I hope this finds you.

I caught myself fantasizing about my own death again today. To be more precise, the fantasy was not so much an indulgence of bloodletting; that never held much appeal for me. No, this one was a reoccurring image of my funeral. “Untimely” and “tragic” are the words most frequently used in substitution for complete sentences in these dreams, wrapped in a sigh and trailed with implied ellipses’. It’s more or less the same concept each time I indulge. In the entrance there sits a wide table draped in cloth bearing scrapbooks with pictures compiled by friends, my journals opened to a particular entry that seems to foreshadow (somewhat inauspiciously) my malapropos demise. A curtain lifted on the boy whom everyone knew as the jester. It would be more tired and cliché if it were not so real, so present. Someone comments that my work should be published posthumously, with complete sincerity in their tone. My shameless desire to be noticed, even in death. The rest is simply the usual spectacle, crying, bowed heads, perhaps even some rain and a bottle of whiskey shared amongst my close friends as they remember shared stories.

It’s a vulgar way to entertain oneself. But it is indicative of human nature; to gauge ones worth based on the level of pain we inflict on others, like some sort of bully for the bereaved. Certainly a practice performed by lovers as they quarrel, each one knowing the effect of their sharp tongues during combat. The wounds we give to each other as we fight to be heard, understood, or just simply to be pleased and satiated.

Years ago I lived in this sort of daily trench mentality. The constant bickering and baiting that are precursors to a full blown fight, the kind that spark from some small annoyance, the minutia of relations, and escalates in both scope and volume. The kind of cyclical argument that becomes nothing more than the fetish of last words and debased oratory. I remember the moment of elation, when struck with a curse so painful she would give up in tears. “I am sick” the phrase caught in between my teeth and my tongue, “but she still cares”. Reactions are an answer to a question you hadn’t thought to ask. And the day came when there were no tears, no stricken look of pain, just indifference. Men can take sadness, anger, jealousy and even apathy, but not indifference.

I woke one night from a dream, my mind still holding onto the presence of some emotion and my eyes still seeing the faint outline of a place I’ve never been. There was urgency and desperation in my hands as they looked for pen and paper. I needed to remember something in the morning, that’s the only thought I could recall from that night, until I found a piece of paper between my mattress and the wall months later. It read:

“I awake to realize that I have not lost a kingdom through the night. There had not been one to begin with. Just bricks and mortar in an outline, under tarps and wet from the ground beneath. The grass along the edges shown like a measurement of the days it had not been tended to. No one came to marvel, to trade or rest within the walls. Just accidental glances from the road beside. And never once did a glance hold such little weight as those cast upon my labor.”

That’s the pain worse than death they say, a life looked upon with indifference. I suppose that’s why I dream of an exodus from this world, a chance to leave this world with the excuse that it wasn’t my time yet, a simple fix to replace this tourniquet that I call my aspirations.

Please don’t take this is as a performance in self deprecation, I already own tomes filled with that sort of morbidly introspective dribble. I write this as an archeologist, uncovering fossilized remains of intent and motive, piecing together the spine that I lost somewhere along the way. Or consider these ponderings as a textual catharsis, even simpler, an outlet wildly aimed at discovery. We can learn so much from the deconstruction of dreams, those dreamt in day and night alike. They are the symptom of some ailment looked over years ago. Be it some dross memory such as a child’s Christmas without presents, or the stain on the psyche of Christmas without a father, a pang infinitely more delicate. Delicate is certainly the condition that we find these rotten foundations, these cornerstones we’ve built our psychosis around. You and everyone else you know tiptoes around them, trying not breathe too heavily. As if even mere respiration could be invasive.

The hardest tumors to remove are the cancerous regions of our hearts that the world calls virtue. Some contrive notion of hope or love, neither idea being fully explained or defined, they have become a place holder for the empty spots we are born with. But they do little to keep the wind out, they grab hold and leech off of the few remaining functional organs we have left. Hope: somewhere the devil has minions carving collars that say hope, the prettiest four letter word, and certainly the most vulgar. And yet, like the parasite that it is, hope grows, filling us with the notion of itself and swearing that all medicine tastes bad going down.

What is there to hope in when we find the very origins expression to be as hollow as the outcome? Some say, hope in yourself, in the human spirit, in the unrelenting struggle for completion and quest for self worth. It’s nothing more than a paradoxical search for the cure of the human condition, born out of a need for purpose. All the while missing that the need for purpose is in itself a plank of the disease we have sought to stem. And as we stare ourselves in the face our blood coagulates on the floor unseen, as we wonder why we are faint.

Was the human mind constructed to be so frustratingly heliocentric? Why are we so convinced of our position as the center of concerns, so unequivocally prone to finding in end in ourselves? And yet we are still torn by the unsatisfying consummation of our answers, of ourselves. When you are sick of yourself, not even the tough pills you swallow can make the rhetoric seem real. Neither the mantra of the mystics, nor the existential prose of a madman can mask the glaring reality of your unsettled soul. When time doesn’t heal wounds but instead pulls the cut wider, why do we always go back to ourselves, our own strength? We have become insufficient devices for our own needs and desires.

The truly strange thing is; nobody seems to be immune from this absurdity. As if we were struck in the head as a result of our blindness only to wake up in our beds the next day, completely unaware of yesterdays consequences, so bewildered by the throbbing of our skulls we look immediately for a way to stop the suffering, we hope that today will be better. We hope that magically one day our hearts will generate enough love to be self sustaining. We hope that our minds will overclock their computation while we sleep so we don’t have think while were hurting. We hope there is no God, because if there is, he is surely laughing at us.

An open letter to that shadow.

I saw you last night, your face skewed and pushed into the foreground, as the entirety of the world my mind had made swept in to take you out of sight. And no running or shouting out could undo the kidnapping of your form. No intensity of remembrance can bring back the moment before, it’s a missing cell from an otherwise flawless retelling. Do you elude me? Or am I pushing you away?

You’ve missed some of the best years of my life while you were having your own. Did you know that I’ve seen the world from a thousand angles and that I’ve seen it all alone? I leave my camera at home. I can’t bear to remember the empty frames.

I stood outside in the rain last night. A few heavy drops slipped through the leaves and branches and found their way to my shoulders.

Underneath the pitter of rain and branches being knocked together, there was no sound past my breathing. It was the first time in as far as I can remember that all thought and movement stopped inside me. As if someone had tripped over the cord that kept me plugged into the outlet on the wall behind the bookshelf. That brief moment where a light dims but is not yet out. Where you can see the last few units of energy burning out, leaving a ghost of an image where it once was bright. I felt my heart slowing and the blood beginning to pool at the bottoms of my feet and the tips of my fingers. Hands heavy and shoulders sagging lower with each exhale of warm air. My eyes blurred out of focus and I lost all sight of the rain.

I saw myself from a distance, grass growing up around my ankles and my countenance set in stone, the traffic light changing in the distance. Every neural pathway cold and taught, as the remaining jolts of charged impulses hovered at the hub of their destination.

It all snaps back violently just as the last function that makes a person alive teeters, taunting my battered systems with its white flag. The world slows as I rush back to life. My lungs filled with the moisture and lowered temperature of the air around me. I am flooded with pictures of a boy coming up for air with the look of salvation written on his face, the sound of doors groaning on their ancient hinges and endless blank pages at the end of a book.

Now I see you. Or I see the missing cell, having been brought in cupped hands and careful steps to a place of safety. I place it on a pillow on the floor and lock the door. Just as I knelt down to look closer I saw you fade back again, a drop of water near an open flame.

So, I invented my own time. I let it slow and stretch as a rubber band shot at a little brother. This whole hour, second, day or whatever it was came together to reveal itself as an existential joke. Well, there I was, rushing through the air, my speed and intensity coming into contact with external forces, each moment slowing my flight exponentially. Landing softly, the fear of impact is quelled. You just smiled about the whole ordeal as you uncovered your face, blushing as you shook off the embarrassing instincts of preservation.

Didn’t you know I never aimed to hurt you? Beyond thought or inspiration, past tears and longing, haven’t you known that all I have ever wanted was to make you forget about the world for a moment and laugh? I hope you keep showing up, it brings me back to life, even if just for the moment.

Lunacy and Libations

Well darling I’m torn between lunacy and libations, a perfect pair, a duo for the blue haired history makers. The men who dwell on consequence and contentious intentions, who postulate and pontificate within the boundaries assigned to them by their predecessors. It’s a story within a story, removed of contractions and words that end with L and Y. A scholar’s way of cleaning up the dirtiness of others lives. But oh what a mess we have left for them dear. Oh how they’ll work to pick apart the pieces of our erratic behavior, and what a chore for them to bend backwards to see through the lens that we used to view this life. To them we’re a generational sickness, brought on by external devices. To us we’re a chorus chant that can’t stop ringing in your ears. We’re the words of rebellion, the sounds of metal hitting lead, the feeling of two souls set apart from the status and a need for more…so much more than the world has to offer.

Do you feel me now? We have been on such separate wave lengths for days. But I see you through the static and the snow. Is this the legacy we are meant to leave? A path of broken glass and signs of forced entry, the hallmarks of our unrest, the calling card we made up on the way. We’ll spend our days in the hills, battling the world and its elements, proving to ourselves that we were made to be weathered and worn. The nights will cloak our movements as we learn how our bodies speak to each other.

I’m OK with this daily bread and the dew on the leaves. I’m content with the fibers and sinews that the ground can grow. And I’m happy with the path that our labor takes. Our hands to the soil, the soil to the sky and the satisfaction of an honest harvest is all that we need. No one need see our shelter, or give guidance to the way we breathe. We have left them all behind, to their ruinous behavior, given them over to the play by play cancer they never could control. Ours will be the dictates of the potter, theirs, the science and dice of death.

Oh what a picture we can create then we close our eyes. Can we use our daydreams as a ruler, a cornerstone upon which we set the foundations of our bed? Can we create a map to overlay our unseen trajectory, one that brings you closer, brings you continuously closer to me? One day, we won’t be able to see were I begin and you end. Our words will be remembered as a single thought, and our life, a defining action. If I’m the fingers, you are the glove. A pair that was always meant to work as one.

Dream 4, part 1

A preponderance of upward glances was a hint that I was young. Hands on handles of briefcases, kneecaps and belt buckles bolstered into my field of vision as a mainstay. Serving as a reinforced reminder of my self imposed age and height acting as an impediment. An impediment to hinder my course to some unknown destination I was drawn to.

Brass colored plastic door knob at the end of the hall. Dodging the waist down image of passerbys (or passengers for that matter) to either the entrance or an exit. Creaks and groans of a hinge tapped into blueprints of senses stolen from my sub conscience. Conscientious control of fear and caution aren't prerequisites for moving forward, they are competitors. Caution always loses when your sleeping. Curiosity is no longer an itch but an impulse and feeds on fearful feelings.

Walls comprised of bookshelves form an edifice, bent into a spiral, set with stairs that lead me downward. I can hear you in my head, the words leap out my ears to crash against the bookshelves and spill across the pages. The sense that I am lost is so present that any illusion to the contrary becomes a contradiction of the only thing thats constant, that trapped inside myself is a concept in collision with external constraints.

Dream 3

I awoke this morning to realize that I had not lost a kingdom through the night. There had not been one to begin with. Just bricks and mortar in an outline, under tarps and wet from the ground beneath. The grass along the edges shown like a measurement of the days it had not been tended to. No one came to marvel, to trade or rest within the walls. Just accidental glances from the road beside. And never once did a glance hold such little weight as those cast upon my labor.

Stardate 4.5.10

Fresh Ere

It’s the come down. It’s the fear of the withdraw that steeps through the elation. Fogs the glass, locks the doors and warns that it is dangerous outside. Wipe away the moisture and squint to peer through the beads of sweat the windows pouring.

All I see is slow motion caught up in snow and ice, with careful steps and cupped breathing. All I feel is static. You’re outside alone and I’m watching you closely. There is so much work to be done, and I’ve forgotten the feeling that nature brings, a weighted calm that rises with the hair on the nape of your neck. Or a voice that never echoes, just lingers.

I’ll turn pages as you turn tides, move boxes as you move branches and hold handles as your handle on everything loosens. You’re a series of reactions and I’m reacting to a series of attacks. Sleep on pine needles and burn the fallen, I’ll wage war with my own devices and forget about the elements. Hold dominion over my little castle tucked away in plain sight and hold communion with snow on my television set, set my breathing to the flicker of the monitor.

Your heart beats when it needs, skips only in the sight of majesty and you hold your breath when hidden from sight. There is no one to hide this wretched form from, no sight to steal my pulse and my respiration slows each day. I knew you once, and it never occurred to me when I thought of the future and growing up that I would forget myself.