Passages

What I see is warped and twisted,
I can’t discern the reality.
Its like some childhood kaleidoscope revisited,
a distortion of actuality.
I see through…

Its like a pane off a stained glass window,
colors and light reflecting.
Everything is tinted and bright with shadow,
my eyes afraid to be adjusting.
I see through…

A reflection of myself emerges,
I can hardly recognize the sight.
Then the light of understanding surges,
and I see I was anything but right.
I see through…you.

College Writing II, Feb. 25, 1999

The best sermon I have ever seen was not issued from the mouth of a human. It was not spoken in the dusty caverns of the holy houses. It was not chanted by the learned priests in temples far to the east. No simple human voice could reach it’s complexity or awe. The sermon that I saw came from the thunder of the ocean. I had traveled far to see the spectacle of the water that blankets the earth. Many had told me of the change that seeing the ocean and hearing the waves could cause in a person. I was skeptical about this marvel and was therefore unprepared for the impact it would have on me. Continue reading

I was reading through some of my old writing and came across a piece that quoted Charles Dickens at the end.

Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

I find a great deal of meaning in that particular passage right now in my life, but am also intrigued by how it meant something completely different to me at the time I used it. Intrigued by how I can internalize it so completely at different points in time in radically different ways. Items like Tarot cards and the like can be used as tools of self discovery. Ways to bring into the light that which burdens your mind, heart and soul at any given step along life’s journey. I think that each and every sight, sound, smell, taste and touch can be seen as tools of self discovery. Ways to gauge meaning and gain clarity. Ways to measure the shifts we make as we grow and learn and change from who we were to who we are.

An open mind needs no key.

Someone was breathing…

Somewhere in the dark someone was breathing. Rapid breaths, sharp against the otherwise silent cloak of darkness.

The darkness itself was palpable, seeming to flow like a liquid around objects in the alley. Over the trash strewn about the ground; around the overflowing dumpsters; through the hanging bars of fire escapes long unused; along this cursed corridor of the city. Vision in the nightmare blackness was like seeing the world through the oily smoke of burning corpses. Ink-like in its substance and foul beyond imagining. Something unnatural and not of this world. The darkness always came with It. Continue reading

Many times I find myself with the desire to write stories. Sometimes I want to write novels; sometimes short stories. Usually, this compulsion is followed by a short burst of creativity and an indeterminate number of words. These beginnings of, to date, unfinished stories beg for closure but I can never muster the energy to finish them to one degree or another. Maybe I’ll find someone who needs ideas or starting points and we can collaborate. Maybe I’ll end up finishing one or more of them in the future. Maybe I’ve already spent as much time as I desire on them and they are complete in that regard. Perhaps posting them here will help me figure out what to do with them, if anything.

In any case, it seems I’ve discovered what my next post should be.

In light of all that has yet to leave
I cast my tired and withered shroud
Above the land of distraction’s sun
Lit darkly by an ominous cloud

Raw repentant vacant eyes
Glisten with the mist of death
Too far gone, the mind is shrieking lies
The pain sung by the absent breath

Aching thoughts are whispered ‘round
The clutter that is shattered truth
And beating drums carry forth the rage
Replacing the innocence of youth

Sapped of strength and will to cry
I kneel before the end of time
As the shinning and naked sky
Dissolves all that is left of mine

Already shortened gasps of breath steam from a chilled tongue. Overt and heavy, cold with heat induced condensation. While the time ticks by, the unknown awakens. A conflict of the hyper-real and scintillating dreams. Exhaling and inhaling the aroma of clear, crisp loneliness. A shock that is so alive with aching that to deny it would only add to the massive emptiness.

Breathe…….breathe…….breathe…….

Open my eyes to what’s missing in the moments.

The sky burns with the longing of forgotten dreams
As the wretched air follows the blade of dying screams
With envy pulling souls across a field of despair
And hollow eyes are bleeding, raining down through putrid air
Rasping breaths come flowing out of the writhing deep
And stirring sounds are seething from demons in their sleep
And in the sweaty silence enfolded by the dark
I am slowly sinking as my mind is torn apart

Take the whispers woven through the wind
And brush the ruin off my skin
Fractured light is slicing through
Resolves that echo less than true
And the slippery earth that winds around
A hope that’s lost in the churning ground
Cries foul to a leaden sky
That bleeds a mist falling like a sigh
Bitter is the dark and blasted dirge
Smashing screams of chaos merge
From shadows of life lost in the search
Remain nothing but etchings of alder and birch

Free flow to the soul and I forgot to follow lazy rivers down paths with golden seams. How far have I gone without willing the pen to fly over seas of doubt, forests of sorrow, pastures of…

I’ll skip the biblical references. No need for irreconcilable differences during a reading of beliefs.

How far can I fly without starlight and the moon bright? Wings of silver casting shadows of white on the ground in the moon lit night…

Can’t I wander for the sake of it? For the joy of it? For the freedom I find in my mind? Leave the doubt behind and cry and love and pain and everything wonderful in the world and beyond. And if I write what I feel and express myself with an eloquent tongue, a rude tongue, a crude tongue and true tongue, then where will I go? To the hall of scholars, to the dusty courtrooms and holler, “Hear I Am!” Or will I find myself with a pen and pad writing what I think is sad and wrong and not doing what I can to make myself a better man?

Words are mine, but with them I just wrap my life in self-important prose and flowery words about a rose and in the end no one knows that I weep these words onto the page and sadly walk from my own stage.