the nook of her back
elicits sensations in me
exhilarating;
greater than a drop of espresso
or crack,
I am alive with desire, free —

but will I step forth
and meet she?

I came back to the willow tree after the amputation of the branch that was split in a square.
I thought it would be thankful that I filed for it to be cut off by the authorities who could.
I thought the tree would embrace me again.

Cause we both had to let go of things.
I thought it understood.
But I felt resentment when I came to see the tree.
It didn’t embrace me.
In fact, it didn’t even want to acknowledge me there.

Did I do the wrong thing?
I don’t think so because I read about rotting when dead branches keep hanging.
I feel that rotting every day inside of me.
I hold onto thoughts and coping too much.
And I have to try to bend or break them somehow.  

Some are most difficult to break completely.
So maybe it fell forced for the tree as well.
But I think the letting go was necessary and the tree should understand that too.

Trees like that are wise enough, you’d think.
But today I realized something different.
It was probably the way I came along this time.

I didn’t come humble.
I came with a feeling that I did something good.
And maybe that was not the best way because I should also have recognized the pain of the tree.
And I did in a way, but maybe I moved too fast towards the letting go.
Maybe I should have come with care.

With tenderness, empathy and understanding.
I shouldn’t have smiled like everything was fine. Cause I should probably know too well that it’s not just fine just because it has to happen.
It’s not easy to let go.
It takes time and great pain.

And I should have been more thoughtful about that.
So next time I see the tree, I would see the pain and hopefully then it will embrace me like it used to.
Because we both understand that life comes with letting go but that does not mean that it’s easy.
And it feels forced sometimes.
Unnatural.
This world feels unnatural to me too.
Whatever natural may be.
It feels forced.
Forced upon me.

But maybe it’s what I need.
I will need it to move on.
But when?
And why?
I’m not sure.
That makes it extra hard to trust in the process. But that’s all I can do.

I got no other choice in a matter.
I’m not happy about my impatience.
I wish I could just close my eyes and take a long time.
Drink my beer in meditation with small sips.

I try.
It’s the best I can do in this moment.
Just trying to take it really slow.
Some things can wait.
And somethings keep trying to alert me.

And sometimes when I find peace in waiting, then there’s also distracting noise.
Always something.
To do, to deal with.
Or not to deal with if I could only let go.

Everything is temporary.
But as long as I live I will face the pain.
Sometimes I feel like I became the monster that I had to deal with all of my life.

I’m stuck again in noise and can’t do what I need to do.
I have to “accept” it.
Over and over.

Sometimes when I finally go outside and I look at the crowd I wonder:
What are we even doing?

All these themes, trends, events, things we do.
Some people are just going about their days.
Moment to moment.

For some it takes effort.
To get there.
Nothing is easy, nothing is “normal”.
But then again “normal is a perception”.

So it “natural”.
But things just don’t come natural to me.
Even though it makes sense in the end.

Most of the time I understand.
The balance that is created.
By forcing me to be stuck.

The Gods hath writ what none hath ken,  
A script beyond the reach of men.
To strive, to seek, to pierce the veil,
Is every soul’s eternal grail.

For he who lifts that sacred tome
May carve his name in star and stone.
Yet time, that thief of memory’s breath,
Shall draw all words to mist and death.

Though some endure through rot and rust,
Their echoes fade to ash and dust.
For vanity, that porous thread,
Unravels all the wise have said.

And in their vast, supreme decree,
The Gods, with cold lucidity,
Have weighed man’s worth and found it seen,
No more, no less, than what hath been.

So let it be, the fate assigned:
A fleeting spark, a bounded mind.
For expectations sought beyond....
It's fading mist and wilted frond.
.

[email protected]

We lived for the
next drink; the elixir to
erase the memories of
a thousand cruel dawns.
It took work when we
were broken and bedraggled.
Creativity and thirst drove
us through the day.

"Do you have anything to pawn?"

"Hey, why don't we stop by the
old carnival guy's place, he's
always good for a belt."

"Big Brenda will you give you a
10 spot to go down on her,
are you
up for it?"

The **** we did to stay liquid smooth.
We redeemed cans for nickels, It took
hundreds to get a bottle.
In and out of dumpsters filled with
the most vile trash imaginable.
Me and those aluminum cowboys,
knee-deep in the filth just to
get a drink.

Winter was bad, frostbitten hands and
hearts, but summer was worse.
Something about the way the sun
cooked the trash had a hellish putrid
effect on the soul.
That smell was the seed of my
sobriety.

<>
"for the vanity of man is as porous as dust...and, in their supreme wisdom, because of this failing, the Gods have decreed, that mankind deserveth no more, no less than his designated allotment of being.
And such it shall be."
writ by
The Marshal Gebbie
June 2023
<>
rise up, rise up,
son up, sun up!
see for yourself a newly birthing day,
the early rays licking the unlocking of a grinning earth's face,
humbling humans and their perpetuity e~mo/notions of eternity.
how are the daily~we, to measure ourselves, versus our ancestry,
by whom shall we~be set forth as examples to our posterity
what tools we fools think, we possess, an etch~a~sketch,
to imprint of who we are,
what we were, and
who we might become, and
be  beauty becoming,
marking our time with ensigns of
words of integers in some giant network
authored, offered, up unashamedly

and even though the sun
does not always greet & meet
the discombobulated human riffraff
every diurnal,
daily identical,
when it shines,
it shines for us all
in an equality of glorious,
it shines upon us all in equality,
it, great equalizer, who restores and
replenishes our colored planets blue green,
a methodology of air, soil and water interactively,
for we are all chemicals, forever effervescent rebirthing

and so it goes.
our cells, are a
rare earth depository,
we plant ourselves
eternally, fed by
foodstuffs of
our ancestors cells,
their brewed ***** dust,
and thus each of us singly
is thus remembered, reconstructed
as are we, both, individually and collectively,
from dust we are, to dust we return, this matériel future prepped


postscript

We Hebrews have a knowingly foolish,
a most beauteous custom, gifted to us by
our forefather Jacob, who when espying a
solitary grave by the road, a nameless marker of
piled-on stones, marking an unknown person last remains,
added one more, add-on to ensure this nameless one yet remembered,
so we too do not pass by without adding a stone, a tiny pebble,
we encumbered, to solidify, perpetuate, renew, ever sustaining,
cannot pass by without adding another rock,
another pebble, that time will surely shift,
but as long we follow this custom,
spiting time's erosive nature and until today,
yet the same, for at a cemetery, every grave,
all marker, ego big, humbled small, topped,
festooned, with small stones, we top them
signaling that this, very spot here, here!
for now, until for ever
shall never
be forgot

<.
and so this peculiar, deteriorating canister places
one more smoothed handy beach pebble, upon
this, his unmarked resting spot
nml
<>
Monday morning
7:10am
an august, August dream day
specified as the 11th day of this
eighth month in one particular
calendric methodology
and as the
17th of Av 5785
in his ancestral calendar