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

Twist (Fill me Up)

Here's a special piece with guest vocals by Tammy Lin Foreman!

Where to which and what to foe
How I wish for who I go
When my niche, now hear me know
From this rich, we start to glow

Fill me up, fill me up, fill me up with emptiness
Fill me up, fill me up, fill me up with emptiness

Balanced on the egos ledge...
Win a beetle, through a needle
When this night has come anew
Skill is a block unlearned
Wisdom is a body turned
Harmonies of solid thought
Dissipate the battles fought
Flight of falling stone
Caress of skin and bone
Bed fur in low moss is waiting for you
Snake round a glow moth, whatever your due

Fill me up, fill me up, fill me up with emptiness
Fill me up, fill me up, fill me up with emptiness

Pushed to the awareness fold
After that the stories told
Body may be absolete
But I'll still be too discrete

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