desire is a well intentioned temptress. to want is to feel alive. she gives the gift of purpose, of drive. “bliss,” she says, “lives within the suffering of pursuit.”
expectation is hope’s jealous twin. one will bring the light out of darkness and the other brings darkness to the lit.
some say the greatest winners know best how to lose.
Sometimes I swear I can feel my soul sitting somewhere in my stomach region and it feels like a liquid sphere. Maybe plasma. No, let’s not even pretend I know anything about the fluid dynamics of plasma. Let’s just say it’s water. Let’s say a day’s stimulus falls like drops on the surface, and these ripples have been building up all this constructive interference against my ability to think clearly. Fuck thinking. I couldn’t even feel right.
But today, it’s like glass. And I can see like I did when I first wrote. And I realize that sometimes my muse is just a reflection. And I am fearless. I am unashamed.
I need the quiet. The chaos leaves voices and glances echoing through the water muddying memories and emotions into this convoluted confusion it becomes so hard to sort out. On still days, they pass through one at a time and I eye each on my back like watching clouds through a snowglobe. It takes time to remember.
I can see eddies that pooled at the foot of a jetty at sunrise and moonlit swirls in the seabed. I see our hands locked and hidden. Secret freckles and birthmarks. Half empty beer bottles and a stained jack of spades. Spiderwebs in the windshield. This is my collection. The fragments of the things that make me crazy.
I hear a knock on my door and get ready to start again.
maps are reminders that your mind will never measure up to your hands. these hands have taught you more than you could know. they trust more than your logic would ever approve of. intellect and creativity alike, alight with envy and pain in knowing no peace like touch.
she whispered: target higher
and swiftly the butterflies unhid
reality often too sweet to suckle
take to me and you must seek character
and bits of illusory tarnish
in wake of the obvious
there is no choice but to remain
asleep
less in repose
more in lives lived alone
sole surveyor
write worlds to scratch paper
try not to blink
days are born in the kind of stillness that bears lonely blossoms quiet and unwitnessed in triumph. i slowly unfold myself from sleep and pray thanks against the inevitability of taking miracles for granted. i savor a confused contentment over the silent symphonies playing for me and the stillness, and we tiptoe in time. i am a rushed and restless creature but these moments have a way with me. today the quiet stays floating just above the noise, the stasis of a familiar day bends to our flow, and i wander.
intramuros
Kind words help forget and I mistake my mine innocuous. Streaks make unlikely impossible and unholy histories are unearthed in these reminders. I wish I could have hugged you when it counted. Disregarded consolation because too late exists beyond a misleading brevity. A singular moment. An era of evolution for bad blood. My words. How late I learn, to care is not to cure. Learn souls are finely crafted. Learn not to beat pigment into paper. I wear our cross in places I’ve forgotten again and again. I want you to know it’s there.
for those in want of a reminder they are alive, let me prescribe a leap into empty space. nothing wants like blank canvas. and nothing breathes like vacuity aflame. and nothing bends like beauty in the literal metaphor of packing chasms to periphery with pieces of soul for paste. in the face of inanition, sign your name below a smudgemark left for someone else and call a corner of this moment your own.
here’s a new year’s gift from south beach, miami..
Artist: Tennis
Song: Marathon
Album: Marathon - Single
