Why is it always white light? It could be anything - Sunshine, Blue Sky - even a moonlit night. But white light? A doorway? Leading where? To more questions? Always questions! Questions with no answers. Bleached Bones! Broken promises, and a doorway into nothing! White light! We are all orphans - Searching, hoping, creating Gods in our own image! So why did we lose our imaginations when we got to white light? Why must white light be the ultimate unanswerable question? And why a doorway into nothing? why a portal into sand? Why must white light define our last goodbye, when we dream ourselves in color, all the other days of our lives!
Light.
and then what he said was.…
The old man was right. Abstraction is the ultimate enemy. Everything else is easy.
Dangerous mind
Dangerous Mind. A gifted child’s a handful - Even more, when the gifts are great. but active minds are fragile, and their hearts are prone to break.
Set a spell…
Empty Spot. See this empty seat beside me? I’m hoping some sweet somebody will take it, and talk to me; take me as a friend - that’s what I want; what I need! Will you? Take it? Take me on, and make me pretty, Make me special; make me loved! Will you somehow, love me, somehow touch me - make me whole and let me see! See this empty seat beside me? I know there are other seats besides this one. but there are none needs filling so much as this seat, None needs loving so much as me. Won’t you - Take me? Make me smile, and know I’m special - take my heart; at least a part! and somehow, teach me, somehow reach me - take my need, then set me free!
Powerful Musings…
Powerful Musings... Would that I could breathe in ability as easily as air - Relearn myself, and this time with some semblance of power instead of fear and trepidation. But such aether air eludes me, and I am left with shallow stuff - Not so much weak willed as weakened by lesser choices. Would I be me, knowing power. Or, might I be - More. Who knows! And who knows if power means more to those who taste it unawares than it does to those who know its absence by degrees.
On Moving West…
On Moving West…
You know, the really funny thing is, I somehow thought that we could make this change — I mean really change practically everything about our lives — and not have it be quite so disruptive. You laugh. Who wouldn’t?
I didn’t. I mean, who knew about all the things we’d leave behind in search of that “other thing” we’d always dreamed of. And don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely no regrets. We are in control now. Of our lives, and of our destinies. We do what we want to do and we live the way we want to live. We accept nothing and no one we don’t want to deal with, at least within reason, and we like our lives. We really like our lives!
But I do miss the world we’d built, sometimes. I miss the friendships, and the people, and the times, and the freedoms, and the places, and the money, and all the trappings that went along with the prison that we loved and hated and fought so hard to be free of.
And then there’s Freedom.
Freedom to control our own destinies. In truth, it is a willingness and a want. Because it’s not so much easier as it is more fulfilling. We could have stayed where we were — making money — living high — but we might never have known the freedom of flight, or the flight to freedom. Might never have known what it felt like to shake the reigns free and say “fuck you” to everything else we’d known and built and poured our hearts and souls into for a thousand years, or at least as long as our families had lived in servitude to somebody else.
Freedom. It means no one’s there to save you when you fuck up. No one to come through when you run short. No answers to the eternal question of back up.
But isn’t that what we want(ed)? Still do? Isn’t that worth it all? Because when the other side meets us in the middle and we are able to look around and see something successful — something WE made, and no one else did — then! Then, we are happy. Fulfilled. Free of anything and everyone, despite the days and weeks and years we lost when we changed.
Despite the friends we miss so desperately, and the pieces of our lives we loved so much.
Nobody can take away the pride I feel every time I look at the lives we’ve made for ourselves!
Nobody.
We’re two kids who came from nothing, with nothing, and hit the ground of adulthood completely unprepared. And yet, despite every odd (and end), we made lives we are proud of. Lives people might envy! Lives to be proud of!
We are children who failed, then learned. Who knew only ignorance, foolishness, and fear.
But we grew beyond that. All of it! We made it past the foolishness and the embarrassment, and the plain old dumbness that defined us. Not that we’re wise. (I wish!)
But we are better armed. Better informed. And more sure of who sits behind anybody else’s mask when we look in the mirror!
Latter works…
Complication.
Never really runs out, this course.
No matter what people tell you.
And Even though you think it Might,
Might.
The Geography doesn’t matter, because
an Easy Climb can be as terrifying as Rough Terrain.…
The Brain
Sees it all the Same.
Look here!
What you see?
Something Strange?
No!
Something ME!
Wisdom…again!
Who’s the wiser,
when the wind no longer blows -
and who will take the time
to stoke the fire when it’s grown cold!
There’s a darkness in my mind’s eye
just beyond my line of sight.
You can see it
when the crows fly
and the embers lose their light!
Who’s the wiser
when the fire no longer glows,
and who can see the line
left by seeds the wind has strown!
There is coldness in some kindness
just beyond the edge of night
You can taste it
in the water,
when the air is wet with night!
Replacement Part.
I always felt jealous of Vinnie. Jealous, and in love.
You know,
(and you do),
I never met Vinnie,
except in your pictures,
and in your eyes.
Somehow, whenever we were together,
Vinnie was with us.
Not in person, but in our minds.
Yours, and mine.
And I was jealous.
Jealous!
Can you imagine!?!
And at the same time
completely head over heels in love with Vinnie.
With a man I’d only met in pictures,
and in your words.
Jealous!
Of an Agent in absentia.
Of God!
THE God,
at least of Art (and of everything
I’d ever hoped I’d want)!
And where was He
when I came wanting?
Wandering.…
Moved on!
Moved on, you say?!?
Gone!
Having made His place in another place -
Beyond My reach, and my obsession.
Moved out of place, and out of space.
Out, then, and into another place!
Outside of Where and How.
And outside of Me, and My Now!
And you missed Him,
and I missed Him,
for you and for me,
and he missed him too!
A little for himself, but mostly for both our sakes!
Vinny was the only thing missing,
from the picture, and from all of this.
Instead of the original,
you were working out of a tool box
filled with replacement parts.
And I was chief among them.
Left to love you -
See you,
Be you!
YOU!
My Sister in Silence.
Mother of Madness.
Dreamer in Darkness!
Maid of Heaven,
Queen of Light.
It was simple just to watch you,
and admire your Line of Sight!
II. Replacement Part, Anon.
I always felt jealous, you know.
Jealous, and in love.
You know,
(and you do),
I never met Him,
except in your pictures,
and in your eyes.
Somehow, whenever we were together,
He was with us.
Not in person, but in our minds.
Your mind, and mine.
And I was jealous.
Jealous!
Can you imagine!?!
And at the same time
completely head over heels in love with Him.
With that Man I’d only met in your pictures,
and in your words.
Jealous!
Of an Agent in absentia.
Of -
Oh, God!
My God, maybe -
at least at the time, and with my limited Sight!
And where was He, then?
Moved on!
Gone!
Having already made His place in another place -
Beyond Your artistry, and My reach -
No, my obsession.
Moved out of place.
Outside of Where and How.
Outside of My Now!
And you missed Him,
and I missed Him,
and he missed him for both our sakes!
And in the end, all there was, was a tool box
filled with replacement parts.
I was chief among them.
Left to conspire with you -
Try to Inspire you.
Try to be Him,
seek to love Him.
Wishful thinking, that.
Simpler just to watch you,
and admire your line of Sight!
What Makes Movement?
When memories fail to bring about
something worth saving for all eternity,
where does the heart go,
and the Mind?
Who calls the Cat?
Cat Calls being the only thing worth saying,
when time has stolen everything, including my tongue.
Can I make these seconds spin? Work movement into turning,
and then turning into something I might remember
the next time I Turn.
And, in looking forward,
What turns Time, when the only movement we find available
is akin to the birth pains we feel we must have felt
the Day when we were ripped out of the altogether
and back into this mess we call the World!
Movement? A Minute’s passing?
I can feel it sometimes -
When the Earth falls silent,
and the stars fall into place
around the Dreams we Hope to dream.
I’d wish for more! But then the movement becomes a blur.
False shadows in a space that must be simple
since it is mostly undefined!
The Next One.
If the throw had been stronger, or the kick,
then the order of the picking might have changed.
Might, in fact, never have been.
It did not.
And so the heart, and the hope that went with it,
all exploded into bloody rags.
The World still went on, though,
and continued with its pace,
Bleeding still -
until it found another chance to dream.
This one took, and it was me.
Strong enough to stay the course,
but not as likely to succeed
when the time came,
and it did,
to fulfill wishes.
In fairness, it could be said
that wishes such as those
should never have been made.
Cannot wish reality into another person’s soul.
Best left then, to the dead.
But when, in matters of the heart, is that ever really the case?
And so there was expectation, and failure.
The failure was not, however, born of Weakness.
No. There was Strength there.
But almost unrecognizable.
Of a different nature.
Misunderstood, mostly,
Misplaced, and often, as a result, Bitter with regret.
Strength continued! Born of failure!
Wounded by every action,
and blooded by every breath.
There was a heart, though. It still beats.
Still knows weakness, and still knows strength.
A heart — buried treasure, and a living veil. But a heart that beats, nonetheless.
It wishes for its other self to this day,
that ghost who might have fulfilled dreams and great desires.
It is not that heart, nor could it hope to be.
And so, since the world will not recant its actions,
it must stand in, and in stillness grieve.
Leave me.
Too many times, when the world waited for a way to make amends,
I found myself wanting.
Wishing!
Hoping!
For something that might make me more of what you wanted!
What you wished for,
Expected!
Had a right to Expect, for God’s Sake!
And perhaps you had a right,
Had it right to ask -
Is this it, then?
Is it me?
Am I all you Get?
Me?
After all the generations,
can it be that it all boils down to nothing more than me!
I did not ask for this -
Cannot be “this!”
See this!
Cannot bend the angle (or the Tree) far enough
to find the Right perspective,
The Rightness of being
Or the Reason I’d be Me!
Lady.
There is a Lady in my dreaming mind who tells me I am Her.
I run!
Hide.
Hope.
Cry!
Sometimes I Dream of Her,
deeply,
and in dreaming find myself abstracted from myself,
Turned!
Torn!
Taken out of Me and into another’s eyes -
Other!
And then I see -
See!
Some wispy Woman who swears that She is Me!
And then I think
Where does reality reside?
Where can I Hide?
Find a Minute to find myself,
or at least Free myself -
Maybe Hope to Be Myself?
That’s it, then.
Hope.
I’ve wished desperately for some Hope, and understanding
that will somehow make this life,
and this existence,
begin to make sense.
I’ve seen a woman looking out at me
with eyes that look surprisingly like mine.
And despite a lifetime of learning and living,
of dealing and dreaming,
I am still possessed sometimes,
by someone who is not -
Not Me!
And yet I think
She might have been,
or Was.
Or, looking forward,
Perhaps Should Have Been.…
If the World was Right.
Ever.
In my Desire to make a mark,
I forced my mind to wander.
But enigmatic Dreams crashed in
and kept me from my Goal.
I tried again to take myself
beyond my need to ponder
But found a Wall too tall to Cross,
and a Fear to deep to dread!
Brighter.
In this dream,
I am myself again.
Not me,
But Me!
More!
Myself, and Me again!
And all the weights
that shackle me
fall off like sloughing skin.
Me!
My Self.
My Burning Heart set fire again.
My burning Soul set free!
My desperate Mind made Me again,
My one desire in Sight again,
My Certain self set Free!
I am of One Mind, mostly.
This One.
Mostly mine. My Self!
Again.
And so my Dream appears,
and I begin again.
Brighter. Better. Born -
Again!
Undimmed.
Cycle.
All around, the Soul was stable.
Simple!
And the World was Fine!
Soft-framed with bits of light
left over from Creation’s efforts
and the newness of All Time.
And then,
What?!?
You want me to believe that Shit?!?
Why?
Because it answered some sort of question posed
by ancient (and unstable) astronomers!
Or because it was an answer to the fears,
and the focus on the night sky,
when souls, and an empty stomach,
made mens’ minds wonder where their God was.
‘Just Because’ cannot appease the Child whose parents lost the fight,
and more needs saying than can be said in just one night.
Turn. Turn again.
See the cycle, and the sickle bend the Light.
Life Comes,
but with a Cost.
We Take it,
Embrace it -
Taste it!
But Life is Selfish;
Tied to Time.
The more of it we Take,
the More we want to Take!
We want More!
Life!
And for all we often hate it,
in Truth, We Hate to Leave it!
We Seek Pay-offs -
Pardons,
Delays and Detours.
Any Thing
to Stave off
the Inevitable Leave-taking.
Dirt-Making!
And all the While, Life looks on.
Laughing through our efforts
while dancing down a Line.
You know, it’s funny (in a weird way), when you find yourself having to overcome a personal prejudice against yourself! It’s strange. And yet, it’s exactly what has been occupying my mind here of late (perhaps because I turned fifty this past June).
First, there was the whole AARP fiasco. You know. To expand their ranks, they’ve lowered their membership to fifty. The fuckers!
So when you turn fifty, you automatically get a direct mail piece from them, letting you know that you qualify for membership. I threw it away. Did I say Fuckers?
OUT!
LOUD?!?
Then there was the demographic thing. I have spent the greater part of my adult life in the business of marketing and advertising. So to me, people are usually corraled into “standardized” age groups.
And then I turned fifty.…
Suddenly I’d been moved from “35 to 49” all the way up to “50 to 64.” That was no fun at all.
Fuckers!
The really strange thing about turning fifty (ok. one of them!), is that I remember not only my parents at fifty, but also my grandparents at fifty. And I’m nothing like them…I don’t think!?!
Am I?
I certainly don’t feel like I thought they must have felt when they were fifty.
But then again, I was looking at them from the standpoint of being me — the child, or grandchild.
What did I know about where they really were in their heads?
My dad’s mother, my nannie, was well into a second marriage by the time she was fifty. And what did fifty have to do with who my nanny was? It was, after all, only an age, and a great excuse to ask for ever increasing amounts of good drugs designed to make every minute of waking life into a soft-edged blanket.
Dream Deep, then!
And often.
On Turning Fifty.…
I used to think that by this time -
fifty!
I might know something,
have some insight,
hindsight,
that might guide me
to some conclusions,
about something,
about me!
maybe?
Something I could take somewhere,
or to someone,
who could explain
exactly what it was that happened here with me.
made me BE!
who I am,
what I am,
and just for an instant,
why
this cookie cutter kid, at least in looks alone,
could be so out of pattern,
out of fashion,
foreign -
Left behind,
left!
So uneasy,
so unready,
to experience anything that was anything
of any importance in the world where I was born — made,
Left!
Mystified!
…by who I was,
and where I was,
and why I was all about nothing to do with anything
that mattered to anyone I knew!
I used to think I might know by now -
Be ready to at least defend my strangeness
to someone more than just myself.
But here I sit, closer to nothing more than death,
with no more knowledge, or defense,
than I had when I was still a child in search
of something that might validate me
to someone besides myself!
I know there are those who love me!
Lives I’ve touched.
Lives I’ve changed
(hopefully made better)
through the course
of all these years.
But for all I’ve done,
I’ve never breached that wall
to see who I might have been meant to be -
or what.…
And although I may bemany things,
the one thing I can never be,
is what my parents thought that I should be,
could Be!
Not in this life,
nor in any other
I might imagine!
So what do I call me?
Failure?
Future.
Different!
There is POWER here.
POWER!
Born of something raw and wondrous,
and altogether unplanned.
POWER!
A dream.
Precious!
Perfect.
Dreamer!
anxiety
anxiety.
I’d love to know a little stupid -
You know,
numbness.
Catch the ease of something simple
Unimportant -
uninformed.
smoky mountains
blue ridge.
foggy tendrils reach down from the whiteness of mother sky in a soft-edged, yet bold attempt to take over the foamy landscape below.
their dance is a soggy affair, met by the strong and leafy arms of trees crowning green cotton candy mountaintops.
ridges and outcroppings scramble for definition as hollers fill with misty lakes of almost water.
beginnings and endings cross paths in the swirling wetness, and drop pale drapes down to puddle and spread along the forest floor.
every attempt at bold color falls victim to filmy shadows and indistinct outlines. this is an easy palate, built for softness.
somewhere there is almost change, but then what passes at first for smoke from some faltering fire, fades into the landscape.
there is no heat, nor dryness here. this is a world of wetness, near complete, with cold as its handmaiden.
Next time.…
Next time.
Next time …
I want to be famous…
smart…
talented, maybe,
or rich enough not to care!
Next time,
I want to be simple.
No complications -
no troubled dreams!
No wishes keeping me awake at night,
driving sleep away
with thoughts of wanting more!
I’d rather be a whore
than live with limitations -
desperation,
needing more!
I want to do it all again,
but different!
This time without stillness,
and the thought that goes with the silence of the night.
I want more things,
with less thought!
Easier dreams,
without the haunt!
Here’s to simple,
and it’s earthly rewards.
Here’s to thoughtlessness,
and the freedom it affords!