until again

what color hides within the light of the moon?
what peace lies in the shapelessness of forever?
and when morning comes at last transcended,
what life descends the heavens to slowly die?

what rapture churns in misery’s wakefulness,
entranced in a light still hidden
and yet still mysteriously unknown and shrouded
by the color of the moon’s last echo—
rippling waters shadowed in forgetfulness—
of how simplicity grows in sanctity?

and glowing through eternity,
does it shake the whispered sessions
in the crimson of the pool?

what in sage remembrance borne
truly hangs despairingly still in thought
(though triumphant still in an ecstasy now broadened)?

and the humming of the muse astride
the trembling cloak of midnight
is wrapped in the moonlight’s shivering wonder.
it stills the morning’s wondrous glory,
opaquely shimmering and enfolding itself
in the transcendence of time.

how faultless does the morning lie in memory,
though bordered still by truthfulness,
and entranced in a lightness, hidden
by the significance of resplendent terror
and the sanctity of a screaming night.

fully sacred in these trials of doom,
when morning at last arrives,
what rapture churns in misery’s wakefulness?
and what peace lies in the shapelessness of forever,
that the colors of the light of the moon on high
become the granite facade of the weightlessness of time?

(original: January 6, 1991 ~ near An’-Nu’Ayriyah, Saudi Arabia)
(edit: January 14, 2010 ~ Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA)

There are days, and then there are those days that seem to last a lifetime. One such was yesterday.

But that can almost always be said.

Each yesterday, when viewed from the perspective of tomorrow, becomes something other than what it was, what it had been, but when yesterday lasts a lifetime, it hardly matters now what I think of it.

There are moments, and then there are those moments that awaken us. One such moment is now. But each moment, when lived in the here and now, becomes more than what it might have been. And whatever this one might have been, changed without my knowing.

i see you with a light undimmed. i know you with a thought unturned. what stands within my heart is you.

“Sometimes” is a lonely place, but it’s by no means an abandonment. Shifting perspective has a particularly insensitive way of fucking with that, but that’s just the joy of being human.

What we get is what we are. What we know…has yet to be understood. What we feel, is just another different thing, shaded and tinted by what we suppose…what we hope and dream.

And dreams are living things. Living, quizzing, perplexing things. Tender, but rough. Sueded by the fold of all days.

And so, we turn, drained and oddly satisfied, to those things that give us the only satisfaction we know.

i see you with a light unstrained. i know you with a thought unbroken. what grows within my heart is you.

It never mattered before, all the things that seem to be. The tighter, unbending, immobile brain-slumber. The jaded afterthought of the miserable ways we were raised to believe in the structured paraphrases of Bronze Age man’s dedication to structure, hierarchy, and bending other people’s will.

And where I used to find release through many, there is only one, now. only one.

for how many years now have i felt exhausted? and suddenly, i am whole, enlivened, invigorated, emboldened, entranced. there is a structure to this that will haunt me forever, and that ghost is the most welcome thing.

The darkling thoughts, the maddened hours…I am drained of them, and without them, I am left full.

i see you with a light recalescent, powered by the spirit in you. and there is only you. at the core, there is only you.

times.

and the way we change them.

sometimes it feels like this.

and yet, sometimes different.

so many complexities, or at least that’s what they seem to be. they’re really puerile, pedantic little things, so ultimately meaningless they deserve no attention at all.

i’ve tried so hard, for so long, to take the high road, i don’t really understand how i managed to let those who take the lower roads, pretending to be on higher roads than mine, drag me down.

sometimes, just moving with the music—swaying and letting the beat push through me—listening and feeling it in the grooves of my essence: these are higher orders of magnitude than the false dreams of the melancholy mythologies of half-dreamed ideals.

and it’s the same biochemical euphoria, but few seem to have noticed.

yes, it’s something different, where i’ve come to be.

. . . . . . .

times.

and the ways we are changed by them.

sometimes it feels like this.

and other times, it screams with the tension of all that is to come.

what so often i forget, is that the anticipation is the driving force of life.

but i have forgotten this for the last time.