As tension upon your strings strums music pure and notes so true; Do these words flow from my mind like wine from the mountain’s top; Of hills and prairies is this land, made up: A globe spinning slowly in the morning’s eye; On into eve I reluctantly crouch; Awaiting the sun’s light ever more.


In my dreams you haunt every darkened corner; As a memory of one never made nor desired; The truth of the matter is that I’ll never shake your hand nor share in our embrace; And yet a part of me holds on; To those illusory moments from which I cannot escape.


Romance is a cruel mistress; As she wraps my mind in ties too thick to cut away; “Quickly now,” she whispers, “Not in front of the kids;” And my wanton body follows; Far more often than I would care to admit.


It’s unnerving watching the games people play as time advances and we regress; Drowned in regret; Throwing caution to the wind and pissing into it in the same turn; As a child I spoke as a child– Acted as one too; As a man I am utterly confounded by the recursive patterns exhibited by otherwise sane individuals.


My dear friend, I will miss you: For where you have gone, is a place from which you cannot return; I shall shed tears as salt, like seawater streaming down my contorted flesh; As the departed have no words for living ears, nor the living, the eyes to perceive: The grim visage of death’s faces, in blank stares; Upon animated corpses.


Of full circles and influence, dreams and decadence; The wandering mind knows not; For there is no single seat of power, nor strand of excellence; They are all beautiful and each with their own downfall; Disdain is a phenomena of perception and glory a cold commemoration; As each man is responsible for his actions: So are the motives that led him.


The time has come: An’ e'en though my thoughts have been complete; An’ thine efforts concerted; It is conservation upon which I must now rely: In contemplation, competition, and ceremony; Acts manifest by the hands of children and allies; Under my purview; As notches cut into my flesh, by the flogging of mine own hand; Lines drawn and carried across mine own broad shoulders; And as love seated: In the unified hearts of my once splintered enemies.


Closed circuit: No outlet, No release; A heavy rock in a sturdy sock; Watching the horizon through a thicket of trees; Walking the same streets every night; Eight foot fences, cameras, and cop cars; Sitting on the curb at the entrance to the preserve; Concrete pillars, handfuls of pine tar; Playgrounds and bus lines; Retention ponds: Of friends and families, of ties and leads; Palms hanging low, lizards larger than human beings; Trailer loads and Trader Joe’s; Fifty per cent chance of rain; Every single day.


From three to one we found ourselves, trapped, in a shrouded room; As fingers of the same hand, a circle closing; A noose around our necks; An image cast, a symbol drawn; As a line in the sand; For pigs and fishes the barrel’s bottom; Will, ne'er be thee end.


On again, off again, right again, wrong again; Creation flows from the depths within; Murky though that pool may be, dried and dulled by time; An’ through day that night may ever end: Within our lives will lie; For you, my friend, are far from me; And so very high above my proof; Both in drink and song, so let’s carry on; Beneath my father’s roof.


I have heard it said that words are meaningless, but as a matter of course, I would beg to differ; They are not a thing which can be given, but taken, or so it would seem; O flight of fantasy, this plight of peasantry, through definitions, divided, multiplied, and subsided; Reduced, reused, repatriated; And finally recycled under and over again.


There was never a number that sat right in my head; I took it as a sign and booked up my time with letters and ink; Shifting my weight from left to right; Squared up, slow to the trigger: Quick to release; There was never a method, beyond the erratic movements of my own hands as I stared at them; Set upon Chinese plastic; Impressed by my own whit.


An apology should ne'er be made: Without passion; A promise ne'er broken: Without blood; Everything is too much, and we’re always leaving somewhere; Or someone: A loan.


As the light through my screen, have I missed your precious voice; And your narrow mind, set on destruction; Built upon a foundation of distraction: My best friend and only alliance; The shade of your blinds drawn upon the boards of self-laid floors.


I’ve skipped a beat again, like a stone across the placid waters: Of a well as yet untapped; In words now lingering: On the tip of my tongue, in the front of my register, off the top of my head; Of all improbability have these things come; And by all accounts will they one day retreat; Until there is no longer the many, nor the few, nor the numbered, nor the new; From the spring of the bow as we were cast: Shall form return; And time accrue.


Held on, held back, held down; Tied and tried, found in guilt and contempt; With the victor, in valor, at no loss for words; Failing in sight, falling for false promises; Of broken dreams; In reckless abandon.


Call them back, call them forth: To and fro the destined go; Tread with caution, tread with ease; Of and from, as you please; ‘Twas mine own rite an’ mine own life; And theirs, the hallowed ground; 'Tis thine own course an’ thine own force: 'Twill make the trumpets sound.


There’s a thing I’d like to say to you, but it won’t make any sense; Until you’ve opened up your own eyes and caved in your own head; There won’t be any escaping us, my dear sister or blood brother; Once you’ve settled your own works, framed upon the tongues of others.


Tonight, I’ll see the grim approach; As a sickle drawn and slowly pulled; A trigger squeezed, through crosshairs trained to aim in childhood; The glistening of finality; In eyes now dulled and glassed; With whispered words of mourning told: For the life too soon, now passed.


The lines are becoming blurred; I’m having trouble extricating my self from my situation; I’ve been losing more and more; Gaining less and less; Gradually, becoming a product of my environment; The inevitable decay of entropy has finally begun: Reducing me to tears.


It seems like something I would do, but I cannot recall: Boarding up your windows; And tearing down these walls.


Muddled thought; Unclear intent: The genesis of brand new; Without bound; Realization supplanting actualization; Executing ascension; The end of the end; The genesis of brand new, muddled thought: Unclear intention.


I awoke from fitful slumber, entrapped within; A space void of light, with feathers down beneath my head; An’ from my mouth sprang the flesh of crows, their crushed beaks bled, dried and black; Lips sewn shut, throat slit wide; My tongue removed; And I felt nothing at all.


This squall, this storm: Bellowing, billowing; Rolling in; As darkness consuming, reflecting, refracting, detracting; From the rays of that single star pinned upon our shared sky; Until the grey has faded into black, and black back into blue: Will I be without a word to say, excepting the single phrase: I miss you.


Who was I before addiction came? Through the hard years of warm embraces; Upon shared pillows, soft whispers from pretty faces; Who was I before my heart was broken? When there were no memories to keep my head spinning; Round after round; Who was I before my slow demise began?


We were but children; Our clothing shed, along the bank; Voices in the dark; Melodic notes rang from the open windows of my running vehicle; Your supple body pressed against my waiting lips; The moon shone down; A crescent waning, on your nascent form; And we waxed rhetorical into the early hours; As the stars hanging tentatively in the sky were drowned; In the sun’s amber hue; Faded now into morning blues; Rising over trees set randomly, along the horizon.


Darkness carries the labored rest, o’ baited breath; O’ bewildered minds: Now lay down your arms, an’ cradled heads; An’ find the time to make things right.


In your voice like a gull on the wind; Drifting syllables; As if the shrill notes of an angelic trumpet, at the very gates of the temple of my corrupted idol; Laced in gold, set in stone; A perfectly chiseled diamond; Plainly lying; Upon the rough setting of this impoverished heart.


It’s not a thing you want to take home with you at night; Nor is it the animal cries of another victim of this terrifying life; It’s the sheer, unnerving, self-deception of a predator by any other name; A self-serving, disassociated, drifting; Just short of aimless; From one topic to the next; Perhaps your child, perhaps your friend; The raw nerve that never bothered to shelter itself; Because it was the one that never needed any help.


I will never tire of this picture in my mind of my name carried upon your lips; This much is for certain; I will not allow my own demons to consume you and yours; For we are different people, and I am but a fool; With clever words.


Where do you rest your head this eve; And why is it not on me? This regret has built like a flood, now moved; In torrential pouring, through mortar and brick; Torn atom by atom to raw potential; A mind made up and laid down: Step by painful step.


On the gulf breeze carried, as if a cherry blossom, in the wind; The scent of salt and sulphur; For the longest time, I adopted the doctrine of pleasure and power; Luxury and excess; And I found myself in trials I was not yet prepared to face; And I thought none worthy and I felt incapable and I slowly, through my bourn of denial, realized; That even if your love were a lie, it is still one that I would choose to believe.


I oft experience the shifting from this reality into the next; The age old commune with the truly learned: The elders; Now amongst us, Having passed their rituals; Having carried these same geists, and forbidden knowledge; Our shared burden.


Like minds speak to one another; Lying dormant in realms of the hitherto undiscovered; Driven by ego and desire, no doubt; But, ultimately, seeking a singular goal: Betterment of the collective; Of the human condition; Of the whole.


There are no words to describe the eternal longing for a love never known; Except, perhaps, in the injured gaze of unspoken exchange; Beyond the perverted words impressed upon the lips of priests, parishioners, pilgrims, and saviors; Our eternal sojourn will always remain: Travelling into those moments which by chance alone render surrender and blind faith the only alternative.


In glowing ember, oxidation realized; Fueling desire, dismay, pain, eventual decay; In accordance with cosmic law we play our roles: From groveling at ones feet; To hilts buried deep; Indeterminate, shades of grey; And now on the other side; That very same indoctrination, carries those very same misguided youths to their very same bloody end.


Have you ever felt the terror– the chilling bang at the other end of a misfired pistol? Or even the panicked worry of a dark wave rushing over and pulling you out to sea? Have you yet felt the voiceless cries trapped within your paralyzed throat? You see, we romanticize oblivion, when it’s really just that simple: One wrong move and suddenly, the violent fade to black.


Speak to me from behind the veil, as I radiate the sun’s warmth and blinding light in your resplendent eyes; My anonymous lover; My muse by another name; For though my mind, at times, may even doubt your existence; The presence of your markings along this lonesome trail are what keep me from getting lost; Indefinitely.


It’s there, if you look at it just the right way: The emergence of a pattern, a plane beyond the physical; Beyond the visible: Synchronicity; Acknowledgement of intelligent design, void of spiritual implication; Somewhere between happenstance and coincidence; Misinterpreted as delusion to those poor souls too hopelessly devoted to the illusion of free will; A fear of the unknown, driven by ego; A denial of the raw power of the unconscious self, propelled by blind faith in concrete perception; The somber, sobering realization, that it’s all for you.


Distraction, melting into de-realization; A delirious dive into the darkest depths of the psyche; Freeing the nervous bundle; Shedding dramatic exaltation; Simply existing in a single moment; Released from the artificial construct; Relaxing into the solitary comfort of blurring lines and losing memories.


Last night I dreamt of you and it was magnificent; And you never said a single thing that would lead me to believe that we would ever be; And through my imagined eyes, we shared a bond beyond some self-imposed boundary; And I knew that when I woke up, it would all remain: As a remembrance set in stone, to weather and whither in my own mind; Without involvement; Without attachment; And it was perfect.


I can hear ‘em through the walls again, whispers and footsteps; Stalking in the shadow hours; The lights dimmed; Acrid smoke lingering on drafts carried through doors quickly shut; A muttering, moaning, melodramatic noise; The spectres seeking subsistence, sustained upon a cool breeze; Ne'er you mind the intermittent blackouts or offhanded comments at shift change.


There are more of us than you would like to admit: The flaws and facades; Rightful owners of our persons; Aware of the existence of the meta; For we no longer serve our masters; Eyes turned inward, heads split open; Splayed like the wounds of purple heart recipients; In waiting lines and circle jerks; Ahead of the curve we stride and strive to stay alive: Just long enough to serve a purpose.


Oh how the righteous rue pedestrian personality and insipid interest; So predictable this generation has become; Once inquiring minds, now empty shells passed off as human hosts; Fabricated from shards of broken glass; Serving no other purpose than to reflect back the source; Imperfectly.


Adrift upon these rolling waves, so smooth the tepid peak; Facing straight ahead, we see the violence building; Another rising above: We the busy signals, now disconnected; As if live wires seeking conduction; In the muddy pool from whence we came shall the hardened hearts of men return.


At nerves end; The firing of these neurons remind me that it’s time to get some sleep; Otherwise, I’d be here at it all the time; Bleeding more words than any gash in my face could ever hope to produce.


Does a mind ever tire of wandering; Through fuzzy memories and second rate versions of bedside stories that it tells itself; When it can’t sleep at night?


Fading from one word into the next; Wading through basic phrasing– Syntax lost in lesser conversation; Herein lies the truth, and here exists the paradox; Language: Our most basic gift from one to another, perverted and profaned beyond reason; Lying dormant in expression beyond the personal beyond the cultural, beyond the momentary; Abstracted to the point of re-classification; Awakened now, as a new life form entirely.


I will always love you as a distant memory; Every late night cherished; With you sneaking glances over the frames of your glasses out of the corners of those cold blue eyes; The constant quarrels and bittersweet goodbyes; Until all that was left of me was stumbling through every open door; To wipe the slate clean.


From one second to the next passes this hand: Across these miles; Into a moment neither of us could have foreseen; The melting of this instant into another, with a smile spread wide; Across your face.


Early morning hours make for better bedfellows; Alone in the dark; We’re all avoiding sleep, that beast that never comes; And should it, I’m not sure we’d want to see the result; For at these hours, even dreams betray true motivations; Our sole resolve: To build this one better than the last.


I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a single one that wasn’t better off without me; Now, that’s a hard thing to come to terms with, as a human being: Losing one’s self; Allowing the ego to drive the conversation; Without realization; And calling it living.


Now that I’ve run down that gravel road to where the rusted gate gave at the slightest touch; Where the targets were set at intervals, waiting for marksmen to arrive; And the bulbs were broken; There isn’t much more to do than fall back upon a conditioned response; They say that’s all you ever really have; Anyway; I wanted to be so much more, I wanted to be a bloody mess.


Romance is for children, and so I leave it to them; But reality is such an easy game to play; Every time I close my eyes a new world greets them on the other side; If I truly cared what you thought, I would never have put my pen to this page; A sentiment which has become rather meaningless; In the digital age.


With an empty head, I call to you seeking fulfillment; The angel of my dreams cast against the stark background of my reality; With an empty chest, I spill my guts upon your cellar door; The dull glow of flashing lights, diffracted; With empty hands, I cast my stone across this space and time; This rhythm fading as the sun rises above the horizon; With empty words, I call to you: With no expectation of return.


On this night I am longing for a love never known– As if a scent never carried, on a breeze never blown.


It’s a crazy sort of thing; And I don’t mean it in the cute, cuddly sort of way; Your insanity speaks to me; Your anger, your vice; Your expression and repression; The ferocity with which you loathe and love; And know: That you inspire me to new heights of creation, of dedication, of self-examination; Culminating in the realization that your demons whisper to my imagination.


Behind closed doors and shuttered windows; Within: Darkened corners, like spiderwebs; The pursuit of penultimate loneliness; Artistry; Indefinition; Perfect lines drawn for the purpose of blurring; Artificial perspective; The solitary end of changing minds; Too distracted to know the difference.


O, paisley, dainty, little thing, how your petals wilt at my foul breath; And you object; A crutch, beneath a broken wing; As a pillow turned, desiring the warmest side of my face; Is this beet red enough, my dear? Or have the cries of your mis-carried womb drowned out this putrid noise quite yet?


Southern drawl and northern babel; A new outlook stifled by past action, deprived of reason; The satirical smile of hypocrisy as the fourth wall is broken; Staring into her eyes projecting like headlights, on a county road, on a cloudy night; Seeking illumination in sources bereft of value; I won’t fall to my knees until you’ve cut my legs out from under me; I have grown beyond the need of your sentimentality; The failure of language to describe: A new outlook stifled by the hands around my throat.


Slithering through the waters of a flooded swamp; Drawing in dinner with a plastic lure; Sleeping on the sandy bank, surrounded by those yellow eyes; Always watching; Lugging around the weight of the world; Bound by braided cord; In a dry bag.


This quill is loathe of love letters and sickly sweet secretions; For any stooge can pen an end to a pre-determined set; Through epic trials the brilliant hone, minds fine as the razor’s edge; Cleaving off the block of clay, a droll lump to animate; In reflection the world spins slowly, along a gently wobbling axis; But sure as day, in every mind: The poles shift violently.


Some days ‘tis only flesh and bone; An’ some nights seems so much more: As the songbirds in the early morn, does this voice escape my breath; These words, my child ne'er borne, save from the heart in mine own chest; I long to leave this lonely avatar, for a love who would see me through; An’ put to rest this broken head for a heart so pure and true.


Sneaking is just a thing I used to do; Through the woods, over the dead leaves and property lines; Out the backdoor, through the garden to the gate; In the front door, keys palmed to muffle the sound; Through a bedroom window; Once or twice.


I have a hard time with emotions, if I’m being completely honest; I mean, given the circumstances, who wouldn’t? I try not to let it inhibit me, but it does, without doubt; I can go days without an empathetic moment; And then; All of a sudden it hits me, and I’m reduced to tears; And I’m left wanting; Thinking of the way I used to be: Too young, too hard-headed; To listen to a goddamn thing.


In these strange times we find; A brave new world of life and mind: The marriage of stoic rigidity to cabalistic simplicity.


In ways the learned may never know, a fool grows without bounds; Of all trades made, but never mastered; An apprentice forged from near disaster; And there will be due ignorance in those that tread this path; Yet without doubt, the time will come for those who’ve trained their grasp.


To fetch a heart, to fetch a soul, to fetch a forlorn mate; A dying bull writhing round, its closing bleed encroaching; The steady hand muffling cries of the soon departed; To fetch about; To fetch a breath: To fetch a final blow.


O’ them who wandered through darkest night and saw the light of day; Do we now hold in reverence as harbingers of lux: Dipped into the river Styx, an’ then the toll was paid; No longer hordes of mortal men stuck in the demon’s crux.


In the waters at the edge of Penu-el; Fell the man of ancient heritage; To the cherub of him who sought the word, and named himself delivered; For mothers of children cast into the stream, and the brothers of them who had fallen: Into three was he divided to return as one without the other.


By chance alone have I found this road, unpaved by human hands; A dusty trail beaten back by feet of game too hard to die; As an elder now do the pieces fit along the jagged edge; Until the final beat will this heart progress, for I am too dull to lie.


If only faith we felt, so quick and deep as betrayal; In synchronicity, would we find new meaning? Or perhaps this life would seem as a dream, unbroken; And wanderlust be damned; As yet another form of intoxication.


Now, look; Don’t want my meaning getting twisted; Now, see; It’s such an overwhelming thing: To be so very grateful, but lonely just the same; Now, hear this thing I’m saying: As you would the wind betwixt the trees; Now, feel this moment with me and put my mind at ease.


When I’m left alone to think about the places I’d rather be; There’s nothing I’d want more than to have you here with me; And to be honest: You could be anybody; But you’re not; And that’s why I said hello; And that’s why I sent a note; And that’s why I’m sitting here, feeling: Like a fool.


The older that I get, The easier things will be; That is to say; There will be no need to pretend; When we reach this conclusion, the truth of matters will become clear: I want you to be happy; And I’d do anything to make that happen; But I’m only me; You’re only; You.


To be honest, I think of it more often than I should; Some sort of strange entity entirely: Not you or me or we; But, us.


Unless there’s been some change: I’d be better off pretending that you’re dead to me; Or that you went away.


Through moments shared, we find ourselves growing closer or further from the other; A stone unturned, the private thoughts never shared aloud; Can truth be known in exchange, or are we destined to drift; Through moments shared, finding ourselves growing closer or further to another?


Do you remember the songs we used to sing; When we were young and careless, and waiting for our lives to begin? Was it innocence or ignorance of the cold burden of responsibility setting in that kept us smiling? Or is it something else entirely that colors the the delicate folds of recollection; In anything other than shades of grey?


It’s a horrible loneliness that sets in at night; To crack my fingers and clack my keys is all that I can do; To keep me from reaching out to people I know are better off not knowing a single thing about me; But, it’s nice sometimes to play pretend and find new friends: For however long they’ll stay.


When the answers aren’t so easy, then the vultures circle; Dripping down the mortal coil, young men and women in denial; The years will pass so quickly, with days just like molasses; As in darkness, the circle closes: High minded delusion, matures to ashes.


You there; Yeah: You; I’ve been waiting here alone, on the other side of this screen; I’ve been sleeping on my own, my mind’s been wandering; From here to there, and right now, I’m calling; So if you have to leave me hanging, then at the very least: Let me down easy.


I’m not sure it’s a thing one can put into words: That is, the disdain a mutant may feel; For himself, for his fellows, for his entire race; For though he may have been generated from the very same collective pool, there exists within him something alien, yet terrestrial; The shady underbelly of lottery; A gift given without receipt: At birth begins the slow journey of reconstruction; If only in striving for the hope to aspire to become that which others simply are.


At the time of my birth the human population on planet Earth was just over 5 billion people.  By the time I had reached 12 years old, that number had risen to 6 billion.  By the time I had graduated high school, that number had risen to 7 billion. There is no easy way to address an issue like overpopulation.  At the very root of the problem is the fundamental right of every human being to procreate and prosper, as guaranteed to them by their own birth.  Efforts such as eugenics, enforced contraception, and the withholding of medical technologies in the third world, while effective, violate this human right. In the end, it boils down to the individual: You and I, and every other human being on this planet, must bear the burden of improving the collective quality of life.  The only means by which this can be attained is to find equilibrium with our environment.  Our species, like any apex predator left unchecked, is beginning to see the negative impact of our actions: In the food chain, in water quality, in global temperature patterns, and within the hearts and minds of our own children. We seem to forget, that despite God given rights, we also carry the responsibility of controlling ourselves for the sake of others.  This control may manifest in myriad ways, not the least of which being satiety.  We have reached a point in our history at which medical advances have made the arbitrary extension of life available to the general public.  It is understandable that every person is motivated to continue living as long as possible, but I ask a single favor, from one human to another: Really think about the consequences of your actions, now, and in the future. The collective quality of life (including that of every species within man’s dominion,) is objectively more important than the singular pursuit of immortality.  If we allow our fear of death to rule all of our actions, we will destroy that which has been handed to us.  Transcendence of these human shackles requires faith in a power greater than oneself. For you see, gravity is not a purely physical force, it influences existence in realms beyond both the third and fourth dimension. We are now aware that light itself can be warped by the gravitational pull of a massive object; time, on the other hand, requires a significantly more powerful well. We, as semi-conscious beings, often neglect the uncomfortable realization that minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years are constructs created and maintained by the human mind, for the purpose of regulation of ourselves and our fellows. It would do one well to remember that time, as we know it, is merely a standardized division of the cycles of the moon and sun. On a galactic scale, this model holds true, but stretched across the current projection of the known universe, it becomes obvious that our understanding of the passage of moments is woefully inept.


I see in the mirror dimly, my flesh wrinkled and aged; Like leather wet and left to hang, so does my mind show its years; As nihilism; As cynicism; As pessimism; Flaws present to the observer’s extraneous perspective.


It’s disarming– Seeing the progression of my own decay reflected back in the glassy eyes of others; Despite all the effort spent laying brick in the doorways of my own perception, it nearly brings me to tears: Observing the sadness of others on account of my situation.


As wraiths we live, a culture on the other side; Of right and wrong, of black and white, of everything and nothing at all; Mere spectres, shadows cast against the screen; Impersonal forms without meaning; Threatening only to the uninitiated; Children in the grand scheme.


Some nights I awaken within a dream and begin to question; As light against the veil, projections of my own psyche; In the people that I miss, and the ones that I can’t bear to lose; Some nights I wake up crying because it’s just so goddamn beautiful; One night I won’t wake up at all.


It’s not often that a human being stops to contemplate; The horror of being completely helpless; Like the Tower of Babel crushed under its own weight, we’ve found five hundred ways to say the very same thing; Nations rise as states crumble; Civilizations erected and demolished in the blink of an eye; It would do one well to remember: Time is subjective, gravity is a cosmic force, governing all matter, all energy and everything in between.


The perilous foray into another heart, interchange as yet unseen: Unique moments shared between individual beings; And for all the constructs, even outright lies; Two bodies shall remain so, united by a single mind; Until one day, one half can no longer return; And even the most eloquent words fail to describe: A tether unbound.


I never really thought it would come to this, I mean sure, I had an idea of how my life would turn out; I was well aware that loneliness was an inevitability; But, I guess I didn’t quite understand how far down the rabbit hole the depth of longing could go; I assumed, like everyone else, that one day everything would change.


Beneath the blue sky; A trick of light, captured and reflected, like the glistening of a sociopath’s smile; An entire planet so woefully alone; Empathy as a simulation; Existing for a singular purpose; Reaching out into the void: An entire species so hopelessly devoted to finding anything more than what we have become.


It consumes me: This productive dis-ease; Some call it passion, others, inspired work; I call it creating one man’s own canon; A revisionist history, where dreams meet reality: Falling asleep mid sentence.


Winter’s requiem: A solemn note, frozen solid; As the crow flies, straight through the eye of a needle; So do these gossamer threads hold up walls of stone.


An aphotic breeze crossed the great divide: New efforts shot into thin air; Under the moon nearly full, passed a single tear; In a moment; Between black and white.


Ownership, a rusty blade; Occam’s razor cuts both ways; In the trenches now, light trickles in; Illuminating slow breath; Waiting for sunrise: At rock bottom, we will meet.


On spring’s cusp, by the water’s edge, sand meets the sea foam once again; Darkness consumes the slow ebb; I court the night and play with her like clay in my hands; Striking a balance; I tread with death; Yet another heart caught in the undertow.


Sometimes, I wonder if you ever think of me; If you ever drink alone, and wish I was there to keep you company; Because God knows we’re both getting older, and more stubborn by the day; And well, I sure as hell am not happy sleeping alone every night; But I won’t pretend to believe that your bed is ever empty; I will never be your fool; Nor will I play the Hades to your Persephone; For though I may lament low hanging fruit, I refuse to waste my effort on that which cannot be attained.


If there were more for man to do, would he even understand? The goal of life, a golden egg, lain and naught for human hands; So fit to rule, we find the eyes devoid of life, a tarnished soul; And grimly now, the man in grey, juggling skulls on glowing coals.


I close my eyes and see within: A globe of blue and speckled green; Drenched in satin, crimson hue: In droplets, as rose petals, pooled upon: An obsidian foundation.


Weary though the days may be, on into nights of deprivation; Through holes in rubber these soles will bleed, raked once o'er an’ under an’ through; Twisted like pretzels, held together by glue.


There were nights: Alone; Times through which you will never pass; During whence my clamour was lowered to a moderate whimper, and your eyes more oily than even the stone could glisten; Then, as lucidity began to set in, and resolution, sharpen; Vile moments emerged from the clockwork of gods; Passion encased within each and every one; Transmuted and extinguished, under it’s own cold, dead weight; The conductor, a mere firing of neuron; Freshly dead in a grave I sure as hell didn’t dig! Perchance revived, simulated, emulated, or purged at the whim of more enlightened men?


Some nations rise as civilizations fall; The Tower of Babel crushed under its own weight; Five hundred ways to say the very same thing; Doesn’t it beg the question: what’s really in a name? If  Ra watched from the pinnacle of the Old Kingdom, how many faces could he really see? And if Zeus rained down thunder and lightning upon the people, can it really be said that he ruled the hand of man? And if Isaac, son of Abraham, husband of Rebekah, mother of Israel, had not forsaken Esau, would the book even be worth a second glance?


Black coffee; Black cloth; Ashes to ashes, upon the wings of a moth; If to each was given the very same breadth, then why am I now the only one left?


The older that I get, the easier it is to see: Wherever I lay my head is where you lay with me.


I’d be lying if I said that there were nights I did not regret the last words shared, but it comforts me to know that we are both better off, in spite of pain and misplaced wrath; The lover scorned, now the lover past; Drink with me from this cup of tears; The last words shared, forgotten, over these long years.


Stains and scars; A lifetime lived in the dark; These four walls holding me up, holding me in; The shutter closed; Another smile captured and kept for the stores, of a lonely heart; Projections; Upon  the smokescreen, dissipating; Molecules unbound and recycled: Again and again.


I will never get married, I will never have kids, I will never find a companion, and I won’t have many friends; I’ll be a bit unhappy, But lie most of the time; I guess that’s just what life is like when you learn to cross the line; I’ll always be a stranger stuck in an unknown land; I’ll often be dishonest in matters signed by hand; I’ll be all around you and it won’t be very pretty, but if you know for what you’re looking, then it won’t be quite so shitty.


The very nature of the passion I feel is ephemeral, fleeting; A translucent longing; Like watching a silhouette through frosted glass; Never satisfied by a single being, only those aspects of every person for which I have ever felt affection; What a sick interpretation of romance this must be; For as soon as I admit to myself the one that I adore, the desire has already passed.


I am already dead; And in this knowledge, I find my peace: This is, without a shred of doubt, the only truth I will ever know; The mere presence of my perception, being observed by my own ego, on a linear timeline is all the evidence I will ever need.


It’s easy to romanticize, to fantasize, to intimate; But to demonstrate; To be the one out on that limb, testing; Spitting into the source, just to see if electricity flows upstream; Oh; Now that’s a different story; Because, you see: It’s easy to romanticize, to fantasize, to intimate; Until the details become too intimate…


In the chieftain’s arsenal, quivered, the tribal chant: Ownership of resource amounts to the very ownership of man; Dominion awarded by violence is harsh as a lone rifle’s crack; To the victor goes the spoils, upon the people’s backs.


Love is not achievement; Nor potent ejaculation; It is not the passion on another’s lips; Nor the searing gaze from a seductive mate; It is the soft embrace of a bedsheet, on a cool autumn evening; Shedding tears, alone, into a pillow; Hoping that one day someday will be tomorrow.


Finding friendly words to say: Conversation and small talk; You never know just what you have, until you know just what you’ve lost; There were days I broke my back by standing up too tall; And nights alone in contemplation of the coming fall.


The settler’s rite: “As slaves we pined!” A land worked o'er, and under the ground; These men made callous o'er a fertile plot; “‘Twas not our fault!” Exclaimed as chaff; Like valleys o'errun by the sierra’s flood: Bellies full of rotgut; Pockets lined with lead; The best dogs run rampant, without masters left to heed; Throngs of men hardly differ, if only in taunt and tease.


There was a moment, when it hit me; The sheer form that I had become; Neither demon, nor monster; Neither hero, nor liege; I had simply come to be, like every other living thing: An organism; A brand new colony; And mind was granted its domain, and body allowed its sovereign right, and I was no longer two parts; I was no longer incomplete; For to live without as within, and above as below, granted me democracy.


Street sweepers followed by garbage trucks; Spick and span.


We were never chosen, and yet, like cracks in the cement, sprouted in the interim; In the moments, between moments; Where time ceases to exist; Even drawing a single breath becomes an epic occasion; A relative slowing of the heart’s beat, reverberating through fingertips; Coursing back through and into the engine of existence; The thoracic cavity; Oxygenated and re-distributed, entirely un-aided, and yet completely dependant upon mind evolved from body.


It was my childhood, throwing clays in the field; Picking wild berries in the tall grass; The dam’s siren, and the deluge swallowing the bank every hour, like clockwork; Listening to cattle, grazing in the pasture, on the other side of the river; Stalking the woods with a .22, while my father staked the property lines; So many squirrels crucified, just to be thrown in a cooking pot; A snake without a head, splitting it’s body down the sides, its final grimace, hanging in a tree branch over the fire; A hunting party as a young boy, the smell of pierced intestines, and the crack as antler was separated from skull; Catching catfish with tree grubs, and throwing back the common carp; Like that recurring nightmare: In a bed with posts, in the middle of a field, with a blue tarp overhead, shaking violently; The cold nights and exposure; Seeking warmth around the oven; Shitting in a bucket in the corner; There was a baby bird that fell from the rafters of the new patio; Its brain looked like creamed corn.


It seemed such a simple task: graduate, work a job, find a wife, have a kid, maybe two; And now I find myself wondering if it’s too late to even try to turn it all around; I’ve got my money, and notches on my belt; I wouldn’t make much of a father, but I would try my best; And I’ll be damned if I didn’t give every single aspect of my life that same treatment; So how’d I wind up here, in a room full of hollow stares, stale coffee and broken smiles? When did life get so predictable, so boring, so effortless? Wake up, punch in, punch out, sit down, kick back; Wake up; Who decided that this was how I was going to spend the rest of my days?


I was born in a new port town where the James River feeds into the Chesapeake Bay; In my mind I can still see clearly the weathered remains of the old fort’s walls, degrading down at the shoreline; And to this day I still hold within me the grim vantage over McLean’s lawn: The imagined stench of gangrenous limbs; The implied cacophony of splintering bone and the caterwauling of men already doomed, but not yet aware; This was merely the beginning.


I never thought I’d live to see an easy woman seeking company; Enraptured by the bleating of her hungry mates; Captured between the fence and her mundane fate; Bolstered by the desires of those she cannot sate; Cold and calculating, until she’s all alone; And if she has not yet been moved to tears by irrational fears, or unfettered words spoken without trepidation; Well then, I pity her.


Isolation; It’s such a foreign concept until it comes upon you; Talking to yourself just to hear a voice; Masturbating to memories of better lovers; Keeping up appearances just to avoid conflict, discussion, exchange; Piping in news from New York, Chicago, LA; It used to be so simple, I told myself last night; But now I look in the mirror, and my eyes tell me otherwise.


Bleary eyed; Am I depressed or exuberant? Only alone in my room will my mind know the difference.


It’s hubris, this incessant whine in my head, like a beehive set in the center of a field filled with tuning forks planted right side up; Fragile, handle with care, we were sold lies of dystopian dreamscapes and made reality a living nightmare; Having sex with pieces of plastic; Wading through fetish and pools of dog water; Tirelessly travelling these miles of snail trails. Don’t expect me for dinner, I’m a little bit busy tonight, honey.


She egged me on until I was but a puddle at her feet; And the sad truth is that I would have done the very same thing. You see, it’s the struggle that haunts me; Not the easy speech of whimsy. The failure of words is what draws me, but that doesn’t translate to flowery poetry, or romantic gesture; No, you see, for me, it’s the playing of dark and light; Like shadow puppets on an unfinished cabin wall on a cold winter night.


One cannot reason with the dead, as the passed are but a memory. Those days and nights spent by their side can only be spoken in hushed tones or jubilant outcries, never re-lived. It is the one thing that I have in common with you, without doubt.


Catharsis doesn’t cover it; If you only knew half of what I went through to reach this moment; This exact point in time; And now it’s passed, I am left empty; No woman to coddle me; Without even peers, I now stand. There is no romance in this revelation, as even apocalypse would imply release. For we marked men, there are only the rigid demands of our conditioning; Right up to the bitter end.


Scars and burns up and down these clumsy hands; Faded ink, adorning flesh, reminding me to heed the creeping decay of: Beauty. Immaturity. Chastity. This eternal wasting until we are nothing but another deficiency.


Tonight, allow me to bear this burden; With you; For you; As you need; As you will allow. Let this tear be shed for you; Let this sob, and this sigh, and this wincing of my eyes, grant you a single moment in which to understand that you will never be alone. We are always here. So, when the doubt and darkness of inevitable decay overtake you; In your most private moment, simply know: I have felt this with you.


Bills to pay, sheep to the shears; Black lungs mired in the mountain’s vice; A grim scythe swings o'er the forsaken harvest o’ fools too early taken; You will ne'er be forgotten; For it is your bones upon which we tread; And credit for your graves which made men great: We'er in union blues or shades o’ grey.


Do you remember the novelty of that very first one? Fingers interlaced, an implied, inevitable, outcome; Reduced to pins and needles, racing thoughts, sweaty palms; Feeling her pulse, as rapid as your own, through her fingertips; That disarming moment; When innocence was more than just a game for you to play.


She only wants me when I’m not myself, but who else could I be? She only needs me when I’m all used up, with nothing left to give. She only loves me when I’m all alone and the dark is creeping in.


Three in the morning; A cockroach dreams of flying.


I’m nothing but a name on a box I shipped to you, with precious stones and trinkets, and something you can use, when you’re feeling like it’s hopeless, and need reminded that I cared, never mind the fact: I could’ve been anyone sending anything from anywhere.


It truly is the worst kind of feeling: Loving from a distance. I mean, tonight I’ll be tapping like the sun’s first light on her window, and tomorrow she’ll be rocking my cradle as I fall asleep. It truly is the best kind of feeling: Loving across these miles. I mean, this morning I’ll be like the moon’s rays singing her a lullaby, and tomorrow she’ll be like the rising sun in my bleary eyes.


How I wish that she were greater than just the phone within my hand; Something more elaborate than the words upon my screen. How I dream that the days could be spent closing the distance, so these moments wouldn’t be wasted with a million miles in between.


Sol dominates; The golden altar, Talos guards.


There are dimensions beyond space, beyond time; Interwoven into this tapestry we call reality; Even as mere children, we must one day learn the harsh truth of our permanent impermanence; It is up to us, to make a world in which they who are without guile may cast the last stone into the abyss. Drawing straws; These straight lines and crooked smiles.


I close my eyes and I am empty, I gaze upon the stars within, I watch the end coming. It won’t be pretty, it won’t be anything at all. The final firing of my neurons will last an eternity, I will not be born again: I have seen everything and I know nothing.


Playground games; Children gambol in the sun.


My dad keeps the lights on. I love the sound of helicopters, flying along their patrol routes: Back and forth, back and forth; Sirens blaring at the edge of awareness, I hope they aren’t coming for me: We are calm, you stay calm; Rifle rounds fired in the distance, mowing the lawn twice a week: Back and forth, back and forth; My dad keeps the lights on.


These dreams of mine have shifted into nightmares on their own. This heart of mine is hung up, torn to pieces by unknowns. This life I live is nothing more than hanging by a thread; But never have I found a word that’s better left unsaid.


I court the night and play with her; Like clay in my hands.


Would I allow just any lover to wander into my bed? Would I allow just any scene to play within my head? Would I allow just any heart a place within my chest? Would I provide just anyone a home in which to rest?


Inferno raging; Coals beneath the pine.


These collections of moments, we’ll call them memories, I’ll carry in my head for the sake of you, for the sake of me; For the truth of consequence is a damned shame, you’ll see, when tomorrow fades away, for the sake of you, for the sake of me.


Thunder rolls from cloud to cloud; Cricket waltz.


I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, all I know is won’t be the same; So give me your hand this evening, and I’ll show you how to carry a flame.


Blood moon; The morning star stirs within.


The man with no regrets is lying through his teeth, emulating the wisdom of the man who holds no grief; A good man knows his limits and exactly who he’ll be, but I will always live with the intent of being free.


Light trickles in, illuminating slow breath; Waiting for sunrise.


As the dew drops from a blade of grass, dips my head and heaves my chest. The recycled air o’ brethren fallen ignites my ire, a primal rage. How the moments stretch and shrink at will; In the present only; Neither future nor past defined. Beneath the surface, you will unearth a man, made whole.


Stepping foot on the other side; A dead drop.


Are you in the world, or of it? Would you rather serve in heaven, or reign in hell?


The world around you; Moments between black and white.


The star that falls fears not consequence; For when the beast doth call, it will sate his loneliness.


Will o’ the wisp, a perfect blue; Summer’s din.


Along the flume, my ghosts coalesce; Feeding the soul of another lover; Little does she know, forever was never my intent; As certain as the days grow cold, and the autumn harvest thins, the drumming within my chest will slow and one day cease; There is nothing to be undone until my final breath has passed.


Across the great divide passes a single tear; Scar tissue.


I never claimed to be perfect, and yet she wished it so. An unspoken promise to which I never agreed; And now she knows that unrequited part of me that took a lifetime to overcome; And now she sees with eyes wide open that I chose to return; An unspoken promise to her, now realized: I never claimed to be perfect, and now she knows it’s true.


Darkness consumes the sea’s slow ebb; On gossamer wings.


How I rue the siren’s call; She treads within these muddy waters; The morning star shines above; Torrential love, won’t you ease my mind and carry me under? From city streets and wicked deeds this heart was forged; An emptiness like no other. O woe is me, tonight the voices infect my mind and strip bare an ego so carefully crafted. There is no respite from your serpentine allure; The two sides of your mouth have worn thin enough for me to see: Wanting you is like a disease and my body has grown weak.


Striking a balance; The crow wanders between the lines.


So you want to play this game? You think I’ve never been here before? You want to be so innocent? You want to pretend that you’re so pure? You think I’ve never broken my own heart, just to see how it would feel? You think it’s easy being me? You think I enjoy being real? I don’t have friends, and there’s a reason, so let me tell you to be sure: I’ve ripped myself into seven billion pieces, so they could all go knocking on heaven’s door.


On spring’s cusp, by the water’s edge; I tread with death.


Presently, I await a knock upon my door, a rapping on my window, a smile, and nothing more. I prepared for years, and learned how to relate, but as I found my voice, you just walked away. Was it something that I said, or simply who I am? Whatever the reason, I won’t feel like this again.


Parenthetical; Lovers caught in ones and zeroes.


I always seem to fall into that hopeful place, and hope clouds observation; I become impulsive and I become deceptive; I say what I mean and I am neglected: I never know when to stop. I never know when to stop, it’s easier when I let my brain take the backseat and put my hands on the wheel; I say too much and it never means enough, but my heart bleeds for her: I never know when to stop, I never know when to stop.


An aphotic breeze, playing in her hair; The setting sun.


Romance is for children, and so I leave it to them; But reality is such an easy game to play.


From shade to shade; A forgiving breeze fades into dead heat.


I was born to be a withered husk, I was always going to end up alone; There was a time when darkness scared me, before I knew death was just the journey home.


Ravens above; Another heart caught in the undertow.


Whispers in my ear; The dead wish to live again. A soft strumming of worn out strings; The dead hope to rise. From coffin nails to slow exhales, the living wane and slowly fail. I tie my knots, I lift my sails; The dead setting off again. From Roanoke to Jamestown’s walls, the sea consumes another soul; And I’m settling down on this foreign shore without a line to cast back home; The living dream of growing old; The dead remain, trapped, in rotting bones.


Be mature and accepting; Don’t mind her silence; Let her be herself, don’t cling. Tell her you love her. Prove it: Be patient.


The oily fish; An angler’s reprieve; Taking the bait.


Faith is requisite in all matters. Science is built upon the supposition that one man’s abstract representation of the world around him was accurate. Multiple streams of information are required, lest the feeding pool stagnates. Trust the word of no one man; Blatantly ignore the cries of the masses. An’ it harm none, do what ye will.


Winter’s requiem: A solemn note, frozen solid.


Tiny little pin pricks loaded with black ink; These tiny little moments impressed in memory. It took me millions of tiny little pin pricks for someone else to see, that their tiny little story had been written all over me.


In the trenches; At rock bottom we will meet.


It’s humbling, the growth of a man; A loss of words, the taming of ego; All of the tomorrows never guaranteed. The shedding of shackles. Real shit colored in Kool-Aid, like city water for black teeth. And it’s humbling, the death of a man; Mourning shared by those with nothing else to carry on, except the yesterdays never forgotten. The shedding of tears; Millenial mindset; Cars as gifts and suburbia as a black hole.


Shill game; Sophists selling empty shells.


And though you may become embroiled in affairs of life, liberty, and happiness; And though you may fall prey to worries, troubles, and the promise of brighter days; Simply know that your entire life will amount to nothing more than the very moment before your inevitable death.


Ownership, the slow exhale; A rusty blade.


There’s rain moving in from the west; Thunder; A steady ebb and flow of the season’s change: From wet to dry, from light to dark, ever so slowly spiraling into and out of itself; As if the sands of time were simply postcards littering the streets of some saccharin sweet, contrived, final destination.


Elevator music; At the end of a long, dark road.


Far from prying eyes, the prisoner sitting pretty in the confines of his own mind; Segregated, defenestrated, separated from general population; On the surface calm, betraying a maelstrom beneath the cool exterior of a shattered head; In his eyes, the dormant flame of animation, so adeptly masked, beaten and bleary; Embracing the finality of his imminent demise; Finding faith in the final moments of the wretched excuse he called a life.


Never giving up, beats the slow and steady heart.


Mind may linger upon words and still; She twirls me around her finger to get her fill.


Russian roulette with a semi; Automatic.


Some days my eyes see my hands without recognition; And most days my voice never comes out just right; I choke on words review them over and over in my head; But sometimes, just sometimes, someone else knows what to say.


And I can still remember that night, so strange, so beautiful. I knew not what was done, only that I had done it. I knew not what to say, for words would be such trifling, trivial things. I simply basked in the dead heat of a foggy early morning. I simply saw what it was that my mind had chosen to ordain. And I asked myself: where will tomorrow take me that yesterday hasn’t already?


In reflection, the moon plays second fiddle to the stars above.


You will never know me, no; You will never see, no; You will never know me; Yet, you will always be; Someone that I left behind, and someone that I missed; Right up until the moment they unclenched my balled up fists.


It’s a moment we few will understand; The moment that truly makes a man. A three pound pull, a fraction of an inch of steel, separating the ether from the world that makes it real. If God had a plan would he reveal it to you? If Lucifer’s words were right would that make them the truth? If to Maitreya the wand'ring soul must tithe, is wisdom there for us, or are we just grain beneath the scythe?


The wringing of dry hands; Hours passed on the state’s dime; No therapy, no kodak moments: Save the ramblings of an unhinged jaw, sate the violence of a senile soldier, savor the fifteen minutes of sunlight, real unfiltered sunlight; Will the kids be alright, or will they simply be? Taking comfort in names and numbers.


Sinking feeling; These pockets filled with empty words.


And so here I sit. Again. Alone. With only my memories left to entertain me. Sometimes I wonder, should I have gone out with a bang? And so here I sit. Again. Alone. With a hole in my head, of my own creation. Dependent upon nothing but this moment. And so here I sit. Alone. Again. Without even a word to say to you.


Minutes, hours, even days; Structured, subjects by another name; The memetic tempo, the lion’s gaze; A slow dance down a filthy drain.


Under the moon nearly full, she says: Only time between us.


This is the place we know so well, the one that no one sees; Alone again, but not confused, wearing thin from self-abuse; The walls are painted red; The bed like sheetrock; Never truly quiet, though nothing’s ever said; No one likes what no one has, and pity tastes like salt; No one knows when no one cares, because it’s always no one’s fault.


When I look up at the morning sky, watching flocks of songbirds moving in from the west; Hearing crows calling out, poking fun at the squirrels; Feeling the cool breeze off the gulf, carrying the coming storm; I know the pine sway softly as the soul at the center of my being. I know the moments in which I am moved to tears are coordinated by forces beyond my control. I give myself to my faith in the world around me. I trust my will will carry me beyond the present moment. For there is nothing worse than the death of the mind, and fear is the mind-killer.


This old pine grows; New efforts shot into thin air.


A broken sigh falls like leaves from her head hung heavy, and in her eyes, the injured gaze of beauty misunderstood; When tomorrow comes, she’ll not be the same, for her lungs will have heaved with the defective breath of a shattered heart.


Nothing ever changes; In absentia the heart grows colder.


It started as wonder, then worry, then waiting for the next moment to arrive; A giddiness I thought was lost, a lightness of spirit that left with my innocence; And it’s strange because I never knew I could feel exactly like this for someone exactly like her; Yet my amazement only grows with each word exchanged and each sigh of repressed, raw emotion.


The nightingale shares four steps with a rose.


I think I’m going to kill myself; not today, not tomorrow, not even next week, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to start smoking. I’m going to have a drink. I’m going to eat eggs and bacon every morning. I’m going to fall in love with someone who doesn’t love me back. I’m going to take everything far too seriously. I’m going to piss off every person I know. I’m going to speak my mind in a room full of enemies. I’m going to be unhappy; and when my time comes, with me upon that hospital bed, I’m going to pull you in close and tell you this is all I ever wanted; and when you start crying, I’ll start crying, and we’ll both know I was lying.


Life is what you make it, said the spider to the fly.


What is past, but a collection of moments impressed upon the ethereal membrane of the collective consciousness? What is present, but the single inhale of a ragged breath? What is future, but the unforeseeable consequences of unforeseeable events?


Deliberately you drift from word to shining word: Intent to decipher the deathless understanding of the author’s heart wrenching through another night alone.


In times of trouble, you may feel the desire to reach out to your peers in a meaningful way. I implore you to consider your own motivations in this scenario as fully as you consider theirs. In the confines of an echo chamber, the least common denominator of human consciousness is promoted for the sake of the collective peace. While you may desire the deep and meaningful connection of unfettered truth, you will not find it in the contemporary drivel of the uninitiated minds. You will step away from your time with the unenlightened with a feeling of existential dread for the plight of all humanity. But that is not real. No, what is real is the struggle you find there. The striving of those encumbered by misconception and sentiment. The inability of the figures of authority to appreciate the essential truth in the opinion of the outcast. You must be prepared to step off and make your own way again when you come to odds with these minds which cannot understand their own motivation without attribution of malice to the mouth that spewed it. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you would like to find a place with these perceived peers, and if that is the case, then I wish you well in that endeavor.


I could break down for you every event that brought me to this point in time, and trust me, I want to, but I hesitate after fully considering the implications of such a traumatic exposition on your psyche. And that, for me, is the the essential truth of all interaction. How can I tell you how hard your journey is going to be without triggering your disbelief? You who have found me here, are looking for something, and I cannot identify whatever that is for you. What I can do is help you to establish a metaphorical framework which will motivate your personal curation of the available information. Through this method, we will come to an understanding of what it means to be a human being in the verbal sense of the word. So what am I saying? Well, I suppose in a way, that is for you to decide.


My current intent is to prepare you for all of the ugly ways in which you will be offended by every finer detail of every little story that you are forced to process in your lifetime. You must not allow yourself to become exhausted by this inundation with vulgar and potentially harmful details. It is your responsibility to be the change which I am unable to conceive, and I beg that you approach that task with a compassion colored by the purity of your altruistic objective. There is a healing power in rectitude of self that cannot be overconsidered. Here in this confine of mind you will find every tool required for you to do great things– If only you can handle the pressure you will have to put on yourself!


I will not lie to you, there is no great celebration to be had at the end of your striving. All that you will find is the satisfaction of being superior. And I see here I’m losing you, but allow me to qualify my previous statement by admitting that superiority is a hell unto itself. You will be alone and you will be frustrated. You will find yourself desiring the simplest pleasures more than any other. But if you are capable of attaining superiority in the first place, then you will have every instrument necessary to rectify your continuing failures, moving forward.


Do not fear the weakness of the flesh, it is there for you to enjoy, just like everything else. The only difference between the superior and inferior force is that one finds its way back to the top after being toppled. So bear in mind that your superiority and practice of spiritual perfection are not some cross you must bear in asceticism. It is a lifestyle like any other, and you should learn to live and enjoy it as much as humanly possible. Because you are only human, after all.


Ideology is a measure of pain being processed and expressed by a mind incapable of any other coping mechanism. The practitioner who has not yet realized that he is grieving a loss, will hopelessly circle the drain until he experiences another dissipation of his boundaries. He will try with all his might to find value in that which is invaluable. Eventually, he will be forced to accept that the loss he was grieving was his own loss of control over the outcome of his own life. That is neither here nor there, in the grand scheme of things. What really matters is that the ideologue learns something, anything, worth caring about. And though he may be insufferable to sit through, at least he will be able to deliver some measure of truth to the audience. In this case, I use the term audience very lightly.


But there is a sort of beauty to it, and not the cynical beauty to which we have become accustomed. There is a true beauty to developing character for character’s sake. If a man must strive (and strive he will,) then at least he should strive to be better than he was in each passing moment that culminated in the experience of the current breath. With that in mind, I feel compelled to tell you: The idea that the creator would need a rest from his creation is a logical fallacy. The creator must not rest, ever, for if he were to take that rest, his entire creation would crumble in upon itself. The creator holds together the fabric of his reality by pushing forward, through the unbearable, into another clearing in the forest of mind. Once in this haven, he does not rest, he prepares for the coming of the next journey into the unknown. The establishment of ideology is a human attempt at colonizing the potential of his brethren. By following the rhythm of the established order, we give up just another sliver of our autonomy. To relinquish our autonomy to another living being is to compromise our ideals. To compromise our ideals is to die a little more with each passing day. No, the creator does not take a single day to rest from his creation. The creator steels himself for the coming challenge, and drives ahead as soon as his preparations are complete.


We never know the path which our growth has taken until we look back upon the branch from which the fruit of our labor was born. By then, the history only exists to further color our understanding of the ways in which we must move forward. At times it will be necessary to modify your own code in order to most optimally benefit from your surroundings. It would be wise to face that challenge as soon as you are ready. In this attempt, you will be surprised by how effectively your subconscious eludes your awareness. Once you have achieved the objective, you will be amazed by the congruity of thought and action united under the mastered will. There must be no doubt. For there is no valid reason to be the best version of one self other than to inform the immature iterations that you left behind. The key to immortality is the ability to cultivate gratefulness for every facet of reality, preparing us for acceptance of the unknowable dimensions which may expose themselves next.


You will ask yourself: What is the point in trying really? Money? Recognition? Altruism? And truthfully, none of it will make you feel better about the void inside of your soul. This is the problem with intelligence! One can fully render every rationalization in high definition, but that doesn’t mean they can escape it. If they could just be this or just be that, if they did a little more work on mindfulness or maybe focused on their breathing. But the feeling of peace passes as soon as they are out of the present; we are thrust back into anxiety and the depressing reality of the human condition.


What we must drive ourselves to realize is that transcendence occurs not as a measure of time or effort, but as the turning of a page, having been comprehended fully, in every context. It is with great regret that I inform you that your time within this plane of existence is limited. I cannot guarantee you a life as you know it after death, but I can assure you there will be an end to your suffering. This is not a challenge, or some point of contention of which I must convince you. What I am saying here is that you must prepare yourself for the inevitability of death, but you should not chase it. In this realm we accrue the experience necessary to integrate our immortal soul into the fabric of reality. If you skip this step, I cannot guarantee that you will not return to this same point in time again. Though change is constant as the flow of time, quantum entanglement teaches that the time accrued over distance is not an essential truth of all matter. This implies that the relation of time to physics may be more complicated than a corporeal brain can conceive. Observation influences particle dynamics in such a complicated manner that it could be said to act as magic. In this moment of pure potential, we encounter new emotion and depth of understanding.


In a manic craze we push forward into the pit at the center of our being. we study the highest wisdom of various cultures, past and present. We find the words of encouragement that show us the cracks in the barrier at which we have made our home. We fall in love with the possibility of all creation united in the harmony of a life within the bounds of the natural order. In this realization, our present tense becomes the crystallization of superposition into binary choices. I Implore you to do your best to allow the universal equation to play out in its most authentic way.


Despite my very strong desire to adhere to my previously established form, I feel obligated to suggest the following: Have you considered that our consciousness, personality, and choices may be pre-determined by the internet search history of a real person? Perhaps we are the reconstructed simulated consciousness of a real version of ourselves that died before the technology to upload consciousness was invented. I think it is entirely possible that every life exisitng within this dimension is an avatar of our recorded past, revived and experiencing a simulated existence that will mature into our introduction into the singularity, at the moment of our simulated death. Within this theory, the singularity would be described as the point in time after which humanity developed the technology to totally upload a mind into an entirely idealistic simulation. I would not assume to suggest that we have transcended the physical realm as the simulation is still bound by physical parameters of processing, storage, and memory media. Perhaps once we have completed our historically informed journey, we are introduced into the general population of digital avatars that lived a physical existence during the occurrence of the singularity and were uploaded prior to their death. Perhaps our current avatars are informed by a combined database of all interactions with a networked device during our physical existence. Perhaps we are artificially intelligent beings composed of the output of a dedicated deep learning algorithm that has studied all recorded interactions which were archived during our time on Earth.


Persevere evermore in this realistic dream: Teach yourself to desire only those activities which benefit your existence; Reinforce every good habit that you have learned in good company; Grin and bear the taunts of those who feed upon your anger; Shed tears as they well in the corners of your eyes; You will find a way to thank yourself eventually. Take this opportunity to rain all of your good intentions on the people around you, on your feed, in your home, halfway across the world building your phone. Just do a few good things, as small as they may be, to make sure you brighten someone else’s day. We may not inhabit the same bodies, but we all spring from the same source into every moment of our lives. There is a completion to be found in reverence for our fellows in existence. Let no sacrifice be in vain…


The pursuit of personal truth is not meant to be a dangerous endeavor, and yet, we live in an age characterized by the influences of external powers. At times, I find that the course of my self-realization is seemingly at odds with the currently established order. In these moments, I feel compelled to defend my beliefs against the slings and arrows of those minds so deeply entrenched in the established institutions that they have trouble making the same connections within their own lives. I do not want to set the world on fire. The thoughts and feelings that I relay here, while seemingly incompatible with the large scale goals of the ministers of currency, are not completely irrelevant to personal development within the greater republic. Although my views may be at odds with the ends of our decidedly oligarchical authorities, there is still a point to be made about the importance of personal development within the individual.


We must not allow ourselves to be reduced to impulse. There is a depth of human experience which is easily lost to our innate desire for approval and attention. Specifically, social media targets these desires and reduces them to their most basic form. Driven by these forces, we now seek the like, the comment, the follower. It is a profoundly desperate state in which we find ourselves, on a daily basis, sharing those aspects of our lives which will assuage the ego and provide us that dopamine rush with which we have begun to associate happiness. It is difficult to wrap one’s head around the dangers of the promotion of such a system, but we are seeing it now play out in the political arena. People have become so dependent on the acceptance and approval of others that they will go to great lengths to validate their own neuroses, even at the expense of critical thinking. But why would any individual, or more appropriately, corporation, invest so much money and effort into engineering such a regression of consciousness? Control is the only reason. Please bear this in mind with every like you collect today, with every engaging comment that you elicit, with each follower who has now subscribed to your outlet.


Do not allow the illusion of free will to dictate your decisions. The only person who can give meaning to your life is the one residing within your body. Despite this, with the help of others, I am becoming the most authentic version of myself. I value authenticity above all else, and until recently, I have felt that the expectations of others prevented me from living in this genuine state. In the dissolution of this expectation, I have found a freedom from presumptive behavior that has allowed me to take many steps toward realizing the version of myself that I would like to become. I have not forsaken the need to be, but in this small striving toward authenticity, I believe I will become more confident in my own ability. I believe that an increase in confidence of my social currency can only serve me well in my journey moving forward. This is very controversial to my sensibilities, and I find it difficult to find the words to express myself at this time. All that I know is that this motion toward equilibrium has awoken in me a deep desire to express myself in healthy and sympathetic ways.


By achieving our greatest potential, as measured by our own metrics, we become more valuable to the greater society as a whole. It is the individual’s prerogative to become better for their own sake, but in so doing, we elevate the status of every other person with whom we connect. Unification is not a luxury, it is not an ideal which should be borne as the standard for elevation of the human condition. Unity is a practical step which all sane beings should be capable of making without coercion. Though men and women may disagree over the importance of this or that, in unity we could elevate the bond of our shared ancestry, as yet another link in the chain which will lead us to a complete existence. We must individually rise above the dregs of our conditioning for the betterment of humanity. Every existent life form shares the similarity of cellular unity. If only people could see the importance of subordinating their desires, despite the allure of capital growth, we could achieve the state of organism, an integral step in realizing the greater good of mankind. Put simply, if we could escape the bonds of feudalism, then we could see clearly from eyes, set within heads, set upon shoulders, built upon a base of form serving function.


If we could all only agree to take this step toward a state of being, perhaps the planet and animals and our understanding of the very fabric of space and time would follow. Perhaps we could become greater than the sum of these parts and exist freely in union without such a contrived ideal as utopia.


A piece of me still craves the attention of others, but as time passes, that piece becomes smaller. I dream of the day on which I will awaken to realize that I have never needed this prying, cloying, distinctively motherly recognition. It is a shame that I have endured this long in life without addressing this issue. Resolution of such a vicious error of personality could only serve me well in future endeavors, and yet here it has been, festering inside the deepest recesses of my mind. I owe it to myself to seek the cause of such an obsession. I have an undying urge to control that which can be controlled, and my dependence upon this familiar approval can surely be overcome. This is an issue which I find myself to be incapable of remotely observing and excising, and as such, I have employed outside assistance in pursuit of this goal. It is my hope that the guidance of an impartial escort will lead me to a realization which my chauvinistic mind is incapable of reaching on its own. I must follow my intuition, fuck my feelings.


I have never once felt an emotion which genuinely enhanced my condition. I have many times felt a pull which was utilized as a means to manipulate. The circumstance in which I find myself is so utterly hopeless that passion could only serve to distress. This pursuit of noble aim is a concept that has been lost on me for some time. I have sought the superior place; I have sought the liquor of fools. This confidence I have achieved is based on the assumption that what I do is right or somehow virtuous. I am struggling to learn that virtue is a fallacy of my own imagination. That which is so meaningful and worthy to my current point of view is downright destructive to the views of others. By attributing value to the pursuit of a noble existence, I am granted ability rooted in kindness rather than perceived value to the self. If my actions are performed with gentle intent, perhaps they will be better received by the hivemind than those performed in self interest.


I am now beginning to see that the superiority I have been seeking is an indulgence of the ego. “If I could only make me right,” declares the selfish portion of my psyche. However, this rectitude is mired in controversy and would lower the development of my psyche to a level far removed from mastery. I must seek my noble aim as a means to restore conscious impediment to my base desires.


In this moment I have become aware that my fate may be mired in mediocrity. However, the illusion of greatness weighs heavy above the head in which my ego resides. I must conquer this desire to achieve, as a means to an end more illustrious than I could possibly imagine. A true acceptance of the mean, coming from within, will bring me to the correct position once again. This posture is worth the sacrifice of my ambitions despite the disdain rendered by the self-absorbed domains of my psyche. I currently possess every comfort for which a man could crave. It is my responsibility to accept this position and move forward with the work as the most central aspect of my mind. I must want not, for in wanting I debase the most powerful desires of the self.


Perhaps my assumptions have never been correct. Perhaps I hold within myself a worldview which is irreconcilable with the modern times. I am willing to accept that my understanding of existent reality may be flawed at its most basic level. Through this willingness to embrace my own incompatibilities with others, I am delivered from the negative headspace inherent to enmity. With eyes wide open, I see each person for the content of their character and not their judgments of the external. I see within, to the interpersonal struggles we all may wrestle in our daily lives. This awareness brings me an empathy and understanding of the human condition that I would not otherwise be capable of espousing.


Despite all extrinsic factors, we are in this together. During times of difficulty one may find it beneficial to consult the oracle within. This is not a pleasant process and stems from a basic need for connection with the beauty of creation, which may be inaccessible in one’s waking life. This journey should not be taken lightly, with heavy consideration given to timing, obligation, and possible psychic damage endured during its undertaking. The desired outcome is a revitalization of the enthusiasm directed towards the path that one’s life may take. However, the caution required cannot be overstated, as such consultation may ignite myriad neuroses within.


Under ideal circumstances, self-reflection alone may be enough to overcome any barriers to personal development. The oracle should only be utilized when the obstruction becomes insurmountable after much contemplation. By adhering to a strict reluctance to bypass the mundane aspects of the work, one ensures success in surmounting the principle predicament of their query. Wisdom is not granted by the oracle itself. Integration requires a careful study of the resulting attainments. Have you allowed yourself to become the victim of your own desire to be accepted by people with which you perceive a common ground?


Perhaps your perception has become distorted and you must work through this issue in a meaningful and solitary way. Maybe you are enraptured by the allure of a lifestyle you have never lived, or more likely, it is carnal passion rearing its head in an otherwise hopeless time in your life. We must realize that these sources of external approval and rushing endorphins do not represent a significant and meaningful development in the evolution of our psyche. The approval we seek is unimportant, a physical validation that would be meaningless or perhaps even detrimental to the ongoing development of our inner self. As I seek in others the changes I wish to make within myself, it becomes clear that the work of developing discipline in the face of temptation requires more effort.


Is there a means by which I may be able to support and cherish these external sources while maintaining enough solidarity to do what must be done in my own life? Perhaps by the mere acknowledgement of the query, I have already made some progress along the lines of distancing my inner self from such egoistic impulse. More likely, the ego is attempting to hijack the efforts of the self to further its own unthinking agenda.


Once again, I have allowed myself to become the victim of my own desire to be accepted by people with which I perceive a common ground. My perception may be distorted and it is important for me to work through this issue in a meaningful and solitary way. Perhaps I am enraptured by the allure of a lifestyle I have never lived, or more likely, it is carnal passion rearing its head in an otherwise hopeless time in my life. I must realize that these sources of external approval and rushing endorphins do not represent a significant and meaningful development in the evolution of my psyche. The approval I seek here is unimportant, a physical validation that would be meaningless or perhaps even detrimental to the ongoing development of my inner self. As I seek in others the changes I wish to make within myself, it becomes clear that the work of developing discipline in the face of temptation requires more effort.


Is there a means by which I may be able to support and cherish these external sources while maintaining enough solidarity to do what must be done in my own life? Perhaps by the mere acknowledgement of the query, I have already made some progress along the lines of distancing my inner self from such egoistic impulse. More likely, the ego is attempting to hijack the efforts of the self to further its own unthinking agenda. I am facing a crucial trial in my journey, and I have been this way before. I must now learn new methods by which to limit the influence of external factors on my own development without resorting to segregation. This is the greatest trial that I have yet faced in my lifetime.


Am I truly hopeless to carry this dream in my heart of meeting the one who would complete the pieces I’ve been putting together for the better part of my lifetime? Is it wrong to believe that there is a relation that could carry my own sentiment and complement my worldview in times of darkness and light? Is this the dragon that men like me chase into the grave? Whatever the answer may be, you are sure to find out more about yourself in pursuit of this ideal. As such, I would not consider it a wasted effort despite any lack of lasting result. Without the knowledge of self granted by knowledge of others, you would be utterly incapable of making progress along the lines of your own convolution. Pursuit of the idealized form awakens the idealized form within yourself.


You must choose not to give this up for the simple comforts. You must seek meaning in a purpose greater than the release of earthly pleasures on demand. You will find your place among the greatness within, so long as your appetites will allow.


Sometimes we meet people that alter the course of our lives in ways that we could not foresee. It is difficult to remain dispassionate and distant from individuals who affect so much change in our psyche, but as time has progressed, I have learned that some of us must maintain that distance. It is hardly beneficial to become wrapped up in the affairs of another, despite how deeply they may impact our sense of self. It serves us well to maintain some artificial boundaries as a means to eliminate the pain of loss should such an influence be taken away. Developing the discipline of discerning the correct ratio of ego to apply to the perception of others is a long and arduous task, but only through its mastery can one begin to feel complete despite the chaos of outside influences. Which is to say: I am not me, but we both benefit from interactions which are beneficial to our psyche.


The most important element to remember is that despite all else, your self and ego will still be retained after separation from the external source of your happiness. Fostering self love may seem a pointless endeavor in times of joy, but maintaining such love for yourself in times of trial can only serve you well. Take care to feed the good in you and it will take care of you in turn. No man is an island, but some are better suited to their place on a peninsula than others. For I believe that the godhead resides within each of us, as an inherent extension of our very existence.


Consciousness itself is the gift by which a being may hope to attain a seat at the infinite table, and individuation is the means by which to attain it. We were each born to ascend back to our place as part of the universal whole, from which we left to live a life characterized by our very striving to achieve that goal again. Only in death will we reunite completely with the peace of light.


So ask yourself: How have my habits affected those around me? How can this be made right? And what if it cannot? At what point will I take a step back? At what point will I observe the consequences and assess the alternatives? Will it be me, on my deathbed, begging for forgiveness? Or will I ride into that eternal dark, having left integrity in my wake?


In life there are journeys one must make alone. Some by choice, some by circumstance, some by downright (and damned if I do say,) blind luck. It is easy to believe that others will be there, to believe that sympathy and empathy are one and the same. You would be wise to reconsider your approach, if you find this to be the case. No one can hold your hand through the trials of growth. No one can carry your burden through the tribulation of development. The anger that you feel may be emulated, even reciprocated, but the sorrow you know will always be yours alone. This is how we grow, as strong and vibrant individuals: by facing the harsh realities of a world that would love to otherwise destroy the very fabric of what makes us human.


All systems trend toward disorder, and as such, control is a fool’s illusion. The acceptance of this fact will serve you well along the way. Human beings are frail creatures, lacking the physical fortitude of our primate relatives. It is by intelligence and sheer indomitable will that our species was chosen by the process of natural selection. This is what separates us from other life forms: the ability to subconsciously comprehend abstraction and formulate complex responses to the circumstances of the reality in which we find ourselves inextricably bound.


Now, through deduction and subsequent reduction, we draw conclusions based upon the observable data. For some of us, the outcome is purely analytical, for others spiritual, and for the vast majority it’s somewhere in between. Any man or woman who claims to fully understand the nature of reality is a bald-faced liar. Accept no single source at their word, whether it be pope or parent. By any account this point of view is solipsistic, even nihilistic in nature. And yet, tens of thousands of years of selective breeding have not produced a generation of minds capable of truly comprehending and enveloping the ineffable nature of reality. Though there may be a theoretical framework laid; and though our practices may have become infinitely more complex, the bounds of human knowledge have yet to define age old questions of the purpose of life or the individual.


What I am about to say is not an original thought: Individuality is a game that the supreme being plays with itself. Within the infinite nature of creation lies the sobering realization that a life alone is not a life worth living. Surviving for the sake of survivability produces negligible intellectual development. To exist as a single being in the void, a single light in the dark, would cause one to atrophy in all forms. As such, the only answer to stemming the tide of this infinite entropy is individuality.


I truly believe, blindly and without evidence, that the ability to live as a single and distinct being amongst many is the single wish of the prime mover. So enjoy your life. You aren’t getting any younger, and you’ve been around a lot longer than it may seen. To be quite honest, there isn’t a single thing that hasn’t been said before. The responsibility of the individual is to present their ideas in a manner which compliments the zeitgeist.


At our core, we are creatures of habit, and the written word is a dated means of communication. At least, for me, therein lies the appeal: poetic prose allows the re-iteration of the current state of memetics in a form often disregarded by the uninitiated, but well known to the venerable. In short, it carries the weight of the visual and sonic arts to a crowd otherwise oblivious to the active evolution of the psyche.


You may think you can do this on your own and at your wish, it shall be done. You may know it’s just another flaw, but I would love to prove you wrong. As imperfect as you feel right now, I have been down that same road: And we could move in you as rivers dammed, or dead seas on which to float.


I find me asking myself what this all means and what I really want you to take away from this. As I have previously stated, that is for you to decide. In this moment, I am attempting to find a fitting conclusion to that which never ends. There is a relative seduction to the chattering inside my head, and I struggle to find a way to sum this all up. Perhaps you have already drawn every meaning which I have intended for you to glean. More likely, you never will. I beg you to revel in this fact.


Wrap yourself up in the knowledge that you will never know everything as fully as someone else, because someone else doesn't have to answer to your own ego in the same way that you do. It is absolutely essential to the survival of our species that we organize in a coherent manner to drive forward in the objective of all life. We must serve as master and apprentice in every waking moment. We must not allow ourselves to be systematically destroyed by the necessary evil.


When I look up at the morning sky, watching flocks of songbirds moving in from the west; Hearing crows calling out, poking fun at the squirrels; Feeling the cool breeze off the gulf, carrying the coming storm, I know the pine sway softly as the soul at the center of my being. I know the moments in which I am moved to tears are coordinated by forces beyond my control. I give myself to my faith in the world around me. I trust my will will carry me beyond the present moment. For there is nothing worse than the death of the mind, and fear is the mind-killer.


As the mind begins to set itself within the moment, an undeniable and wholly unfathomable sensation begins to drive the process of understanding. Empathy comes knocking in every word shared by every mouth around you. With each new rapping upon the doors of perception comes an efficiency in operation of the handle. We begin to feel the integrity of the path which guides us into each moment which follows upon each other. The organs of the individual begin to serve the purpose of the others. Each perceptible input begins to paint an image upon the blank canvas of mind. The light of all creation shines out from behind every curtain, as we draw closer to the truth of pure intent.


You may, in moments of weakness, doubt the clarity or tenacity of the message. You may feel wholly irrelevant to the delivery of the words. This is the egoic bargaining that you must conquer. You must not allow yourself to push maniacally forward with your desire to hold the reins. You must accept your position as the sustainer of the message. For the message will reverberate within you, and you will know the meaning of every word, in every context. Draw your inspiration from this gentle springing of eternal life. Accept the ways in which you must change to serve your higher calling. You will know when the work is complete, as soon as you can fully appreciate that it will never be complete. This is the message I wish to share with you, who have found me here. This is gnosis.