Words.

I know that you will die today

or tomorrow 

and if not then

whats the difference?

I know that my youth will die today 

or tomorrow

and that its passing makes 

no more sense to me than yours.

Gone will be the midnight cavorting 

and the early morning sleep

and with it something I will always miss.

This life is steeped in dying 

and likewise still with life.

The choice is yours today

or tomorrow

and if not then,

Moss veiled nickel at the bottom

a pond not made for wishing 

what good is wishing 

if its only a penny?

.

I'll take two

try to make my fingers meet

behind your trachea

before I start ripping

.

I'll pause 

admiring yuppie princesses

playing mom between bouts

elation and depression

.

In the road and the door panel

following string for miles

just one muted wail

on finely polished brass

.

just like "Rusty"

and other words that are

not what you expect

Maybe I am just too tired,

frazzled and terrified over life.

Chances are I don't have.

What does it take

to overcome when 

everything's totality hits.

Instants return each sorrow

and hold you breathless

in death's grip reduced to praying

as one last attempt

to ease the pain.

Then forget and move

on to the next attempt.

Will this work out better 

or is it just another scar waiting to happen?

Oh yes, life is about risks,

but at what point do you run out of love?

You are a precious gift 

that not everyone deserves 

least of which me

sometimes when it is late

I don't feel very deserving

I don't know

After a moment's pause, I realize how bad it feels.

If only I was sure about uncertainty

and the causality of this duality

or the rough fragment that I seem to have become.

What I thought was the universe opening before me

was only a vast emptiness inside.

A ridged, hollow wasteland defined only by its lack

and I do not yet know its depths.

I wonder if most people ride the surface tension

and how do they keep from caving in on themselves.

How a life once defined by hope and love is given to fear,

a small price next to pain and doubt.

For every look of tenderness, now many of indifference? 

And what do you trust in the moment everything abandons you?

It is after all you who teeters over the chaos

Pray for balance or a turn of the tide.

No matter how high life gets you, gravity will win.

Every sensation has is opposite, inseparable opposite.

Consequence can crush the heartiest most robust intent.

Still each caries enticing possibility in its wake.

Yet, innumerable are things we do not see

and then, to see one may be to see all.

To describe one to know all

She absentmindedly lipped her lips

in their luscious pre-chapped pinkness

she was looking at a mug, half empty and cold on the table

I knew I had to ask her how her garden grew

When we first met she was not much to look at

a drink too many had pushed her middle past her jeans

her face hinted at acne past and wrinkles future

She had aged beautifully

She likes the calm after the storm

when clouds still mar the sky, yet have relented

For an hour or two she needn't brood

but she will anyway

The miracles her mind has seen, truth or dream

have kept me on my toes, perhaps opened my eyes

and when she reads how she concentrates

There is a particular sadness surrounding loss.

It's a power drawing from us self.

While we lament, we are reminded.

There is a great sorrow in watching the boat sail

there into an unknown vastness we sense.

We know it is more powerful than we understand.

We wade into it from time to time

enjoy its dimension from perceived safety.

We always have a way to get back.

to get home.

If we do not cling to this tether

what choice have we but to slip into the vastness?

This anchor keeps us safe

it is our harbor in the storm

a resting place within the chaos

And does this not make the chaos more enticing?

Doesn't this knowledge embolden us,

drive our curiosity?

It is a center or way point in the black.

And with it we can explore

and this world around us becomes a little less

frightening and a little more like home.

I do weep for you

you without

I feel for you

you fight nobly in vain

How do you keep it up?

When everything seems to have abandoned you

You who are at the mercy of the vastness

You who stare nothing in its cold nothing

Your tethers swirling free in the maelstrom.

where do you turn?

When hope means nothing?

When good and evil are irrelevant?

Then a brush with something.

Could be any little bit.

Pin your last ragged shred of self to it,

And let it take you away.

Reorient and find what is solid

Clasp hands with a revenant

Collect your tethers

Repair and strengthen

Find the shore and rest

There is a rough mortar holding together

what has become of the learning

holding together.

It appears cracked and brittle and yet,

hasn't this house stood for ages

though whipped by wind and winter?

It might be the millions of moments

each birth and death a lifetime.

The person I was a moment before knows me not now.

The struggle of the man once he accepts

he has not the luxury of time

fixed, and failing.

We all must die twice.

Once when they put us in the ground.

Once when our name passes lips for the last time.

It doesn't get easier fighting chemistry.

We evolve as individuals, we move.

Layers of being waxing and waning.

What am I?

Am I atoms and molecules?

Am I muscles and sinew?

Am I bones and organs?

Am I a complex amalgam of these things?

Am I am mass of tissue called a brain?

Am I a thought in patterns?

Am I the sum of my thoughts and memories?

Am I chemicals emotions?

Am I electricity?

Am I govern by receptors and neurons?

Am I a spirit?

Am I a soul?

Am I am Child of God?

and where do I begin?

Laid bare, we have our answers

Irony dictates which of these a person believes.

How is it that a thing comes to think of itself?

Govern the metaphor and own it.

What are you?

Are you a flower?

Do you not start as seed?

Do you not take time to blossom?

Do you not wither with age?

Are you then a flower?

Perhaps you avocation then.

A doctor

A teacher

A pastor

Are you this?

Maybe what we do is us.

Am I a good father?

Are you a good wife?

Charity.

Achievement!

Deeds of legend.

The space in which we exist

as time passes us by

what do we consider to be of great import?

I wake up, go to work

fret about a woman, dinner

TV, internet clean

internet dirty

sleep

Where do I work in these great questions?

those questions of the ages.

Are these my questions at all?

If not mine, then who's?

Someone with the time?