Momentary Blips.

Archive.
Pound after pound of Archival thought
Knee-deep ink
To rid myself of claustrophobic thinking
I surmise, there is a trade occurring.
Here, on a desolate plane
No eyes intending discovery
Just the plain, seeking simplisticism.
And if the word won't heed-
Make it.

Tolerate the intolerable
I do it every day.
I taste cleanliness, the freshness of which
Exfoliates my innards, depleting monastic tendencies.

But I do love this life, amidst the loss of visceral pleasure.
It is okay to behoove of what I know I am giving up.
And sometimes, 'okay' is a word that I can look in the eyes
And crave less.

In between these momentary blips
Patterns are forming.
Gesticulating (word- adored) among revolutionary Gods
That impugn the 'by and by' with their 'just out-of-reach' energies
Outlines, bold and profuse with muscular definition
Weakening - never, in the interim of fluctuating interplay.

How lucky is this life to have been gifted
Masculine mentors, at the virtual ready, channeling through their utility
Their absentee care and cognizant charity
The few words blown softly into my iron sternum
Softly, gently, taking intangible black holes, and
Filling them with warm, unshaven care: expectation-less, effortless
Whole, in the most twisted, inexplicable, nonsensical sense.

The vat between the worlds that I frequent, and the one I inhabit
Is a vast, protected, barricaded, obstacle course of defeat.
I locked myself away here when a broken rudder and a map turned sour
Had torn themselves into ten pieces, shattered beyond repair
What to do with the headless house that soon lost its arms?
Retreat.

Retreat, repair, recalibrate, reconstitute, reconvene, recoil.
Rid myself of the river and its condescending backwater.
Bilking the warm forearms of trust and security.
The hour wanes from happy morning towards gratified solitude
But before I can get there, I must taste again, the belch of decay

I tread lightly here, and still, the sinking in of thigh-high mud made of shit
Cloys and sucks me further, punished for wandering too close to such fire.
I know better than to allow the unaffected portion of my steam-rolling resolution
To meander too closely to cliched holidays that will always singe, given half the chance.

Roam away, directed by the strength of arms that clench a future
Built of the trust of self, without the intrusion of apologetic ineffectiveness.

I have to keep walking forward, further into this hapless set of circumstances
In time, fruit hanging nearby, ripened and joyous
Can be eaten in sunshine, nourishing days to come
Profuse with laughter and even melancholy joy
Consoling the weakened fighter,
Robbed one last time, of tools worth losing.

Astute in direction.
I will live to see the fields I dream of
Dancing under the softened fingertips
Of these hands that go so long without the warm palm of a partner
To call each other home.

And for now, that is okay.
Okay.

I am aware of what I am trading.

..and I continue to trade for more of the same.

The Ending

I fell asleep in the sun,
Warm air held me
Safe, relaxed, contentedly dreaming
It may have been years before I woke
Woke to this time where the shift now
Blares, at a rampant pace.

Who was I in that decade-long nap?
Underscoring the worth of self
And it is not so much that I neglected
As I chose to prefer the needs of the beloved.
I gave enough to recover from,
Day after day, happy- even, to have
Parceled out inner consolation

I traded moments of long rest
With the rushed flick of an elbow
Clicking around the blurred boundaries 
Of the dark.
Motioning this tired right wrist
To maneuver about the soft strokes
Of hushed and silent inspiration;
Coagulated ambition
Blocking the glut of production
The robbing of what would have been right
Quantified by the payment of understanding.

This judgement of self is brash, unacceptable
In time I've come to know this,
In more time, I'll come to know it better
Having already begun the cumbersome process
Of forgiveness of the now- If I live long enough...

TS Eliot's garden, brimming with regret
Lautrec's wasted grease, lost in drink
The closeted sexual perfection of EE Cummings-
'Cum on, with a name like that...?
What have I learned from these poignantly controlled brothers' of mine?
To tighten my seclusion, choking more oxygen?

Fuckin' idiot.
Best do some living, before the ending kills itself.

Nourish

What, do I ponder, is it that I need, to move?
To shake, spin, swirl, swerve, sway, swivel
Away from all that I serve, in the interest of self-preservation?
What is a world without restraint, refrain, reconstitution?

There, that transitive verb: reconstitute.
Adding water so that I may be made anew?

Madness

What more can I take, to take away from this developing cocoon of need?
I roam, off kilter, avoiding the spin-out of lost control; and why
Maybe I need this madness in my life.

Wisdom

There is an order to the way things are done around here
Innate is my intuition and execution of these orders
I fathom the indisputable method and relinquish my resistance.
Leaning in to the way I unfold, I intuit the scheme that Is;
As though the boney, kind finger of a woman in her nineties
Reminds me gently to flow in the direction I know
Offering tidbits of sense among the nonsense
Through the cumbersome stills of deja vu.

O Gentle Highway...

To take this in segments, may be the very necessity I belong to.
Having not known any other paths to placate assumptions
Am I to tolerate the devices that now program my method to love?
I tinker on the dashboard of all my design

I shall see, in the murky light of all I follow, as I dangle that bone of contention
Grasping the tendrils of freshly ripped oxygen, decrepit, these elbows that punch inward.
The beat of this evening drum, assaults me as I scramble to wreak carnage on mirrors
This wreckage is blatant, carnivorous and all-consuming.

The Lovesong of The Detached, is now roaring into muscle
Burning the surface of all ache; skin is useless here as I wander into the oblivion
Of all my unknown weakness; brandishing knives in dark corners
Looking to slit veins that bleed broadly among organs that double-task

Sing me a song in Swedish that I may assign my own meaning
To allow the molting of decay to begin, and not stop until the rosy sky of dusk returns.
A quandary of cells has belted itself in strong, stubborn iotas yield a chorus - grotesque
Muslin for skin, stained with restraint; who am I amidst this busted glass and drivel?

Scorched, tempest blares, bloated deformities rise, as nuances of destruction become exalted.
The disdain plastered to my temples, recoils in the abject humiliation of recognition
O gentle highway, remuneration - nearby... Come coax the mountain down and away from itself
Glorified in the rubble of forgiveness.

This dark hair frames a stranger with eyes too solemn to recognize, the basted glow of loneliness.
Had I burnt my history to a crisp, where would my today reign?
Iron-encrusted epicenters of emotionless frivolity latch themselves against-
A buoyant determination to hang tight until comprehension exceeds doubt

Quilted care immobilizes all I seek to burden, these words - these words - this ink...
This ink that crawls blindly, withering away at my resolve;
What, in this night, believes in, believes if, believes in belief
Futuristic plateaus dart about in their discovery, irking some semblance of acknowledgement

A banyan tree to shade these feelings, to umbrella my urge to wail; to waken sleeping comfort
That roams in a brutal coma of deceit. This turbulent aura is tiresome, seeking care to elucidate calm
I crave a gentility from life that I am lacking, to lengthen the meaning of strongly pumped arteries
Prowling for some good on a night akin to softness and the ethereal flow of contentment.

How can they not go hand in hand, the lover and the fighter - ever spinning on the root of existence?
I suspect they tango long into that night that whispers faintly, of love without boundary
There was a time when to analyze a moment meant to capture the bewilderment of bliss
Bliss found in the sigh of understanding and reconnaissance of pleasure

Pleasure, a syndrome that  pounds the halls of unwise choices yet continues to love just the same.
I seek the glistening nutrient that covets erogenous meaning, built on volumes of depth
Not flagrant, misguided satisfaction, burned down by the wilting memory of delusion.
So, to carry on in wisdom-infused purpose is the order of my 'now'.

To bow to the feisty spirit of adventure, with remembrance that life be tasted when the ardor swells.
Anything less is an offense to the many memories of youth and all her wild abandon.

Is

A soul, as it speaks, is weightless in its curiousness 
Fluid, in its susceptibility, intuitive to need 
Colloquial, effortless, sensitive
Brave within its vulnerability.