Pure of Heart

 "Even a man who is pure of heart  

And says his prayers by night,  

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms  

And the autumn moon is bright."  

  

I do not have a pure heart.  

I do not know good from evil  

Without touching it,  

Tasting it,  

Experiencing it...  

This is not to say I am evil.  

But I have experienced it. 

Been the victim of it,  

And been a perpetrator of it.  

The same can be said of "good."  

I have been the victim of it,  

And been a perpetrator of it.  

I am a tactile learner,  

That is my learning style.  

I will put my hand on that hot stove  

Just to smell the flesh burn.  

Pain is integral to the learning process...  

I heal myself by phase shifting opportunistically to alternate realities,  

Parallel universes...  

I have died infinite numbers of times  

And yet here I am, alive...  

I heal wounds in others  

By taking their pain into me.  

I am uniquely designed to bear it.  

It's a genetic disposition.  

I swallow their essence,  

I breathe it into my lungs...  

Burning as it courses through my veins  

Until it reaches my brain...  

And I have wounded others   

By pouring my pain into them.  

Molten aluminium   

Coursing through every passage beneath their ant hill... 

Filling every gap and crevice  

Before solidifying into a gleaming metal tree...  

I dig it up and meticulously remove all the dirt before mounting it on a polished wooden base,  

Downside up...  

I don't have a pure heart...  

I have seen too much  

To be that innocent...  

I can't be certain that innocence  

Is something I ever really possessed...  

My memories are not always chronological...  

Past, present, and future  

All exist simultaneously in my mind...  

They mix and mingle... 

I know, 

But I don't know when...  

I feel, 

But I don't always know what I feel... 

A persistent feeling of deja vu  

Slithers around every moment...  

Some ethereal feathered serpent   

Coiled around every root and branch and leaf...  

I'm the tree that I hang from,   

Attached by the Achilles tendon,  

Arms reaching out and down to the earth...  

Watching the ants return to their decimated home,  

Confused by the sudden lack of scent trails,  

The smell of absence...  

Woodland creatures of all sizes and species   

Living their lives around me as I observe unnoticed...  

I become what I see, smell, hear, taste, and touch  

While still being me...  

I mix and match...  

I fuse everything together to process its totality...  

Everything is one thing...  

Everything is the same thing...  

And I transform into everything,   

Transform everything into me...  

I'm neither good nor evil, 

Both and neither...  

My teeth are sharp,  

My claws are long and curved and hard as steel...  

I can be terrifying,  

And I can be sweet... 

It depends on the moon phase and the tides...  

My logical whims and my intellectual vagaries...  

I am not at all in control  

By being in total control...  

Both dead and alive...

Growing out of myself like a fruiting fungus 

Connected to every tree in the forest  

By my luminescent strands of mycelium...  

Order from chaos and chaos from order...

Constantly metamorphosing from this to that...   

Back and forth the pendulum swings...  

My fingers tracing runes in the sand  

As I watch the seasons change...  

Small, Imperceptible Movements of the Eyes

 It's the little things...  

Flashes in the dark of night...  

Crackling electricity across an amber sky...  

Occasional dreams vivid and reaching just enough into waking mind...  

Tendrils off the vine clinging to red brick walls...  

Flying over local streets in the light of day,  

Accomplishing small things when survival isn't at the forelock of the mind...  

Tiny needful things...  

Exposed to a burning sun for just enough...  

Just a enough to produce vitamin D...  

Just enough to visit local shops by the park...  

Never enough time to spend the day...  

The darkness of the lair always calling...  

Comfort and shade...  

Condensate cooled,  

And comfortably armored...  

The buffer zone ensuring a bit of a hold   

On whatever sanity is supposed to be...  

Scratching in the dirt and the dust...  

Scrambling through the tunnels of mind...  

The little things  

Watching from their burrows...  

Sleeping in comfortable pockets beneath the earth...  

Waking world and dream world not so far apart...  

The rules not so set in stone in either...  

Both giving rise to the other...  

Rising off the ground   

Wings spread  

Catching thermals...  

107° Fahrenheit...  

Records smashing as memory lies  

That it's been warmer and hotter at times in the past...  

Turning off the alarms just minutes before they sound...  

Waking from dreams just in time...  

Not wanting to disturb the twilight silence just yet...  

Not quite remembering the whole story...  

An old friend wanting to go home...  

Her hair slightly smoldering from an electric discharge...  

It's understandable...  

The things that happen in dreams can be unpredictable...  

Stormy skies in amber light causing reflection on waking life...  

Daily rituals to tie it all down...  

Wishful thinking and necessity...  

Moving on...  

We Feed the Fire with Our Dry Bones

 Trapped in the news cycle...  

Obsessive and addicted to rapid fire bites of information...  

This has been going on and off for decades...  

It's caused issues in relationships...  

An excuse to ignore executive disorder...  

Things will get done right after this little five to ten minute video...  

They seldom do...  

The world is always ending,  

By flood or by fire...  

Submersibles collapsing in the depths of the sea...  

Particle accelerators forming black holes or opening portals to demonic realms...  

Soccer players trapped in caves...  

Extinction level asteroids in near miss fly-by...  

Rebellion or revolution...  

11:59 pm on the Apocalypse scale...  

Babies being thrown into the Rio Grand...  

U S. Politicians publicly perpetrating human trafficking schemes...  

Election denial and election interference...  

The latest mass shootings increasingly ignored by the everyday blinders...  

Everything always balanced on the sharp of the needle...  

That frog in a pot that everyone is boiling in...   

The world is a chaotic and dangerous place  

Watched through the silicon driven pinhole camera set up in my secluded den...  

Just sitting by the cool electric light  

Watching shadow play on the cave wall...  

That metaphor become literal reality...  

That illusion become the physical reality... 

Venturing out for supplies every now and again...  

Breaking the seal out of necessity to earn just enough to secure a seat in the nest...  

Everything is temporary...  

Change is as constant as resistance to change... 

You'd think I would learn...  

Lining my burrow with silken fibers...  

Every now and again peeking out of the trap door...  

The local view seems quiet enough,  

But it's deceptive...  

When zoomed out,  

The world is on fire,  

And everything I am seems flammable...  

The clock on the wall keeps ticking...  

Closer and closer it goes  

Towards what can only be  

Eventual oblivion...  

Hope is hard to come by  

When brain chemicals seem in short supply...  

Buffering

Between the random pauses  
Where the video buffers...  
When the traffic lights turn red...  
Pauses in the mindless continuity  
Of the here to the there...  
Periodic blank moments  
Between the then and the now...  
Moments if sporadic metacognition...  
The smell of hospital waiting rooms and brightly lit hallways polished...  
Bits of experience dropped here and there...  
Standing in line at the grocery store...  
Idling in the drive-through...  
Struggling with the effects of executive disorder...  
Just moving is like changing a planet's orbit...  
Universal forces bending takes infinite effort...  
Feeling gravity pulling...  
Aware of the constant flow of particles forcing mass down...  
The immense weight of the immaterial  
Inventing itself moment by moment...  
Drop by drop  
Collecting in the empty spaces...  
Condensing the moisture out of the atmosphere...  
Hot air passing over the fins and coils...   
Energy transfer communicating data packets...  
Situational awareness...  
Water slowly seeping out from under the molding by the door...  
Time traveling while the elevator decides when to arrive...  
Hovering over the microwave  
When the countdown approaches zero...  
An incomplete circle swirling at the center of the screen...   
Buffering...  
Intermittent connection...  
Sharing the source,  
Finite, but infinite...  
There is all the time in the world to decide...  
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Sleepwalking the Highwire

Eyes open in the early morning hours...
Sleep is a luxury that often avoids grasp...
Tenuous grasp on vivid dreams had...
Faces not seen in years
Caricaturized through the kaleidoscope of the internal universe...
2D on the surface of the black hole event horizon spinning at the center of it all...
Memories of it all blurred by urgency...
Colorized by the struggle to survive...
The eventuality of decay...
Intimate knowledge of every thing that goes bump in the night...
Barn owl and whippoorwill...
Vixen fox call and silence rustling in the fan blades...
It's always taken effort...
Moving boulders with the backhoe...
Changing the course of the river...
The landscape always changing...
Hanging on to the feel of the liminal spaces...
Those places where things feel familiar as well as new...
Always the same story with different characters,
There are only so many combinations one can realize before getting lost in the soup...
Everything has its brackets...
Roots digging down deep can still be exhumed...
Nothing can hide forever...
And no ghost can really be fully found...
The ghost of a mind is the spirit of material existence...
All falling and falling,
Settling dust of light...
Rising with the updraft,
And falling again with rain...
Gathering in pools on the sidewalk,
The soul of the muse
Soaking into porous concrete...
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