What is it that hurts the most?

Is it the fall we make or the risks we take
On this journey through the wild wilderness of love?

Or is it our deepest secrets breathed life when truth of the heart become paramount;
Like a mountain who's summit is so high that the very image brings dread of pain?

Maybe it is the unknown uncertainty that certainly drives our actions to be the best we can be,
While the possibility of failure adds the weight of the world to shoulders unaccustomed to the shared desire for success?

Am I Atlas?
Are you?

It would seem these fears have a home rooted deep within the doubt we allow to enslave us,
That the mind can play cruel tricks in order to achieve some semblance of balance
Not unlike a see-saw teetering on the brink of touching the heavens or reaping hell

Such is the challenge of completion.

It is this work in progress that yields great pleasure at the sacrifice of the greatest pain; a fight for happiness founded on the acceptance of our greatest faults
Fought in order to see the inherent perfection in such complexity.

My greatest pain?

It's the fear of loosing the 'I love you' because you might want more.

For one known to sojourn
The world becometh but a fraction
With every incremental journey
The puzzle of life clarifies
Like an uncouth window in need of cleaning
Every swipe removing a haze
That had previously clouded your vision
So that absent your cataracts
Each new destination resolved
And the beauty what lay beyond
Beckons
And as you merge into nature
Father asks you:
“Do your legs not tire little one?”
Enthusiastic you mew the contrary
You always were the contrarian
Springing away in leaps and bounds
In search of the next great adventure
Waiting around the next bend
I watch you go feeling proud of my little girl
Yelling after her:
“Daddy loves you my little traveler
Be sure to return with tales of your exploits.”
Like clockwork she returned again and again
As days became months and those to years
I began to fear the day when you no longer came
...
That day is today my baby kitten
…
And my heart aches for just one more story
From the one cat known as Sojourner

Daddy misses you so much

Extant
Are the ones who see beauty
Through the personification of nature
In an attempt to merge with the ethos
To achieve a higher understanding of love
Lovers

Extinct
We are when our minds claim ugliness
Ignoring the sun, moon, and stars
In favor of mortally wounding the spirit
That values the next high over the current low
Killers

What esteem there is between lovers
Whom time has allocated a chance
To prove that not all obstacles
Require tears
It's the years spent together
That true value can be found
Like hidden gems in a simile
Where the relationship between two
Is best expressed through relativity
Shared within a hearts journey
As it ascends and descends the mountains
That represent the highs and lows
Of our loves ebbs and flows
Where our fingers can brush heaven
Tracing our names in the clouds
Or where our feet hit the valley
And the only way left to go is up
So we climb in effort to summit
The esteem only lovers can know

The clouds scamper along the horizon
Bringing with it a breeze of life
Ever so succulent
Like the sweet smells from a jungle canopy
Ripe with fruit and flowers of all variety
Accompanied by the sing song melodies
Of crickets
Chirp, chirp, chirping
And bees
Buzz, Buzz, buzzing
As the breeze weaves it's way through the trees
Causing a deep moan sporadic in nature
Then... rain...
Falling out of nowhere
Furious
Lightning flashes as thunder follows
Upsetting the breeze to a gust
Speeding up the world in a fast
Sorta
Slow motion
That yields sight to rushing lime greens
And bowing brown boughs
Caught within the torrent of life
Only the forest may know

Deceptive it sleeps
Waiting for the rage
All consuming
A break in the torrent
Pain subsiding
It's replaced
Singular focus pulses
Throbbing incessant
Needing to be released
Craving blood for blood
Seeing red
It's free

And then words
Alone
Are not enough
To sate
The demon patient
Waiting
Hiding behind
My face

What do you see,
In the complexity,
Of a world so flat and round?
Is it the subtle rhyme,
Or gentle bliss,
From a breeze that has a sound?

What do you see,
In the simplicity,
Of a desert so bright and bare?
Is it the quietness,
That you might miss,
The reason to compare?

So now you see,
That such beauty,
Exists without a care.

To PERTINAX,

Too long has pain been a blanket,
Smothering your soul to flickering embers.

Your spark, caught in a continuous updraft,
Only to be lost amongst stars too far to see.

Pain, a forever companion, details the scars
That mar the beauty nature has sown within.

Darkness, forever a rain cloud, soaks a spirit
Bent and broken by fatherly expectation,

Unattainable,

By a son cursed to wonder why he feels alone,
When surrounded by love he cannot understand,

Or chooses not to,

For fear that feeling will hurt worse than the numbness,
Ever-present in the mask of hatred and jealousy,

Coveting all that he has not earned,
Wanting to be more than the sum of the parts he built,

Some of which lie shattered at his feet as tears fall,
Slowly lubricating gears that had atrophied

In a dark rigor mortis where bare fists seize,
Their constant beatings of black-and-blue memories,

Where control was subverted by passions not in line
With the values that created the monstrosity,

Inherited by a man whose lack of love stained him,
A tarnish that self-berates and self-hates the lack of love

He does not feel.

Choices that forever hold back the sway of emotion
He was never equipped to deal with,

Even when surrounded by motherly affection
That consistently put him first, even when she was last.

Shame is not a big enough word to describe the pain
Of letting down the single light in his world,

That has full faith he can shed the weight that chokes,
With a firm grip begging for release into the peace

Of death.

More scars to carry forward and harm the flesh
That traps what could have been beautiful,

Had he just bled the toxins that poisoned his mind
Against the dreams that raised him to be more.

Failure is his greatest fear.

For fatherhood has now grasped this broken man,
And the blood now flows to them by association,

Repeating the same mistakes that led him to bleed,
Expecting family to be the boon that heals all,

A purpose not his own to selfishly inflict on innocents,
Too pure for a world of pain, hate, and ugliness,

Unaware that beauty can exist in a damaged man,
And that love can heal all if shared honestly.

A two-way street that begs him to traverse it,
Opening up and allowing light and beauty to shine,

The way to loving himself,

And forgiving the corruption he allowed to rest
Within the center of his chest.

I can love myself.
I am beautiful.
I am not a waste.
I can be more.
I can get better

With time,

Then truly love those who have loved me in my absence.

—PERTINAX

"There is no story worth telling"
He said
After I asked him of his loss
The man seemed blank,
Empty,
Without regards to his obvious depression
In a denial that was building,
Block by block,
A wall around the sadness he hid inside
His stoic exterior sent shivers up my spine
Attributing to a lurking fear
That perhaps this man had broken,
Snapped,
And maybe just one slip of tongue
Would trigger an eruption
Of repressed emotion
Itching to find an expression
Yet he remained cool like ice
That forms in the nights of winter
With eyes burning hotter
Than the streets in summer
As he repeated his mantra
"There is no story worth telling"
At which point he walked off the roof
Taking his loss with him

My sadness comes when life is put into perspective
Just how tiny we all are
In a scheme unknowable
But also possessing knowledge
A contradiction set in the realization
That perfection is not a part of our condition
Instead that we are conditioned to seek
Nay
My sadness is not one devoid of happiness
But alas one of wanting more than can be obtained
Straining to see through a looking glass
Whose aperture contains but the slightest imperfection
Such that the vision produced is warped
To a degree that sight becomes a lie
Dancing like a butterfly just outside my peripherals
Taunting and laughing at me during those quiet moments
Of peaceful contemplation
That lends the insight that generates a sadness
As massive as the black hole at the center of our galaxy
******* in the surrounding information
Only to spit it back out
Unrecognizable
To the otherwise happy and content man
That desires to be more than this mortal coil can permit
So I sit and write aimless lines
Designed with the intent
To convey in words
The potential inherent within a mind
Wondering adrift in a world possessing a surplus
Of ignorance

If only others possessed my sadness

The world could be a happier place

The symmetry of the soul is lost on me
There are no straight lines between
Right and wrong
It is asymmetry
That leads me to conclude
Morality exists above the laws
Attainable only to the few that understand
Truth is a prelude
Or a lovely ode
Dissonant in its ever changing nature
To the point that it alludes
Even the holiest codes
As I sit here on my throne
And consider this crooked reality
Never to be certain
Philosophy is my home
==============================
It is through uncertainty
Where we certainly
Feel alive enough
To ask the question
Why?

What words left unspoken
Speak callous to the mute
For it is grace to give sound      
Opposition tranquil                        
Like the rushing water              
Heard from a background ravine
Babbling incessant                              
Just out of reach                              

Woe it is that such secrets rest
That truth ranks second      
En lieu of base expression      
Deeming stoic pretense superior
To turbulent interior                          
Similar to the focus of a predator          
Stalking it's prey              
<Silent>
Waiting for the perfect opportunity
AMBUSH!                          
To sate the quiet hunger              
Patiently lying in wait                

Oh, it is a shame that masks be worn
For behind that false visage        
Rests a truth                        
Left unspoken

The dissonant chime rolled over the distant mountains
.
A chain peaked and capped in the reflective white sheen of never-dying ice
.
Reverberating to the tune of loneliness in a sensual duet between the wind
.
Where every gust unites the pallette into such a beautiful harmony
.
That the range can't help but to announce it's existence to the world
.
In cadence like a sweet symphony tuning to the pitch of A
...
Before the start of the first movement
...
The Earth begins to tremble
...
In ode to the Spine of the World

I wish we could have stopped
To catch our breath
And consider the path to which we now travel
I feel guilty
Guilty that my behavior
Became a tyrant
Dictator
Focused solely on the oppression of the "I"
So consumed was I
In my hunt for supremacy and success
That I lost you within my own hubris
Thinking that it's my way
Or the highway
Just because I read a few books
Doesn't make me king everything
The way I smothered you
Makes me king nothing
For this I am broken
I did not realize the burden of proximity
Until the erosion of your character was complete
For this I apologize
I did not intend
For it to end
In such a way
I loved you
You were my balance and muse
Yet I threw you away like you were old news
Until that's what you became
A person lost in the complexity
Of a prison I built with words
Not your own
Forever reducing you to a mere shadow
Of the woman
Living in my home

My actions
My fault
My heart
My vault
My
My
My
Never you

I'm sorry

The pain sours as the milk spills
Rancid subjugation to the rejection
Of a cause without its mode
What positive devolves into negative
A multiplicity of being that sheds light
When consumed by dark dawn
Where clouds bring rain in a permanence
Detached from loving life in full
As the moon wanes to new
Betraying a sky desperate for a clearing
To wash free the trapped potential
Inherent within striated cumulus
Begging for a release that allows breathing
For an inner compassion held captive
And bright sun dimmed by the regret of day
Sadly passing in multitudes; a rehashing
Beyond that of moving skies crying
Tears of forbearance belonging to trees
Drowned under weeks of relentless monsoon
Desperately gasping for a mindful remedy
An explanation for a cycle that perpetually
Stops giving
•••
I breathe out pain only to receive it again