A preface: Though I speak them and share them, the words that follow aren't mine. They're yours, synthesized and stolen from the calmness of your eyes, the whisper of your breath from across the room, the gentle curve of your spine against the chair. They're our words. Feel this.

Paths
There is a path that leads nowhere,
 leads to nothing.
It is not a path you follow
and it is not a path you take.
It is a path of Enlightenment.
Many will dismiss it,
ignoring the call of future-past.
Many walk it unknowing.
At times it is wide as the deepest river.
At times it disappears amongst the undergrowth.
As you walk with it,
 You will come to know its many moods.
Some days it will caress you with falling leaves.
Others it will batter you with branches hurled by gales.
But keep walking. Always continue walking.
There is a lesson to be learned.

Love poem from flame to a log

all I want to do is touch you,
consume you with each caress
lick you, stripping away flesh.
melt for me.
spontaneously combust, and I will grow --
blossom into a thousand tiny flowers
shedding petals to the air with
each passing gust
-- I lay you bare. exposed
for the cold carbon oxygen doesn't want.
ashes to ashes you fall,
swept beneath the rug when I depart
passion undoes us, the
exhibition breaking bonds
of taboo temptations
hold me tight and I promise
I will bring you out into the light

Grocery Aisles

dance with me down the grocery aisles
we'll
make the produce jealous with our tartan tangos
at the cue of the frozen entrée orchestras, we can
salsa sashay with hips so generous that
no lie would be big enough
and it will be ballerina twirls past boxes of cereal
canned veggies can do the tootsie roll
following at our feet in a two-step touch
the wheels may be stuck,
leaning leftward with the momentum of a grocery list long since forgotten
but it doesn't concern us
the grocery cart menagerie is the only audience that matters
if you dance with me down the grocery aisles

On Walking By

I am the infection,
the contamination,
the word that plants the seed of an idea.
And, like a weed,
I flourish in the spaces in-between.
If kiss is kill,
then kiss me deep,
but don't you dare kill me.
The inflection, Pontypool,
screams at me to tell you to shut up.
I'm in the thick and in the thin,
waiting inside the outside.
My roots are strong.
They are tendrils and strings that,
woven,
cross the divide.
This fabric a blanket forms,
and I wrap you in my love.
Hypothermia seeps into your bones,
Under heat disease
Take the pressure off and go to sleep


If any of you have read this blog in the last few months, you know how much I go on about silence. It's the ninja aesthetic that draws me there. Move in silence, strike with deadly precision. I'm no ninja, but I like the imagery.

I'm drawn to silence I think because I live a noisy life. I'm always busy running around, involved in something. I'm always thinking about something I care about. Silence is a retreat for me, it's where I want to come from.

I don't think silence is as bad a thing as we credit it in society. To be by yourself, to be present does not require speaking or noise or sound. I view silence the same way I view the concept of nothingness. It is a container and an inverse that we cannot exist without.

But at times it feels like a fool's errand because to seek silence is to make noise. It's like Enlightenment, to truly be enlightened, one must not strive for Enlightenment, right? So I'm at a loss because I'm not sure what to do with all this sound.

Perhaps I should make a:

Unfinished empathy

You make me fall in love with your stories and your cares and your worries and your stares. It's not you, it's me. It's not me, it's you. All these insecurities touch me, grab me, pull me in. I feel your love and it becomes mine. I love on your behalf where you can and where you can't.

You make me fall in love every time you fall in love with someone else. It's painful. It's terrifying. All these strangers piercing my heart though we've never met, I see them in a new light. It's blinding bright: hurting, heart-shaped holes the only shadows unrequited.

I want you to stop. Stop loving. Stop caring. Stop telling me about it. But no, that's not the way this works. I'm a conduit. I'm translating this experience, making it accessible , but I wonder for whom?

Catalysts, we are agents of change. Networked and hardwired to receive and act. I take this in, redirect it, funnel it down a different path of this spider's web woven. Self-identified as a hub, I stand tall in a center with no boundaries. Forever.

Left-side. Left-side receives and listens. Carries across, translates into form. Words? Images. Picture me this, standing, leaning in the doorway, waiting for you to realize you can come in. The door is open. This is home. Home because you have carried it here on your back.

Let it sit. Let it stand. Freedom songs of the snails and turtles belong here. Radiate outward. Breath in with my hands. Breath out with my hands. Feel  them beat and break the knots that tie you down. Gulliver broke free from the grasp of such small worries.

When we care, it's a trade. Energy exchange in unequal expressions of entropic excess. I see red and blue at odds, polar offspring of the warm and cool emotional spectrum. I am blue: grounded, present and calm contrast to the lost red, the anger and fear that takes control . I take it and tame it, balance but I am no savior.

Reception is all about giving. Provide, provide, take you inside. A letter separated from the ultimate booby-trap. Sometimes we call it bait. Wait.

Redirect.

Positive spin. Clockwise or widdershins? The machine, perpetual motion, turns itself.

Rainchild

Dripping and loving it

Soaked to the bone
I have found my home
And it was laughing
It was laughing at you.
It was laughing at me.
It was laughing at this construction of we.
I am a child of the rain.
Soak me through.
Drown me in your sorrows and your happiness.
I can take the pounding, thundering, roaring
I am sound.
I am silence.
I am the up down yo-yo that spins circles around you.
You call this form?
It contains, it traps, it holds, it comforts.
Do I contradict myself?
Hell no.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant
But I'm not some big eared beast.
People always blame the sun
When it's the rain they should be watching.
Watching before it washes you away.

Untitled

This blog post is a poem.

Perhaps this is where we're headed

And we've crossed a line
Or perhaps the better way to put it is crossing a threshold
Off through the looking glass to join the Hatter
Though maybe I'm thinking of the Other
Who is it I see in the mirror?
So many questions -- what are you thinking -- asked
I'm exhausted
I want to hide behind these allusions that
keep things distinct.
We've lost ourselves in this blur.
It's all a fog.
Dense.
Grey.
Cold.
Warm my hand in yours.
But who are you strangers beside me?
Inside me.
Eat. EAT. Forever hungry for more, hungry for love.
What was the tea party but a civilized orgy?
What is class but an orgy of ideas?
Well the orgy is over. [or near enough]
But we're still here.
"watching myself write and create is painful sometimes."
The inside looks at the inside from the outside
Of course it's painful.
It's excruciating.
The ultimate pleasure-pain, like crack for the mind.
It takes a certain kind of crazy to
return
to this constant ontology
analyze analyze analyze
When we connect the dots, we lose them.
They become just another part of the line.
But they get just as lost when they remain
disconnected
The individual is a cancer upon the hive mind.
It stimulates the kind of change
necessitated by its mutation
For it is something new.
Or else it is destroyed
Rarely does it remain benign
[p]lurking silently
ignored or else forgotten
There's a crack in the glass:
A hole in the fourth wall.
We can taste it and know it is there
like a gut reaction
but this does not mean we see it.
It is invisible to us just as the wall was.
And yet we run at it
smashing ourselves on it
bugs on the window
window to the soul
blink away the disturbance
Something changed.
It scared us.
Or at least it scared me.
And so we back slowly away from the reflection.
But it stays there.
Perhaps not physically
but mentally it stayed with us
like that trip to Vegas
So we're running in circles.
Always ending up right where we started.
Alice was just a little too nice and innocent.
Ace was just a wild card.
Didn't it take the Queen to cross the landscape?

A Poem is an Act of Creation

Dance With Me
We are all searching.
We are all dancing,
left 2, 3, right 2, 3.
Circling and gasping as life burns through us.
Celebrate it and rejoice.
Show the world what it means to move.
You are not beholden to anyone except yourself,
so expand. Grow.
Like the Christian god said, "Let there be light."
Let it shine forth so I can see it.
Let it spread.
Let it be what it was always meant to be.
Ten million candles glow with the light of a forest fire.
If we each to our own selves be true I hate to be the one person standing in the way.

Entwine

I was up early this morning (though it was sleeping in compared to what time I wake up normally) and decided that this kind of cloudy, overcast Sunday morning would be perfect to write a poem or two. It's been a while since I've slowed down enough to tangle words like this. I think the result is a little sketch, but in its own way was cathartic and soothing.

For the record, yes, the girl who punches me in the shoulder is you, Charlie. And while you're everything I could want in a dance partner and friend, I think we both know what I really mean at the end there.

Read on and enjoy.

Entwine

To borrow the words of Billy Idol,
I feel like "I'm dancing with myself,"
I'm searching for someone who can keep up with
the ratatat percussion of this four count step
But
I keep getting lost in the music.
Circling, spinning, dip and twirl.
Frustrated, distracted by that face in my mind.

We almost fall.
There's no one to catch us
as the secondhand stops at 3.
A knockout beauty stands in front of me.
I apologize profusely.
She playfully punches me in the shoulder.
Refocused in that moment I lead us
onward, upwards, down and out
We show this world what it means to move
while inside I'm still searching for the perfect partner

Back When

Just a crappy little poem I wrote the other day when I couldn't sleep.


I bet you could see more constellations
before we learned to turn hillsides into suns
Night was darker back when
back when electricity was fire in the sky, was
snake tongues of light tasting clouds

I want to climb a mountain and look down
find Orion's reflection in the city
The Northern lights as the twinkle change of
synchronized traffic signals
Make a wish on the freeway cars as they burn by

It was probably simpler
Midnight trysts meant more
They weren't sterilized in incandescence
or washed out with cold fluorescent glow
LED screens sucking away at souls

This is a digital age of plastic and chrome
Everything gets vacuum packed and sent off
in another satellite to streak across the horizon
Yeah, I bet you could see more constellations
back when

I feel poetic today.

Escape me

Have you ever just looked up through the leaves as you passed beneath a tree?
Gradient greens abound in overlapping sheets.
Trapped in air-conditioned confines
Learning language/linguistics
So many videos I get antsy
Twitch and twitter and tweet
Internet distractions abound
IM interactions, blogging blessings
Browser A.D.D as I surf this superinfo highway
I watch out for web sharks lookin' to take a bite out of my
Seal shaped wireless card
Chomp chomp at my bandwidth #pataphor
We're a bunch of Granolas up here

People Lurk

Peace with myself
Love those around you
Unity can lead to compassion
Respect my property
or Karma will get you

Where these words are taking me.

I don't know.