we gonna watch ourselves stumble into despair? the beat is there, you can feel it in your lips when words form like waterdroplets to fall into meaning. why should we be frightened of what might come out when we release our body to a greater rhythm than our mind? how good do you have to be to move? is freedom learned?
no. freedom is earned by letting go of all the bullshit accumulated by years of bullying, freedom is there for those who choose to not police themselves, who choose not to fear each other, who choose to love, love, love everything that touches their heart, and leave behind everything for that moment of connection, for that spark of rapture in the glowing eyes of their beloved.
the only thing that is learned is how to better hide ourselves from suffering. but this suffering is the only thing that leads us to feel, to free ourselves of inattention, to focus on what truly matters. freedom is not necessarily happiness. but it provides the ability to gain happiness, to reach across seemingly insurmountable boundaries, to talk to that beautiful queen whose eyes met yours and flashed with the future, to vault your insecurity and touch what you know is there even if you can’t believe it, to press your lips to her honeyed sweetness and taste ecstasy. what could have prepared you for this?
we have everything we need. we have eyes to see, ears to hear, mouths to breathe. everything else is a shroud hiding us from each other.

My Way

where is this elusive purpose to which we drive ourselves daily, getting by, consuming our chosen poisons? where is this happiness, this contentment, this place of arranged and meaningful things centered about our hearts? is it in the future, in the achievement of degrees, the acquisition of a spouse, the steady flow of money? is it in the present partying, the nights spent drinking and smoking myself to a point bordering oblivion? is it in her eyes, or her eyes, or her eyes? where is my heart? where is my mind . . . fuck my mind, i don’t regret losing that shit. but my heart, my heart . . . it is waiting for something better than anything that flows temporally through the lobes of my contemporary understanding. it is waiting patiently for my death, it is waiting patiently to stop its steady pumping, to reside into silence, to relax into god. so i keep running, and i keep eating, and i keep drinking, and i keep carrying this heavy load of desire on my back every day. until i die, this is my curse, this is my blessing, to be human, to be confused, to be hungry, to be crying shamelessly into the night to be held and loved and known. i can’t be that monk, holding myself away from the world, i can’t be that saint, giving myself to the world, i can’t be anything but myself: and this–this is what i feel. so fuck everything i’ve ever known and read and been told–i’m going out to live and find my own way through this bullshit.

Blast

like so imagine this over a salsa beat, in miami streets, in the kind of
heat that makes the city wired with sweat. imagine that you are somebody
who is exciting, somebody who sprinkles their bangs in the air and everyone
shakes to the music, in the trembling sacrifice of all expectations,
cut across the horizon of care, there is only image, sparkling water on the
screen, a toning of gravity. the sexiest spirit in the heavens enters the
body of a woman, and all of the people dance in devotion. there is
competition, there is rivalry, there is bitterness. it blends into the
sweetness of her shining. the drummers play to draw the invisible out.
whosoever saith that taming of cobras is a hoax because cobras are
hypnotized not by the sound of a flute, but rather by its motion, are fools.
there is magic in every movement. a tunnel in the fabric of reality to a
world that won’t be understood, only created. it appears, transmitted by
your tongue, by your vision, by your trail in the sand. it comes through
you, out of you, into a space where it is devoured. the feeding of the
hungry children of the light.
become addicted to what is positive. we are not drifting apart. we are
coagulating into orbs so delicate, formed from the deepest toughest roots in
the earth, that when we are crushed, the finest wine in the many worlds will
be drunk by the gods, and they will throw a party of vast dimensions. yeah.