Meandering

Let it all fall away.
It's gone for now.
Just let it fall away to nothing.
There's nothing in the world to touch you,
nothing on earth to worry you.
You can drift on the air for a while,
and not have to worry about a thing.
You can let your mind wander,
and wherever it goes is just fine.
You don't have to be anything, for now.
Nobody's going to judge you here,
nobody's going to say you don't measure up.
You don't have to defend yourself here.
Nobody's going to say you don't measure up.
You don't have to defend yourself here.
It's okay to relax, to let the world fall away.
You don't always have to be in control.
You don't always have to keep up appearances.
You don't always have to follow your purpose.
It's okay to let go for a while.
You can watch the sunset
and contemplate the nature of language and consciousness,
or something.
Something that seemed so deep and meaningful
but never put food on the table.
Something people love to say they care about
even though they don't really care about it.
It just makes you look deep.
And I ask myself why I still bother with poetry.
(It's hardly even poetry these days, really.)
At least something in my life can be pointless,
I guess is the point.
At least poetry can be pointless, useless, meandering.
There's nothing more terrible than a goal.
A goal sucks the uselessness out of life.
You give up everything for a goal, you know?
You can't indulge your emotions anymore.
You can't enjoy things just because you like them.
You don't have time for all that.
You've got to turn and face the terrifying center of everything.
And you can't look away.
You have to train yourself to face it,
face it every day,
face it down and bend it to your will.
(I think there are points that people reach
where their personalities either dissolve,
or crystallize.
You either go back to nature,
or you become the machine they've molded you into.
It's not exactly like that, I guess.
But this is a poem,
and it's okay for poems to be pointless.)

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On the Mountaintop

The tree grows on the mountaintop.
It strikes its roots, it doesn't stop.
The mountain stands, so tall and free
beside the crashing, rolling sea.
The sea lies low, so wet and cool,
and in the sea there swims a fool.
The strong-armed fool with iron lungs
makes panties drop with velvet tongue.
"The tongue's not only made for speech,"
he says while swimming by the beach.
The beach where ocean meets the sand
while lovers walk, all hand-in-hand.
The hands that feel, the hands that make,
some hands that make from batter cake.
The cake's all baked on Drury Lane,
while next door junkies pierce their veins.
But veins still flow, and spread throughout
a body that won't fall to doubt.
That doubt all cutting like a knife,
and curses at the heart of life.
But life is joy despite it all,
for all that grows, or walks, or crawls.
And what can crawl will one day stand,
and speak to time the time's command.
For life commands that each takes part,
and gives itself, and gives its heart.
The heart that hides itself in fear
will lose itself with passing years.
The years that flow with all that goes
in summer's heat and winter's snows.
See snow that blankets earth with glee,
and whitens every planted tree.
The tree grows on the mountaintop.
It strikes its roots, it doesn't stop.

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Sphere

Beautiful sphere, formless form.
Moment by moment of timelessness.
Go ahead and pour yourself into it.
It won't deny you.
All you have to do is pour yourself into it.
It won't reject you.
Just give it what it wants from you,
and it will never turn you away.

It's all right if you let it slip by.
It never runs out.
It's all right if you let it flow past.
It never runs dry.
It's all right if it never takes root.
It always has more seeds.
It guides you gently, and greets you like a friend.
Trust it. It was meant for you.

Some will say it's all a lie.
They'll call you hypocrite. Liar. Joker.
Sometimes you'll be afraid they're right.
You'll be afraid you're wrapping dreams around nothing,
and that the fear will never go away.
That's when you'll see the wonder and terror of it,
but only if you need it.
Hope you'll never need it.

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Freedom

This is where peace is.
This is where meaning is.
This is where joy is.
It's all there in the play of the mind,
all there in the action and the progress.
You can look for it all you like,
but you'll never find it except in action.
The life you make is the only life you'll love.

And I know it might hurt to hear that.
I know it can be be a pain to hear life calling.
They talk about freedom and responsibility,
and they're exactly right about it.
Freedom is such a heavy responsibility
that there are days when you want to be rid of it.
It's so much work.
It's such a constant, weary struggle.

But you've got to learn to love the effort.
Love the burn. Love the journey.
Listen, I know they sound like hollow cliches,
but they're true. There's life in them.
We only get stronger by fighting resistance,
and our own resistance is the first we encounter.
Entropy always wins. Things fall apart.
But a human being fights against it to the end.

That's what the man meant when he said
"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
You've got to fight back that part of you that wants to die.
It's a liar. It's lazy. It's not you.
You know that life is worth every effort,
and you know that you always have a choice.
Never let them make you forget it.

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You Already Know What This is About

"Don't be sad because it's rigged,
be happy because you can win."
That's what he told me,
back when he told me things.
Learn the rules, one by one.
See what a million centuries of progress has made.

It's contagious, they say,
and there's no one who can stop it spreading.
They slip it in your drink,
all on the sly.
Or else they slip it into the way
you pay to keep it out of your drink.

It doesn't hurt. Not after a while, at least.
You'll hardly notice it after a while.
Some say you learn to love the way it hurts.
Some say it's fear that keeps you holding on.
(Do you want to know what I think?
No, you don't want to know what I think.)

You're probably getting the wrong idea.
I'm probably not expressing it very well.
Because it's not what you're thinking. Not entirely.
That's part of it, of course. What you're thinking is part of it.
How could it not be?
But it penetrates deeper than that, doesn't it?

The true horror is that even the best of us wants it.
Even the best of us wants to give in to it.
It talks so sweetly, so kindly sometimes,
and promises such blissful dreams.
The real struggle of fighting it
is the struggle to want to keep fighting it.

Because it's a choice at first.
It's only later that it becomes a compulsion.
It only takes the willing,
and it makes good on its promises.
The horror of it
is that it makes good on its promises.

"Don't be sad because it's rigged,
be happy because you can win."
Tell that to a starving child
and smile.
Smile as you hand her a loaf of bread
and shudder if you touch her hand by accident.

"Don't be sad because it's rigged,
be happy because you can win."
When the lights go out,
every woman is the same woman.
(Do you want to know what I think?
No, you don't want to know what I think.)

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Hole

It's a real pain.
It's a real pain to feel like you'll never make it.
It's a real pain to wonder how you'll find peace of mind
when the whole world wants to wrench it away.
That's a real pain.

It's terrible to worry every day,
to feel like the world is closing in
and your mind has turned against you.
There's nothing worse than being so sure it's too late,
and that all the world has passed you by.

It's as if you've fallen into a dark hole,
and outside of the hole sits a man, smiling down
and saying, "That's not a real hole.
You're just faking it."
Because he thinks you're just faking it.

And it's no good explaining it to him.
He's made up his mind already.
If you're stuck in a hole you decided to be there,
no matter what the circumstances,
no matter what the challenges.

He acts like it's so easy,
I mean, he could never understand what it's like.
The idiot probably thinks you're an idiot.
He probably thinks you just don't get it.
He probably thinks he's helping.

He doesn't know the answers.
He's never felt pain.
He doesn't know what you need.
He doesn't know what it's like.
He doesn't really care.

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Sing On

Not yet, no little one,
no, it won't end yet.
We'll let you pass, in time,
once we've got all we want out of you.
Not yet, though.

Does it hurt you?
Do you want us to let you go?
Do you want it all to pass?
You'll tell us all, soon enough.
Once we see how much blood you've got...

Are you afraid?
Don't be afraid.
It's only a dance we want, only a song.
Surely you'll dance, won't you?
We know you will.

You've got such a fine voice.
Keep singing, keep singing.
Sing till you're gone.
Sing till we let you go.
Sing till you're not afraid.

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Vapor

Don't tell me life's not beautiful,
and don't tell me it's too much.
I've heard all that before.
I've heard your nightmares, your horrors,
your worries and your doubts.
I've heard you say, "Just let me sleep!"

I think you wanted to slip out of thought,
out of all that strain and stress.
You wanted it to be simple,
so simple you could close your eyes
and drift, and drift...

You wanted to sleep the world away,
never to have to reach or strain again.
You wanted to drift off on a cloud,
dissolve into dust and breath and vapor,
and never have to think again.
Just like all the rest.
You know how special you are.

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Simplicity

See the cloud that forms from a droplet,
the tree that grows from a seed,
and the eagle born out of an egg.
This is the way of the world.
See the rain dissolve the heavy cloud,
the fungus that feeds on the ancient tree,
and age start to wither the eagle's wings.
This is the way of the world.

Simplicity will not last,
and at last it births complexity.
Complexity becomes too much,
and lapses back into simplicity.

You can feel it, sometimes.
(I can feel it sometimes.)
When you see the sunset in clear skies,
and feel your heartbeat melt into the light.
This is what the world is, deep down.
Patternless patterning.
A child locking the puzzle-pieces into place
only to dump the whole thing when it gets hard.

Poor kid. Poor silly kid.

If he only knew how simple it really was.
Lock the pieces in place and you've got a picture,
you know? Simple.
On it's own level, simple as a ripple
spreading out a circle from the center.
None of those awful worries about purpose,
or progress, or practicality.
None of that constant worry that makes existence a drag.
Just a ripple spreading from the center.
Just a child playing at a puzzle.

It's quite complex,
because you can never say it all.
It's quite simple,
because you know it before saying it.

Now, I'm not saying there's any kind of disease
in that kind of thinking.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a problem.
It's only a problem once you say there's a problem.
And once you've decided there's a problem,
God help you if you suddenly decide there's not one...

It's an unfolding process.
It's activity and passivity.
Simplicity and complexity.
Feeling and thought.

See the cloud form from a droplet,
see the skies beyond
and the bright stars above.
Feel what formed them.
Feel what they are.

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By the Book

Do it by the book.
Because that's what it says to do, in the book.
Or do it the way your neighbor does it,
assuming you like your neighbor, that is.
Of course you like your neighbor.
Because that's what it says to do, in the book.

Now don't get me wrong,
I've got nothing at all against reading.
Books are great.
You find all sorts of good things in books.
I found a twenty dollar bill in a book, once.
It was mine. (The bill, not the book.)

And I don't even have anything against neighbors,
as long as they keep the lawn mowed
and don't expect me to bake them pumpkin bread every Christmas...
But what was I talking about?
Doing it by the book, is that it?
I think that's it.

Funny thing about books, is the way
they break up thought into linear little chunks.
I mean, you'll always have your fancy "avant-garde"
going on about streams of consciousness,
but if you're honest with yourself,
that stuff's easy to write, and pretty uninspired too.

And then you get into doing things by the book,
and that's where you start running into trouble.
Because nothing that can be written down
makes anything like the slightest bit of sense.
It's just that we've agreed to pretend it makes sense,
and that's good enough for most of us most of the time.

Because people go around with this idea in their heads
that words are here for communication. That's silly.
You might as well say TV is for showing moving pictures,
or automobiles are for getting you from one place to another.
On one level, yes, it's true enough.
But when you look into it, it's a gross oversimplification.

Is a house just for shelter against the cold?
At first, yes. It's an immediate solution for an immediate problem.
But things get more complicated after a couple thousand years.
It's not just shelter, now. Now it's a place for storing junk,
or forgetting to change that light bulb,
or keeping a dozen little secrets.

So when you do it by the book,
it's easy to think it makes perfect sense
or that it makes no sense whatsoever.
And both of them are sort of true,
and both of them are sort of not true,
when you do it by the book.

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Oblivion

Remember when you believed in magic?
Remember when you believed your dreams,
your wishes,
your pretty thoughts
could all come true, sudden as a thunderclap?
Remember when you thought the world cared?

Sometimes I wonder if there's any innocence.
It sure doesn't seem like it.
Pull back the veil of horror,
and there's another veil behind it.
Pull back the second veil of horror,
and there's another veil behind it.
Pull back the third veil of horror,
and there's another...

I'll tell you what happened to the magic.
I'll tell you soon, I promise.

Remember when you believed in magic?
Remember when you dreamed it was for you?
Remember when you imagined you'd escape?

You know what they did to you.
(Can you deny the way it hurts?)
You know what we did to you.
(Can you forget the way it aches?)
You know what I did to you.
(Can anyone care about pronouns these days?)

Of course there's an end.
Of course there's a way out.
Two ways out of the nightmare.
Two ways out of the swamp.
Two ways out of the disgust.
Choose: either live, or die.

What's wrong with loving death?
Sometimes you'll want it so bad you can taste it.
We're afraid death will hurt,
yet we pine for oblivion.

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What Sue Thought

Sue thought she was smarter than Mark.
Mark thought he was smarter than Sue.
I think I'm smarter than both of them.
You think you're smarter than me.
You're absolutely right about that!

Of course, there's always the option
of opting out of the game of one-upmanship.
There are two ways:

One way is to say, "Oh, I just don't feel any need
to compare myself to other people."
(The technical term for this is "lying."
See also "irony."
See also "being a hipster.")
This is a technique for forming a clique
where the first rule of the clique
is that all members must deny the clique's existence.
(This is known as The Fight Club Phenomenon,
AKA the "Feminists Don't Have Meetings" Phenomenon.)
See also: Rosicrucianism, the International Communist Conspiracy,
journalistic objectivity, and National Public Radio.

Because the thing about claiming not to compare yourself with others
is that it's a cheap, obvious, and really kind of lazy meta-move.
It pretty much amounts to saying,
"Well, I can't win the game
according to any sustainable set of rules,
so I'll just subvert the rules
and act like that makes me a better/more enlightened person."
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Sort of like the nerdy kid in high school
who thinks that reading a bunch of old books
makes him somehow superior to the football player
who gets to sleep with the cheerleaders.
Or the egghead professors
who love to hate on celebrity culture.

(Or they say some silly crap like,
"Let's make scientists our celebrities..."
Scientists, my ass.
Sorry, but I'd rather see a picture of Kim Kardashian
popping up on my Facebook feed
than a picture of Bill Nye, or Stephen Hawking, or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
So sue me.)

That's the first way of opting out.
It's dumb, and stinky, and smells bad,
and leads to totalitarianism.

The second way is much better.
It happens when you voluntarily and knowingly
choose to put yourself second.
(I think they call that love.)
This is a difficult balancing act,
because there's always this little part,
way in the back of your mind,
that wants you to go back on that choice.
But the most human thing of all
is to be able to form a resolution
and stick to it.
Because it's worth sticking to.

Sue thought she was smarter than Mark.
Mark thought he was smarter than Sue.
I think I'm smarter than both of them.
You think you're smarter than me.
You're absolutely right about that!

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What's Left of Memory

Remember when you dreamed magic would save you?
Remember when you wished beauty would cure you?
Remember when you felt loving would heal you?

Tell me what you hoped for.
Tell me what bright dreams you had.
Tell me, sweetness, why it all fell through for you.

You were too good for this evil world.
You were too kind for these cruel times.
You were too sweet for this bitter earth.

Poor dear, they betrayed you.
Poor dear, they misled you.
Poor dear, they ensnared you.

Remember you are not alone.
Remember you can share your pain.
Remember you've not hurt in vain.

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