The Depths

The Depths

How can a crevice be so unremarkable?

Your vacant stare

               of non-acknowledgement,

               author of a frown.

What has meaning

in a void?

Should any caring ensue,

               entwined among

      disassociative strata

                    of cumulative

               disconnectedness?

Here I am at the bottom,

     near invisible.

A gash in the chasm.

Did you want to see the real me?

We

In the canopies of trees,
leaves await their windy suitor
Shall we drift aimlessly
On currents
We know not where
They lead us
Shall we sling to our birthright
Unwavered
By our known
And ultimately
Certain future?
Where will we be?
Withering uneasily
On the breeze
Or fluttering
Like a tease
endlessly

Land of kindling
You await
And what once there
Flying free
Now settles softly
In a nest
or burrow,
Still shy
of dark moist dirt
Earthen bed
Something dangerous
And live
Deadly
Exciting
And certain.

What is your will?
Where would you
If all could go
Take us now?
To time-touched rock
Encased in history
Constant
Ephemeral
Nothingness
What now cool master?
Is this what we shall be?
Today
Tomorrow
Till eternity?

Stick Thin Boy (for Patrick)

Stick thin boy
you were
the light
that lit
the room
you
bubbled over
joy unleashed
with each
new idea

Why did you
go there
all alone
where you
shouldn't be
Stick thin boy
to the water

Petiole

My tiny beating heart
faintly glowing
lantern on a tendril
reaching out
hanging bare
you would not go there
no fond smile
of quaint naivete
just you wouldn’t
only I would
so I hang
droop
withdraw.

Why couldn’t you give the
right response
sunlight for a seed
water for my thirsty throat
I put it back inside
pack it tight
and warm
and safe
till better weather comes
another season
another love lost
fallen leaf
compost

Escaping the Matrix

To succeed, you have to go faster than time. Jump ahead of time. Have a feeling, a thought, an action, in the right order, with the right sequence and timing, and miracles happen. Traders sell at the right time, politicians act on inside information, developers catch a trend early, surfers catch a wave at its peak. The key is to predict an opportunity before it happens. To determine something no one yet knows. The weight of these intuitive actions, once realized, can be immense. In suicide, people went too fast. Thoughts and actions got out of sequence, parallel possibilities merged, producing consequence. As Morpheus said “Time is always against us.” Unless you can beat time.

Loner Freaks (like us)

earthy odor of confidence and poise
evaporates
cold quivering metal mind
shivers, barren
“This is the Village of the Forgotten,
The Place of Lost Places
These are Those who were Left Behind”
she squints in the light of the impending hour
as two grandfathers grind their chimes
and a voice screams from the speaker phone
her mind
now fully programmed
whispers
“Type, damn it. Type.”

Crashing Through Treetops

She stared at the tops of trees wondering why she didn’t love herself. What could she quit, who could she leave to make things right? Then she would be happy, like all the other changes she’d made in her life. Lots of changes she’d made. She loved change. It wasn’t the result of the change that she so needed, it was the changing itself – going through the changes, striving endlessly. A car jerked forward into the intersection. In her mind, it slammed hard into her door, crumpling metal, tossing her to her side, her blonde hair splayed across the seat. Blood splattered on windows. Back to reality… she drives. Why weren’t things easier?

Inside Alis (Part Two)

Alis Diamond is strange. She purposely avoids any exercise in which she is required to analyze herself because she is not really her own entity at all, but an amalgamation of tangible influences contributed by thousands upon thousands of knowing and unknowing people. Alis knows she is strange, and she's satisfied, even pleased, with that simple definition.

Alis is a collector of ideas, thoughts and impressions. She is each day the "clean slate" which psychologists claim can only be maintained for the first few days after birth. She channels her energies not into finding herself, for she is just a pinball on a world machine. She directs her efforts toward understanding the rest of the world.

Inner peace and equilibrium are precious gems in the mantle of humanity, to be sought out and obtained only after deconstructing (not destroying) one's outer core of hardened emotion and pragmatism. Each irony, each insignificant inconsistency in world society, is a pin prick in the tinder of a battered straw voodoo doll clasped tightly in the hands of fate.

Alis feels the strangeness of human existence as would a single grain of white sand on a wide vacant beach. She goes with the tide.

Self Emmolation (A Man with a Cause)

All the waves of society's underestimation
cannot wash out the flame of intent
intent on recognition
it cannot be extinguished
it is only transferable.

The warmth which envelopes the emoliate
and charges him with purpose
sends its fiery tongue to lick the public's conscience
to singe their souls
and taunt them
And as all protruberances of the human host
become concave
the blood and fleshy sinew hearts of a few
bystanders
meet with reason
and strain outward from their shallow sockets
Their lives have been touched
by the passing of a stranger's

And like the smoking remains
of charred bone and teeth
The long and painful journey
lies prostrate before them.

Shattered Alis

On the elevator, the sound of a woman jingling her keys, or a man jingling the change in his pants pocket, was often abnormally loud and grated against Alis' nerves like the sound of shattering glass. Sharp and jagged, flying in all directions. Like her.