Colosseum

There's a school of thought

Concerning our ultimate end

Positing that we don't experience our own death...

That there are branching timeliness and probabilistic dimensions...

That we, the conscious observer, 

Must exist,

Perceiving alleged reality,

In order to allow reality to objectively exist...

All is consciousness, 

Collective consciousness is All...

Those close-call moments in your life

Where you swear

Just another inch or two to the left

And I wouldn't be standing here

Right now...

Where the ice caught your tires 

As you slide helplessly towards that

Busy intersection,

But the wheels catch

Just in time...

With probability,

Every outcome that is possible

Occurs simultaneously...

Your consciousness usually jumps

From the time line 

Where your body dies

To the nearest time line 

Where you survive...

Your perceiving/observer mind

Can't observe life

From a corpse...

That is left for another time line

To grieve...

In this branch of philosophy, 

We have all likely died

Innumerable times,

Constantly jumping tracks

Into more favorable-to-existence realities...

I am somewhat inclined towards this possibility...

If this were how things actually worked 

Then I have died many times...

Sometimes I can feel it...

Every sensation, but totally devoid

Of physical pain...

Falling from unhealthy heights

And then getting up unscathed and unphased...

Bones crushing...

The hollow metallic thud of impact

And the groaning of stressed steel...

Another time line involves the jaws of life

And a trip to the morgue,

But my consciousness jumped here 

Just a few minutes before that 

Unfortunate event...

There's a vague awareness of the jump...

Everything looks generally the same,

But some small details seem 

Off...

This place that our combined consciousness

Creates 

Wants to be seen...

It desires the attention of mind...

It can't exist without force of will...

It has no energy but for what the watchers

Put into it...

The rowdy audience

Cheering on either the gladiators

Or the lions...

Kicking Angels in the Teeth

What you want, 
What your heart desires,

It's all in front of you,

But you look right past it.

All those things you think you need

Aren't the things you really need.

All the love you feel you've

Missed out on,

Is the love you've willfully withheld. 

We will give advice

That we would never take.

We say things publicly 

That we don't really believe. 

We just want to fit in.

To be seen and to be unseen.

To be pitied for being unwanted

While giving empty platitudes

Should unwanted want be shown.

Every glance

Could be a ravening wolf,

Or so our egos sometimes believe.

Every kindness 

Has some stranger's expectation

Tied on it with a pretty bow.

We say we want peace

While carefully planting mines

Strategically across our psyches.

We say we want love

While chasing it away.

It could be anywhere.

A hundred dollar bill

Blowing across a salt dusty parking lot.

Will you ignore it

Because it doesn't shine like gold?

Will you put it down

And forget it

Because it doesn't look like

A movie star?

Has it stopped massaging your ego?

Is the honeymoon over?

Is no one fawning

Over what you think you are?

We struggle with our emptiness

Telling ourselves we deserve to be full.

We gently coddle our demons

While kicking angels in the teeth.

How dare they presume 

That we need their touch?

How dare they assume

That they deserve ours?

Isn't this how it goes?

Every time a bell rings,

An angel gets it's wings.

At least, that's what they say.

Bell's are ringing...

All the time...

But wings are being torn off

One feather at a time

As the clock keeps ticking...

Diner at the End of Democracy

 

I'm just here to watch the show...

I was summoned from the darkness

To observe...

Condensed from the primordial chaos 

To see these moments in history...

The drama and the stupidity...

The sensationalized ignorance...

The guilded misanthropy...

Sitting in the diner at the end of democracy

While sipping murky gray coffee...

Occasionally scribbling into the journal...

Pouring words in with a funnel...

Gently tamping them down

Before securing the wad and the musket ball...

Betelgeuse Going Supernova

 At the time,  

We thought we were doing   

Exactly what we were supposed to do,  

Given the circumstances.  

  

Ain't that always the way?  

  

We think we're in love...  

We think we're justified...  

We think that one step must necessarily  

Follow another...  

We think life is supposed to make sense...  

  

Existence has no obligation to make sense.  

  

We do what we can to understand it,  

But, even if we figure a part of it out,  

there's always one more thing that we don't understand...  

  

Unending fields of things that we don't understand...  

  

The mystery lives on in our own ignorance,

Self-imposed or not...  

  

We can imagine this or that...  

We can convince ourselves that our thoughts are reality,  

That our vivid imaginings are tangible things with height, depth, width, and history...  

  

In our vanity, we worship our own creations...  

We give tithe to them...  

  

Thoughts are like ghosts...  

Unwritten journal entries...  

That letter you wrote, but didn't send...  

  

Some are burned away,  

Some are stored away in boxes...  

That slight smell of mildew and old books...  

Memory, an imperfect and uncredible storyteller...  

  

We do what we can with whatever we find...  

Afterimage

 

If I were to die tomorrow,

[I'm not planning on it...

I plan on sticking around on this rock  

For as many years as I can get...  

Ideally, a handful of decades...]  

But...  

If I were to die tomorrow,  

I could say I tried...  

That I gave it my best effort...  

Whether I was doing good things,  

Or doing bad things,  

I did them with all of my mental focus and strength of will...  

The levels of those aforementioned things,  

Mental focus and strength of will,  

Have fluctuated over the years  

In biorhythmic waves,  

But I use whatever I find in the tool box...  

Moment by moment passing...  

Experiences gathered together in bouquets...  

Memories made, and held,  

Or forgotten...  

Editing on the fly...  

Some choice, some chance...  

Alternating Heaven and Hell balanced by periods of limbo...  

Everything in it's place in the display case...  

The thing that wears the suit  

Doesn't exist until the suit is made...  

Moment after moment forming and dissolving...  

Frame after frame  

Successively revealed and then hidden...  

Summoned from primordial chaos,  

For just one, single moment,  

Before grounding the charge into the Earth...  

A timer running out...  

One stage following the next...  

Cause and effect rarely tastes like intention...  

God lives in the gaps  

Between those layers of steel that didn't quite weld while the ingot was in the forge...  

Only a handful of days before I hit the road...  

Riding off into the sunset, offset by 90°...  

Reductive

The farther you look back. 

Towards what you think is the beginning,  

The less you know...  

Eons may have passed...  

Infinities traversed...  

Reaching out over vast emptiness...  

Reaching past the cold darkness. 

To where you were plucked from the void...  

To where every atom of your body was created...  

Distant past...  

Before stars and planets...  

Before protons, neutrons, and electrons...  

Before light could escape the soup...  

But it wasn't even the first time...

It wasn't unique...  

There was time before time...  

Breathing in...  

Breathing out...  

Contraction and expansion...  

The cold and the hot...  

So much more than this one life...  

One tiny dust mote, 

Carried by the flow...  

Overwhelmed by the deep...  

Lost in history...  

Billions of human lives obscured by those who have held power...  

By those who have made themselves gods among men, or tried vainly, at least, to convince the forgotten to remember them as such...  

We pay for our brief existence with our blood...  

LSD-25: Narcissus Complains About Water Pollution [Revised Edition]

A bus trip from Storrs, CT to upstate New York, modified by a fictitious drug similar in action to LSD, turns into a search for meaning for a 25 year old author/artist/college student. Mentored by an often sadistic shaman/teacher our antihero is led through his own past, present and future in a barrage of sometimes euphoric, often terrifying confrontations with his own mind. Standing somewhere between the Beat poets and renegade authors like Bukowski and J.P. Donleavey, this novel, written in 1994, was my first attempt at the "great American novel" archetype. It's a coming of age novel. It's a love story. It is a political commentary on middle to lower class America, and an indictment of the campus drug scene. It is about struggling. It is about failing. It is about succeeding. It's a snap-shot of college life in the 90s, warts and all.

I was born in Bristol, Connecticut, 54 years ago. At 24 years old, I wrote this novel. Four years later, I published the first very limited edition of 50 softcover books. Thirty years later than that, I actually decided to proofread it.

At the time it was written, I was enamored with the Beat poets as well as renegade authors, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burrows, Bukowski, Donleavy, and others. "First thought, best thought" was a concept that I clung to. In my mind, I treated this novel as if it were Kerouac’s 120-foot-long scroll of tracing paper manuscript of On the Road, except it was a text file on a Brother word processor. It took me about two weeks to write - just me, a carton cigarettes, a big bag of weed, and a large bottle of Jack Daniel's in a small college dorm room. I slept when I needed to, but I banged away at the keyboard pretty much around the clock.

When I released it onto the local scene, it was released in the raw, unrevised and relatively unedited, except for a proofreading from an old friend who left it relatively untouched. 30 years later, I came across the manuscript on an old hard drive. It was good, but it needed some work, especially since this was a scanned version of the hardcopy assembled into pdf form (OCR leaves something to be desired). I've always had a hard time letting things go; so, I decided to do the work, give it some TLC, and give it another go. I dug through a generous mass of typos and occasionally muddy wording to do that. I'm hoping that it benefited from 30 more years of amassed life experience.

Do you want to take the trip?

https://www.amazon.com/LSD-25-Narcissus-Complains-Pollution-Revised/dp/B0CPVYSCQQ/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1702331663&sr=1-2

Be a Good Dog, Mr. Kerouac

I really need to get laid,  

But anxiety and depression have got their hooks in me deep...  

Executive disorder keeps me chained...  

Risk is daunting...  

Just stepping outside the house  

For anything other than work  

Or foraging for supplies  

Feels unthinkable...  

Could really use some human touch,  

But the thought of baring my soul  

Even one more time to someone new  

Feels like a taser to the chest...  

And just hooking up,  

Even though I'm not above it,  

Means using emotional resources...  

And I'm running on empty right now.  

One foot in front of the other...  

I know anything can happen at any time...  

Fortunes can change,  

And something can fall right into your lap...  

It's happened before...  

It can happen again...  

But I'm not going to get my hope's up.  

"It's a terrible strain to be alive."  

That last line was from Kerouac.

It's sometimes hard to be simple happy

Given the world that we've got.

Wonky brain chemicals don't help.

The belly is starting to grow.  

A couple more teeth should probably come out.  

Time and money seem to be in short supply,  

But there's always an excuse to not get up and out.  

It's not that I'm picky about physical looks:  

Short, tall, skinny, chubby, black, white...  

Person, man, woman, camera, TV...  

(Yep, hard to be happy given the world that we've got...)  

Everything is too transactional...  

There's a price to pay for time spent...  

Closeness has a cost...  

And distance has a cost...  

I know that I am everyone,  

And that everyone is me,  

We're all just little sparks of one uniform consciousness  

Trying our best to think we're unique...  

"I am he as you are she as you are me,  

And we are all together..."  

So, we chose this messy place as our home...  

Somehow, we wanted this chaos...  

Knowing all and being all...  

I suppose that could get boring...  

Separation from our spiraling thoughts  

Might have seemed like a good idea, at first...  

But, as above, so below,  

Those spiraling thoughts still get you...  

They're built into the template...  

They're endemic to the source...  

It's all just a distraction  

That consciousness constructs...  

The highest of the highs,  

And the lowest of the lows...    

We all blindly race around   

The surface tension of the bubble,  

No matter what we think we know,  

Philosophizing about what it all means...  

Well, meaning is up to you...  

You have to create it...  

In general, it's just about recording experience...  

The source has no other intentions...  

There is no great plan...  

There are no requirements or obligations...  

Your pleasure and your pain  

Are the goal, in and of themselves...  

If you want to be good, then be good...  

If you want to be evil, be evil...  

We all get recycled the same way, regardless...  

The character arc is variable...  

There are no set Cosmic rules...  

And other than perception being subjective  

With consciousness building the stage set,  

All experience is food for the One...  

You're being a good dog  

No matter what you choose to do...  

The world can be your oyster,  

But it's still a terrible strain to be alive...  

Novelty Clock

Visible, visceral changes in the flow of living  

Arrive in seasons,  

Cyclic in the round...  

Sun and moon spinning on the novelty wall clock, outsider art,  

Hand-painted in the style of Van Gogh...  

Starry, starry night...  

Waiting patiently, sometimes...  

Waiting for the right moment to spin the prayer wheel,  

Or the roulette wheel...  

Wheels within wheels constantly spinning...  

The fire on the fuse traveling by viper hissing sparks...  

This is how time appears to flow...  

Even your own senses are accomplished liars...  

Balancing what you need with what you want...  

Random portions of each in no particular order, but odds are 50/50 at any given marker point on the graph that 50/50 will be the final tally of plus and minus...  

Thanksgiving has just past...  

Fractal visualizations to meditation music playing...  

Incense burning...  

Bright lights low...  

Ceiling fan on high,  

Moving air helps with sleep...  

It has to be felt somewhere on the skin...  

A foot out of the blankets...  

Arms or legs...  

The torso usually wants to stay warm...  

Or, at least, wants something with some weight draped across it...  

Knees to sternum, more precisely...  

Gambling on another chance to travel out of the physical shell...  

Dreaming inwardly to project outwardly...  

Everything is inside...  

Everything you will ever need to build a personal universe is inside...  

Pyramids built of massive blocks of perception measured precisely,  

And placed with intelligent care...  

It seems impossible,  

But here it is...  

The sun will rise too early tomorrow,  

And the alarm clock will be unwelcome, but heeded...  

Some plans are coalescing into physicality...  

No longer just a thought or an intangible goal...

A done deal...  

A springboard...  

Setbacks always threatening to cast shadows by standing between you and the light source...  

You are the light source,  

You are the obstacle obstructing it's light,  

And you are the shadows that obscure you from yourself...  

Burn it all down,  

And keep shining until all that's left of you  

Is light...  

Last Day with Irja

She largely stays in her room  

Repeating the same phrase over and over...  

Her native language is Finnish,  

So I have no idea what it means...  

It sounds like "door to door" with a heavy Finnish accent...  

The second "door" always more breathy,  

Almost a hiss...  

Sometimes there's an extra syllable at the beginning...  

"Ja door to dua(shhh)), door to door..."  

Incessantly...  

*  

I can tell when she's trying to get up out of bed  

Because the volume and tempo increase...  

"Door to door"  

It's how I know I need to go help her,  

So she doesn't slide to the floor...  

She is frail and weak,  

But she never asks for help...  

*

Sometimes the "door to door" isn't spoken...  

In this case it's a low chuckling sound...  

Almost like she's laughing...  

And it is constant, like the aforementioned phrase, for hours at a time...  

The gentle clucking if a hen on her brood...  

Or ferrets at play, chuckling as they do...  

It's the only sound they make...  

*  

She can be the sweetest little, old lady you ever met,  

Or she can be a dog barking at strangers while tied to a leash...  

Heavy rain pouring down...  

Starburst streetlights multiplying through the water...  

From moment to moment, dementia is consistently inconsistent...  

*  

But that phrase,  

"Door to door", "dua to dua",  

And the chuckle-clucking,  

They dig into your nerves after awhile...  

Like water torture...  

Drip,... Drip,... Drip,...  

Sitting on a couch in the living room  

Waiting for the shift to pass...  

"Door to door"...  

12 long hours broken only by her bathroom breaks and two trips to the dining room,  

Lunch and dinner...  

*  

She is at her sweetest in the dining hall...  

She likes to listen to the gossip at the other tables...  

Entertained by people watching...  

The phrase doesn't happen in public,  

So she must be vaguely aware...  

"Door to door"...  

Usually mostly silent through meals...  

Spare attempts at small talk before and after meals...  

Always tries to order lunch for me on her tab...  

"Eat! Eat!"  

But I always demure...  

I always bring my own food...  

*  

"Door to door"...  

Aside from during meal times,  

She is very cranky...  

Very, very cranky...  

I was thankful that it wasn't personal...  

I have had clients who made their disdain and anger quite personal...  

Willfully trying to be hurtful...  

Her inner chihuahua spread its generalized rancor evenly over everyone...  

'I want to EAT!!!" She will yell when it's getting close to lunch...  

She'll yell if there's any sudden noise from the living room...  

More of a snap than a tirade...  

The kind of chihuahua that nips at fingers and hands that get too close,  

Or move too quickly...  

*  

"Door to door"  

"Duah te duah"  

Played on a loop that continues to play in my ears for hours after each shift...  

"Ja duah te duah"...   

"Duah te dua(shhh)"...  

Spelled the way the words sound...  

Google translate doesn't recognize this as language...  

It may as well have been spoken in tongues...  

Ancient Egyptian...  

World War II code...  

An S.O.S. in some variant of vocalized Morse...  

Bombs strafing the landscape...  

"Door to door"...  

*  

Maybe it was some kind of prayer...  

Repeated in some ritual with Tibetan overtones in respect to repetition...  

Spinning the prayer wheel...  

Spinning until sleep tunes it out of a distraction filled world...  

It's good when she sleeps...  

No "door to door"...  

No chuckle-clucking...  

The times you could be sure she was staying out of trouble...  

A break in the acoustic bombardment...  

*  

This was the last shift I'll ever have to watch over her before I shuffle on down the road...  

"Door to door" ...  

Opportunities opening up in the outside world that I can't refuse...  

She won't really notice my absence...  

"Door to door" is one of those things that has been burned into my memory...  

Tattooed into my ears...  

In the dog park below the third story apartment window,  

There's a green...  

Just across the street from a pond with a fountain in the center...  

Turtles basking on a small stone levy...  

A short distance from that,  

the road home...  

Saloon Doors Swinging

Eyes on the digital clock periodically...  

Keeping time and tempo...  

Flurries of activity punctuated by hours of waiting,  

Or is that vice versa?  

Times slows when attention is given to it...  

Perception is reality...  

We change time all the time...  

We manipulate it with our attention...  

We create gravity wells via contemplation and concentration...  

Electrons transform from waves to particles just by our focused attention on them...  

These things have been scientifically proven...  

We don't know why...  

Or maybe we do, but we can't seem to put it into words that don't sound impossible...  

We exist in a space within a space within a space, and so on...  

Galactic turtles swimming in the tachyon flow,  

Undulating back and forth like a dancer's hips...  

A dancing multiverse crackling with electromagnetism...  

Projecting holograms of physicality...  

If you pinch yourself,  

It doesn't prove this is more than a dream...  

Intermission at the drive in...  

Fumbling towards the overcrowded restrooms...  

Moths and June bugs bumping into every light source...  

Drawn to the light and the heat...  

Unable to resist the ageless photons being fast absorbed, reflected, and diffused by every obstacle between them and infinity...  

Ageless things gone in an instant...  

Waves becoming other waves overlapping a galaxy of disparate waves and harmonic waves and synchronic waves...  

The bedpost ringing like a bell sometimes...  

Distant memories of once being a man...  

Human is just a label...  

I call myself that for the sake of convenience...  

So I don't lose my place in the world...  

It's just a bookmark,  

The story is so much bigger than just this one life has to contribute...  

Just a mote of dust glinting in shafts of sunlight...  

Lost in an ocean of virtual drops...  

Just another tiny piece of the unified field...  

Within it, without it, dispersed evenly across the void...  

One with the source,  

Yet forever trying to individuate...  

Buoys bobbing in the waves...  

Circles radiating out from the perceived center of gravity...  

Perceived center of self and will...  

Trying to measure the massless and the incorporeal...  

Time isn't physical, it's just the space that allegedly physical constructs experience kinetics inside of...  

Time is an empty room...  

Consciousness swings wide the saloon doors and stomps in...  

Magic Eye Respawn Noclip

 The ticking of the clock isn't so noticeable anymore...  

It has become a fixture of expectation filtered out of active consciousness...  

I inspect the microfiche line by line, page after page...  

The entirety of the manuscript exists,  

Beginning to end,  

But I behave as if I have free will...  

This illusion of change is a comfort sometimes,  

The apparent incompleteness,  

But the whole picture is there...  

With the proper training,  

The needle can be dropped anywhere on the spiral...  

No matter what note you hear,  

The entire song has already been written...  

The entire symphony...  

The entire anthology of symphonies...  

A series of photographs at 60 frames per second...  

Faster than the perceptive fps of the brain to the eye, 24 to 48...  

A torrent of input processed constantly...  

Filtered aggressively...  

The meditation of mundane things pressing in on all sides...  

You can hear all things anywhere and everywhere...  

You only choose to remember specific notes along the way...  

Perception is a funnel with a wide mouth  

And it narrows to a pinhole after a fashion  

Dropping experience in metered amounts...  

The pressure that builds compresses you into physical matter,  

This fleshy body that can feel the earth beneath its feet...  

Cool grass both soft and alternatingly hard sharp feeling on the soles...  

Wear heavy boots as you sleep if you want clear lucid dreams...  

Sleep on your belly with your feet off of the bed...  

There are always noises in the kitchen late in the evening...  

Ghostly roommates that I never see when the sun is high...  

The rain came this week after an unseasonably hot, dry summer...  

People say they remember hotter,  

But memory isn't as accurate as thermometers...  

We invent a lot of details...  

We see things that weren't there,  

And see spaces where no spaces existed...  

We rewrite history,  

The sights, the sounds, what we were feeling at the time...  

Every moment exists everywhere eternally,  

But only through motion can we feel it...  

Unmoving, it may as well be nothing at all...  

Everything at once is just a striated blur,  

And so we move...  

Trace our finger over the words as we read so we don't lose our place,  

Or re-read the same lines repeatedly...  

Sometimes we still do...  

Bouncing over imperfections in the spiraling grooves of the vinyl...  

Hiss, pop, snap...  

Visual white noise static...  

When we let our eyes cross out of focus,  

We feel truly alive...  

We phase through walls like Montauk...  

We see the hidden picture...  

The holographic image of ourselves that we have created becomes almost clear...  

Real enough to get lost in for a lifetime  

Before we snap back to what we are...  

Observers of the impossible...  

Avatars in a simulation...  

Explorers of raw mathematical code expressed in waves...  

Some mundane illusion that is comfort food for a troubled consciousness forgetting its own divinity...  

Limiting itself in some vain and contradictory attempt to understand itself...  

Reading the microfiche line by line  

As the record crackles and pops...  

West Texas Drawl

I find myself missing her,  

The first wife...  

Smoky West Texas drawl and beautiful brown eyes...  

I chance upon old photos from an old hard drive...  

There she is   

Looking back at me from the backlit LCD...  

In the beginning,  

She had a warmth about her...  

Emotionally...  

Physically...  

Intellectually...  

A chill eventually set in...  

I find myself missing her,  

The woman I first met...  

Kneeling down on the carpet to first kiss her as she was sitting on the couch...  

Her lips so soft and warm and wet...  

Placing my hands on her hips that felt like Heaven distilled into flesh...  

The moment was supposed to last,  

But moments rarely do...  

Some say time is a substance like water...  

Perception flows in its current,  

But past, present, and future all exist in a timeless now...  

I find myself missing that moment...  

15 years we spent together struggling against the stress of survival...  

She fell out of love with me, eventually...  

That chill slowly settled in...  

I grew to miss her touch even when she was sitting right next to me...  

The days of cupping her breast as we spooned to sleep long past...  

One of the pictures a side view of her naked breast, up close,  

A self portrait taken when the warmth was something she felt for me...  

When she could be playful and seductive...  

I remember the taste on my lips...  

The feel of her erectile tissue reacting to oral stimulation...  

She was so perfect sometimes, to me...  

I guess I never really was, for her...  

I was physically frail when she loved me...  

Then I became reborn after a short bout with near death...  

Good as new...  

Physically...  

But not in time to retain her love...  

Not in time to ever feel her warmth again...  

In the holograms film is every moment we shared...  

That first kiss has to be in there somewhere...  

I find myself wishing I could relive it...  

Mere memory doesn't do it justice...  

They simply enhance the absence...  

Digital pictures are just lines of code...  

Cold evidence of distance traveled...  

Even if they sometimes hint at some kind of consciousness behind,   

It's simply artifice and illusion...  

Her breath in my ear as my lips kissed her neck is a million miles away...  

She is just another stranger now...  

Just another encapsulated story in the anthology...  

I think about the timeless now with a longing...  

I find myself missing her sometimes...  

No one that came after feels like this...  

No one that came after lasted more than a moment...  

I understand that there is no going back...  

I hold no hope of reconciliation...  

But she still holds pieces of my attention  

Tangled in her hair...  

Timing

 

When the test subject is released into the wild should be precision clockwork...  

Early morning or late night change from point of origin to distant time zones...  

Where you are is not always when they are consuming content...  

Catch them when they're hungry...  

Starved for contact...  

Mid-day rush hour has too much interaction and stress...  

Bellies full with rushed lunch,  

Convenience store offerings not taken seriously...  

Get them when they crave kobe beef that slides down like butter...  

Be the Croizet Cognac Cuvée Léonie 1858,  

Or at least feel like it to their overburdened taste buds...  

Sensory confusion is about the when rather than the what or the how...  

Blindfold them, strike the match, then hit them with the ice...  

Melting wax from red candles splattering on the skin...  

Touch the audience in places that make them feel on the edge of ashamed,...  

Like they know too much,...  

Like they've been told a secret that no one else can ever know...  

It's just between your art and their perception...  

Offer them physical sensation and visceral emotion...  

Bare the soul as if no one is really listening,  

Embers burning the roots underground,  

Traveling for miles like strands of mycelium communicating with the root systems of groves of trees that keep the soil from washing down into the river and out to the sea...  

There is always a tiny bit of their attention that is listening...   

When the stars are at the proper place in the sky there is always a small piece of soul absently observing,  

Drawing circles in the bathwater with delicate fingers while daydreaming...  

This is where you get in...  

Set the salt in the waves on fire at just the right moment,    

Just as the sun angles over the horizon...  

Just as the moon pulls up the water from the roots to the shore...  

The place where the garter squeezes the thigh is where that magic happens...  

The way flesh feels better than it looks even when it looks as good as it feels...  

It's all about how it makes you feel...  

It's not about logic, mathematics, or grammar consciously practiced...  

These things fall into place all on their own...  

If you time it right...  

If you listen to the whispers and the music in the fan blades turning...  

Know without knowing...  

Sleepless nights from some unknown contraction of purpose,  

Something is moving below the surface...  

A world always on edge,  

This is how it has always been...  

The tragedy and the triumphs are always the same in a historically cycling pulse...  

Evolution has no direction or ultimate goal,  

It's just life constantly running over obstacles and allowing the changing environment to shape them from asexual single cell division to multicellular copulation through sensual friction... 

Every day brings a series of moments that touch you in places you might not want to admit...  

If the timing is right,  

Finish the thought and then broadcast it on public access like pirate radio...  

Raising Welts

I still have to remind myself...  

Songs play on random...  

Moments in time marked by notes...  

Raising welts in memory...  

Emotions partially left behind,  

They never fully vacate the premises...  

Regret, I try not to participate in that...  

Things happen...  

Experiences get catalogued for future use...  

A box of a/v and pc peripheral connectors and cables collected in a box for years...  

You never know when a lesson will become useful again...  

Dozens of journals on a bookshelf...  

Documentation of ephemera and random occurrences since memory isn't always accurate...  

Chronology isn't always the way it dances...  

I remember every touch,  

But they tend to glow together...  

Mix and match...  

Garanimals is a childhood memory before Toughskins Husky jeans...  

Some of the musical artists from back then have since changed their names...  

Many have aged out of this world...  

Morning Has Broken...  

Ride on the Peace Train...  

More recent moments from the last decade are colored by corporate music...  

Things were out of sync...  

Overprocessed...  

I couldn't master autotune so a few relationships went all off-key and sour...  

The sex was always good, then the little blue pills made it amazing...  

They never did help with shared emotional dysfunction overlapping though...  

What we individually brought with us,  

And what arose from our admixture...  

People sometimes run together...  

Ink hitting a wet spot and accelerating through the fibers of the pulp...  

Bloom...  

Sometimes I have to remind myself  

That I'm not like her...  

The reason for the split...  

There's a tendency to be engulfed by another personality...  

Enmeshed...  

"I think I'm like you because I think I need you..."  

But it's more  

"I think I have to be 'not me'  

For you to stay..."  

We mimic those we desire without even thinking about it...  

We play the part because the lead got lost on the way to the show...  

Unless you're high school sweethearts,  

You're both just understudies...  

Time clicks by with a steady frame rate...  

Perception, however, does not...  

Perception of time is based on re-created memories...  

The smell of old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys hardcovers from the used book store...  

Wandering the isles...  

Snapping turtles at the frog pond...  

Duck weed and bullfrogs...  

Subconsciously avoiding things about who I was that offer clues as to who I am...  

I only have suspicions...  

We never make it easy...  

Reinventing ourselves with every new trauma,  

With every new victory,  

Every time the Viewmaster's lever clicks...  

Different windows on the same paper disc...  

Songs play on random...  

They remind me of my ex-wives before and after things went out of tune...  

I know there is judgement...  

The music reminds me,  

Subtle moments...  

And the not so subtle...  

I even go back to high-school,   

Spinning around and around on a wet road just to see what it's like to lock the brakes...  

It must have scared her to death...  

Promise and Opportunity

The seed, once exposed, falls to the earth...  

Lost in the the leaf litter...  

Contemplating...  

Waiting for a change in the weather...  

The proper moisture content in the atmosphere...  

The right place and the right time...  

Years can pass, under the right conditions...  

Dormant...  

The potential for life is whispered in it's ears...  

A promise...  

*  

The flesh has long ago fallen away,  

Decayed or otherwise consumed,  

Exposing this potential for new beginnings...  

This promise...  

The seed coat can be a prison...  

Sometimes fires have to rage outside  

Before the skin can be broken...  

Time served...  

Exoneration...  

A promise of freedom...  

*

Sometimes passage through the digestive system of a field beast or migratory bird

Carries it to a distant place...  

Softens the seed coat...  

Prepares the way...  

Enzymes and fertilizer...  

Even shit has it's place...  

Even shit can produce beautiful things...  

Life is ever changing and opportunistic...  

Not always picky about where it chooses to flourish...  

Not always pretty, the backstory about how a thing came to be...  

Struggle is essential to the show...  

The classic literary conflicts are there in every mundane moment...  

From cataclysm to quiet afternoon...  

*

Nothing is as it seems  

As the the void is constantly changing...  

The dream is a churning machine  

Always looking for new ways to express what it wants to be...  

One plus one is always two...  

Two plus two is always four...  

No matter what the one is...  

No matter what it thinks it's made of...  

From one end of the Universe to the end of another...  

The seed always wants to eventually grow as long as it retains the potential...  

There is promise unless the seed forgets...  

If it is crushed or destroyed...  

A promise broken...  

These things happen...  

They make room for alternate possibilities...  

New promises to be made...   

*

There's always another player waiting for room on the server...  

Waiting for someone else to get booted off...  

There's always something else waiting for it's chance to grow into the now...  

Opportunistic and hungry to express...  

The imagination of the void is vast...  

Limitless...  

An infinity of promises stretching to the end of time from the beginning of time...  

And time is just a promise that orients expectation within consciousness...  

A placeholder that whispers to the seed pod that it is time...  

It wordlessly pronounces its name...  

Chilled Glass on a Hot Day

 I bleed words to no one in particular...  

I bleed words for no one in particular...  

They show up like condensation on a cold surface...  

The chilled glass of an iced drink on a hot day...  

Things just happen...  

The physics of prose...  

Just reporting the facts...  

Descriptive observations...  

Maybe a half dozen regular patrons stop by for a drink from the well...  

Hit or miss beyond this...  

Sometimes there's a concert nearby, and I benefit from the tourist overflow...  

I'm just a foreigner with local flavor...  

An unpretentiously homebrewed IPA...  

Droplets gleaming, forming on my surface,  

Sliding down like emotionless tears...  

These are not tears...  

Humidity sweat...  

Words like teardrops sounds clichéd and trite...  

I don't sling for pity's sake,  

I just do what I do the way the scorpion stings the fox after crossing the river on it's back...  

It's just nature...  

A compulsion...  

God knows it's not for payment, or even recognition...  

Precious little coin in the larder...  

The bottom of the wishing well is just sand and smooth pebbles...

There are tens of thousands like me washed back and forth over the ocean floor through deep sea internet cables...  

Electronically screaming into the void because sometimes it just feels good to scream...  

Why hold it in?  

The cows in the field barely lift their heads, tails flicking flies from their thighs...  

I have no expectations despite sometimes imaginings casting sparks in the night...  

Popcorn ceiling casting popcorn shadows from the light that I often forget to turn off,  

Just below the ever turning ceiling fan that makes those shadows dance and tremble...  

New Book (that I wrote) on Amazon

Originally from Bristol, Connecticut, I followed my heart to Lubbock, Texas, in 2002. Wound up in Austin, TX, three divorces later. In my late teens to early twenties, I was into making photocopied chapbooks of my poetry that I sold at a handful of local shops. I was in the Air Force then, stateside, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Once I got to the University of Connecticut in the ‘90s, I frequented coffee houses, open mics, and poetry slams. Scribbled in my journals every day filling up 66 120-page blank books over a little more than a decade, … until 2003. For some reason, being a husband and struggling to support a readymade family sucked the poetry bug right out of me. It came back in 2017, just after the first divorce.  This time, instead of physical journals, I posted my thoughts online in a blog.  Haven’t attempted publishing my work in book form since I penned a novel in college over twenty years ago. It’s time.

Softcover and Kindle eBook of my prose poetry collection, Flytrap & Honeydew, is now live on Amazon. Hardcover should be live on Monday or Tuesday. Check it out if you like. (And maybe share this post for me to get the word out.)

This is a collection of stream of consciousness prose poetry. All pieces are written in response to living everyday life. Topics ranging from dealing with depression and anxiety to relationships and divorce to general musing about why this reality is what it is. It's real, it's heartfelt, and it's relatable. If you've ever been in a dark place, maybe this will help you know that you're not alone.

https://www.amazon.com/Flytrap-Honeydew-Jesse-Stuart-Yandow/dp/B0CK3VSRZD/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Proofreading Imperfection

Editing poems for a collection...  

My words seem so concrete and everyday...  

Sifting through the mud for small bits of gold or silver...  

Sacrificing pillars of words for longer lines...  

I tend to write in small bursts of broken lines that would take up less space in sentence form...

I don't like being broken by the margins...  

I usually avoid them as much as possible...  

I enjoy everyday language, but sometimes I wish that I didn't tend to constrain myself to expository writing...  

Poets that write so that words float disjointedly off of the page, and yet still capture an emotion with fluid grace...  

To me, I seem utilitarian...  

Wrenches and gears...  

The interlocking teeth of a machine...  

Not the complex, delicate and minute gears driven by fine wound springs counterbalanced and weighted to precisely measure the passage of fluidity and artifice...  

Larger gearing...  

A standard transmission versus an automatic...  

Teeth that I can feel grinding from the work of pistons firing...  

My unedited expression feels common when I look back on it after letting it ferment in a bottle at the back of a cool storage room for several months...  

Expecting fine wine and finding vinegar...  

Editing doesn't come easy to me...  

Not every word is precious, but I want every word to be precious...  

I have a hard time letting go...  

Once it's written, it's alive, and once alive, doesn't a thing deserve to continue living?  

That's not how nature works, though...  

There is no ultimate goal...  

The destination of evolution, the end point, is extinction, not transcendence...  

Before then, it's just blindly being exposed to environmental factors that either promote continued survival and reproduction, or end in non-viable mutation...  

It doesn't think, and I'm always overthinking the way bronze age nomads created God's logos...

Trying to understand the process in absentia...  

Not everything that appears in this world was meant to be in this world, not meant to stay; its existence just a simple inevitability wrestled from the chaos...  

I have difficulty accepting this as I replay the tapes and recordings, the photojournalism of the videographer documenting non-physical events...  

A time-lapse black-and-white of inevitable decay, life eating life...  

Fruiting fungus reaching its fibrous mycelium into the medium of brown rice, wheat, rye berries, and vermiculite...  

Precise quantum calculus that I can never seem to understand constructing everything I experience, but I try to understand...  

Breaking my back to stay just another day in this reality, and another, and another, sweat breaking on the brow...  

Breath catching in the throat with a tremulous inhalation of feeling...  

There is mystery experienced, but my words don't seem mysterious to me, maybe trying too hard or not hard enough...   

Maybe the threshold effect has me firmly in its grasp...  

Maybe I take things for granted, digesting every moment in scientifically analytical fashion, trying too hard to impress myself...  

Even the stillborn are kept in blank book jars on shelves behind glass for potential future analysis...  

So many of them staring lifelessly through the formaldehyde silently waiting for reanimation...  

Some things should be in the cremation furnace, but one never knows if there are parts that might one day be useful, repurposed into something greater than they turned out to be...  

That box of cables and connectors collected over decades... Memory chips, hard drives, and CPUs...  

A closet full of clothes that should go to a Good Will collection bin, but just hang there waiting for relevance...  

I feel for these old material things, I imagine some kind of soul in the inanimate, the work of the hands that stitched them, or the injection mold that spat out the parts that were later assembled into likenesses of fictional characters...  

Collector's items, physical renditions of some artist or engineer's imagination and craft...  

They deserve to continue to exist, don't they?  

Or maybe it's just me stubbornly clinging, a grape-sized tick on the neck of a dog...   

Freshly extinguished match-head still glowing and placed on mine in hopes I will remove my burrowing mouth parts from the flesh of the past...