water

The cold
relentless
water

Constant
pressing in

air escapes
fighting breaks

emptiness begins

down

I feel it coming down on me.
It is always self imposed
but that doesn't change a thing,
doesn't make it less.
Most truthfully revealed,
that makes it worse.
To easily I shirk the thoughts of others.
To readily I discredit the critic.
But when the voice is inescapable?
When it comes from inside
and is a constant beating
loud and down,
my spirit is reduced to dragging.
I faintly pull myself from sleep.
I go through the motions
and I feel the hope has left me.

2 weeks

2 weeks.
For a straight 2 weeks
2 weeks straight I forced myself to stay awake.
Something like grotesque curiosity.
It is only my responsibility
to test the limits I can impose
and to experiment on me.

The sun is rising on what may push to a third
Sleep has become the newest dirty word
for something lost brings something I can earn
and only when I push myself will I be brought beyond
the boundary of what I have already learned.

Only the clothes have changed
I ought to think on that
and people seem different when you see them multiple times
in the same cycle
you look at someone with a tone of judgment
if you know they have slept since you saw them last
when you haven't.

They don't know
though
how could they?
but perhaps the sense it in your eyes
or the stare that seems to drive you from the conversation
with a broken waiting.

How long I can push this
is clearly different
from how long I should
with the aid of foreign substances
I could probably never sleep again
and the efficiency would increase
exponentially

But there is a voice in your head
and falling from your teeth
before you continue to operate this
heavy machinery
you maybe aught to contemplate
at least a little sleep.

Us and Them

I often wonder:
"What separates this from me?"
"Where do the edges around my form stop
and the edges of this object begin?"
Objectively.
What defines "This" from "Me"?
Where are the bold line we all claim to see?

Do you claim this authorship?
Can anyone?
I feel that life is slipping from my grasp
and draining into these things that I surround my self with.
But something keeps me piling them up
against the onslaught of eternity.

As if I can encapsulate my self in them.
As if they are the amalgamation of my self.
As if I can be remembered by the objects I pour myself into,

but they are poured into me and I am left to the mourning of them.
For they feel me not,
nor do the fear the passing of time.
nor do they fear the loosing of mind.

I hold my self under the influence of them as long as I can stand
and still it does not help,
and still I  am left without the gratitude they are deserving.

I will never learn,
not like the things in my life,
not like the lie I choose to be surrounded by.
So when you look upon my life,
when you take the time to analyze my holdings,
remember that I chose these things to quantify my life.
I chose where to define the lines between what is "I" and what is "Mine"

Elemental Awakening

Wind is rattling my bones,
and throwing out these hardened stones
for this,
the hollow cold is broken, weeping.

Sunlight hardened every foe,
it beckoned frontward, head to toe,
at once,
our sudden tomb is opened, shrieking.

Refuse to let the anger grow,
I cast my vision to and fro,
and hear
The darkness to my bedside, creeping.

As the tree tops sway and show
how powerful the forces blow,
at last,
my lids draw slow and lo,
escort me to the sleeping.

endings

I hoped that this would find an ear more welcome to the listening.
Yet deep between the eyes of the it landed lightly hissing.
My thoughts before the fire were nothing more than passing wind.
The speech I dare to cast to thee more tempting than a sin.
We press the items nearer still and see the outcome thus.
I hold the findings much to dear and welcome all the hush.
Still no one dares to utter here the words that all are thinking.
With this one vote i've yet to cast our ship is well past sinking.

Horizon

There is a dancing just ahead
a blinking hope for something.
No more than the loss of lingered dread
can cast the wanting from my head.

The hope for answers, tease me.
I fail to find the point.
Still there is nothing left aside
the changing of the lights.

Before this vision passes
I feel my eyes yet swell.
It is all just as well
for fleeting are my glances.

Nothing gained is not then lost
and nights worth keeping often tossed.
Oft in memory, once we had
the mind o're sadness often glossed.

I look to something in the future found.
Though never be acquired in hand.
The searching brings the truest happiness,
more valuable then all the revel sounds.

paper

Broken folded papers

held plans and ideas for a future

abandoned ideas litter the roadside

so many missed opportunities 

how cluttered can one place be

will i ever see the end

will the fruition be ever reached

if i think to heavy on things

my will gives out
most times i really think about myself
it takes no time to realize

i lack the follow through to achieve anything

slide

Gentle
running down slow
slow and determined
heavy and deliberate
Gentle
these fleeting feelings
fall out of me
effortlessly

criminal

I feel myself being flanked
the rising pressure of the ranks beside
the timing of it all is trying to break
but the feeling may never subside
I put myself into this position
the balance and counter balance of it
I am held at arms length for inspection
but the true task is just outside of my vision
I lean in close to listen
but the whispers are barely slips of hope
he slowly sips his chosen poison
and sets up for the next attack position

position

Assume the position.

eyes down

head forward

knees bent

hands clinging to any semblance of self that they allow me

here

I know my place

here

I know my boundaries

here

 I cannot fail

 

or succeed

How did you get that scar?

"It is something of a funny story."
That's what I will tell myself
over and over
skipping inside one track
until I believe that is all there is.
I will paint this over and over and over
and over again until I believe it was that way.
Until the outside is how I see the truth.
the time it will take to convince myself will be nothing,
compared to the time lost in the shattering.
the brisk of white.
How I heard the flashing lust.
I held it up so high
and even as it passed
I knew it was more that I had expected,
and unexpected.
This is a lot more to feel than my grey matter can process.
I peeled back the layers once
but it turned me right out.
With no other option left I put on the face of the manufactured truth.
I now hold up the mirror to block the light back
and in the retelling
it shines just as bright behind.
"It's a kinda funny story, actually"

Have we met?

I can't be trusted
I can't trust
due to the data collected
due to the future projected
only a fool follows
only a fool allows himself to be followed
only a fool follows
due to the future projected
due to the data collected
I can't trust
I can't be trusted

breathing room

the information is out there

just waiting to be discovered

but that is really just a pique

due to the flooding of all things information

the world awash with zeros and ones and zeros

we have such a finite time to search

to find

to learn

to discern

and no guide is reliable to teach

and no time is available to glean

we know that we will not attain the peak of the holy mountain

before time runs aground

we are not even sure such a place is reachable

or tangible

but you either climb the slope or succumb to it

although

even in climbing we eventually succumb

but I suppose that the higher you climb

the less dense the population

the easier it is to breath

even though we all know 

the percentage of oxygen is comparatively low

so long

At first, the sight of you was a rare reward.
like the gift of waiting years for a taste.
As in the times you hear it approaching.
With baited breath I hold
until the gasping of your visage crossed my plain.

But the pay was not as it was meant.
The comings were short and the going much wanted.
There were no more whispers.
Just steady anxious talking built into a
swell of wordless grumbling.

I could feel the disappointment ripple through my veins
and cross the threshold to my face
but still you lived here
a burden unaware of the friend in hiding.

Too late was the calling of the future.
Too far behind was my desire to mend this rent cloth.
And now, as nakedness fills my senses
I know what it is that I have lost.

Pulsing
Like the deep mass they are.
But far from the brightest star
they take themselves for.

bore the mason's mark

More malicious is the many mandalovians
much manipulated woeful melatonin
wanton wars inspire wanted wailing
Moreover marching lengthy
manipulated martyrs leverage
mundane masses breaking
with supposed education.
Made up, grinding media coverage
mixed more for my own monarchy.
Manly men o're more mundane
for the right money I would gain.
I never my face shy from maintenance.
Must my yet still paces be paid?
I feel cared in the grooming
Much melding here aught be done
my willingness after the place that I have been
bred to never fit
my monetary champion is minuscule
compared to even more massacred multipliers
I wish to fill my role
If only once
I would prove thanks to my suppliers
support the reliable mark
mutilate the often minding masses?
The future's vitality deserves a better order and the
weak should expect to bend their knees
what requires more?
From times yore,
bitter the stings of the mundane misguided life.
Mystic markings explain the marvelous way
messages hang lightly over every plane
broken by fathoms of pain.
please accept!

Comparative studies in empty vessels

I know that I have been pacing these rows up and down for days.
I think that I am going crazy cause the faces seem the same.
After so long of nothing changing the brain begins manipulating
all the data it is saving for some abstract entertainment.

Is it so bad to drive myself insane in this desolate place?
The desert is a terrible location for any race.

I still reach out to embrace even the lowest of things.
Hungry for the change.
Like an unexpected malady I wait for thee,
with pride I would wear this pain.
I churn my body, wrenching in the sun,
and when it's done the freezing raps my bones.

Not even the passing time gives care to the broken man
strewn upon this open plain.
Not without the hardest attempt to bend my joints in ways never intended,
but in the breaking I release my spirit.
One drop and then another I paint myself across the landscape.
I only know that you will be impressed at what you have destroyed in me.
I am completely empty of the things that made me human.
I now can dwell alongside the empty landscape
guiltless.

Sameness of Men

I left this world as that sentence slid down your chin,
splattering amongst the potatoes like the rest of the unmixed gravy upon them.
In all these years I thought I had loosed the ability to disbelieve you.
Unique is not surprising, but the content surely stings the senses.
My ears feel sticky from the hearing,
not to mention the mind from knowing meaning.
Then, like all things that startle and set to undermine,
after the sting of suddenness passed,
it is rendered only a festering remnant.
A quickly forgotten wisp that faintly remains.
So too has every other man before you.

After the horse got out

It did not taper sharp enough
and the check did not engage the relief as it aught.
Knuckle whitening terror shook and the teeth were loosed.
Half way through the tap I changed my mind
and due to the poor construction,
this birdcage is more a work of art than a practical torture device.

Shine the steel all you want but the mind is still abused of it.
A bullet built somewhere between breath and butane sounds better
than the smile slowly leaving your face.
This dusty visage is but the stuff of wandering minds.
Unless you see the sights you never knew
there is danger in not keeping the gate closed.

Pin Prick

The screen has holes too wide to functionally filter anything
but it's presence is meant to make you feel safe
not actually keep you so.
Threaded and forced into the union.
Even a wish master lacks the inspiration at the suggestion.
Billows of brass burn at my nostrils and lift me on it's drifts.
Higher then the graying tops,
I can see tomorrow.

olfactory

Something of a ripened burning smell
lingering from...
i'm not sure where.
It licks at me, relentlessly.
Drifting out of the shadowed corner of every childhood closet it came to me.
Clinging to the remnants of my adolescent ramparts.
So sure we were in the reckoning.
But it was swept up in something....

a smokey mist

a soft gasp

existing 'tween solid and gas

But so heavily it hangs on my steering parts.
How still it takes it's hold.
I am powerless to the tortured grin of the past
but a slave is made of every master.

last night

Rising red on silver steed you push yourself into me.
Whether short or longer this distance is coated by time's plastic embrace.
I can't resist these thoughts,
built and bolted to suit me.
Between these fabulous rows we both know how the chemicals mix,
what results.
The pilot is long since out but the flame presses on,
either unaware or uncaring,
till the basket burns apart.
In one breath's time I find myself alone.
The red swells, spreading,
and you will never grace my home.

..

A cacophony of hip-hoppery
hypocrisy runs deep.
Sauntering and provocative
no offering this steep.
Profiting from the buffeting if
suffering comes cheep.
wondering how blunt, her sting
when pondering I weep.

Everyman

I no longer think of real people in this room.
I choose to imagine men that have been
set up as the means to achieve the end.
With both hands I require steadfast churning
but this runs deeper than a standard whim.
Within the millions of "Him."
There is no solitude in the dark corners of this world.
No untouched plain where pleasure finds refrain.
The strange thing is the drive toward pain.

Before I could hope to afford your gaze
I spent the weeping hours of my life imagining your approval.
I put shovel to paper and drew out a response to anything you could say
but you never played your part that way
and I found groping in the dark my only avarice.

I see a semblance of the things I once would strive toward
crumbling all around me.
Finding lives of their own without the watchful eye of my destructive gaze.
Corrupting,
something and nothing,
bleeding in the background of a screaming, winged thing.
To sure to put upon you.
That never stopped the ones whose voices freely flowed,
from throat to ear.
The brain behind these passionate eyes.
His sturdy hands will never hold me dear again.

Destroy me

I have the curse of closeness to you
for my advise,
no matter how correct,
will always be rejected out of hand.

I don't quite know how to say this:
You are killing me.
There is a fortune in the fact
that you waited so long to reveal yourself.

Now the store house is depleted,
and the ice is wearing thin,
destroying what you didn't understand begot the win.

Despite the carefully constructed 'way'
I felt the break of a few guidelines for the pleasure of 'love'
Love, as if it is a tangible thing.
As if it does any good to the progress of truth and worth.
For all my observations 'love' has been the down fall of every successful ambition for humanity.
But I digress,

You would think
that after riding around in my skull for so long
I would have figured out how to quell your destructive need.
You only feed on the things I work so hard to achieve.
Just,
Please,
let me have the things that bring me happiness
without rusting at the foundations of it.

Status quo

Contained within this infuriating visage is the worst of possible dualities.

Inability to make wise decisions.
Unwillingness to let others choose.
When encouraging others to make decisions it is never happy with the outcome.
So fearful of any idea that was not it's own.
Inexperienced in all things.
Demands perfection without practice.

A common combination of laziness and greed.

Love of the Poisonous Mermaid.

I, like all those that came before me, was born into the ocean
unwilling, unprepared, unguided
and seeing this I straight way began to learn all I could so as to climb out of the weighty water and propel myself in directions not always set by the currents

For the formative years of my life I studied hard.
Not the subjects necessarily required of me,
but the things that pertain to survival in this society.
How to steel my mind.
How to see my emotions as the rose from the primal depths at the slightest coaxing.
How to cull and control my base concerns.
I learned the way to keep the animal at bay.
With every thought and deed I built the boat
that I could steer through my life comfortably.
I set my sail to propel me into the world toward the horizons of my choosing.

It was not long into my voyage,
feeling confidant that I knew what I needed,
that, with the suddenness of dawn,
I see you struggling,
naked,
thrashing on the rocks.
A mockery of anguished beauty.
My vessel, as if on it's own, begins to circle.
Your eyes lock like they would on prey.
This course, once set, could never hope to stray.

Before the better thought had crossed me the offer to climb aboard is made
and, as no deviation could be paid by you I meet rejection.
You continue to thrash upon these rocks and sink below the depths.

It falls on me that in the moment I missed an important detail.
Under witnessed in all my pondering.
I was taken in,
encapsulated,
and beyond that it was painfully clear that you were never taught to swim.
Perhaps the ocean was something that you were not even aware of,
despite the fact that you were positively drowning in it every waking second of your life.
I looked out across the waters and I broke my better judgment.
The agreement we struck rang so pure in all of its ritualistic sacrificing.
I placed you in this vessel, and you reigned upon the tower I built for you.

Unfamiliar with the dryness of the open air.
You grew up drowning and despite it's being worse for you,
could not accept a world were you would stay afloat.
So, in attempts to make my domain more like your home
you almost immediately set to poking holes.

As the water poured in
and the panic washed over me
you looked upon my respons with anger and distrust.
"How dare you" you would shout.
"Why must you treat me like a child?"
and so, to quell the beast I thought it best to go along.
For, perhapse it was I who had been wrong
and, as if it had been the way I had always been I too began to drill the holes in my boat.
I see that because of the affliction I have put upon myself I now would rather drown in any misery,
experiencing your nearness,
than to survive happily alone.
What is that part of me?
I long to be happy, and for you to be happy
but yours is the wall.
Set in it's location so that time itself will not wither you from your course.
As I stare into the horizon,
knowing that this sinking vessel will never make it there,
I look upon your smiling face.
You seem so content,
so unaware,
as a caged, abused, pet
who, when given the clear chance to flee to better things would rather keep the home as hell so dear.
I know it will never be made clear to you,
so I embrace that.

As we sink to death I know that I have brought myself here willingly.
Even though I faced the choice to find the better,
still I chose to drown.
I know that I did.
I know that I didn't have to.
I don't quite know why,
and you
sweet,
oblivious.
Even though you are miserable you can't believe that it will ever be different.
So complacent in your complicated sadness,
a million hands could reach to pull you out and every one,
as it is a stranger,
you would only slap away in hurried anger.
the chance for good if through the unknown is not a risk worth taking
no matter how terrible life is.
The most terrible life is better than the unknown path to good.

errosion

You are responsible for how you feel.
You are responsible for how you deal with recurring waves of stimuli.
It is a slight and in the least a lie to say
"Tis you and no one else that made me feel a certain way"
No.

A person in this world can never feel responsible
for myriad things that happen in the facets of this cosmos
the things which people say will never bend at your control
the least of which the things that other people do to you.
Never you'll be asked permission for the things the world will throw at you
and you are wrong to seek to change those things.
the only place you have control over in all the cosmos' offering
is how you will react to things that filter through your brain

through your eyes
through your touch
through your ears

If a sentient being goes to say "I am offended"
As far as I can tell it is the same as saying
"I have no control
over my emotional
response to stimuli that this world is displaying "

"You need to change the things you say and then apologize"
is to say "I am too weak to handle my own life
and I demand that others take responsibility
I find that life is just to hard, so please live my life for me"

You operate under the blank illusion of control
when setting up the trust in others for the steering role.
The delusion is you wont allow yourself be treated thus
but one thing than another to the strangers you give trust.

The limited control we do have over our own minds,
aught be closely guarded and kept in check at all of times
not handed o'er to anyone that comes across our senses.
Your reaction to all things should lie behind defenses.

Should anyone with ideas that run contrary to your own
be given open access to your mind as 'twer a home?
in doing so we take the keys
our most precious commodity
our individuality
and give it over openly

Would you steer your own life?
Then demand nothing of others.
Demand only of yourself.

Does something make you uncomfortable?
So be it.
Does something wrench your heart?
So be it.

We live in such a world that you can freely share your feelings.
Do not bottle up the way you interpret the world around you.
With constant positive motion you can advance the world toward truth.
But not by stripping others of the same right to speak freely,
only by the light of every eye can happiness be seen.

In the halls of free discussion all people find the world that we deserve
but, it becomes eroded by a systematic silence implemented from birth
We long to live as will decides lest we fall to insanity.
We cannot strip the species of this core of our humanity.

Take responsibility for YOUR actions.
Change the world by YOUR choices.
To expect others to bend to the whim of your emotions is the way of a dictator.
And it is that mindset that allows the rise of dictators.
Be fearful of the minds that say:
"I don't like what you say, and you will be punished for it"
No matter how acidic,
No matter how offensive,
No matter what a person says,
It is the right of a thinking being to say what ever they feel to say.

It is only in the arena of actions
that consequences should be lasting.
If a person seeks to poison the world with their hateful words,
the responsibility of opposition is to use the same platform.

Respond to word with words.
Respond to action with actions.
Do not punish a silly speech as if  it were a murderous infraction.

If someone disagrees with you do nothing to silence them
but a challenge should be made upon the field of free discussion
Rationality prevails.
It always has.

Only through the reaction to hateful words with hateful actions
is our intellectual progression eroded.

Static

I swiftly dissolve into the foreground,
every time you come around looking for it.
I wear my anonymity as a badge.
In plain sight I fly below the radar that will rob you blind tomorrow.
I stand where you think I will be found
but, that is too easy to be so.
From within the squishy depths of an unformed idea,
I produce the utterance that soars
like white noise.

White noise, I am sad to report,
is something that we have systematically erased from our lives.
The station never ends.
No waving flags. No bowing heads.
No abrupt drop to the scrambling nothing.

The shame is felt therein
from empty shape are born so many inspired things.
Artifacts that now will never be had.
Our need to feed constantly upon the fat of entertainment
has severely slighted us the quality of things we pour into ourselves.
We demand so much.
We flood our senses with anything we can.
In the turn of demand and supply we find that
quantity trumps quality every time.
We will take anything over nothing any day.
So much does fear of empty hold it's sway.
This oldest call, subliminal, harkens to the day
when our own signal will be nothing more than static.
In those moments,
the ones we have left behind,
will judge us by our absence.
They will quickly find a way to change the white noise of loss.
Through the blight of binge till providence provides
the next beating heart.
In their finding, those past become a sacrificial offering
to the god of the constant.
Desperately hope for the unending warmth of distraction.

snow in the folded sack

broken
as we push it back
woken
as if pulling slack
spoken
as the whipping crack
woven
in the deepest track
token
of the bleeding rack
open
to the world now black
notion
how to climb the stack
omens
never reach the plaque
slogan
trust the zodiac
frozen
by our will to act