When I Asked Who Didn't Know

So I sat there thinking about being,
answering a lifetime's question
in one moment of one night.
Clarity would dawn upon me as
I let myself be lead by the hurried
hand of one kamikaze thought.
Quickly,
he said moved
through memory
as lightning struck outside the window,
inside my chamber of secrets revealed.
Come, and I did
through amazing eyelashes you're gay brainbox
angel good attempt idiot crazy gay dux
cool accent where are you from gypsy in the back of my mind
don't judge me victim my best friend sick
one of the kindest always says bitch little girl
mama is that like Rome sooooooooo smart anxious
sinner him too nerd effeminate awesome
never be left behind easy doormat door
guilty positive good with words hypersensitive
disgustingly cute Pengu overthinking
controlling liar Son of God gay
couldn't deliver disappoint empathetic Protoss
French economic historian writer
so sorry there for you ego lost wrong
and then I ran out of breath,
having chased memory to the bolt that held its chains.
He turned around, looked at me
with unfeeling
and left me with all these answers
in the dark to find the answer.

Take Me Up

There is piano music playing in the background. You try living without your other half, without two quarters of your ego. It's a liberating nightmare, a full-blown dispatriation in split senses. And anywhere you go is the potential of the moment to remove the earth beneath one of your feet, testing your balance, checking to see whether you are able to shift your weight onto the right foot in time. Watch your back, try to prepare and you end up projecting your fears onto the future, a half-wish come true halfway up the stairway to heaven. Just then, you hit that bump, that wooden plank that's rotten to the touch and gives way under the weight of your guilt as you step on it. I thought you would have left your baggage at the bottom. When you refused to take the elevator, the doorman told you to leave the luggage downstairs anyway, that you couldn't possibly take it upstairs with you. But you, stubborn and foolish, held on to it. At least half of your mind did.

But I have told you, you cannot achieve anything with half of you. It's either all or nothing, the decision has to be whole. And so, climbing the stairs has been an uphill struggle. You see happiness at the top, but it's a narrow road and you know you can't hold all your shit with you, mountaineer.

You wish I'd just move on, but so do I, believe me. Tell me you're not an idiot, and I'll believe you, but for fuck's sake don't tell me you can handle what you hold in your pockets. You have a half-burnt cigarette for your middle finger and are squeezing a removed doll's head in your left hand's crush grip. Exhausted, are you not? Perhaps you'd like me to go on, say 'anyway' or 'regardless', and just move on up the steps. I don't have to lumber your ball and chain of course, but I swore I'd take you up, and that's what I'm going to do.

So, I implore you, leave those things you value downstairs. See, just unclench that angered fist and your broken toy will roll down the steps along with those painful memories. This is about letting go of the past. You can't heave it up, heaven doesn't accept things that have passed their expiration date. You can't go in with broken mementos, or with souvenirs of suffering. Believe me, you don't need them anymore, there's enough childhood and joy there to satisfy all of the world's children that have ever lived. Have faith that you will find it.

Now that you're looking into my eyes, I want to assure you that the way we travel is the right way. Your doll's head cannot talk, even though you hear its voice. It's but a passing wind, one that will cease its whispering once you're no longer in range of its emission. So when you recall those visions and thoughts that mean nothing even here, even before we have reached where you want to go, you cannot forgive yourself. Why are you holding yourself to such an obscenely distorted standard? What have you to die for? Rolling emotions? Unrooted sentiments? Fear that you have hurt? You cannot hurt, I'm telling you, it isn't in you. All you can do is make these images in your head of being a tyrant, a deceiver, a betrayer, a cheat, a liar, a destroyer, a dictator, a fallen angel. These are such violations of reality, of what you are, that if you knew, if you only knew, you would instantly let go of all the pain you're holding on to and go up. Since you have forgotten the difference between what is true and what isn't, I've come to take you up the stairs, to teach you what that is. You don't need to understand. It's better that you don't, actually.

So, stop. Let go.

Then, lighter, keep walking, and it will feel more like you are traveling a flat path, closer to the truth.

Taste

Reprieve; a guided hand knows where the land rears and where the seas part. It knows nowhere, although it extends from a place so vast and lost in space; that is where he can be found.

He ground the last of the coffee as if they had been the first coffee beans exported from Brazil. Fresh off the boat, they exploded under the crushing incising of the titanium blades, attached to a raging, screaming motor by a middle-aged Chinese worker in a factory. Fine powder went into a Corphala mug and it lay there, tepid and dry. Coffee. Someone's salary. Someone's morning pick-me-up-(and-stay-with-me-until-work-finishes). Not his. His was for someone else who needed the caffeine to stay awake. Orget (Orjay, for anglophiles) slept just fine and could now greet the day with someone else's drug. He poured the boiling water into the mug and watched the steam snake its way to just before his nostril vacuum. Still working properly. And with all the sheer momentum of the blades in the grinder and the suck of his lungs, he grinned last, before the unflattering glob of salivation collapsed onto the surface of the black, black sea - his present for the manager, his man-ager.

Going

Teeter-tottering on the edge of reason,
Wondering how long it will be until
The knife cuts deep into my opaque resolve.
Is there not long to go?
I can feel the dial turning on my clock,
An emotion switches to another.
Back here I am sitting, waiting,
For the last thing to go wrong next
And for me to fall in a straight line
Of repair, recovery, reset, repression,
Until there's just about nothing left.

Because, let's face it,
What really matters doesn't matter
And what doesn't really matter matters.
So is the web spun, twisted.
Why would we say we want it different
When we expect it always this way?

Such is how God delivers the goods.
Feastingly, our mouths: open garages
With vans of servitude parked inside.
Ready to be taken for a spin
Outside the parking lot
On the soaked roads at night
With the streetlights mirrored
In the darkened flesh of the ground.
There can't be any people here
Except cameramen and the
Director.

That's right, Him.

I don't blame him for tragedy
For two reasons:
One, it is not my blame to attribute and
Two, I cannot attribute blame where it is not.
If a guilty man were to sleep
He would sleep with his blame
And no woman nor man,
Could take it upon themselves.
No one lets go of their cross
And we carry them on our backs
In the heaviness of pain
With the anger of blame.
Imperfect tools.

After all, the weight will break our bodies
Not in a literal sense
Because that wouldn't make sense.
We'll all be smiling in heaven
In the metaphysical bliss
That's, oh, oh, so close
That you can feel it more and more.

Teeter-tottering on the edge of reason,
I'm finding no answer where none is supplied.
Riding in the front seat,
I can pretend that I am going,
But the truth is
I don't know how to drive.

The great lesson I am learning is that
The less and less I struggle to survive,
The more and more I know I am alive.
That's why I never wrote the script,
Just followed the directions.

Phoenix In Flight

When there's a piece you hide inside,
You don't know anything, anything
About the world outside your emptiness.
Hearing shot whispers, voices bellowing
Are cries of fear of being loved
For who you are, for who you are,
For who this damn confusion knows its spark.

And something tells me you won't know,
You won't care less to know what's right
Unless you break the chains that you're still tying yourself in.
Please, don't give up the fight now,
There's a guiding light, a path for you to take
And that's the way the wind is blowing
That's the way your love is flowing, away.

Cruelty keeps a place of hate in the abyss
Where your heart once used to be, to belong,
And it doesn't want you to come back, it doesn't want you at all.
But it needs you to survive
The pain you kept inside it wants too,
Yet you have to make the livid choice
To live or die by prayers you make, for your sake.

How do I know,
That you'll be here,
When I come back?
You'll still be near
And not fall away
Not broken
Not shattered
Not ashamed
Not in pain
But okay. Okay.

'Til then you might only peace undisturbed
But yours certainly will be tainted.
You can't run away forever
And you can't light all speed.
You have to take your chances
And throw them all into your fire
Out of the sparkles and heat
Will come alive, again, a bird.
As it flies away, you'll be on its back
And you'll spend the life together,
No ashes will carry in the wind
That's tearing your dreams apart.

Oh, don't confuse yourself any further
Truth is but a wingspan away
Bring it into the horizon,
And let it shine the darkness into day.

Come. It's time.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Have you ever been told by a day that the world is your oyster, it keeps itself together and it won't fall apart? In the moments that pass, know that there is a chance to redeem all that you've lost. I do believe in substance, in the forwards backing truth, and there's an idea that speaks in the past like a wheel. It turns. Some call it the eclipse, some the sands of time, some aren't quite aware of it. Regardless, it spins, and out comes a web that we all are tangled in, not trapped in the sense that we yearn to escape, but free because the web protects us from what is not real. Rest assured, you shall not asphyxiate because the web grows larger by the moment, always expanding, always growing. Will it collapse upon itself one day? Irrelevant, until it isn't.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. And, those dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.

Something tells me the rainbow is somewhere behind me. I stand here, where else but here? And that dream that I dared to dream has come true. Happiness, is unfolding itself within me and this places the rainbow behind me. I can always turn back to look at it and admire the hope that it gives, and remind myself of the days when it did offer me hope. When it signed itself as a guide, a myriad of lights playing in the rain, it shone. I followed, step by step, until I went over the rainbow. It hasn't stopped raining, and I am closer to basking in the rays of heaven as they glow a larger and larger halo through the clouds in the firmament. It's wonderful. Mysterious, but a known mystery, a reminder that I've been here before and am simply welcomed back. It hasn't changed one bit, nor should I expect peace to do that.

I like it here. This too shall pass. D'accord.

Peace.