Grasping

Trying to grasp that feeling before some sound or song or someone else's feeling drives it out. This "I breathed the crisp autumn air and felt the cold sun on my back" euphoria. Some wide eyed sense that things are okay and if the air can smell like that and quiet can sound that nice, that things must be on a good track. A track headed somewhere where the air always smells that way, and the crisp feel of it on skin can wake you up and snap you out of your bad dreams. Where each passing sound holds worlds. We must be headed somewhere bright.

Dust

I wonder if there really is anything, and if it matters in the end, if you try, fail, succeed, win, lose, if you do it alone or joined.. who keeps track? What substantiates each moment, like dollars with no gold behind them? Only passing from hand to hand, trying to be worth something. Trying to buy meaning, buy time, buy anything to feel like something more than the dust of the earth pulled together to form limbs and joints that move through the world until they can rejoin the dust that is still formless, and be nothing more or less for it. No more distinguishable from the rest of the dust than before it gave us form. Didn't Hamlet turmoil over the very same Idea? And has anyone gotten any further on the subject since? Didn't Shakespeare too, return to the dust? For all his great work, his sweat and work, didn't he end up just the same as every common beggar of his time? I don't want to be dust.

converging realities

I found this lingering on my computer. I'd forgotten that I had written it.

"The cold sun outside the window is all that seems real in these moments, when the room is so dark and gray and the light that filters in seems to have volumes of words frozen inside it, as if it can almost whisper them, but it hasn’t enough life yet, and maybe, if you are faithful, and watch for long enough, it will divulge its secrets. So in stagnance I sit, and wait for the sun’s luminous knowledge to pour into me, because even the strongest stagnance couldn’t survive that miracle. Speak, Sun.
Downstairs, lives are moving, each in their different worlds. Accepting that moving through life is a form of convergence of hundreds of realities, is key here. Often I have sat and watched people live as if there was ever one reality. Such petty games. Such angry hearts. Step in between the lines, where all that is truth dances together."

Sun spots

Friday night like a dream, a hazy memory in the morning.
Pure trust, with speckles like sun spots, where others have scarred it before, that fade with time and care, like old photographs in the sun.

Dreamlike in nature, drifting, jumping-dancing down side streets and alleys.
"Always" echoing on the wind,
You echoing off the walls.

Existing is easier in these places

The birds chirp here, and there is an overwhelming peace in the gentle breeze and the softly swaying flowers by the lake.

And more energizing than caffeine is passion; Such effortless happiness, that comes with the beauty of wild things. And the waking smell of sweet grass on pastureland; The sun shining on top of the water in the dam, and the dock that stretches out over it, begging passers to disturb the stillness with a jump.

And oh, how easy to indulge. The smooth, light wood underfoot quickly, to the warm water, so soft on skin. How easy to exist here.

Light

Sunshine whispers "I was here all along, but your eyes had grown dark, as had the one you'd cast them on." And I saw it was true, and the last bitter, cloudy film slipped away into the place where lost photo strips and bad dreams are forgotten and go to rest and the light flooded my eyes and all the dark places filled with the bright things that had been there all along.

My old notebook says..

"Found a note, tangled in the sheets, said "I love you, so don't ever become me."
Echoes on the wind remember that you never could say please.

Found your picture on my porch, your cursive on the back begging "don't ever settle."

Found pieces of words from you,
scattered in the streets,
must've dropped them as you'd leave.

Oh, to be a gypsy but not a thief. "





And the next page:


"I know, I saved your life.
I was hoping you could stay in mine.
But i know that sometimes too little is too much to ask,
I just ask that when you smile,
Remember why."

Under the Bridge

Under the bridge, the lights on the bare trees are eerie. The trees themselves are skeletal, the solitary beams of light illuminating their bare limbs, as they reach upward toward the moon. Though the clearing is dark there is a subtle magic almost physically present, as if the trees might uproot themselves and come alive at any moment or the silvery rays of light could be something more than just light, but magic themselves, imbibing the underbrush, and whatever lives within.
And you, dancing about on the beams of the bridge between life and death. Dark and light. The pure rush of defiance; sweet and strong. The cool air fresh in our lungs, awakening the live nerves that are forgotten in stagnance.



I found this crumpled piece of paper in my room when I was cleaning, yesterday. I'd scrawled it out after a late night trip to the 11th street bridge one cold night in february. Looking back on those solitary pieces of paper I find around my room is always a trip.

Myths

The city looks like stars, and if holding your breath through tunnels really made desires come to life, whole hearts would breathe deeply again at the other end and join the expansive mob of people in movement, and I know you wanted those myths to be true, but the cold sun outside my window is true, and this moment as well, and can't that be enough?

Puddles

Your face is swimming in the water before me; these sun soaked, sky ridden puddles we meet on the streets, and it is you, and me, and us, as always. And now and then because then couldn't last till now by stretching itself out across the moments and exist in both places. And we were then, and I am now, and welcome back to yourself.

Composure

The light on your face, on that night in the snow;
I knew better back then, but something in me let go.
But what does it matter, if you never see the sun?
Locked up in your room, you're coming undone.
Perfect composure, out on the street,
Frozen by fear of expectations you never could meet.
Something rich, something strong, that you lost long ago,
Is the only thing that could keep you,
But you'll never again know.

Ripple

He had ideas. Positively brimming with them. She had an off the shoulder sweater and a fear of being alone at night. They understood, but opposed each other, and one cold night when the heat was out, they danced.
Their walls didn't crumble; in fact, remained quite in tact. Wary of themselves. Wary of each other. Wary because the world is alive with the arson of the past; flames that never quite die, but linger and wait for the right moments to dance behind your eyes, or deep in your stomach. And despite this, they grew. Became comfortable. Found blankets, found moments, found this moment-just this one- to live in.
This moment stretched, and true to form, ended. No love story in epic ending, just one moment-just that one-sliding into the next, it's ripple in time smoothing until it became one fluid particle in the fabric of every other moment, which slid into the next, ended, and slid smoothly into the next..

Admission

So you blame it on the hormones
Cause you have too much pride
And anything is better than admitting
That someone got inside.

Star light, star bright.

The stars have seen more, in their time,
And they know that each passing day is but a moment,
each devastating blow, naught but a ripple, the smallest ripple in a scheme so vast and incomprehensible in size, that your small moments begin to feel like everything, and expand. No longer just a ripple, but a wave, crashing over the span of the whole ocean.
Because you think your world is the whole world. Because your emotions are the sky and your actions are the ocean and the whole world has turned on you, after all you did to sculpt it.
The stars, they know better. Know more. The stars have seen the dinosaurs possess the Earth, and for a brief moment, the world was theirs. THe sea and the sky, and everything in between. They have seen that ripple. That moment. That brief pause in time. So forgive them, if they see you, and they do not bow.

Three Days

Well this whole world, yeah it flips and twists and kicks, and you've got three days, three long days till you'll see straight again. Then flip it up again and watch your vision blur as you stumble out the door, and if you need me I'll be on a plane to Europe. And if I need you you'll be sitting on the floor, wondering where it all went down, but you'll never get up, no, you'll never stand up and run to that place. When discomfort is comfortable, you'll never flip your world, but it only takes three days, just three long days till your vision clears and you see again. If I could I'd show you, save you, take you, like I just saved myself.