Disregard for Notions of Old

I’m curious to meet the person that said we had to settle down into a semblance of normalcy in life and have a wife and kids. I don’t even know what I’d tell him, but I’d want to know why he thought that was what we were supposed to do. The more I think about the way I’m supposed to end up as opposed to the way I’ll most likely end up, I can’t help but to feel a bit discombobulated. It’s as though there is one recipe to follow, and one false ingredient turns to whole dish awry. I wonder what this man was thinking, because he was obviously wrong, the poor guy.

With most marriages doomed before they begin, the subsequent offspring that follow (or precede) are brought into a broken record of a world; one that keeps skipping on the song that should be the kind that plays at a movie's happy ending, but sadly isn’t. Instead we’re left with shattered lives, estranged spouses, and children that are torn between love and hate, and its true place in their life. The concept of family is deteriorating by the day, and yet this man told us all to follow these steps and all would be right. Well we’re moving farther from right each second, existing in the wrong, and I can’t help but to shy away from this whole mess. I’m not listening to this great prophet of old, because I’ve no desire to be the ticking time bomb that everyone seems to be; bursting to smithereens a life that was supposed to be beautiful bliss, and instead is the smoldering embers of a burnt soul existence.

Lucidity in Earthquakes

Slow rolling omnibus musical chair mind,
requesting the quaking of aching souls,
backwards breaststroke up capillary worm holes–
finale grandiose in aftershock doom knells.

Tsunami shock waves muster destruction dirges,
chaotic urges birthed in earth’s unruly womb,
exploding outwards ashy phlegmatic plume–
buried it all under jet black virgin soot.

Gravitate reverse pull rending towards epicenter,
sinkhole collapses devouring worlds whole,
masking synapses revolting delusions–
upheld derma with crumbling bones.

The Battle of the Flame

There’s this nuclear reactor buried somewhere within us that teeters in dangerous red. Upon reaching that point we grasp for the shutdown, in turn snuffing out the inner radiance we are too wary to let explode outwards. Like comparing celestial themes, the stark reality of it all is that some people just shine brighter than others; garner more attention, are generally more charismatic, or are just plain irresistible for a smattering of reasons. The question lies in whether to douse out your flame and keep equilibrium in darkness, so as not to upset the meridian line we so achingly toe.

Though you may try, the embers will be inevitably roused, and soon the flames will consume again, and you will be forced to admit that radiance is you. Though you may cut the wick, and play down the beauty of yourself, the alchemy never lies and the chemistry unfolds none the less. You can’t transplant yourself out of your own skin for the sake of another, even if it bruises the pride or ego in the process. The reasoning why is that you only postpone the damage in never admitting what truly is. Some stars just shine brighter, complaining about it will not change the fact, and acknowledging doesn’t make the situation evil, rather it puts at ease the anxiousness we secretly harbor.

The honest truth is that people are who they are and to accept them for anything less is to deny the beauty of their spirit. That we may not be that person is quite alright, because worth is not defined in the easily accessible, but rather in the self-assurance of not needing outright affirmation. All the stars shine in their own luster, don’t fret that yours may not compare to the rest, for the beauty is in the mosaic, and each piece brings its own magnificence to the whole.

Temporal Aches

Teleport me back to the succulence of youth,
with its supple vat of emotions ripe for the picking.
Drowning in the daily depression roller coaster,
riding the peaks and valleys of stoplight changing minds.

Rip through the temporal ether,
time spiraling into the gawky adolescence;.
If only to cherish the impossibility of never reliving it,
paradoxical wants in time’s game of cat and mouse.

Nowadays emotions are dormant beasts,
slow to rouse from hibernation, though potent when awoken.
Digging through the mess of understanding,
life becomes more about clarifying than truly experiencing.

The Secrets We Forget To Tell

It’s not always the overplayed hyper-sexuality that men find attractive in women, but rather, the radiance of a genuineness that emanates from being every asset of “yourself”. We don’t always need you to be the pinup that ravages us with your sexual voracity–while nice, it’s not a necessity— because true lasting romance doesn’t build its foundation in lust. Men want to be able to relate in even the most simple of ways; the simple companionship that you would desire in a true friend, with a bond that permeates to a greater, more substantial depth. In essence, we don’t want a plastic fuck doll that acquiesces to our every whim, and defines her self-worth in said farcical relationships as a mere sexual vessel. Personally(and I can’t speak for everyone), but self-respect is the most attractive quality in a female. In a woman knowing her true worth and accepting nothing less than what she deems the best. It’s so heartbreakingly alluring because it’s a twining to one’s own soul, and knowing that your not in a constant tug-of-war of who is the dominant force in the relationship; of who calls the “shots”, and all the ridiculous tyranny that men and women deem fit to enact upon one another in these sick parasitic bonds they call a relationship; but rather it’s progressing towards the sublime greatness of love together as equals. So next time your worth is defined by your body and how much pleasure can be extracted from it, just question what it is you want out of the situation, and more importantly if your content with it. If you take anything from here let it be this; while men and women want to complicate what they truly want in a significant other, it boils down to finding someone that compliments you in every facet of your life, because if a part of the whole is lacking, you doom yourself to the self full-filling prophecy of unsatiated desire instead of embracing the salvation in true contentment.

The Cosmopolitan

About to get swallowed whole
by the ravenous cosmopolitan.
Put through the shredder;
sliced up delectably nice.

Engulfed completely in anonymity;
the pin in the moral compass,
buried Atlantis in the urban haystack.

Disintegrating kite streamers,
whipping anxiously voracious.
Falling horroshow into the waiting maw,
dull the bright neons of innocence.

Strain the sustenance right out,
regurgitate those rural remains.
Corpse of sacrificial sunny days;
used puppet body left to decay.

Clothes-Line

Lost in the spin cycle,
bookish thoughts hung out to dry.
Parched on the sun-baked line,
crinkly clothes-pins of the mind.

Cooling wind from autumnal breath,
billowing in the dandelion sway.
Reading it all on breeze wafted sleeves,
catacomb musings emerge from the maze.

Diminutive fit for giants days,
shrunk too thin for glutton ways.
Bleaching truth from the honor guard,
in disregard for color-safe white lies.

Wardrobe of rugged patchwork souls,
vehemently clinging to woebegone lifelines.
Searching for the shoddiest of means,
to stretch the fabric without bursting the seams.

The Poetic Motif

I’m getting tired of using celestial themes and ancient mythologies. Writers tend to get sucked into this trap off glorifying the cliches, the motifs that have littered quality literature for hundreds of years. There’s no real reason to reference the sun or dredge up Greek gods (it’s not as though I’ve ever lent much thought to their symbolic prominence), yet they manage their way in there regardless. What about finding the beauty in the everyday, the mundane normalcy of routine simpleton lives. Championing the random acts of kindness, or the altruism only you know—these seem worthier causes. I don’t want to claim that “your radiance is like the sun”, but rather “it blinds me like the warmness of your body snuggled under the waves of sheets on our favorite weekend morning”, or something along those lines. Using real actions and occurrences as opposed to the metaphysical, hyper-intellectual imagery that hovers in the realm of poetics. It will always be there, the desire to emulate the greats and borrow from the endless trove of beautiful metaphors, yet sometimes the real beauty lies everywhere else.

I can only propose to live by this self proposed maxim, yet I can guarantee I’ll get sucked right back in after reading some Shelley, Keats, or Shakespeare on a rainy, woebegone day. It’s the endless lure of true greatness calling from the grave, enrapturing you in imagery that is far to fanciful to even hold true now a days. Inevitable indeed, but I suppose the whole point of this is finding the meaning in moments, in the epiphany seconds where all the simple, boring everyday stuff gets put on hold, and your able to coalesce the mosaic and find the beauty in it all. Life becomes not about bills, papers, deadlines, crushes, or hangovers (to name a few), but rather the disastrous beauty that encompasses it all. Here’s to hoping none of the above cheese imagery wanders into the fingertip and onto the “paper”, yet only time will tell.

Burn the Wick

You’ll tell me it’s alright,
I’ll keep on worrying.
Letting the phantoms wash over me,
blinking shuddering tears from your eyes.

You’ll give me desperation kisses,
I’ll be a study in depression.
Marveling at the numbness of my face,
you’re swatting apparitions futilely.

You’ll be Isolde,
I’ll be Tristan.
Dying the Romeo death,
you’re the Juliet wishing.

You’ll give up eventually,
I’ll be completely destroyed.
It’s time I disappear,
accept you can’t fix this.

You’ll remember the bliss,
I’ll bear the scars from it.

Methods of Interpretation

I’ve never given much though to the innumerable ways that a given word can be interpreted. Now lets expand that by a couple hundred thousand words, and we’ve got a slew of issues ready to burst. This lovely can of worms has arisen throughout the years, as people considerably more intelligent than me have deemed an inconceivable amount of ways to understand things. What I’m so shipwrecked on is why no one admits that there’s not only one concrete way of interpreting something, but rather a volatile smattering of all these high-brow philosophies they parade around like birthday pony rides. These intellectuals on high, harpooning off of logic and reason into the nether regions of near incoherency (all in an effort to make something that is relatively understandable into something that now needs to be decoded). Through the process of gleaning information via interpretation we’ve somehow arrived at a kaleidoscope of options that ask you to suspend one idea in favor of another. To simultaneously look and not look, and yet derive the one truth that has to be there. It’s all rubbish.


People bring their own experience into understanding–it’s that plain and simple. I vouch that it is impossible to suppress your own experience while trying to interpret something. The main reason being, is that it is the only viable body of work that we have to compare things to. Someone that’s had a charmed life and had everything handed to them on a silver platter will not be able to empathize with someone that has soldiered through poverty on the mere dregs of their willpower. It’s not possible because our imagination can not duplicate reality, and more importantly you can’t mimic the real anguish of experience. This is not to say that these two individuals won’t be able to see some issues the exact same way, but I’m talking about “thinking about thinking”. The act where in every second of being alive, your bringing your codex of scarred wisdom/experience into any mundane situation.

Information and experience are processed differently, handled in ways we can’t begin to comprehend because in truth we can only ever barely understand our own thought process, let alone that of anyone else. All I’m making a case for is letting things be, and not attempting to suffocate anyone in someone else’s idea of thinking. Let them know it, teach it to them, but don’t abdicate that they must understand or even grasp the rationale that goes into it. I loathe methods of interpretation, because if anyone else were ever to read this I wouldn’t force them to grasp the agonizing mind set that went into writing this.

Equinox

Sometimes you can have a perfect day with someone your not supposed to be with. It’s as though the scales of fate skewed to disparity, yet you can’t help but hate yourself for loving every minute of it. While your minds off wondering what is supposed to be right in life, your existing in complete ease, breathing the breaths of unconscious contentment without a second thought. Your so utterly relaxed it’s as though you exercising the calm center of yourself, yet there’s another in the room sharing your oxygen, and crowding your space. Their living in the same time, gulping up the same air, and their heart is beating perfectly in rhythm with the one in your chest. They call these things symmetry; a state of being in absolute harmony.

Yet there’s a thought gnawing in the back of your head, making headway to announce itself out loud and mar the bliss you so achingly hold on to—reality. In worlds where colors are absolutes, and the DNA structure of ourselves is irrevocably unalterable, we can’t fight the immovable. We’re stuck trying to pan out calculus equations that reach infinite zeroes repeating, and we’re following those numerals off the lemming cliff to our doom. For in these moments where contentment becomes us; as we’re reaching euphoria in stolen moments of unbelieving, the sobering shower of reality is crashing over us. You fight it still, building the crescendo of this rapture, edging towards the climax, and you arrive at an emotional orgasm. You’re floored with feeling, gripping your surroundings in floundering amazement at the nerve responses jittering your senses like seventeen year old cicada songs. Every sinew is singing the melody of rapturous rightness until the lights come on and blackness fills you to the brim bursting.

The sun and moon can never be, forever doomed to gaze eternal on their celestial highs, crossing before one another in this woeful unrequited dance.

Mirror Lives

You ever look at yourself and know you’ll never admit the impossible? Those dirty little secrets you hole up in yourself, incubating them with all those grandiose fears you harbor, and you wear the sham of denial to prevent that particular volcano from erupting. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Maybe you practice blindness in attempts to banish it from being true, or rather drink yourself to oblivion so that the hazy fug of inebriation makes it seem slippery, and drops down the sinkhole for tomorrow morning to deal with. There’s a thousand million ways to hide, evade, or generally mutate those little issues, but as opposed to running, maybe it’s time to solider up and go ballistic on these mothers.

The truth of it all is that everyone out there(sooner or later) will see the crack in the lining of your face, the infinitesimal downcast frown that belies the agony your harboring. That tempest is billowing to an oblivion you try to avoid, yet the path of destruction leads right through everyone you know, and sooner or later their storm tracker is gonna find you pinging maniacally on their radar. Whether you fess up to it or not, that knowledge is floating free from the pandora of your being, and that will just aid the anxiety ridden sludge within and consume you further–because now your worrying about what everyone else is thinking (about what is wrong with you). It’s as long-winded as it sounds, as inane as the madness of trying to comprehend insanity, yet it’s out there, (you know it) but you lovingly avoid it.

Shame on you, but one of these days the mirror’s gonna reflect Dorian Grey back at you, and it’s gonna shock your world. Your ruinous visage will burst through the facade of your being, forcing you to notice it, demanding your wandering eyes to focus in on the implosion your causing. These words will fade long before that day happens, yet maybe they will burrow in the sediments and germinate into something akin to reason. Either way, drink it up, down, sideways, and let the blindfold take the wheel for however long you want--- it’s only your life your running from.

Impish Scabs

He only loves you for your pretty face,
and he’ll only stay for that skinny waist–
so darling, when is it time to change?

Those pretty fingers caress your cheek,
playboy kisses trail up your thighs–
tell me love, is this your disguise?

Your eyes devour his roguish face,
breathe religion between his legs–
it’s no wonder you can’t see.

He leaves you writhing in pleasure,
keeps you waiting in wracking sobs–
that watery smile bogs you down.

Your love turns to septic paranoia,
those excuses scream mockery in your ears-
why is it you won’t heed these fears?

Now you implode with envious disgust,
bloating his ego that’s fit to burst–
those tears are his victory lap.

It’d be sad if you didn’t keep picking the scab,
letting the old infection right back in-
in those begging breaths you let him win.

The Daily Struggle

Sometimes you miss a day. Caught up in the swirl of activity that ticks each minute into crazed frenzy, and you just get lost among the mess. It's hard sometimes, figuring out why you carry on with it, why when your body's failing, time's disappearing alarmingly fast, and priorities become too tangled to identity, that you still soldier on. The only explanation I can think of is that it's something tied inexplicably to your livelihood. One of those strings of fate that entangles itself in you, and makes separation seem futile.

Regardless, each day dawns with it a new hurdle to encounter; whether it be a gluttony of sloth that disables you from work, or a waning desire to function at all--a rebellion rises up in you to combat it and in turn create something truly beautiful. For there is nothing more precious than the beauty of creation that comes from your own well of genius. A genius not seen by many for the most part, nor understood by even yourself, yet it feels irrevocably right to seek it out and nurture it. Suns will keep on setting, breathes will keep blowing in this chest, and with each rhythmic reminder of life's existence, these fingertips punch away at a truth that more and more each day seems to be fleeting into non-existence. Yet, it is neither a deterrent nor a catalyst, merely a roadblock in the search for honesty of expression.

I'll let these eyes droop until this screen becomes blurred, fuzzy letters mashing together, and yet it's all part of something greater. It's in the effort, the actual fight of creation, where the visceral parts of yourself( where experience is truly known) battle to put to words what it is your feeling. Where your body can so easily tell your mind good from bad, and hurt from pain, our attempts to try to identify it out loud seem to fall short. As though in the act of speaking we're giving power to a thought merely processed, not actually birthed into verbal existence. With each cramp that thwarts the process, every distraction that lures you away--all the mess that gets in the way of productivity; I welcome thee to plague my way. For without the struggle of it all, the end product is never worth it. It feels as though you were given a free pass, one that would soon loose its lure, and that's a fate I could never bear. Abuse me, attempt to break, ruin it all in the decimation of weakness, if only to produce the beauty that lies mired underneath it all.

The Aftermath of a Show

There's something about music that just resonates. Whether it be the siren ringing of your ears for days after, the soiled stranger's sweat on your clothes from an excursion in the pit, or the eighty year old smoker voice you magically attain through screaming you face off. Coupling all these things together brings up the greatest experience we ever truly let ourselves embrace. Music. It’s the great unifier. It's finding yourself in a venue; lights dim, vision hazy, everyone's shuffling around at the edges of the stage waiting idly, your heart's fluttering in anticipation of your own personal play list being fulfilled, and finally it all begins with a sound. Soon the music has you moving; as though invisible puppet strings were causing kinesthesia to burst from the inside out, and your utterly powerless to stop the beat of your body.

Imagine it as a culmination of many factors coming together to form a euphoria that lasts only as long as a note holds out, or feedback reverberates through the speakers--yet it is the purity of the moment that we must cherish. It’s realizing how in the aftermath of a show/concert you feel thoroughly changed somehow. Emanating from the core of your being it's as though you've experienced every emotion possible in the span of mere minutes, and your body is in shock and attempting to recover from the maelstrom you've just inflicted. As volatile as it is liberating, the wild abandon of losing yourself in the music is an enticement we are all but incapable of withstanding.

I find myself now in the aftermath. My bruised feet speak sermons to me, while ears protest coherency for onomatopoeia ringing sounds, and I find myself on the verge of imploding from the sure ecstasy of feeling within me. What I'm experiencing is the aftershock of a truly visceral response to sound, and in the multitudinous hours that follow I can only stare in amazement at the capacity of experience I’m capable of feeling through the sounds of music

Brain Mush

Sometimes your brain turns to mush. Whether it be from over-stimulation or a complete lack thereof, it's a distinct feeling of being frazzled. Times like this everything takes on a funky hue, an odd sensation of living in the twilight zone of your everyday life. You can't quite think straight, nor can you comprehend everything as acutely as you'd like, and therefore your somewhat zombified for however long this particular episode lasts. It's a shade inconvenient, and plenty aggravating when you couple it with bad timing, but it just goes to show that we can only take so much at a given time.

I'm currently battling through one now, as hours of reading have made words appear almost foreign. Has that ever happened to you? Where you just look at a word like "menagerie" and each letter seems to take on a life of it's own, to the point where you see no coherency possible; as though that smattering of letters coming together to form an actual word seems farcical. Maybe you get it, or maybe you don't, but I'm quite afflicted as we speak. Right now it's only sheer memory of keyboard locations that is keeping this thriving. As though I'm shoveling through blizzard-esque snow in order to reach the pristine, icy cold sidewalks of logic and reason. Often times over-analyzing, or thinking too much in general will just fry you for a time. So in this moment, digression becomes me, and I'm undulating tension slowly into the atmosphere.

Hopefully all of this recharges the system, and allows for some productivity to resume. Though each day we tiptoe precariously close to the red-danger-zone of our limits, and each subsequent time is a study in maintaining homeostasis. Until the circuits short again to leave me veritably useless for another span of time; I can only put solace in these words coalescing together to stimulate the brain waves enough to surmount the burdens that are continually placed upon it.

First Sunday

Nothing quite compares to the first Sunday of the Football year. It’s like Christmas come early; only instead of cocoa and stockings, we’re treated to monstrous hits, stellar feats of athleticism, and the general uproar that causes you to wildly ejaculate at your television all day. Like a relapse into drug addiction, all semblance of responsibility or general coherency takes a seat on the sideline to those precious few hours of that glorious first day of the week. In the season’s infancy, with all the stats wiped clean, the slate of standings non-existent, and the lost hope in a team’s destiny having not yet sunk in. Like a virginal snow untrodden upon, you can’t help but succumb to the visceral thrill that engulfs your being; the undeniable presence of football being underway.

With the epic glories of football comes the frosty chill in the air; the autumn wind that makes goose bumps tickle your skin, and gradually devolves into desolation iciness. Edging ever close towards equinox, each Sunday brings with it a cornucopia of newsworthy stories. Seeing the unimaginable happening before us, as we rage endlessly to duplicate the feats our eyes are wont to believe. There is no greater joy than giving Sunday a true meaning again, as opposed to the dreary pre-Monday doldrums it reluctantly mantles through the rest of the year. Each morning dawning bright with infinite potential, edging into greatness as the sun dies much too quickly in the sky, leaving us with the lone game of the night to satiate our desires until the week begins anew again.

Indeed this is sentimentality at its finest, yet not a shred of remorse blooms in the marrows of my being--for these precious few months disappear all too fast. Like our lives in fast forward, each Sunday comes as quick as it goes, and we soldier on in our own gridiron battles.

Proof

I can't prove that I've ever loved anyone. No evidence remains to convince that wrenching battles and waterfall emotions were once harbored in this body. Not an artifact endures to verify a capacity for boundless passion. Like a city full of strangers, all of these truths are buried in the depths of commonplace flesh and blood.

Proof lies in recurring demonstration; in repeatedly plunging in the labyrinth, foraging through the maze, and coming out the other side scathed in experience. These scars made in invisible ink (visible only to you), are gazed with ever-wizening eyes that fuel the codex of empiricism. Yet it’s a world without 3-D glasses, and so not a soul can see what’s marked you. In this pock-marked bucket of life, where water seeps out too quickly to staunch, the truth of love is evanescent, and proof lies only in the divulging of yourself each and every time. In showing the world that you are capable of love, and of the subsequent hurt and vulnerability that tag along with it. Only through verifying the hypothesis of it all can certainty be derived.

The grail of the heart can’t ever be fully known, yet know this; as sure as the strings of a heart play the melody of your soul, the proof lies in the epicenter of doubt, struggling to burrow its way through and proclaim it all to be true.

Fever

The bowery of our passions, the urban sewerage strewn along with the passing of days; it caters to the very basest parts of us. Wishing to metamorphose in the feral monstrosity way, to debase yourself and become enslaved to your whims. Ah, it is decadence gilded to brilliant radiance, and in its blinding glow; the knees crumple, the head yanks back in exultation, and the primal screams of gory glory are released. These moments, the infinitesimal moments of pure release, they capture volatility at it’s finest. An explosion of thought and feelings, of every visceral psychosomatic inkling your body can muster—we become the conduit for our brain’s revelries.

Finding the beauty in the ecstasy; the wilting of reason to the betterment of pleasure. It’s a Dionysian orgy of rapture, oh sweet sickly poisonous nightshade. Alluring beauty coupled with irresistible charm, your demise is constructed in the rampant imagination that we strive to keep in temperance, yet the slightest tear in the fabric of our moral vigilance leads to the eruption. The sporadic devolution from reason to primitive orgasmic seasons. Finding it all euphoric beyond belief, the too short breathes that sustain us turn ragged, a short fuse blazing towards eruption.

The fever racks your body, seizing each muscle fiber in abandon, showing you who the true master of it all is. Repression merely lasts as long as the tenuous bond of decency can be stretched thin till breaking, once the deluge comes, in the snapping string of woeful madness, it all ends in the Armageddon of feeling. Tactile infusion, pleasure ruing you in the ruin. Our capacity for savagery is infinite. It’s only a matter of time until we are all but unrecognizable in the insatiable act of our wonton want.

Flooding Season

Days of the flood,
suffused to bursting capacity.
Saturated in precious hours,
the tide rises to consume.

Flotsam in the vastness,
drifting anonymously along.
Worsening for wear,
the trident aches unsated.

Ready the buoys;
cry the crescendo of the sea.
Weather the rough;
the levee's exultant cries.

Mr. & Mrs. Miscommunication

For a race that has had thousands of years to understand one another, our two distinctive genders have made it alarmingly hard to comprehend one another. Like an elusive whisper on the wind, males and females almost seem designed to fit together perfectly biologically, and clash in all other aspects. That lock and key of our physicality aside, the act of thought processing, leading to our tongues and mouths formulating, then to the ear lobes receiving it all, and lastly our brains digesting it---somewhere along the way it gets transformed into a farcical game of telephone. This inability to fully grasp one another is what fuels many of the issues humans have with one another today.

Part of it lies in this inability to read minds. While it would alleviate matters greatly, it would also spawn a Pandora's box of other issues. What we must attempt to assay here is the notion that anyone in this world is capable of figuring out our thoughts at any given time--it just isn't possible to know what someone wants you to think. Our brains process information like light speed; blazing through all sorts of emotions, feelings, and the such–-yet tell me, how could anyone ever attempt to know what goes on in anything other than their own skull?

The answer lies in not bogging interaction with lies and half-truths. In doing this we throw countless road blocks along the way to our desired topic/destination. It's as though we willingly sabotage ourselves to ensure peril lines the course of our communication--as though honesty and purity of intention were the safety belt(who needs them?) of verbal interaction. Time has come to be forthright, to embrace the prospect of lowering the veil of secrecy, and in that act, perhaps simple communication won’t have to resemble the sad hilarity of two foreigners attempting to talk to one another.

The XX and XY distinguish us, yet it is in our power to bridge the gap of differences, and thus in any and all interaction, strive to conduct ourselves with some semblance of austerity. We’re only wasting one another's time by side stepping verity, and embracing the discord of fabrication. Maybe it was destined from the beginning of time for our genders to writhe eternally in the purgatory of miscommunication, yet the silver lining remains--only if we work tirelessly towards it.

Back On The Road

Sometimes one can’t help but succumb to the nostalgia of road time explorations. I’m talking about those On The Road moments, where freedom was the open road to oblivion. Traversing the wilderness of youth, traipsing across the county, life was in the simplicity of existing to capture every rapturous moment. Warping back to those times when a simple steering-wheel nudge was helming the ship towards the next great adventure; where anything and everything was visible on the horizon, and merely being there, breathing in the religion of experience, was a revelation in itself.

Those nostalgia days driving through my mind, seizing control of memories and imbuing them with a clarity and vivacity that entices me evermore to drop life, and take up the mantle of the road. The aching sweetness of blazing through state lines(windows down), blaring the tunes of the day, masquerading like madmen through the infinity of the road that lays dauntless before you. In those pristine moments, perfection was possible, if only we knew it then....if only we knew.

Regardless, stuck in the cement grind of routine and responsibility, we exchange the wings of adventure for the shackles of mundanity. It's in the restlessness of experience that threatens to usurp the stability of normalcy. Ah, if only every second of being were comparable to the wild exuberance of the road, then, alas, every minute detail would be relished with abandon. Yet, we forage on in the hopes of finding ourselves in the desolation once more; with engines thrumming, windshields stained in the bug-splatter, and most importantly, the overwhelming rightness of the act itself.

To the day when I take up the quest once more, singing the tune of seductive asphalt, and see the rearview holding the beautiful prison of my life....receding in the distance.

Decompression

Breathe

Slowly sinking into yourself,
loosing spools of muscle tension
as each second submerges you deeper.

Exhale

Release the grindstone of stress,
the ingratiating presence of worry.
Deflate the monomania of control-
in this moment subvert the anxiety.

Breathe

Each cell carrying buoyant oxygen,
infusing you with the sweetness of clarity.
Spindling through the glory of your being-
eyes closed- Pollock specks litter your lids.

Exhale

Flutter the orbs open to warm light,
seek the calm in the release;
deflating into the void,
freedom blooms within you.

Breathe

Take heed of the strength flooding your lungs,
seize it true to break the manacles.
Fill up now with certainty,
fluidity of purpose roars through you.

Exhale

Final expunging of putrid woe,
unplugging the toxicity of fear.
Rid the last of it in this movement,
rejuvenation through the symbiosis of

Inhalation/Exhalation

Autumn's Eve

The arctic breeze kisses the cheeks of us all as summer's soiled sweat dries fastidious on our supple skins. We're shedding the carapace of zesty ectasty, the supernova loves of summer being swallowed by the autumnal black hole of reality impending. The end of days is upon us, at the vilest vortice of destruction(the cusp of a season's death),yet we fervently embrace the dionysian excess in remembrance of the smoldering reveries of these phantasmal months. Waking up in the cold sweat of summer's past, we adhere to the truth that the only purity lies in the care-free sweltering heat of our lives, captured snow-globe-like in the arid days of lust and love.

Finding life to be ever so lugubrious with that autumn chill raging through, demanding it's presence be known, time tolls the terrible truth that we must douse the flames of passion. Let reason sink it's fangs back into us, and thus deliberate what truly matters in the span of existence. Cyclical thoughts linger as the years pass, days dying, people passing the millstone of remembrance, it all signifies something grander than another season's passing. For some we lose the truest part of ourselves, for others it's a rebirth of the most honest expression.

Inching towards another year, another 365 days of toiling in existence, the chameleon in us all wishes to camouflage itself in the sweet panacea of ignorance. In the blissful servitude that retains our sanity, yet we are never content to strive in the half life of a setting sun. Such as the seasons must falter and rise with the tide of the cosmos, so must we contend with the ever changing "seasons" that make up the trials of diaphragm inhalations. This Autumn's eve brings with it the lens of clarity fleeting--sweeping in to tone down the embers that retain there right to burn ferocious. We must all find the silver lining in change, with the prospect of living the same scenarios, yet finding the resolve to seize the reigns and change the outcome.

Let the days cascade around us as we forage on in the spectrum of years. Through this we find the truth of our own strength. Like this Autumn's eve, which finds one in particular floundering in the night, only to be reassured by the light of the world--of bright minds infinite radiance.

All The World's A Stage

In the utter eternity before a night's unveiling, where the endless trepidation mounts to near nuclear hysteria, we find ourselves in that moment of solace where quiet reflection is a stolen whisper on the wind that's quailing before the tempest of the night. Seizing these moments with the utmost delicacy finds us envisioning the countless sins we shall embark upon in the following hours. We doll up the direst parts of ourselves; actors on the stage of the world, playing the part we want all the humble plebeians to be enamored by. So it goes, in the horrorshow madness of this manic desire to lose ourselves in the faux mirror reflections of our quasi-selves-- a doppelganger of the night. Looking identical, breathing with the same bodily faculties, yet an insidious light gleans in the eyes, and thus we may say "the mask is on".

The act that follows shall be played up with a Dorian Gray-esque innocence, howling the deteriorating evils behind the facade of our “evening’s mask”. Seizing all in the hyperbolized debauch of ecstasy, fueling the shells of ourselves with untamed ferocity into the rocks of the world, crushing all around us in the tsunami of our desires. The world turns tremulous with the backwards edicts we evoke, and it all crumbles as the dawn rises, melting with it our new “faces” and reigning in the devastation.

Morning comes with the amnesia. Bewildered we find the aftermath of our nocturnal activities strew around us post-usage–we are the sole survivors. Naked as the day is new, a twisted rebirth into the decaying rot of the nightlife. Guilt hammers us down into enfeeblement just long enough to chip away at the gilded armor that shelters us through the night, and yet it recedes into non-being as the day dies, and thus the cycle renews again. Only our innards, the soul of our being bears the true scars of this implosion of self.

The portrait remains the background in the play.

Oneiro (Dream)

That’s what it was, a dream. It was an inkling of the future glimpsed in the hazy vein of intoxication, which coupled with wild euphoria, heightened emotions to near absurdity. Cantankerous misery swiftly followed as did the alcohol tolerance that swirls maniacal in the stomach. The bi-polar mania of emotions set the precedence for the roller coaster ride through hell and back; detailing the finest hours of unrequited love, only to be soberly doused by the riddance of giddy hallucinatory affections, and the somber iciness of realty’s return. This night’s mania can be compared to a fleeting kiss, so succulently sweet in it’s departing glory, yet too soon forgotten in the miasma of the night. Follow this all up with the inability to properly articulate this fine jumble of emotions, and it’s as though I were smote deaf and mute simultaneously-- left to flounder around in near incoherent idiocy. Fallen like the crisp leaves that signified it as Autumn’s night, spirits buoyed and sank, logic flew Amelia-style around the world, and by night’s end the whirlwind maelstrom that is this random life subsided into pitifully acute loneliness.

It isn’t every day where the spectrum of human feeling is ever pushed into the red, and in those rare occasions where the thermometer reads dangerous numbers back at you, it is those evanescent seconds where we truly feel alive. For the remainder of the worker bees monotonous days, we while away into obscurity. So it all was rather dream-like, especially in retrospect, yet the bitter sweetness of it all has refused to fade. The vibrancy replete with the misgivings of youth, and more so the rampant miscommunication that fuels a majority of our interactions lends this encounter true lasting power. For it is in these few moments where we can actually feel the visceral pull of life on this earth, the tugging of Gaea at our cores, that lets us know how limited our time here truly is. As though we were seismically linked to the ebbs and flows of the cosmos, these rare epiphany scenes are the closest we come to Shangri-la. It all fades in a blur of jargon and a smattering of static, yet the precious few scraps we retain shall forever taint us with the knowledge of something grander in this life.

This is all taking about love, and the rarity of experiencing it in the emotionally rich soil of your adolescence. In the lush garden of these years, the soft pattering of snow on a window can become the avalanche of apocalypse, or the purest poetry that none but you can ever appreciate. It is a gift that fades far too quick, a temptress of the night where for once in our lives we are thoroughly capable of running free with the wilderness inside us all. We are conduits to the chemical world of pheromones and unspoken emotions, mixing together in the volatile nature that is our youth.

It was all a dream-–that overwhelming sense of euphoria that imbued every muscle with Everest climbing resiliency, and made blood flow voracious through the entirety of my being. To those chimerical days, to that phantasmal night, may you forever take me captive in the imaginative powers that have long since withered dry in the barren wasteland of adulthood. May we forever ride the wings of our infinite dreams.

Mosaic

Hearts aflutter in buttery excess,
breath's baited the hook, line, and sinker.
Hands are Jell-o quivering,
speech stuttering in delivery.

Minds a study in inertia;
babbling blankness consuming the cerebrum
Tongue's parched in arid immobility,
eyes whirlpool in a dilating frenzy.

Harmonious disharmony,
amorous hatred,
logical lunacy-
the paradox of you and me.

Devouring one another,
destroying in creation.
Union of delicious delirium,
murmuring the pathos of our infinity.

Seek the "x" marked spot in me;
a verse elegantly bound.
Unraveling with each movement of a tongue;
a heart waiting to be found

A Proposition

I propose this to anybody out there that's in a relationship that uses the term "love" and legitimately claims to mean it. To all those out there that engage in one-night stands, friends with benefits, open relationships, general whoredom(and the like), this need not apply to you. The proposition goes like this: Do not have sex with your significant other for one month. The reasoning behind this is as follows; this is a test to see if your relationship can endure the trials of daily life without the panacea of sex to wipe the worst of issues away.

Now by all means, if the smell of doom is in the air at the very prospect of attempting this little challenge, then please don't ruin things on my accord. Maybe this is all a form of torture, maybe it's a revelation into the essential workings of a relationship, but the possibility of finding worth and appreciation in one another without the aspect of sex is a cause that has no price tag. The physical discomfort of climax lacking shall never truly subside(if it's what you've always abided by), yet what will happen if a shred of foresight were ever thrown into the picture?

Tell me what happens if you or your partner becomes physically unappealing after a time? Shall the well dry up, utter disgust parch your passions? Or let us imagine sexual performance wanes with age, physical prowess diminishes with years, and your level of satisfaction isn't met. Do you then throw away your significant other like a worn pair of shoes? Let us even fast-forward to geriatric days(God Forbid!) when physical intimacy becomes neigh impossible. Since we've arrived at old age are we content to not experience sexual pleasure anymore, and thus prepared to grind out our remaining years with this person because of a lack of desire to illicit change?

Tell me, when does it end?

Stress later on down the line makes you incapable of lust-making. Are you now damaged goods? You suffer bodily harm and can't function at full capacity. Do we toss you to the curb? Finally, you suffer an emotional trauma that leads you to warp intimacy into a pain-filled gauntlet of excess debauchery. What then?

What all this is seeking to unearth is if there is love strong enough to survive the absence of sex. Are the two mutually exclusive? Do we claim to love someone merely to reap the benefits of love making? Does caring for someone stop if the sex does too? Regardless of talking in the hypothetical, is there love that exists purely for loving the actual person, and not merely the parts in which you extract pleasure from one another? Has love become tolerating the worst in each other to be rewarded with sexual lust? Is that fair compensation? Is that even love?

Perhaps a month is too much, then again maybe it's too little. Before the utterance of "love" is spoken let us think about what loving someone actually is. It begins with taking the good times with the bad times (i.e. not leaving at the first sign of hardship). It continues with taking the ugly with the beautiful, and the ups and downs of actually being invested in another person. It’s loving the flaws and working together through the worst of life. The compensation for that is having someone who loves you for you, and vice versa. Actually loving somebody entail being selfless, being capable of sacrifice, compromise, and dealing with issues that sex alone can't solve. Find yourself someone that you truly love, and then sex won't be the sole reason for having a relationship, but rather the logical progression of loving every facet of that individual.

Take me up on this proposition, or don't......either way it won't affect me, maybe just you.

Unsettling

That tiresome curse called "settling" ticks away at our vivacity like such a seductive little parasite. See the truth is we feed it--enable it. Dual purpose hosts to both suffer and provide sustenance, our penchant for accepting mediocrity in our lives is the anchor around our leg as we drown in the apparition of our hopes. It's that rumble in your chest that sonorously booms unrest, quaking throughout your being with the brimming restlessness of disharmony. A disharmony of self, wrought out of the inability to champion the Olympian potential in the world around. Instead, the bubbling sewage of sub-par existence has you swirling in a quagmire of stasis. Time has come to rid the weight of your own misgivings and stand upright at the prospect of utter satisfaction; at which you’ve spent every exhausting, hard-earned breath on this volatile land for.

Or Don't.

Part of the neurosis that fuels this affliction lies in the tempest of self-image, and the loathing each and every person has for themselves in that capacity. As though someone were holding a horrid fun-house mirror of destruction to reflect the very vilest of sins back at us. It is a matter of perception, of flipping the refractions of light to reflect the true image you strive for (within the essence of your being). A trick of the light in your mind to finally accept that there is beauty within you, and until that momentous moment of epiphany where your infinitesimal worth shimmers before your eyes, you shall always accept the basest form of yourself in others, and in everything around you.

Until then, knowingly or unknowingly, you shall forage on in the antipathy of greatness, courting sullenness at will, subconsciously sabotaging yourself at every turn, trekking towards every pitfall along the way--all because you've convinced yourself you somehow deserve it. No one but you is capable of dictating the terms of your self-perception, and in that same light, the change is equally dependant upon you sounding the call for the bountiful store of reserve strength nestled beneath the festering decay of self-loathing and insecurity. It is but your choice to rise up from the nettles of death, and embrace the true power of yourself. On that day, in that moment, you will realize that "to settle" is but the gift of the weak, and you shall be rid of it in all of your encounters. See you on the other side.

War Paint

Swallow the pill of pride; gulp it down with the animosity you hold so dear for relinquishing control-- the potentiality of being hurt. Don your stoicism, the war paint emboldened on stone face, it will do no good, you’re marked. Like the exhalation of stale breath, releasing tension oozed up in the unused muscles of your heart, it will flood you in the blood frenzy of war. No amount of armor can rid you of the kinks. Infection is inevitable. Defeat is an immovable object, love an unstoppable force.

Starting with the tango of tongues slithering sinuously, lighting blood afire--it shines viscerally in predatory eyes. Life becomes a matter of action and reaction; it’s no longer thoughts, but desires, and necessary steps leading up to the apocalypse. Shedding the necessity of decency, morals become jests in the zest of living-- the explosive drive of rapture.

Paint mixes with feral sweat to stain the scene in primal indecency. Stripped bare, left open for the kill, you’ve surrendered so completely that victory is mere letters you’ve never deigned necessary to wink into being. Guttural images flash across neurons, forming contentment amidst the chaos. Sated aftermath brings clarity of the blank canvas. Washed clean in soiled sweat, war paint pools at your feet, remnants of prison garb—a carapace.