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BLOCKSOFTEXTFREEDFROMTHESEPARATIONOFTHOUGHTWORDSBLEEDINGINTOEACHOTHERINTHESAMESTATEINWHICHTHEYARECREATEDINTHEMINDACONSTANTRIVERWASHINGTHROUGHCLEANSINGWHATMUSTBECOMEPUREAGAIN

There is no ghost here in your void,


just a living memory of the promise


of what could have been.

I have no ghost to give up

just the trailing ends of ambition.

_____

If you are not happy with the narrative it is up to you to write a better one.

I've never been too smart.

I've never been too good at anything.

I've just managed to stick around because
      
I don't know what else to do.

I know it sounds silly to say but

I know thats the truth.

I'd be better off someone else.

I could be an egotist with a sense of modesty.

As the matter for physical forms decay


they are spread back into the elements


and take on new forms. It is then possible


to argue that reincarnation is a fundamental


principle to existence.

Creating A Puddle

I felt it begin to drip out of my ears and down the side

of my neck.

It trickled slowly at first and began to gain the speed of

a small river.

My shirt began to get quite wet but I wasn't sure of

what to do.

It didn't hurt but it was strange to say the least. I think

you'd agree.

I must have been standing there at least a good ten to

fifteen minutes.

When it stopped I looked down at the small pool at

my feet.

I saw memories and faces in ever collected drop on

the ground.

I felt like I had been given a new start as I began to

walk home.

I woke up  and found myself

in a strange place.

The face in the mirror was mine

but it was not the one I have lived in.

It was a past life come back to me.

Stepping into the photograph of a memory

as shapes emerge to fill space and gain

depth and dimensionality.

Past Lives and Future Presence.

shark week

like a

shark

moving

silently

through

water,

my heart

is ready

to strike.

2 Lines To Think About.

Ability does not always dictate passion.


Is it possible to forget the taste of a kiss?

4 rubbish lines

Self-Aware Network.


A restless sense of being that awakens every morning.


Oscar's Wild.


Bear Malling.

One Hot Afternoon Nap

I went to sleep in the middle of the afternoon to the sound of her 

voice singing to me. I could feel the heat growing as the fan

recycled the hot air. A helicopter was outside combing the
neighborhood looking for a man they would find locked in
someone's home. When the police finally cornered him he emerged
from the house with a woman in her mid-40's in his arms. Guns
were drawn, shots were fired. A few bullets hit him in his extremities
while another pierced the flesh just below his heart. The fatal shot
blew off a chunk of his skull and brain matter. She was never quite
the same after that afternoon. Covered in blood and brains she had
been grazed in the leg by one of the officer's bullets, but otherwise
physically unharmed. The story would later make the rounds of the
local news affiliates. When I woke up the shooting had passed.
The afternoon was still hot as police taped up the crime scene. At
least one person would have that afternoon forever seared into memory.

Transitions from person to pure being.

"If you're frightened of dying 
and you're holding on, 
you'll see devils tearing 
your life away.
But if you've made your peace, 
the devils are really angels, 
freeing you from the earth."

The Future Is Stupid

ERASE

your notions 

having to do with 

PAST PRESENT FUTURE

the experiences they seek to represent

fall short of what reality is as it occurs in the

moment imagine time as words spilling out into 

the universe creating every possible thought and sentence

all at once appearing as chaos floating in the ether

Peddling Cliche

Would you like to hear about endless pastures

and how they are like our wild and untamed

years of youth?

Perhaps compare the love and affection I feel

for another to a petaled plant or the sun in some

manner of ascent of descent?

Why barter in cliche when some perfectly unused

combination of words can be found?

All these ghosts in love.

to what end should one follow a dream?

After complete heartbreak and devastation
a strange calmness overtakes you as you
realize you are still breathing.

Ends

We've walked these paths for so long

that seeing the end should be

no surprise.

Painting A Canvas With An Endless Palette

Glass eyed views of distant news.

________________

Like a fist smashing against brick-

skin bruising-

blood spilling over-

cracking bone-

flesh pulverized into uselessness.

___

every useless excuse and mine.

___

What she said is not important.

It's what was meant.

___

Surrender can only be determined by one person.

___

A constant process of renewal.

___

What is real? What is left?

___

I am the only one holding myself back.

these tides are elemental.


__________________
I was someone else before this


and I'll be someone else when I return.

Let's remove the drama from the reality

and deal with certainty rather than emotional

culpability.

the uninspired heart has a hard time convincing the hands
there is anything worth creating.

‎"As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,-a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss." - Madame Bovary by Flaubert. Taken from Part 2 Chapter 4

workshop

This is an unclear image.

It lacks sensory detail. 

There is nothing concrete for the reader to hold on to.

This didn't take too much effort did it?

It certainly shows.

If you went back and edited it a little better and 

added some more detail I think it might work.

In its current form it is most certainly not very engaging.

Other than the critiques I mentioned 

I thought it was an ok effort.

Borrowed Time

These hours were never ours to begin with.

We have always been in need of time,

borrowing it from those more generous.

This borrowed time seems to go by twice

as fast knowing they were never ours to

keep. Sometimes we just sit here alone,

watching them disappear into the face of

a clock staring blindly back.

Will I cease to be,

Or will I remember

Beyond the world

Our last meeting together?

- Lady Izumi Shikibu

these cities were lost before anyone ever lived in them.

Free Write Exercise In Self-Indulgent Claptrap

cheap suit parachute tongue

wagging its way to your strange

heart stranger you know stranger

still as rivers frozen over in winter

now like memories forgotten through

the process of living crystallize as

hearts mythologize youth as a golden

age of innocence that was as corrupt

as any before or since when was a

reason ever good enough for you

that wasn't good enough for me to

see behind the curtain and see the

magic for myself and find the oracle

of delphi divining fate to the faithful

full of hope delivered on the whispers

of ill made promises.

quit the shit thats got the hit on you.

Methods of Production

When one creates there is a requisite minimum

required from the heart in order to create.


This minimum varies from day to day as well

as from project to project.


There is no chart of fixed percentages that can

be referred to in order to determine the adequate


amount of emotion needed in order to create works

varying in quality from the common to the life defining.


If there were no heart involved in any part of the

process the work would be left incomplete or


rendered impossible from the start. Modern methods

of creation and production have found ways around


this fundamental problem. It should be noted that a

percentage of the population believes this advance


to be an aberration of the creative process and treats

it with the according amount of disdain.

Believe the heart not the Hype

Finding Words In Odd Places

There was a poem caught between your lips.

I tasted it with my tongue as we kissed.

The words were soft and yielding

as if they were waiting to find the right page.

I took them home that night and tried

to remember them as best I could from

memory. Everyone knows memory

can be an unreliable thing. In our case

the words struck closer to the truth than

could have been expected.

For Women Everywhere

I wanted to write a poem about a woman.

I stopped myself because I started thinking

of how cliche this would be.

Would it be based on a person I know?

Would it be a composite of people and

characteristics?

Would I try to pull a personality from

pure imagination?

The options that were presenting themselves

continued to grow.

Regardless of which of those routes I chose

how would I portray her?

Would I present her as some ideal beauty in

both thought and form?

Would I show her as wondrous but flawed?

Perhaps plain and dour?

Maybe she would be an artist of some type.

It's hard to say where I would have gone

with those thoughts.

Actually,

those thoughts led to this.

Period (.).

Every word is a reflection of the one

preceding and proceeding it.

Some words can be found with a hard

STOP.

These words are indicated by

a period (.) .

One cannot undervalue the importance

of this punctuation.

Without it thoughts would spill over

endlessly into one another as individual

drops of water do in the flow of a stream.

There are other punctuation marks

commonly used but none bear the same

effectiveness as the period (.).

Half Dollar Half Remembered Dream

your dark blue dress framed your figure

perfectly as you walked through the

guests gathered at your home.


you asked me to reach over and find

the two fifty-cent pieces that were

resting by a window near the fridge.


I reached my hand out and felt the

largeness of them as they sat clenched

in my hand.


Warmth glowed from your eyes as you

smiled when I gave them to you... unable

to turn away from your expression.

facsimile

of an original

is only as good

as a copy can be.

it is becoming a game

that will leave no winners

at the end.

The Future Is...

Shut up about the future already.

It's not a mythological beast

wandering the forests of

North America.


It is not a place we can visit

with any regularity. In fact

the future looks oddly similar

to today.


Have you wondered why that is?

keeping up

how late the night

becomes

daring us to keep

up with it

as the light begins

to graze upon

the horizon.

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If you begin to separate
meaning from the process
what is left?
Is it a new fluidity
unencumbered by reason
and enamored with its own
reflection?

Do/-ing

All that's left is the doing.

Everything else is easy.

The Problem About Pencils

this eraser

moves over the page

undoing the work

of the hand

but always leaving

a mark of what

once was.

Good Company in a Good Place

A whiskey coke

spilling over your hand

as you walk back to me.


The jukebox plays old

45's, my glass almost empty.

You wobble onto the stool


as my arm reaches around

you. Lighting a cigarette,

taking a drag, you smile


wide as smoke streams over

my head. I pull the fabric

tight against your hips,


reaching out for a kiss.

A drag and a sip.

Another song comes on.

What is real of what is sold to us sitting in our homes?

Lost eyes fixed on endless glass horizons

glazed over and submitted to the fate

we have committed.

Don't worry about the day

since it hasn't even begun.
____

Thinking about you from when and then.

___

Everything is fine.
Everything is cool.

PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE

Learn from the past, Live in the present and Plan for the Future.

Becoming Morning

Don't bother watching the hands on the clock tick by slowly.

They point the way to moments we know are coming.

3 a.m.

becomes 3:30 a.m

which then becomes

 4 a.m.

becomes  4:30 a.m.

which then becomes

5 a.m.

becomes  5:30 a.m.

which then becomes

6 a.m.

becomes 6:30 a.m.

which then becomes

7 a.m.

as the light bathes

the land and the day

begins to shine its

light on us all.

As hard as it gets...

don't forget:

someone cares.

It's not as dark

as you think it

to be. Reach

out through the

tears and find

that voice that

will listen.

Reach out

and touch

life once

more.

These walls know nothing about the solitude of our lives.

Dear H_______,

Shut up and listen to your many voices all screaming at once
begging to be heard. Answers are always in short supply.
Most of us make do without them and instead move forward
with our lives as best we can. This hubris will be the death of
us all. This intolerance, the rampant pettiness, the refusal to
be anything more than beasts deigned worthy to bear a spark
of light behind these eyes. It may be too late though I would
hope that is not the case. I'll be around watching, listening
and wondering if we'll ever learning from ourselves.

yours,

________

sometimes even the choir doesn't like being preached to.

Fruitless Searches and Other Matters

Nobody ever wonders how the Devil feels about things.


___________________


Too many hours
                           Days
                 Weeks
and perhaps
                   MONTHS

have been wasted on

a fruitless search for 

an ideal that has always

left me empty handed.

It's pointless. Reason

rears its head and takes

a look around the room

and quickly ducks back

out. BFD. It could be

worse. Fortunately it

isn't. Better cross those

fingers.
_____________


this awkward tongue speaks more often
than it should. it rarely knows what to
say or when to say it. it goes on anyhow
to anyone willing to listen and to those
who aren't. what an awful creature to be.

____________

A Beautiful Day To Go To The Beach

The weather at the beach is going to be nice today.

Families will come out in droves with their coolers

and sun block. First time dads will make sandcastles

with their children. Most of them will watch as the

waves roll in and slowly erode their work. There

will be the requisite volleyball games being played

by both the buffed up beach rats and the inland

suburban weekend warriors looking to forget the

workload of the previous work week. Lifeguards

will be sitting in their towers looking out over

gathered masses with a mixture of concern and

duty. The servers at the nearby restaurants and

bars will be wishing they could be freed from

their invisible yoke and wander the few feet it

would take to get to the surf and the sand. Just

below the lifeguard tower off its left hand side

will be a 45 year old insurance salesman passed

out, drunk. Not coincidentally, he will also have

forgotten to apply his sunblock as he sleeps.

Calculating Sound

there is a silence in here that begs to be broken

but the awkwardness of our hesitation keeps it

alive and unbroken. conversation would be an

unacceptable means of ending this. It would

have to be some naturally occurring sound that

could strike at the right time with the proper

amount of force. The effort and timing for such

a thing to happen is almost beyond the calculable

efforts of men. That is not to say that it is not

possible but rather that the odds of it happening

in just the right way are possible but the likelihood

is slim but still within the realm of reason. In

circumstances such as this it would be much better

to step away from the situation and enter an area

where sound is already occurring at a steady pace.

The Fields of Youth

Running through paths cut deep

in the fields

                   the sun follows

over head.

                 When evening comes

there is only one thing we can

                                                do.

Emma

 From such seeds sown

a sorrow will sprout

from the soil of your

marriage bed.

Abject Cruelty

flower gazes at the sun

with blind faith

until the hand cuts her free-

her beauty

drains slowly

into the vase

and then...

dries

out between

the pages of an

old book.

the shortcomings of beauty

scratching your skin

until trails of red emerge

like roads cutting through prairies

as tears run rapid over the slopes

of your visage.


beautiful one-

what does beauty mean

when the heart has been cut free

from the soul?

something we miss most mornings

We often miss the sunrise.

Regardless of this fact we

can see its handiwork in

the moments we wake

through clouded glass.

Are you still sleeping?

Has the sun brought you

back to life once more?

I Wash This Heart Out To Sea Where The Dark Waters Will Comfort Me.

Butchers know how to make the hardest cuts.
___

Whose side are we on?

___

Why bother waiting for the dead hand of the past to be lifted
from your shoulders when you can move it yourself.

by the throat

we have no one to blame for our successes or failures but ourselves.

once we begin to tear away the veil of our clouded thoughts can we

begin to develop clarity on how the world works. it is ruthless and

indifferent to our desires. never rely on it blindly. be willing to be

the aggressor, be willing to grab it by the throat and tear it away.

It starts with the help we find for our selves

Let's stop making trips of our guilt

while there are still life rafts on this

sinking ship.


This isn't the Titanic.

doublethink

What I want and what is right are two separate things.

We are innately selfish creatures that will do what we can

to bend the world to our whims.

The greatest cause of distress is when we believe

with complete faith in the infallibility of our cause.

Other times we have no regard for others in search

of base gratifications.

For such violent

and avaricious creatures

it's a wonder we are still alive.

In short

what I am saying is that

it'd be good

to see you.

Let's Talk

Let's spend some time together

and say some nice words to each

other and remember what it was

like when we first met.


Let's spend some time together

and forget about all the hard times

the bad times the mad times and

find the peace we've longed to see.


Let's spend some time together

and just be the ideal .

The Story of a Day

Wake up

it's time to go to work

have to use the restroom

take a shower

have something to eat

get dressed

get in the car

drive about 20 minutes to get to work.

punch the clock

work

lunch

work (more)

punch out

drive home

get out of the car

walk inside

put some music on

change clothes

drink

write

think

sleep

our sorrow sleeps tonight

finding comfort in the transitory nature of our lives

making peace with the unease in my heart
_________

endless ache?

4th

A celebration of creation

amidst the changing tides

of personal revelation.

The Muse As Both Inspiration & Creator

I want you to forget here

& when &

remember

here &

then.

Patchwork Puzzle Art

We walked into the toy store and quickly

found our way into the games aisle.


You reached into the shelf that held the

jigsaw puzzles.


The first one was a  bland landscape you

often see on the walls of dentists offices.


You looked around and made sure no one

was near us when you ripped open the first


box. "What the hell are you doing? Are you

nuts? Security will catch you!"


Your smile said, "No, they won't" as you grabbed

a piece from that first box before putting it back


on the shelf. You repeated that process another

dozen or so times. Each lone piece found a new


home in your purse. "Let's go" you said. I could

feel eyes on my neck as we walked through the


sliding doors. No one came after us as we got

in your car. When we got back to your place


you emptied the orphaned pieces out onto your

kitchen table. If those puzzle pieces were children


that had just been adopted you would have had

an international coalition of the unexpected.


You pulled an empty picture frame out of the

closet and pried the back off. I could only watch


in curiosity as  you set the pieces down one by one

into the glass before placing the backing on it once


more. A wide grin spread across your face

as you turned the frame to me and exclaimed


"Isn't it beautiful?"

mornings

waking to the sound of lungs

breathing in/out,

the sun 

beating a warm path

through the window.

W
   here we have

                         be
                            en
We sh
          all be a
                     gain.