A wet
Black and white day
Can’t think straight
Third hand fumes
Can’t sleep nor stay awake
Can’t rise above
The conflict
A screeching halt
A distaster
Real, imagined
Untitled
Untitled.
Sinking Deeper
Sinking Deeper
Sinking deeper into the sea
The cement blocks are
External burdens
The rope wrapped around me
IS me
If I can release myself
From myself,
I can cut away the weights at my feet
And unravel myself free
Burdens are fixed
A limited mind can be tricked
The objective of blocks
Is to anchor me to the aphotic bottom
The rope is my imagined constraint
The rope alone drowns me
The blocks alone drown themselves
One hand loose, and I go up
Changing oneself is the obvious solution. Why do we miss it so easily? Perhaps because the weight of our circumstances is more noticeable, even painful. The ties that bind are uncomfortable, constraining, and annoying, but weight hurts, exhausts, controls the direction.
To cut off life’s problems is also swift. Escaping from personal knots can take a long time. For peace of mind you don’t get to do what’s easy first, then what’s hard.
Talk about keeping us humble.
Exiled
Exiled
I was told to leave
Forced to remove my sleeves
Exiled by all means
She smoked a cigarette
As if it was good sex
I was on the bottom
I was the most less-than
She outed my silences
The most civilized violence
The longevity illusion
Everyone putting up with each other
Until someone can no longer bother
To watch my transgressors
Rot in stagnation
I move, I move
And they look up
They may have been right
They may have been just
I pack my shortcomings
Doing more taking than giving
More draining
And in the way
Was I really useless and a discomfort?
I will have something to say about this one day
Maybe they’ll read about it
I go my own way
As they say
They won yesterday
When everything was better without me
IMAGE: Maximilian Jaenicke
Wake Up
Wake Up
Wake up, wake up
‘Cause I know there’s no giving up
Must make up, wake up
And so I brew one more cup
To wake up, wake up
And I wait for the day
I catch up with time
But for now just breathing
In and out is fine
Until I wake up, wake up
Doesn’t matter what I’m dreaming of
To wake up, I must wake up
When I arrive will it be enough?
To wake up, wake up.
‘Cause I know tomorrow
Answers to no one
What I have to show for myself,
A dream undone
And I wait for the day
I catch up with time
But for now just breathing
In and out is fine
Someday I’ll wake up
Wake up
This is a song I wrote for a friend’s post on a story site. The main character would drink a lot of coffee to get herself through some difficult days. I wanted to capture the inability to burn off the heavy fog from lack of sleep, coupled with despondence. This song pays me a visit occasionally, this is one of those days.
“Stillness is our most intense mode of action,” is the first sentence of a great Leonard Bernstein quote. Stillness is practiced from a place of power, but forced from a place of powerlessness. I ask myself, does this stillness feel like a split second of nirvana, or years of drowning? Either way, my revelation is understanding who I am under my circumstances. The painful freedom of the truth.
And then what? Am I ready to take action now, or soon? Who will I be under new circumstances? For now, I wait.
I’ve Heard Enough
I’ve Heard Enough
I think I’ve heard enough.
I get it, you like it rough.
There really isn’t a conversation,
discussion, or debate, is there?
We’re all about your way.
And your way is my pain.
Like the small animals you maim.
I’m sorry you can’t feel yourself.
I’m not feeling you either.
You’ve limited your imagination
to only what resembles you.
And torturing others is progress.
To see someone else suffer
is cause for applause.
I understand now.
This is your time to weaponize
what makes you uncomfortable.
Your problems are now my problems
to prove you’re a victim.
I’m done fighting fair, or my way.
I’m playing your unsustainable game.
But I guess you’re winning.
My destruction is your living.
I’m finished listening. To call out an asshole for being an asshole is a compliment to an asshole. They’re having the time of their lives.
I’ll survive, self sustain, perhaps even be more neighborly.
Smart or not, educated or not, an asshole is an asshole. I’m recalibrating my position, starting with being done.
IMAGE: ?
Her Reaction
Her Reaction
We treat Mother Earth
the way we treat women.
We’re not really doing anything wrong to her,
her reaction is what sucks.
I’ll sometimes humble myself by standing next to the ocean. As much as I’m too restless for my own good looking for greener pastures around the world, the town I presently reside in offers a voluptuous shoreline. A Puget Sound sunset should be on a bucket list. But this isn’t a tourism ad. The health of the planet is what has been on my mind.
I expect to see some dramatic changes in climate and nature in general over my life time. I’m not supposed to. Despite my dissatisfaction almost everywhere I go, I don’t want to move to another planet. I’m actually content here. What’s worse is being forced to go because someone had to be an asshole instead of a whole human. And way too many of us are like that.
I know haters don’t want to be convinced. But the reality of our existence is beyond them. Is it simply human to be entitled? Are we so ego centric to think the Earth is ours and should just give and give? She’s not going to take it any longer. Right now she’s just being passive-aggressive. Watch what happens when she snaps.
Life As Better
Life As Better
Measuring the time of a better life
depends on who you ask.
Life as better cannot be defined
in a three dimensional photograph.
Life as better hasn’t happened yet.
If I wanted to remain in the past
I would have ended myself then
and left a nostalgic corpse.
Instead, I go onward
along with the erosion of mountains
and aging of the moon.
An old oak that outlives generations of humans
does so by periodically sprouting new life.
A life of perpetuating memories is a life stopped.
Blasting back to the past makes me uncomfortable. Nostalgia is rare for me. When I observe others trying to recreate the atmosphere of their childhood, or keep repeating a personal era that appeared special, or hold onto tastes that they insist should still be relevant, I find this existence to be anachronistic. A burden, and insecure.
I want to keep pushing onward no matter the damage done to me. I haven’t had any glory days so far, at least I hope not. I’m pretty unimpressive if the past is the best I can do. Priorities change, but the goal of arrival has not.
Humanity seems split between those gripping fast to an unreliable past, and those trying to brave the unknown future. I must be a young soul, always looking forward to what is new. My past hasn’t happened yet. I wear life on my face and process age in my head, but I brave the unknown future.
Investor
Just one investor
A going out of business clearance sale
Only salvaging pennies on worthless items
Just one investor
To reflect back in his eyes the value of potential
I never got out of the red
Should’ve never got out of bed
I rely on the outside at the cost of pride
An empty store front
Bought up by something new I’ve never heard of
I needed just one investor
Sometimes we rely too much on external validation. I’m terribly guilty of that. From love to worth, what is around me reflects me.
Sometimes I so badly want someone to come in and save the day, whatever that means. I seem to fail at helping myself. And watch the world go on without me.
The internal world is my new investor. She doesn’t have a lot to offer, but space and time. I can work with space and time.
The Answer
The Answer
The Answer
Everyone has the answer
The answer is everywhere
The answer is right in front of you
The answer is in the details
The answer
The answer is forced
The answer is ignored
The answer is the right energy
The answer doesn’t smell right
The answer
The answer is money
The answer is black and white
The answer is male and female
The answer is children
The answer is prayer
The answer
The answer is in a holster
The answer is regulations regulating regulations
The answer is blood
The answer
The answer is an erection
The answer is a gentle touch
The answer is his bravery
The answer is her leadership
The answer
The answer is to demand
The answer is to shut up
The answer is to vote
The answer is to congregate
The answer is to divide and conquer
The answer, the answer
The answer is abstinence
The answer is sex
The answer is commitment
The answer is choice
The answer is independence
The answer
The answer is to talk
The answer is regular checkups
The answer is in a pill
The answer is timing
The answer
The answer is understanding
The answer is faith
The answer is to learn
The answer
The answer is freedom
The answer is the law
The answer
The answer is trust
The answer is distrust
The answer is the truth
The answer
The answer is in the question
The answer is to find an answer
The answer
The answer is
You
Me
Us
We
Love
I’m back online, looking for answers. Giving answers.
Papa, I Borrowed Your Gun
Papa, I Borrowed Your Gun
Papa, I borrowed your gun
I decided not to run
Papa, I borrowed your gun
You were right about that one
I borrowed your gun today
Some say you raised me right
Others believe I shouldn’t fight
But I borrowed your gun today
Who is the villain now?
The one who starts it, or the one who finishes?
Who is the victim now?
The one who starts, or the one who finishes?
Papa, I borrowed your gun
He tried to run
I borrowed your gun, Papa
It wasn’t for fun
I guess I could go to the police again
Straighten out my heart and head
But I borrowed papa’s gun instead
Change out the word “gun” with “power” and re-read. I know, the rhyme scheme is interfered with, but that’s not important. How does the poem resonate now?
As long as she’s a father’s daughter, like how the old fashion comfortable story above illustrates, she’s approved to have access to “power”. If she was an individual taking matters into her own clutches, she being the gun owner, she’d be simply investigated.
Finding an image for this post was eye opening. Images of women with guns were mostly models with ridiculous cleavages, a few military service women, and as for girls, daughters looked more like sons. There were no images of everyday plus size women with rifles, no women over 40 packing a Crimson Trace, no girls in glasses with braces wearing a tiara pointing a glittery but real shotgun. It’s no accident women are hardly marketed to, or encouraged really to purchase “power”. Women with “power” is to be kept as a novelty. We’re still borrowing. And not for our sake.
IMAGE: Eiko Ojala “Tough Talk and a Cowardly Vote on Guns.”
No Call
Disconnected
No Call
No Call
No Echo
Nobody signaling ‘over here’
No finger pointing
Even with whom I’m connected to,
There is no connection
I’m a fly
Wanting to join the party
I only crash them
A door to door salesman
Nobody buying
No longer charming
Been feeling really disconnected from everyone and everything, lately. An island. I’ve even put down my phone. I start to wonder how alienation will take form on my face. It’s just me and the news; what a weak combination.
So I start from the beginning. I walk. I walk among trees. I walk along the shore. I walk with the river. Mother is a good place to start to connect. I’m still at her breast. I will grow soon.
I want to touch nothing. I have nothing to say. But maybe I’ll start to wave.
Lemon
I was given a lemon
I thought I was making lemonade
But I’m making a lemon mess
And now I don’t even have a lemon
