Those words spoken long ago
I choked them down dry and raw
Now I find regurgitation
To be the only way
In avoiding asphyxiation
Belief is one thing
Reality another
A monster when combined
Some call it "Love"
Some call it a "Lie"
Delusion is jelly-thick
You know what tastes nice?
Reclusion.
I poisoned myself on hope and seclusion
Love, may you gag on my rotting flesh
My eyes have opened
My mouth agape
Choked out from love's embrace

i could pull the sheets
up and over my head

i could shut out the day
and hide from the light

but i can't escape the fear
i hold tight within my chest

will i always be running
in search of something better

wondering if i mistakenly
fled the best?

i saw an odd ball of light the other day
and thought it must've been an airliner,
but it was a god's ocular
sizing me up

so when it crossed my mind
i took hold of it,
"let him look"

up, at the black overhead
grimacing at me
i shouted

"well, old man? what's the verdict?"
and all the stars shone down

in the tiny cracks, that they cut through the sky
i swear i heard
"*******"

knowing our time here is short
and shorter lived, with how we rob ourselves
why is it we take from others
and give back so little

knowing love is to share
why do we guard it
keeping it close to us
biting at those that might
want to be loved
or, to love

especially upsetting
is acknowledging the few paths of recourse,
mostly hollow options, left to us

Poem and mope
Are the same word
Built differently.

I stand
at the water's edge
in deep thought
Recognizing
the disappearance
of what was once
solid ground

Voices
that I thought
were my own
echo their warnings

The undertow tugs
at my ambivalence,
waves of thoughts
not to stray
from what I know

How little confidence
this voice has in me
How powerfully
It has influenced
my life

But no more!
Groundlessness
will set me free

So, I’m drawn to your religion
On the basis of aesthetic.
I want to feel the way that
Golden, plump, laughing Buddha
Feels without having to read the stories.
I want to embrace the wu wei--
Whatever that means--
I want to sit criss-crossed
In the long, naples yellow grass
With no ticks.
In the orange afternoon sun
With no nighttime.  
I want to worship at a smoky altar
And feel the arms of
My Goddess wrap around me.
Hear her voice: slow, smooth, but stern.
“Thank you,” for the sacrifice.
I want to be divine--God
Gaze down from the Heavens
And take pride in my light
Like I am your son;
I want to be free of the burden
Of my humanness,
Lifted,
Cleansed,
Purified.
I wish to be free of desire
And so it is the desire which ails me.
And I curse nothing more
Than I curse my hungry heart
And my faulty mind.
Lifted,
Cleansed,
Purified.

It's rained every day this week.
I don't have what I did the last,
I'm not the same.
I think this may be another world;
It enveloped me, incautiously.
I did not see it coming--
Cool arms blurred my view and embraced me.
I opened.
My reflections are silvery, but I am not.
Everything is gray.
I don't hate it.
The sky's breath is cold
And I feel it soak through my clothes.
I set my umbrella down today and
I stood there. I closed my eyes.
I don't know who I am in this place,
But I feel okay.
I've lost, am lost, but little has changed.
I have not washed away.
Like storm clouds, I hold onto what's gathered around me.
I want to feel this ambivalent nothingness.

The rain brings new beginnings,
But now I must play the storyteller.