Holding Fast

Holding Fast

Holding Fast

I’m digging my claws into my own skin
Holding fast and staying on target
True to who I am
I’m being clingy to me
I am my own codependent
I stubbornly stand my ground
Not giving into the unfair Siren sound
I won’t dance to music I hate
I won’t be the patient one among thousands of aggressors
I am my own over baring mother
My own demanding child
I play possum to coercion 
I agree and validate others so they forget about me
I won’t bleed for someone else’s pleasure
I can’t be swayed to sit in someone else’s shade
Not today

I don’t want to do what I don’t want to do. How often do we find ourselves doing things we’d rather not be doing? Or worse, hate? The flip side being, we sacrifice doing what we truly want to do. Our attention repeatedly goes to what we don’t want, instead of what we do. Then life becomes barren and we wonder why.

I’m selfishly plowing forward with only what I want to do. Guess what? Nobody suffers for it. I’m even nicer. Appeasing others is making their relief from suffering my responsibility. I’m happy to help, but not to the point of joining in, then I’m not helping.

I see love in others where I am my true self. When you get yourself, you celebrate others instead of control them. Let’s keep going in this direction.

IMAGE: Jake Baddeley

Don’t Tax the Rich Guy

Don’t tax the rich guy
I’ll be him one day
I don’t want to pollute my future self
Don’t tax the rich guy
I won’t want it when I’m him
I believe I will be him
so I protect the delusion
of my future self
by letting the rich guy
have all the profits
They will be mine one day
Don’t tax the rich guy
I’m on your side, rich guy!
May I have a yacht ride?
I believe in you
and you will be me one day soon
You are the ideal to be preserved
so we protect you
Don’t tax the rich guy
I’m buying my ticket to be you
I don’t want to do anything
that will erode my possibilities
Eroding the rich guy world
is erosion of my ideal self

…Well, isn’t this an emotional way of helping the rich get richer…. Know anyone like this? The unspoken prosperity gospel.

IMAGE:  Mario Sanchez Nevado, Deep

Fall in Love with Me

Fall in love with me
I need the chemistry
An addict in the third degree
Fall in love with me

Taste my savory sweet
Wave my flag of defeat
You’re the fire’s heat
Taste my savory sweet

You’re the man in me
Powerful physically
Burst my energy
You’re the man in me

Fall in love with me
I need the chemistry
An addict in the third degree
Fall in love with me

Take me for a ride
I invite you inside
The worse of me supplied
Take me for a ride

Promises I’ve made
Perpetuate the shade
Your hand was better played
Promises I’ve made

Fall in love with me
I need the chemistry
An addict in the third degree
Fall in love with me

I’ve been dead before
Spilled upon the floor
Darkness’s little whore
I’ve been dead before
I’ve been dead before
I’ve been dead before

Fall in love with me
I need the chemistry
An addict in the third degree
Fall in love with me

Image: Boicu Marinela; Pen and Ink Drawing “breaking”, 2012

Perfect Sick Sense of Humor

and a weight in my pocket

Is God dangling a carrot,

or is the carrot God?

Perhaps my efforts are laughable

What happened to the transcending flow

of oxygen and love?

Now, even what’s precious has hardened 

The wind of spirit usually up lifts

Now, the spirit is something to carry

A weight in my pocket

In high school, one of my favorite songs was Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumors”. The song seemed less dramatic back then, but bless “The Mode” for not being neon happy 80’s music. Nevertheless, it’s what’s looping in my brain’s playlist right now; not because of the tragic story of the daughter in the song, but because of the head-thrown-back, mouth wide opened, belly bouncing, bellowing God character.

Below is another older poem of mine exploring God being the essence of all things perfect, including the perfect sick sense of humor (favorite songs get into the blood). God is a fine point, as well as a five o’clock shadow. I objectify him. Calling God he is even objectifying. In addition, spirituality becomes solid, even burdensome. That bothers me more than God being a pain in the ass – a spirit in pain and causing pain.

I realize that our spirits don’t and can’t always carry us. We have to carry them, sometimes. I must be heavy for my spirit. She lies awkward and unconscious in my arms after crawling to me. She’s the victim in God’s and my conflicts. We both know that.

Perfection

The most perfect 
sick sense of humor
Next to the most perfect storms,
and perfect timing, and sunsets
Perfection is not just
good, happy, love, universe
Perfection can be 
the perfect hate, accident, pain,
cyclone, war
Death is not bad, it’s perfect
The wild is not evil,
it’s perfectly neutral
Want perfection to be love?
Make it love
Darkness is perfection, too,
just don’t choose it
Perfection is neutral 
Perfection is extremes
Penetrates, surrounds, expands,
creates, lives after death,
never lives, tangible, non-tangible
Nothing to prove, an idea
And so romantic

– Even The Smallest Bird Casts a Shadow, ©2015

Image: ? 2013 Anyone know?

Hollow State

Told to leave

I was told to leave

Toothpaste girl was invited in

I wasn’t even asked to leave

I had no chance to defend

or explain myself,

to redeem myself

They wanted me gone

So I had nothing left to give

And bubble gum girl dissolved

and faded like a mirage

They wanted the mirage

So I had better disappear

I didn’t blink like light hitting a tooth

and then crediting those that created

the effect

A whole person denied

to artificial rot prevention

I wasn’t shiny

I looked up antonyms for narcissism, and for the most part they all point to humility. I kind of feel like there is a more hands on approach to what seems to be an epidemic.  One term I found compelling to be opposite of narcissism is substance.

Narcissism is a hollow state, as well as a hollow life. A narcissist’s life purpose and practice is superficiality. It’s all about presentation along with what they wish to present; all about being impressive, and nothing else. It amazes me how we fall into the endless abyss of someone empty. They’re very convincing that there is something great on the other side. But nothing ever materializes. We bite into that cute, hollow chocolate Easter bunny, but it tastes like shit. I’d rather be tangled up in someone who is dense with love, wisdom, action, and human complexity.

Admittedly, narcissists are great reflectors of ourselves. Masters at telling people what they want to hear, we need to consider our greatest weaknesses – our own hollow spots. The more matter a person possesses, the better they are protected. To gain the upper hand, present to a narcissist that you have substance, and are loved for it. Your proof of worth will call their bluff. Narcissists are loved from the outside-out. There is no in.

Image: Matthew Spiegelman – Portal

The Inner HE

Love died
The death of love
He’s gone
I grieve

Love is a HE in this thought. I’ve noticed my masculine qualities missing, as of late. I lack muscle, single tasking, and automatic ego. I crave pillar shoulders to hold me up.

Perhaps the Mars qualities within are simply ill. To compensate for mere functionality, intelligence is an information addict, and emotions rule. So, I’m gathering and surviving. Until the tinder in my belly ignites, hunting has ceased.

I thought I caught sight of love walking away. Was he so wounded that he left to hide and die? Or am I such the injured party that it’s best to abandon me? All I know is the existence of this tremendous loss. I’m on my own, left unprotected.

Love took bullets for me. He would fight for me. My intuition and education are at full capacity navigating life’s war zone, but there is nothing in me charging over the fields. For now, I take shelter in a cold cave; a furlough for rebuilding love, attracting new love, and constructing his pyre. I can no longer selfishly prove my value, but instead, I will prove his.

Image:  James Linkous, Brooklyn, NY – Diffusion Self Portrait 4′ Charcoal on Paper

 

We’re On To You

Lyrics – 2017

The loudest camera time, and with a little help
you were pronounced fair and square
Little did your lovers suspect that
it would all be down hill from there

So you think you’ve got it figured out
by watching every move
Well then, can you handle little sister
staring back at you?
Words mean nothing, 
but actions tell the truth
We’re on to you

One by one into the spotlight
the underbelly will be revealed
You’ve got the worlds attention
Flip a coin for your next human shield

So you think you’ve got it figured out
by watching every move
Well then, can you handle little sister
staring back at you?
Words mean nothing, 
but actions tell the truth
We’re on to you

If you find the perfect hiding place,
it’s in our silence where we will lose our names

Go ahead, keep sweeping,
but the rug has been removed

So you think you’ve got it covered up
then watch our every move
Well then, can you handle little sister
staring back at you?
We see it coming down while your above 
the wasteland in your view
Your words mean nothing 
Your actions tell the truth

We’re on to you

These are lyrics to a song I recently wrote.  Our political climate is Arizona hot. I’ve never felt so compelled to pay such close attention to the actions of those in power. Nor have I ever felt my country fading away, until now. The worse part is we’ve turned on the wrong people – each other.

Having said that, perhaps we need a power explosion to blowup in our faces. As a nation, I don’t think we know who we are anymore; we have dissociative identity disorder. I want to feel whole. My neighbor isn’t just next door, it’s everyone. But we don’t trust each other, and force someone else to solve our problems.

Are we peeling an onion, or just de-petal-ing a rose? Are we disarming a bomb, or filling a powder keg? Are we cultivating a fertile landscape, or accelerating a wasteland? I guess for now we support what we believe in until someone in charge yells, “Shut her down!”  Or, we continue to struggle just like multiple personalities fighting for their turn at the helm.

Illustration by Anton Semenov