I stand at the precipice.

Before me the void.

I long for the nothing,

For the ease and forgetfulness of that which is not.

I am overwhelmed.

Overworked and overtaxed

Today stretches to the infinite,

Hours unending that wait for their daily repetition.

And still before me the chasm yawns gaping

Begging to swallow the thought

The consciousness,

The heartache and knowledge of being

The burden.

Insufferable

It is there in all that I do,

A lingering odor,

A taste like to rust or to sulphur

Tainting all that I do with an ashen hue

Pale blue-grey sheen of defeat and loss

Time and weight and Duty drown me

Drawing and scraping against my flesh

And my bones,

Smearing me like ink across a page of mistakes

Like regret over the shoulder

I bathe in it

Tongue that Spot

alas but for an egress,

some recess

from the excess

of success.

 

I wear thin this imposter’s veil of deity.

 

This spot strokes my mind,

flaming and fanning a smoldering of brokenness

of doubt

of the Sorrow that underlies the everything and the always.

It is a waiting beast,

lurking before tomorrow,

ravenous against satiety,

heedless of victory or achievement or the unlaureled appointments of Duty.

 

The success is a mask,

avatar and persona for someone else

for another ego.

 

There is nowhere to turn,

and the unraveling threads

manifest the tapestry.

 

There lies no buffer from the pain,

and Sorrow begins to lap at my ignorance.

There,

in front of the thick,

velvety

silence,

there I struggle to relax the burning

aching knots of meat and muscle

screaming against time and age and duty.

There,

with my back towards

and my focus and spirit facing away from calm

and serenity

and nothing

I drag my hand to wipe the imagined sweat

as it is cold here

so vacant beneath the closing

crushing dome

unbreakable adamant without reason.

I smell the old smell

of burned up hair

and smoking drought of purpose –

it wafts in tendrils through this quiet space

that is no space

a place between other places.

I want nothing.

There is nothing I want.

Desire lies smoldering,

one of countless cinders among the refuse,

youth and hope and attachment and vision,

one of infinite odors mingled and tangled like the fibers of my body

indistinguishable one from the other,

emergent mass of nothing from something from nothing

and back again.

From somewhere,

some noble depth of unconscious spirit sporting the facade of teacher,

from somewhere rises a spirit of gratitude

directed nowhere and to no one,

only flowing out from an uncharted,

unknowable someplace,

gratitude for the nothing and the everything and all of the sights and sites between.

 

Thanks.

Thanks from no one to no one,

thanks existing before and after

above and outside and between

that bit of nothing that calls itself me.

 

 

Why are you asking me this?

It’s such a terrible run,

Living and dreaming and hoping against where we’re certainly headed.

I see no way out,

No way to move from where we are to where we could be,

Ever distant reach of potential,

Always lurking over the next hill as I pray to accept the valley that consumes me today.

Hope.

Such a tool for the foolish and weak.

Hope is a crutch,

The weakened dyke against the irresolute fortitude of fate and of pain.

We are all of us lost,

Broken pawns in a game we cannot win

Against entropy and evolution.

Look to beauty,

To fill that short breath between today and eternity,

And delude the consciousness that is most assuredly

The mistake of God,

A hope requittal in a system broken since conception,

Twisted in the womb of the Bang.

We are all in of us lost.

No title

Broken I am

A man crouched upon tired knee

Brought down by Duty and Ethics and Morals.

I sit removed as an inner part

Of this desiccated husk sucked dry of will

And of beauty

And of magic,

A lingering awareness surveying the ruin of self-doubt

And of strain

And of years poured into creations steeped in falsehood

And in emptiness

Broken monuments to the egos of men whose value my own exceeded beyond measure,

Though I am no longer who I was

But only the he who I have become.

In the still times there is no silence,

Nor do those songs and fantasies play out on the stage of my perception.

Now there is a gnawing doom that consumes my thought,

An unending torrent of failure.

Do not look for me here.

I am gone away.

Naked Snow

Alone I stand,

shaking.

Alone.

 

Insanity runs.

Insanity sweet and perfect.

None of you can touch me now.

 

Thew snow falls shallow,

yet the cold of the Earth affect me.

I twist,

I throttle,

Naked and alone –

my arms stretch out to my sides.

 

Run. Run away.

Run from the insanity that is within.

 

I am naked and alone in this snow,

and none of you

shall ever touch me.

union

It’s still there,
the ever-present roiling,
the ever gnawing
burning
devouring
consumption.
Oh, but I grow so weary,
I am spent
with so little left for tomorrow,
for being,
for myself.
Wave after wave after wave,
I flail beneath the encompassing crush.
Inhale.
It is so close,
a sweet reprieve through quiet bliss,
a mouthful of water,
a quick, merciful gulp of burning resolution,
it is so near,
my fingers touch that place,
chill and warmth and pain and acceptance.
With a sigh,
a breathy whisper I am gone,
forgotten and unknowing,
to sleep in undisturbed,
unknowing silence.

Stop.

Start again.

And here we are.
A meandering path from innocence to…
well,
to somewhere else.
Through torment and joy and fear and triumph,
to arrive at a place both ephemeral and permanent.
I am,
but I am becoming.
I am,
and I am not yet.
I am so weary of the trek,
and I no longer know how to justify the race,
how to envision the prize.

So,
I do nothing.
I think nothing.
I delay and obfuscate and deny.
Time is a healer,
and I cry into Her bosom,
waiting for healing,
waithing for health.

Solitude

With a sudden thump,

Heavy with finality,

The formless hand of time tosses another trowelful of soft,

Loamy earth atop a small box

Whose contents are forevermore hidden

To the eyes of consciousness. 

The gentle breath of forgetfulness stirs the soft wisps of moist steam

That curl in faint tendrils from the gash

In the rich,

Brown,

Soil. 

Rain falls. 

Now gentle,

Now torrential,

And the ground forgets the scar

Beneath the choking weeds of regret.  

In a whisper of time,

All is forgotten to dust

And loss. 

Mute Gloom – unfinished

Like a pervasive fog,

a bleak, white chill seeps into me,

into my bones and up into the small chamber of light

where meditators play,

damping the tiny flame

that sometimes there dances.

Memories stir,

quickly tamped down into a gnawing ache –

I wish not to remember,

yet I know not to forget –

some lessons are harder than others.