a vast emptiness permeates my consciousness, rain pounds the garbage and the dirt, my pulse beats heavily, my muscles convulse and cramp, my body shakes in the midnight hour, my mind stabs fear into my heart, my thoughts flow like a polluted river, sending torrents of darkness into my twisting, aching bowels, my dreams are dark corridors with wicked storms battering the windows, my power is gone, my hope has faded, I feel I am standing on the crumbling edge of a shifting universe, I am a rogue cell giving life to disease and destruction, I am a bug...
can you hear my lamentation?
are you there?
is someone there?
am I alone?
how can I know you if you have left me?
how can I love you when you won't speak to me? a prayer of simplicity to a shifting universe, falls from my quivering lips, and blood spoiled by hatred, drips from my fractured and restless body, send me an angel of hope, send me an angel of peace, have mercy of this rogue cell wreaking disease and destruction.... have mercy on this bug... for there is nowhere to go, there is nothing to do, we are who we are only through the fullness of being. -------------------------------------------------------------- in the quiet stillness, a baby breathes gently, and awakens, in the light.
===================================================================== this poem is dedicated to my friends who recently lost their business to fire.
love, a twisted labyrinth, a heavily wooded web of darkness, emotions helplessly oscillate, between desire and need, between attraction and fear, between what I have and what I've lost, alone-ness and time, stirs the deepest hunger, creates an unquenchable thirst, an unrelenting ache, the limitless depths of this, burning, gnawing, despair, it is something in the Self... an emptiness, a black hole, a void, that cannot be filled, how ever vainly we try, to medicate, to hold another, to shun another, to kill the "other," to pray to the vacant heavens, but a screaming sadness, creates a torrent of frozen anger, a will... to exist, a dying to live, the courage to be, to co-exist with the lack, the courage to be, in the face of the void, it defines me, allows me to reach with the senses, transcend the paralyzing pain, the disorienting pleasure, to become, for just a fraction of infinity, someone unequivocal.
the poverty of the heart, writhes like a restless fetus, twisting all around in anxiety and nausea, feeling through the city night, like a blind man, in a tunnel of darkness and metal, pain, the oldest friend, was there at the beginning, will be there at the end, aching on the surface, aching in the depths, aching in the body, mind and soul, calcified knuckles, detached retina, nasal fracturing, slight limp, half numb left hand, and a bum knee, a tuna sandwich and a hearing aid, long nights and lonely dreams, a shit love life, but it's the only life he's got, and he was never surprised what he could do alone, just out of sheer willpower,
now he trains younger hearts, eyeing the struggle, from student to teacher, from novice to master, if success never came to him, skills were gained, how to handle failure, how to manage the sting, with the restraint and patience, of a veteran of the ring,
somewhere in the nexus between time and meaning the heart explodes, like a spiritual sneeze, just a gnarled figure under the lamplight, shadowboxing the breeze.
a Goliath of a world, a David of a soul, born to kill and whither, born to love and grow,
one must be nothing, for one to be everything, and when you are everything, you will know that it is nothing,
God is everything, God is nothing, God is both, God is neither sometimes I'm many, sometimes I'm one, sometimes I've gone beyond, orbiting a baseball sun, the plate is our life, we stand alone, did you know? we will be alone when we go, so stand relaxed at the plate, while we orbit the baseball sun, when you relax you get hits, you might just get a home run.
steam cloaks the vicious river, purposely raging as though the flow was in it's nature, frigid black water, beats and splits the ice, ripping through the open dam, to swallow the dirty city snow, temperature drops, and the pulse slows, under the lights of the bridge, lovers and dreamers, holding hands, beautiful faces kiss beautiful faces, lovers and dreamers, offering us a bond, through our common ideologies, of love, war and terror, a community for the rest, alleviating the anxiety of death, my ideology is the blues, and "the blues is just catastrophe lyrically expressed,"
a poet sits at the bar, unfurling rhymes, about the frozen land and sea, half past a waitress's ass, a thought occurs to me,
life is but a thin sheet of ice, resting on the ocean of infinity.
