The Warden Sleeps

 You wake up on the first day of the rest of your life. The depression is not gone. The stakes and struts on which it grew are all still here. So too are the habits and memories forged in its malign influence, and you've been through this before.

It sleeps. And though you can't tell when,
it always wakes. It will again.

For now, the world is little different, but you are. You can breathe a little easier. The house is the same, but for little day to day changes. The tasks you could put yourself to still intimidating. You do not stride boldly out. To move too boldly may bring it crashing down again.

You don't know what will wake the warden,
what to flee or move toward.

But for now, there is respite from its despising gaze upon all you think to say, upon the outcome of things not done. For now, there is some flavour to savour in even the interplay of bitter and sweet in a cup of sweetened instant coffee. It feels like you could have fun again.

Gaze upon the bones: your weight; the tasks left undone for weeks; the gentle and polite concern of coworkers; things it would have been nice to do... Under your feet, the ground trembles with thunder, a distant growl and long sigh, the half-disturbed snoring of latent depression. To look too long, too worried, too threatens.

Perhaps any of these could be worked on slowly enough to weaken its hold the next time it wakes without hastening the rise. Too much happy idleness just relaxing in the thin ray of light while it lasts will give it more to mock.

But perhaps that isn't quite true. What stinks in idleness is when it ceases to be relaxing and turns into a numb shell pressing the button over again despite increasingly diminishing returns in joy or soothing. That and a sense of abdication of duty to the screamers, whatever one's own good intentions. The knowledge that some suffer and you are not helping them will always rise to the surface sooner or later. Would that there was time for it to regain some of its weight... No, that isn't what's been lost. 

It is not light what bites less into you.
Your callous scarring will not let it through.

And what is there really to do about that?
Well, perhaps if you can loosen the grip of the warden, just a little by little, and refuse its shaming at how much of your strength this takes, perhaps someday the skin of your conscience will feel again, less under the thick of this numb weariness, as base childlike sense-pleasure can now. Maybe there is some nobleness in that somewhere.

Take It With You

I have no patience for hollow compliments.

If I am worth listening to, listen, even when what I say is hard to hear.

If I am a great philosopher, embrace my ways - use them.

If I am a cunning pathfinder, walk with me through hidden and treacherous ways.

If I am a good cook, then come by my table and eat of my food.

 

If you would give me kind and complimentary words, and then walk away from me unchanged, taking nothing with you...

Then please, spare me.

Spare me the awkward obligation to pretend gratitude and praise you for your shallow, meaningless roleplaying as somebody who gives a fuck.

Oh, and if this leaves you full of awkward silences you don't know what to do with... I have something for you. Forsaking hollow signalling does not mean you must be left without any tricks.

Here is a sentence of great arcane power. It can be pronounced many different ways, to transform an awkward silence into a meaningful one and give you more time to think. It is almost always true when you need it, and it is almost never impolite:

"I don't know what to say."

On the Subject of Gods

 

We-mortals, we are stories.
The Gods are tropes.

 

This too is an oversimplification, of course; I just think it strikes closer to the marrow than most on the subject.

To suggest that the Gods exist independently of ourselves is just as ridiculous as to suggest that tropes exist independently of stories.
Not a bit less ridiculous than that.
... And not a bit *more* either.

To suggest that the Gods do not exist *at all* is just as ridiculous as to suggest that tropes *are not real* at all, that there is nothing there to *talk* about.
Not any less ridiculous than that. Nor any more.

 

A Poem to Wanderlust

I wake and the wanderlust crusts upon me.
Like the first frost on a window, like limerence on a lonely soul.
Like heart's compass remembering North after so long spinning aimless it had been forgotten.
Like thunder at the very beginning of a rainstorm.
Like bubbles breaking the surface of an underground lake.
Words of yearning surface in my mind like clues to a cipher, like a god's whisper.
"The Body Needs to Travel".

 

 The Body Needs to Travel is an album by Ian Tamblyn that I listened to in my childhood.

When Love is a Question

My love is a question. It seeks answers of understanding, tolerance, interest, amiability... and initiative, bounded by consideration and careful wisdom.

My love is a question and the answers are multiform. They come in words and music, in images and touch... in action, or inaction.

My heart exalts when it is answered artfully. Some eyes reflect comprehension of the depth and tone and timidity of the question I'm asking. Some eyes, some hands, some lips... in some moments... answer me firmly, and my world is, for a moment, resolved.

Some times, eyes are averted, hands fidget, lips purse and strain, and the answer is feeble or flinches away. It is a symptom that love has become sick.

Some times it falls to me to cut through ambiguity and excuses, to stand broad and stolid and confront plaintive cries of "I don't know!" by answering the question for myself, and answering it, "No."

My heart staggers when I stand grim in the bloodiness of a question silenced; when I have at last taken some answer as final, and resolved to ask no more.

Dear Memory: A Love Story (The End)

There was a time that we were lovers,
through March, April and May.
I went home in the summer,
though I wished he had asked me to stay.
The ocean was very wide,
and it got in our way.
So I came back from the other side,
to see how much had changed...

The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Today.

He always was a gentle man.
He is a gentle man still.
He met me at the train station,
like he'd said that he will.
We had a long, awkward conversation,
head to head, eye to eye.
I had lost his heart some time ago.
I may never know why.

The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Goodbye.

Does he regret
the time he loved me
today- I promised I'll be okay,
so I'll be okay.
Though I loved him- Maybe I'll hear from him,
and I can be his friend,
who loved him.

The End.

Dear Memory: Five Years Ago, Three Thousand Miles Away...

It is the day of back-to-back exams from 3 to 7. I slept in to be well-rested, had a shower and a filling but not over-filling breakfast. And I remembered, as I was turning to head out; early, so I could spend a little time studying... I had wanted to listen to something new. I had been thinking I wanted to listen to that weird song you showed me, "An Audience With the Pope". See what else was on that album that I hadn't explored, because the names hadn't caught my attention as much. Your taste in music has rarely failed to interest me.

You might already see where this is going.

So I found the album, and put it on my mp3 player, and listened to the first track while I was crossing the road. Heh, I thought to myself. Well, it's refreshing. I haven't worn out my ears on it yet, and yes I think I might vaguely remember this... Not exactly the thing to want if my purpose had been not to think of you romantically, but then I already knew that.

But there is something I had forgotten about that album, if I ever knew it, that you surely know very well. The next track came on. And I was a bit stunned. The first song I ever heard you sing... Which, at first... I caught the mention of a cigarette and raised my brow at it as I gathered myself up and left your house, the very first time I visited it. In retrospect, with all I know now of that day, and having listened through the fullness of the song again... Well, I guess it may have been well on your mind from the disappointment when you thought I was informing you that I was unavailable.

And so I march on, and appreciate the meaning. It's not the crude encouragement I thought. It makes... sense now. Obsession, memories... They're addictive and habitual.

And then... There is something I had forgotten about that album, if I ever knew it, that you surely know very well. The next track came on. And I was a bit stunned. The song that you had sung to me, along that farm road. I knew there had been one, thoroughly a love song, that I couldn't quite remember. It expressed finding something that had been missing for a long time, but... I couldn't remember how. The melody, everything, was lost to me. I only remembered that you had sung it to me, and I had asked you whether you really felt that way, about me. And you had said yes.

I think I had almost started to convince myself that it had only been Skyscrapers, and I had mis-remembered. But Skyscrapers doesn't say that.

And here it is, to my ear. The same band, the same album, the very next song. A parade of little memories. I am struck with profound appreciation and a sort of reverence. And I'm nine months later, and... Huh. Well, would you look at that.

My Season

I wrap my heart in a net and throw it out to a vast sea.

I walk, with an uneven gait, favouring one leg over the other. Snow flies out before the toes of my boots in little powder waves. Powder water, cold and dry. I scoop up the top of a bank experimentally, clench it together. It falls apart as I open my hand. Yes. Very dry. Cold, dry water.

I smile viciously, savouring the darkness of the sky, the constant texture of the falling snow through it. The struggle of snow, shifting softly under my boot with each step of an uneven gait, favouring one leg over the other. It parts or compresses readily, and my boot comes down further. It resists, a packed clump more solid, and I slow to drag my body over the momentary obstruction. Sloughing powder snow away with my boots, I feel slightly like a sea turtle, dragging itself across wet sand. I feel a little like something like a horse and something like a bird. A chocobo, maybe? I smile viciously at the sky. I feel at home.

The snow is deep, at least a foot of simple fall and stacked up much higher where it has been pushed to the side to leave mere inches slowly accumulating under the unceasing fall, diagonal texture, dry water.

I took pictures of it, at my porch this morning, at the campus before I left. This is the picture of real winter as I know it, wild and troublesome and inconvenient. This is my season. It is cold, but the wind is not harsh, and it is not too cold. If you step out into it, and you expect it to be cold, then it is... but like water at the beach, if you expect it to be cold, and step into it anyway, you can quickly become used to it.
Or at least, I can.

Hunger reaches up across my chest like a wooden brace that I press against by walking forward. I feel the pressure and smile viciously. It is a part of the season. Dark night, falling snow, walking made more effortful by shifting pressures and uncertain hold. I pick my feet up and sprint for a short ways, grinning. There is ice in my hair. I am listening to Welcome to Night Vale. It is a particularly good episode, and the ending credits cease just as I am turning down the driveway of my house. A walkway has been carved out, and shoveled bare recently. I suppose I should feel grateful. But what's true is that I will be glad to leave this place. There are many places I have left, and been glad to leave, in my life. But then again, there are a precious few that I have left, but have pointedly not been glad to leave.

It took me about 50 minutes to walk home. I considered taking the bus, as I walked out of the campus doors. It was close at hand, just filling up with students as I reached it. It was packed and crowded inside, with still more students hoping to board it. I have a strong preference not to be crowded. I made my way through the crowd and past it with little hesitation. I walked home, smiling, sometimes laughing at my podcast. I smiled viciously at the sky and let my mind wander, let my self imagine the shape and perspective of different creatures as they came to me.

I enjoyed my day, those parts of it in which I was doing something, clawing life out of fatigue. I paused at the door of my house, and shook my backpack, and brushed small piles of snow off of my headphones and jacket. I stepped inside, to toasty warmth. It seemed too warm. It smelled of warmth in a way that I cannot identify with any other smell. The remaining bits of snow immediately began to melt as I came down to my room. My pantlegs are damp. My socks are damp. My ankles are itchy. I pick little shells of ice off of my hair, and set down my backpack, and take off my jacket, and hang it up to dry.

I filter the rest of the ice out of my hair with my hairbrush, overcoming stubborn resistance, embracing every detail, preparing to sit and relate this story, which I fully expect to seem wild and rambling. It is meant to seem wild and rambling. It should not worry you, if you read it. It does not worry me. I am happy to allow myself, for a while, to be wild and rambling. The weather outside is a face of true winter and I am home. It is too hot inside. I laugh to myself, and begin typing.

The words and the images as I had thought them while I was walking come readily back to mind with just a little prompting.

I am a little inspired by Welcome to Night Vale. I have been enjoying it. The episode that was ending just as I turned in to the driveway of my house was A Story About Them, set sometime in 2014 of the story's timeline. On this day, I particularly appreciate the weather.

Drifting in Snow; The Season of the Scavenger

Eoin weighed particularly heavy on my mind today. I went walking in the first snow of the year that I have seen. It was beautiful, and I was happy to stay out in the cold until some areas of my skin began to feel slightly numb.
I had wanted to send him pictures when the real snows came.
Pictures of winter as it is in Canada.

There was a particular street, where streetlamps positioned between pairs of trees offered a gorgeous image that I felt, if I had the materials, I should like to paint. The bare, arching branches curled over the top of the sidewalk, giving it the beautiful natural-tunnel look of paths between trees, but the light cast the trees against one another in alternating light and shadow; the light in front of every second tree so that its part was cast in beige, and behind the others, so that their trunks and branches were dark silhouettes, and layered like that; light, dark, light, dark, light... Giving the path's length gorgeous texture in contrast.

A friend asked me what was my favourite part of winter.

I don't think I have a favourite part, per se. I prefer cooler temperatures, and so I appreciate that winter is a season in which I am not likely to feel overheated. I often tend to see seasons, much as I see other things, in the things they symbolise. Winter is endings, death and rebirth, rest and repose, the elegance of the lifeless and the dangerous beauty of unforgiving forces of nature, such as ice and snow.
It may also stand for austerity, the time when nothing grows being a natural time of scarcity, but humankind in this country is now divorced from such things.
I suppose I see it as the difficult season, and that appeals to my need to be challenged and face adventure.
In much the same way, spring represents birth and renewal, autumn represents change and shares the motif of endings with winter, and the motif of plenty and harvest with late summer.
Spiritual symbolism. I do it.

Winter speaks to me of wandering, which touches me more and seems to me less obvious.
But it is an ancestral symbol, too. When nothing grows, predators hunt and prowl, wandering farther from their homes to find sustenance.
Humankind are predators, and do so as well.
It is the time when scarcity may force conflict, and unwelcomeness shows its ugliest face; some may be cast out to freeze or starve if they cannot make their own way.
For both of these reasons, perhaps, it feels like the season of the wanderer and the outsider, that one who must always seek and cannot be satisfied for long with what it finds, for even as today's hunger is satisfied, there is always again tomorrow's empty belly to fill as well.
Of course, this time of difficulty is marked with revelry and defiance once we make it through a significant enough chunk to feel we have some measure of victory.
Hardship brings joy at overcoming it.

I certainly identify with the symbols of the wanderer and the scavenger, so in a way I feel that this is my season. The cold is a welcome discomfort to me, a connection to the sense that this cold North land is my home, and a little challenge which makes weathering it more satisfying...
There is nothing quite like coming in out of a harsh cold.

To Love Left Behind

My perspective, the shape of my life in the context of memory and priority, bends around you like a center of gravity.
The time before I met you takes on the aspect of a prologue, the content of the story a few short and treasured chapters I wish I could relive.
When I lay down in my bed, and am not thoroughly exhausted, I am disappointed by your inevitable absence, and accompanied by your memory.
However, the ghosts have grown more peaceful. I will not say they haunt me. In reflection...
My heart is sore, but it is a pain I can live with and appreciate, like the ache of muscles after exertion.
I am okay.

I remember your face, contorted in judgement and revulsion; not at me, but at the wounds in my mind which have hobbled me. Yes, that is one of the memories that stays with me. I cherish that understanding, seeing you sickened by that which stunted my growth; that you saw it as an awful thing is a tender and cherished measure of your respect for me.

I also remember your face smiling, as I so often saw it, and the context that gave this so much beautiful light. No, you told me, you were not someone who smiled a lot. But you often did when you were looking at me.

There was so very much that you did for me, and now...
You are a memory, to me, and a distant unknown actor. Somewhere, you are something, and it is not for me to know what.
Laying in bed, not quite exhausted, and keenly aware of the empty spaces under my blankets, the silence in my ears, the empty in my hand where I wish your hand would be... And I don't regret a thing.
Only perhaps, that it may take a lot of searching to find someone to fill those empty spaces now, after your legacy.

If by some chance you wind up reading this... Yes, it was probably the right thing to do. I have been recovering much more cleanly of late.
I am sad, and I miss you, and I can live with it.
You left me far healthier than you found me, old friend.

The Sun-in-Rags has its tribute for now. I am distant, I burn, I am not as I was.
I continue along my path, moving more slowly for a while.

October; Natural Cyclical Endings

A chill rides on the quiet wind, what some old friend of mine once called a "culting cold". The ground is littered with leaves in yellow and red, although many yet remain green on the branch.
The temperature is just the way I like it most. It has an edge of cold that might grow uncomfortable if I were tired and had no protection against it, the better to hide in a comfy sweater or a warm blanket. The sky grows dusky around six, and grey with cloud. It is not bright enough to hurt my eyes, though I still see clearly and in colour. Meandering through the campus grounds, I take in the beauty, alone. I allow myself to meta-think about my heartbreak, still not fully healed, and to notice and embrace that I am capable of enjoying this autumnal atmosphere, the beauty of cyclic endings, alone. It is not too much to bear that no-one stands with me. Perhaps it would be too much if there were no way for me to share my appreciation of it with... But I can write it here. I can mention it to friends in passing.
Alone, I can walk across paths laden with fallen leaves.
Alone, I can feel the chill of coming winter foretold on the breeze, but not, as yet, here.
Alone, I can walk away from those things I must leave behind, without knowing in any certainty whether I will ever see them again. This is life and mortality.

I remember the similar chill of mild Irish winter, and smile fondly. In the coming months, that mildness will make way for the harsh and savage ice winds. I will walk through paths carved in deep snow... probably, anyway. I wonder if I will feel more or less lonely then. I wonder if I will spend my time with new friends. I wonder if I will build a snow sculpture on some day when the snow comes plentiful and wet enough to inspire it. I wonder if I will take an opportunity to slide down hills as I did when I was still a small child.

I have a test today. I know the fact, acknowledge, accept, and then hold it at some distance, although I do not push it away so that I might forget. I walk through the chill air, admire the campus clad in autumn. This is one of my favourite times of year, and it is good to relax before a test.

I feel well. Parts of me are certainly still grieving, but overall, I feel well. I am beginning to imagine ways that the future might be acceptable even if I never see that person again, although I should hope I will. I am beginning to imagine that I may be happy in other places, with other romances. I reflect on age and maturity, on the continual process of growing up. I consider that I seem to have a much better time meeting and keeping friends than I used to. I consider that my radical views have, to a large degree, mellowed out. I tend to give more credit to those I disagree with these days. My mind wanders, philosophical, serene, reverent. I write half from memory and half as a lucid stream of consciousness. I feel I have written enough, for now.

Common or Garden Heartbreak

If you've had any romance in your life, you probably know all the symptoms. An obsessive compulsion to listen to songs that remind you of Them; the mind turning irresistibly toward Them in every idle moment; the transformation on the context of every song you hear; the feeling of guilty wrongness upon seeking the company of other people which may be pleasantly distracting, but doesn't fit the craving for Their company.

Every part of it is predictable, as reliable as the tide; what fills me with joy leaves me with sorrow. I've certainly been through it before. This iteration is better in a number of ways. We did not part angrily, but honestly and with respect. There is no other new partner to blame, only distance. The spirals are looser, less clinging. All the questions about self-worth have easy answers, because our parting did not reflect badly on me.

But there's no dulling the sting of that core blade. Whenever my mind is idle, songs and memories and a desperate hope that I will see Them again fill it up. I cry silently in public, and wait, patiently and impatiently, until the tears will finally run out. How many months will it take? And more importantly, what I actually fear... Will I be able to get over this heartache without letting go of the hope that I will see Them again? All sense tells me there is no reason I can't. Desire is the partner of sorrow, but if I can make that desire light enough not to crush me, that doesn't immediately mean it will fly out of my head altogether, and what could possibly convince me that going back to such a fine thing, if and when it becomes possible, would not be wonderful?

But still I am afraid to let go too readily.

An Open Love Letter

To my darling Ashlynn...

As I rest here and contemplate the day we've had, listening to you occasionally begin to snore... My feelings are complicated and uncertain. But then, they always are, aren't they? It is not as dramatic as I'm used to. I have a mild headache. I'm slightly tired. I guess I'm content. Nothing flashy, just a gentle, faintly smug feeling that things are all right.
The gratitude was real. The satisfaction of rubbing your feet and knowing that you are appreciating my hands. I am confident that I am doing reasonably well, and that you will miss me when I have to leave, and look back on this time fondly. There has never been any question whether I will miss you.

I am a creature with an extraordinary perspective, and I carry an extraordinary weight. She who helps me shoulder it? That is just one of the things that makes her, too, extraordinary. And yet, we are ordinary within the frames in which we live. You chatting with your friends and co-workers. Me playing Binding of Isaac in idle moments. Sharing music, sharing videos, eating pizza and ice cream. I am reminded of Doctor Who commenting on the beauty and freedom of regular, everyday people, and for once, for a little while, I feel just a little less afraid of age and dying.

I think I will still be afraid of losing you until, one way or another, the last goodbye ever said between us falls on dead ears. In the mean time, fear is balanced and comforted by your presence and your bizarre devotion to this restless wanderer. I dream of journeying with you and do not know, now, what will or won't happen. I have my dreams and so do you, in this strange world of cynicism and conveniences built up on other cynicisms and conveniences through year after year, in this cute little old city, part old and part new. I lay next to you and type. You lay next to me and sleep. You'll work tonight. In another week I'll go home and then it will be months upon months before I will likely touch your face again, but for now I'm here, and the world isn't perfect and dramatic just because I'm here. I am not quite able to whisk you away into a fairytale as much as I might like to.

But you tell me you needed this... Well then, it was worth it, and that's that.

Rest well, my darling.
Perhaps some other day I will hold you to my side when I go, and you will go with me. Not this time.

Thinking in Poetry Again

The beautiful, absolute world of mathematics mocks my relentless imperfection...
  And the inexorable call of death mocks my mortal limitations,
reminding me, my time is short; I can do anything, but not everything.

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

To what do I set my mind, my very life?

Days slip by unrecorded, my focus on other priorities; on study, scores of 100%, cooking, cleaning myself, maintaining some basic standard of health and happiness, talking with my roommates...

The physical law that there are only 24 hours in each day, 356 days in a year, and only so many years in a lifetime... Although that number is not set, it seems to close in like a ceiling, and cause me great claustrophobia. The x variable glares down at me from an unknown height, declaring with historical empiricality an extremely low chance of anything over 100.

100 years seems so short a time when one thinks of all the things there are to learn, and improve...

I Don't Know

a first draft

I ask you, what if I never stop
Just waiting for the shoe to drop
Will that bring it crashing down?
'Cause I got, scars that just never heal
Even with a love I deeply feel
I just can't find the bottom; which is deeper? Which is stronger?

And I fear that I do you wrong
Just by being a puzzle you can't solve
And I don't want to pull you along
Hoping you'll be the answer if there isn't one

I don't know if I believe in justice, fairness, peace or all that stuff anyway.
And even if I do I don't know if I'm really good enough to earn it anyway.

I ask you, what if I never change,
If I ache with dreams but stay in my cage
Will you ever tire of me here?
I expect my friends to change and grow
But sometimes I fear, it's funny though,
That I'm spinning my wheels and I'm getting nowhere.

Just waiting
To see some fruit grow
Where my hardest struggles tore the ground
And I'm waiting
And I don't know
How long it'll be now,
And whether you should wait with me or go back home.

I ask you am I going anywhere?
And if so, why am I still here?
I ask you why is everything so slow?
'Cause baby I don't know,
And I'm sorry, and I'm blind here, and I'm scared.

Flowers

I got this basket of flowers
in a photo album I bought -
it was there to be framed
on the front page, then replaced.
But when I took it out and changed it,
I had to pause and think.
It was quite a pretty picture,
throwing it out would be a waste.
So I'm sending you some flowers
(cuz you know I love you, babe)
And I really hope you like them,
though they probably weren't made
                        to be used this way.
                                            Serp

I made two copies of this homemade 'postcard', because there were two identical pictures of flowers, and I have sent them to two people who are very dear to me.

Pubic Hair

written on August 7th, 2014
& inspired by Ani DiFranco

When I'm in the bathroom
I have a way of wiping myself
that has a habit of plucking out pubic hairs on
just one side of my groin
And I could probably learn to change it
if I could see what I was doing
but for now I guess I'll live with it;
It's not important,
It's just annoying.


When something is pulled away
Oh time will ease the pain
When something is pulled away
Oh time will ease the pain


Ain't it funny how the little things
in life just get passed by
like the hangnails you pull off sometimes
and the crusty stuff that gets in your eye
There are some things we don't talk about
Things we would rather not discuss
And the silence just fades into the background
-until somebody has to die
!

Then suddenly all of the silence
comes crashing down around your ears
and you can scream and wail all you want to but
Nobody wants to hear
There are some things you don't mention
except alone and in quiet prayer
While lives get plucked from the human race like
Just so many pubic hairs


And every time we do not speak
We fill our world with silence
And every time we turn away
We fill our world with silence
And every thing we don't discuss
We fill our world with silence
And the silence will cover our graves


So when I'm in a dark room
I have a way of crying to myself
that has a habit of making the skin
around my eyes feel raw and burned
And I think we could learn to change this
If we could see enough to care
I just hope to god we learn
that some things are more important
than a hair


When something is pulled away,
(Every time we do not speak)
Oh time will ease the pain
(We fill our world with silence)
When something is pulled away,
(Every time we turn away)
Oh time will ease the pain
(We fill our world with silence)
When something is pulled away
(Every thing we don't discuss)
Oh time will ease the pain
(We fill our world with silence)
And the silence will cover our graves


And suddenly all of the silence
comes crashing down around your ears
and you can scream and wail all you want to but
Nobody wants to hear you 'cuz
There are some things you don't question,
except alone and in quiet prayer
while screams are brushed aside
like so many stray pubes on our underwear


Ain't it funny how the little things
in life just get passed by
like the hangnails I pull off sometimes and the
rash that crying leaves 'round my eyes
There are some things we don't talk about
Things we'd all rather not discuss
No matter how much or how little
they quietly affect all of us
And the silence just fades into the background
along with the best of us


When something is pulled away
Ah time will ease the pain
When something is pulled away
Ah time will ease the pain

~~~P.S: My own thoughts on presentation...

The parts in purple should be sung or spoken more quietly, more like a whisper,
and ideally blend into a sort of musical break between the sections in black.

Would like to have guest backup voice/s for
"We fill our world with silence" and possibly for all of the parts in purple,
while still singing/speaking solo the parts in black. Or white, as it generally appears on my blog.

An Empathetic Wish

That I could care for all mankind
as though they were my darkened sons
that lit the day and cast such light
to guide my sight through lonely storms

That I could dream as children may
of peace on earth and guileless trade
through age until my dying day
though naivety is born to fade

That I could live a life unfeard
the scorching brace of hate avoid
and suffer not the shyness
painful memories employ

That I could in my kin inspire
a love that from no heart would turn
Yet failing me, I close my eye
and live in shadows crisp and stern

inspired by the style and themes of Emily Dickenson;
with perspective and wisdom kindly shared with me by The RSA and CrashCourse

Sex Without Shame, Death Without Fear

"Just thinking out loud... 

I don't mean to dwell on this dying thing"

It's a shot of bloody perspective reminding me
that regardless of WHAT
I think and have experienced, regardless
of how much I do and how many hours in smug solitude
thinking I'm better, or smarter, or more spiritual
than you
That I know, that I can face it
ALL
It still remains more true
What is said in the book, title forgotten:
You truly feel, don't you,
that you are now completely disillusioned?
That may prove to be the most enduring
illusion
of them all.

And I am dying. Very slowly.
A decay no medicine, no surgery can erase
Time and entropy will take my place
and fill it with strangers
With a shot of bloody perspective...
An urgency that will fade with time
That I could die now while I'm ready
equipped with a fullness of uncanny surprise
the understanding that nothing
no matter how great could prepare me
The shock now is greater...
I wonder, if only,
Walking with giants, lit by a star
I would know now, to know,
to have no expectations...
Until the next moment,
of bloody perspective,
How far?

It may be harder to face living and knowing
that I will forget, and find boredom again,
a lack of perspective...
I wonder to myself, if the impossible can be done...
Not to deny death... Yes, that exactly.
NOT to.
What seems it should be within the reach of the mind...
I'm not sure it is:
To face Sex without Shame,
And Death without Fear.

Fools Of Us

You just cannot win when you're wrong

Though the battle be bloody and long

Oh, the truth will make fools of us all

And the longer you cling to illusion,

the harder you'll fall.

We were all of us ignorant, once

We fought with our lies and the battles were lost

To have wisdom, we must pay the cost

Bitter remedy swallowed with pride

'neath the hat of the dunce

The truth will come out...

It always does, in time.

And the louder you shout

The more foolish you'll look, to yourself

at the end of the line

You just cannot win when you're wrong

Though the battle be bloody and long

Oh, the truth will make fools of us all

And the longer you cling to illusion,

the harder you'll fall.

You just cannot win when you're wrong

Though your allies be wordy, your arguments strong

You may hide behind tyranny, authority,

maybe last your whole life;

Doesn't matter how long, you will never be right

The truth will come out...

It always does, in time.

And the louder you shout

The more foolish you'll look, to yourself

at the end of the line

You just cannot win when you're wrong

Though your allies be wordy, your arguments strong

You may silence dissent, but what victory is that?

You're no closer to truth for each tongue you cut loose

And the truth will come out...

As always, it's yours to decide...

To acknolwedge the loss;

To abandon your pride;

To be wrong,

to be free,

to be right...

Oh the truth will make fools of us-

You just cannot win when you're wrong

Though the battle be bloody and long

Oh, the truth will make fools of us all

And the longer you cling to illusion,

the harder you'll fall.

The truth will make fools of us all!