Swimming

The hard crust of reality begins to soften around the edges, and time melts like a Dali pocket watch.

Shapes flickering behind the things around me. Memories of what was projecting through to the possiblities of what may be, the present becomes a falcrum, a point of uncertain clarity.

Reality- a liquid, impossible to hold with the hands of reason, but I can swirl ripples through this pond, swim through the waves of experience, I can cup my hands, draw this water up to the lips of my perception, drink deep, emerge and see the ocean around me, gaze upward to the sky, and dream the blue so deep within.

I feel the other souls around me, some are like dolphins, they teach me to swim with vigor and joy. Others flounder, splashing frantically, I feel panic and the paradoxical compulsion to both help and flee, sometimes I help, sometimes I flee.

I begin to recognize rafts and boats around me, they are stitched of souls intent, the will born of passion, a fire to behold. I am part of some, I know now, and can relax a bit, let myself drift and know that I will not drown. I can also feel a fulfillment knowing I have saved some others from drowning, just by being as I am.

And here is the pearl, the purpose (porpoise), in being, my ripples caress the infinite in circles drifting outward. I am not alone in this ocean, and bridges are easiest built with others in mutual fulfillment towards being together joined, riding the waves. I have learned to swim by realizing I've known how all along, I just had moments of forgetting, I remember now, can you?

Carolyn Was Here

Cynical and sensuous 
GenX dreams and a wunderlust 
Couple of drinks to awake the beast 
Turning sex into a living feast

Told her my deepest, darkest fears 
She showed no anger and she showed no tears 
She just smiled and said okay 
I know I love you anyway

Carolyn was here

Saw her face in my shedding tear 
Pain of looking back makes it all too clear 
Who turned away, who turned away, 
Who tried to say it didn't happen

Jacob Two-Two and The Little Prince 
We shared something in a thousand hints 
Wanting love, but afraid to trust 
Watched our heros turn to dust

Let herself go, waiting to try 
Makes you wonder when the young ones die 
Future held possibilities, 
All cut short by a stupid disease

Carolyn was here

I Exist Here (Behind the Lenses of Your Eyes)

I exist here behind the lenses of your eyes

Storing your present experience 
with clumsy hands

Evoking past memories, 
like pluking the strings of an untuned instrument

On a journey we have embarked, 
spanning but a lifetime

Signs flash by, counting down the miles 
in unknowable numbers

Lessons are learned, soon forgotten, 
relearned, then reforgotten

Emotions flash by in waves of light

Sometimes, when you sleep,

I am left to wander the being that we both share

At these times, I leave footprints,

Hints of emotion, suggestions of revelations

You awake, and call these traces dreams

Sometimes, awareness of me floods through you 
in a cold flash or deja vu

And I leave you shaking

Your thoughts and dreams define me

I exist outside of space and time

Yet I am your thoughts and dreams

And I am the unit by which you measure space and time

You see me reflected in the random clouds

Or the blackness of night

I existed before you were aware of your own existance

While your understanding is based on logical conclusion

My understanding is based on feeling and revelation

I seep (seek) through your logic in burning points of inspiration

Neither you nor I are complete or absolute

Only in unity will we both become whole

Someday, we may be just one

Sacred Scars (Road Maps)

All I've ever hated, all I've ever fought, is inside of me. It never went any further than that. Everything that somebody else did to push my buttons, make me mad, it all has a ring of familiarity. Those thoughts I wrestle, all sanctimonious and proud, are the ones that are mirrored in what I see as wrong. It pulls and hurts and knots me up inside, leaves me wondering, what's the point? How can this be healed? How can we, how can I, step beyond this? Learn to accept, learn to change? Who is the teacher? All the good ones seem to be locked in the past, chained by dogma, obscured by the parts of me, parts of us, that are afraid to die, afraid to let go, afraid of the pain of change. But pain is what keeps us here, it's familiar and known, it won't get us when we least expect it, or will it? Isn't it happening anyway? We are all becoming- becoming something. Growing, healing, hurting, crying, laughing, being. It's what we are, it's what we do. So, this is the comfort of pain, knowing it's a sign of growth. And that itching, gnawing, aching is the feeling of skin restitching itself into scars that map the journey to here and now. I am this sensation, this space in which to occur.

Road maps don't show what is, they show what was, a moment frozen and stretched through time.

Take It Further

Take it further if you can, 
take it further if you can. 
They say 
That all limits 
Are self imposed

Soul To Soul

Casual anger wrapped in spite 
Pushed through with empathy site 
Connecting on the akward angle 
Carefully caught in each others grasp 
Calling on the deeper self to hold 
And speak in times at bold 
A mirrored image on the surface scan 
A total sum of life to span 
Can we fill it in complete 
A moment of the real with us 
A kind of feeling through the rush 
That tells us that we're here to touch 
Soul to soul to soul to soul 
How to stand this 
How to understand 
How to under stand 
A compassion that isn't in denile 
Of the hurt sometimes 
Digging in the dirt at times 
This is the time 
Here is the space 
We grow through this 
We grow through this 
How is your bliss 
Do you touch this space enough 
Or fall back behind the walls so gruff 
To feel alone 
Just skin and bone 
One apart away from rest 
The comfort to belong 
Together with someone 
That will not test 
My meddle 
On grilling spite 
Chewed and roasted 
Escape from this 
Alone all one 
Who is here with me 
What corpses may I dress 
In like minds 
Mimed 
Going through motions 
Not hoping for a spark 
Only caught up 
In half measures 
Of Me-Sures 
Assured of some standing 
But not where I'd hoped to be 
Not free 
Not caged 
Just tethered to aspirations 
That seem to reach too far 
But then a hand grasps the other end 
And I finally understand 
That I can stand 
Weathering the fearsome storms 
Emerge and feel the sun that warms 
Shed the skin that did deform 
And grow into my heart reformed

Ingrown Psychosis

Persicution complex around a grain of truth 
All that's left of the predator is a rotten tooth 
Elders all ignore their blinding denials 
Bang their gavel and put me on trial

Try to discipline me to the fortune wheel 
Telling me to close my mind and forget how to feel 
Try to deal with it, I don't know how 
Behind this closed curtain I take a bow

Undone to see but how to be 
I hope some day that I'll break free 
From this ingrown horror that's all around 
Inside this gaseous membrane 
That's far from ground

Open Up (To This Surprise)

Open up to this surprise 
Death is waiting in the final prize 
The lies been told the secret kept 
The moon was stolen while awareness slept 
Drawn into the passing void 
The stars are found in the spaces we avoid 
Trails oblivion in the crows foot squint 
Draw on clouds from the toxic hint 
Below the cries of sainthood doom 
Lonely faces in the basement room 
Step into the dark and see the star 
Come on down and see who you are 
Into the out a sum of time 
Without clocks no bells chime 
And to these means there comes an end 
It's what's inside I must defend 
From flame to ember and back to spark 
The cause this effect to leave my mark

Rising Tide

Giving definition to this form. This feeling underneath, between the words in conversation, the unsaid agreements to disagree. Can you feel it pushing and pulling at the edge of what I didn't say. It's not the way it's said, but something just beyond. 
One day a child was born and all passed it by except those that would abuse him with their love they said was pure. He grew afraid to give the acceptance to take the love of others because of what it could do. He became frightened of hope, because it was like a candle, once lit it so quickly burnt away. 
But, inside, something grew, it was like a knot tightening, drawing his attention, blurring his vision, mooring him to the spot. A ship, dragged down by it's anchor, drowned by the rising tide. Death stood by patiently, like a flight attendant ready to see him on to the next leg of his journey. But then, the tide lets out and he is left standing, wet and ragged, blinking in the sun, the knot loosens a little. He fumbles with slippery fingers to untie it before the next tide comes in...

And so the spaces between my words are fears of rushing tides, and sharks that might be hiding in the waves of what you say. And I wonder, how much love I have given, that, though given in purest intent, had barbs and teeth and bits of knots that caught and held and dragged others down in rising tides...

Tainted With The Thoughts

Soul, powerless in this glory

Tainted with the thoughts that rile against security blankets 
Soul still trapped in matter of opinion 
Powerless in this glory 
New found freedom 
Just another cage

Head filled with afterbirth of revelation 
Paralysed by future sights of mini-marts and shopping centers for the blind 
Things are changing every day, becoming more complete 
Starving kids on side streets 
What's to be done, what's done is done

May the sky open up and swallow me whole 
Head filled with afterbirth of revelation 
And the womb splits, 
spilling blood and guts into the clockwork shifting

Swallow the seed and watch it grow

My First Vacation

It started with the dream of dying. Life ebbing out of my body as my heart slowed to a stop. No more hunger, no more pain, state of bliss, looking down from above at my body on a dream soft marble bed, photo-overlay effect, double image of my physical body, in my bunk bed, springs so loose, it's more like a hammock. Both images fade/recede out of sight, feeling of flight, falling without vertigo. Fields rush crowds of people past in whispering wind. Familiar faces without recognition, is that someone I know or someone who reminds me, of someone I know. Pain like nostalgia tinged with regret. Flash of body double. Eyes open to closed eyes open. Body relaxed, hanging in bunk bed. My first vacation.

Not Broken

I am not broken, needing to be fixed. 
Not sick, needing to be well. 
I wish to learn so that I may grow. 
Feed my soul so that it may expand. 
Grab up the reins of awareness and ride my chariot on. 
Learn to read the signs posted 
that point to the destined experiences 
that my soul chose 
in the pinprick moment 
of my death and birth 
out of which the infinite 
moment of my life 
is now becoming.

Close to Crying

Am I just 
A Lone 
Child 
In this Universe of Separate 
Lives 
Clinging to pebbles 
Of the Material 
World of worlds 
Spinning around 
Each Other 
Outside Another 
All One but none 
Alone 
In this Universe of Separate 
Togethers

What If This 
(Was Just What You Were Looking For)

What if this was just what you were looking for

Ardent underground, avant guard 
You don't get anywhere, when you try too hard 
The movement is lost, when it becomes as such 
If less is more, then nothing is too much

Masked on paperclip, call it what you will 
The fable of the label, gets pushed to overkill 
Words fall from a thought still churning 
You read the time, from a clock that's turning

Let it go to see it rise, the dream becomes sublime 
The thought becomes translucent, with the things that you define

Grabbing Strength

The contact point evolves 
Grabbing strength from calloused scar

Intention on the sleeve of action 
Weaving anger into loops that heal

Needles of Communication

The long sharp needles of communication towers 
Inject into the clear blue belly of the sky 
A cacophony of silent noise 
Is this a vaccination, innoculation 
Against the deafening roar, of the cries of angst 
The death cry of the human spirit 
Or maybe a hit of some hallucinatory drug 
Into an atmosphere of longing 
For some miracle to come 
An addiction to what could be 
Numbing out what is