Interim Sublime

there is a ceaseless realm of shapeless shadows
unbeholden to sophrosyne
where once upon a glimmer stood a maiden
a prism so profound sight did beseech

we vanished along violet shores of twilight
her gentle words eclipsed my darkest fears
cradled by a crescent moon once looming
as stardust ran its fingers through our hair

the floor gave way to zinnias of azure
whose depths we dared not ponder as we fell
and for the briefest instance, we were fractals
amid a glowing wall of aquarelle

the sky was soft as snowfall in November
and florid wafts did wrest our every sense
adrift inside of worlds belying wonder
that only eyes of pretense could amend

I knew if I should wake, that I would find her
for all of Nature’s bounty was her ward
and when the sun had swallowed all the stillness
her kiss did linger on forevermore

[image credit: James Abbott McNeill Whistler]

Pointed Lessons

the abstract tapestry of thought and emotion
sifting through memories
persisting beyond the toll of midnight

a surreality poignance fraught
amidst your fabled absence

through context into lucid light
those wayward flecks take flight

seeing now
the urgency defining bated breath

hindsight is a bird unbounded
heaven’s haste begets unheeding

by the merit of its taste
left on the tongue in lingering

how is it that voices lacking tangible disclosure
visibly vociferate through vales
our verities unseen

only to be vetted in the aftermath
of fate’s denouement

moments later, vested virtues
forsaken anew

by the nighest conscious duress
of my conscience’s affording

i will honor your bestowing
in the bastion of my breast

pray not let these pointed lessons fall
when life resumes its pique

[image credit: Edouard Goerg]

Before Us

to awaken
into death

is the dream
none dare brandish

listless, heavy-lidded
landslide

in somnolous languor

beholden to the mercy
of a cursed blink

and the blinding
of our blackest truth

laid out
to die
before us

[image credit: Francisco de Goya]

This Dream

i awaken
to words of kindness

from friends
and strangers alike

but there is nothing
strange about this pain
that we share

this bridge
we have all built

through the sorrows
of our time

grants us more
than a fleeting respite

as we gain
the understanding
that none are alone

that every struggle
affects us all

that our face is seen
our voice is heard
our truths, known

it is only in togetherness
do we stand
to court the hand
that bears the gift
of the morrow’s ingress

know, my friends
there are no strangers
among us

let us walk bravely
into vales
of unknown consequence

for love
shall harbor no secret

when its light
has finally shone

to guide us home

so it is, was
and shall ever be

this dream
e’er haunts humanity

Final Frame

i awaken
into dream

the essence so precise
a place
i know so well
it seems

this feeling
permeates every aspect
of my being

where i can
never again
expect
to be

time has turned

forbidden
spurned
forlorn

for the life
of me

i cannot
discern disparity

alas

my conscious mind
soon finds
the glass rift

as what was once
life shifts

the past
sight amiss

all is ripped
from this fervid grasp

in that fleeting
final frame

of perfect
freedom

forsaken

Tripping

we experience
our own expression
subjectively

in the form of dreams

our subconscious
is the peripheral landscape

flourishing between
the diametrical opposition
of a contiguous mirror

as we stand
in the midst
of chaotic illusion

alluding to the infinity
persisting in each dimension

and that
of our existence
within every aspect
of eternity
itself

as oneself

as everything
and nothing

in perpetual states
of entropic balancing

behind the masquerade
of conscious awareness

through the cosmic filter
of relevant perception

personified

rant of dreams forsaken

In life, we are plagued with many things.
Some serve to compel us forward.
Some, seem only to exist to thwart our pusillanimous progress toward the arbitrary goal of being human.
What on earth is this innate desire to adhere to such ludicrous standards of corporeal existence?
What is this tethering to that which can only be thought of as tormented torturing?

To be able to reasonably anticipate the fate of each moment is a fate worse than death itself.
To know the rhythm of each step.  
The cadence of every footfall.
To know the precise frame of time in which that insidious sliver of seeping sunlight will slip in through the window’s crack to smack you into the oblivion of consciousness.

Beholden to the call of nature’s never-ending reminder that our minds are moored to primal needs to which we must abide.
To know that dreams we hope to reach are ever dangling within our reach on string-bound carrots tied to sticks that sit firmly within the grasp of capitalistic ceremony.
Only to be ripped from our hands as the sky rips off its fleece of sloe that flickered with the promises of worlds we’ve yet to know.
Worlds we once had known.

Our dreams become less reasonable as reason wriggles into our conscious condemnation of the hope we must forgo.
The cost exceeds the measures of the treasures life might show us.

And so, we go from lavish fiction in depictions of our making to the stark and unforgiving scripts seemed written solely to afflict us.
Imprisoned by a temporality that deems our freedom nothing more than fruitless. Scheming to destroy the only things that make this life worth living.

And believe that it’s a given, that regardless of how much we strive to live the lives that linger long in silent songs that writhe in our subconsciousness, we slowly die each time we’re forced to lift our eyelids open.  
To the moment of our hope’s demise, we try to trick ourselves into thinking thoughts in which our dreams aren’t sinking fast like ghostly ships aghast into the vast, dark abyss of bottomless abandon.

So that we might barely subsist.
This is not the life we want.

Dubious portrayals made to convey a fervid fantasy none can achieve lest they bereave their one and only soul’s reprieve by leaving all that could have been. To sleep beneath the silent seas of muted pleas whose surface screams tempestuously with festering feelings of remorse and discontented cries of silent implore.

Born into a life of languishing where anguish rules as king with such an iron fist, the siren’s kiss falls into effigy.
It’s far beyond what’s known as wrong but come the shadow of the dawn we must persist as listless pawns e’er clamoring just to go on.  

For if we were to choose a fate not left effete by our own feet and force ourselves to deviate from what’s accepted and expected we would find ourselves neglected by our peers appearing queer whose scolding sneers and jilted jeers sustain our ever-loving fears of failure as our freedom fades.  As quickly as we can adhere to anhedony-addled tears of consequence beyond compare.

We forsake freedom for the sake of filling holes of corporate waste for ends that we will never taste.
A lifetime spent with egg on our face.

There is no hope for time replaced.
Still, knowing this, we must awaken without time to contemplate our dreams in hypnagogic states that hold the key needed to free our soul from these arbitrary weights.

Inflicted on our conscious being bearing on our consciences absconding with the only thing that would ensconce our existence.
But our purpose has been purloined for acquisition of gold coin in copious amounts of which we’ll never see by all accounts.

As pointless is this penned appeal I must present this truth concealed for I must voice these things I feel lest I succumb to my ideals of suicidal impetus of such unbridled force that thrusts upon me like this bed of bricks from where I now sit writing this.

in the middle of the night

in the middle of the night
on a frozen platitude
it was simple and sublime
just a thinkin’ ’bout you

The Silence Reigns

the silence reigns
broken

a familiar smoke
potent with poignancy
awoke time
within itself

seeping through the rift
of heedless mind

every sense besotted
with tenses past
and present

disparity so stark
a nothingness became me

folding every breath of hope
upon an inward entropy

the truth thus revealed
through open eyes
omnipresent

had wracked my soul
in quantum rapt

of love i knew
will always know
will never be
again

Beneath a Bellowing Sky

i once awoke
inside
skin
so thinly disguised

as compromise

drew lulling tears

until i was shaken
by words unheard

from thoughts
unspoken

uttering
of consequence
beyond

these walls
where echoes go

to greet death
calling

as throes
of discontent

and gloaming bathe
the hollow hearts

beneath a bellowing sky