Monday, February 15, 2016

revelling in the unravelling

I have not been using this blog that much lately... minimal posts in the last few years. I started to feel like it was very self-indulgent, and I never shared it about with people because it was always an expulsion into the ether, just to get stuff out so it wasn't whirling around in me or in my books or documents folder - it was freed into the world. Without expectations. 

But I realize that act has allowed me to feel safe within a space - safe and vulnerable simultaneously, safe to be vulnerable and to fuck up and to not make sense all the time. To be self-indulgent, to be lost, to be fucking confused and to post shit poems and good ones and dreams and rants and all in between. No one was going to read it, but it was still exposed and free. 

I think I might be okay with it now though. I have plenty of words to say and if they all happen to be in the context of this messed up and dark and ridiculous blog of mine, well, so be it. No need to hide anything. I am a human. I have grown, and in this age where so much of our lives are documented (more curse than blessing I feel), I won't hesitate anymore to let that be seen. Fuck it. Why think too hard, why feel insecure? Too many other areas where I have to be so careful and thoughtful and meter my expressions. Here it is just whatever. I like that, it is easy. I'm not going to take myself too seriously. Life's too short for that sort of shit.

So... here is a new poem.


***

The whole thing is a bit fucking hard you know
not dying and still going and trying to make a thing out of all the ness
flailing and breathing and sometimes getting waterlogged and sluggish
pouring out yourself and leaving your dreams in a small patch of drying mud
on the bank of the reservoir
the hums and vibrations of the music you could make just ghosting about in your heart and
in other people's ears
waiting to be born
swimming about in the void in anticipation
little souls bodiless
jostling to be illuminated
to be vessel-ified
so they can walk among the living at long last
just to find that the whole thing
is primarily constructed of aching and yearning and clawing
interspersed with moments of gold
some chemical compilation allowing the exposition of time and our worlds curling out all around
like a carpet unrolled
out
and off a cliff

so mid air is the same flailing we make when drowning
only faster
the outer world rushes and shoves us
the inner does the same
only slower
until we just follow some path that calls and could be maybe the 'right' one
stumble out onto gravel that cuts up our feet and mud that slows us and we stray
regardless of which way
we might go
some roots stretch below and above we try our best to climb to
some fruit that looks so plump and why can't it just be in our hands right now
why can't that juice just run down the chin joyously
instantly
instead of having to stretch and slip and watch as they rot and drop

why does the perception persist that one branch reaching is better than another
or that one unfurling is more divine
or that one river is more valid than another
that nature has intention is absurd
that our souls draw us onwards is a certainty but certainly no one knows how
though we futile try to clarify our whole damned limitless lives
only clamped tight and stemmed the flow along the dendrite by the mortal uncoiling
the spoiling of truth's vine

the sunshine was too hot,
the river too dry
the rains come too fast and
the roots, exposed, died
rotted from the inside

but songs get written anyway
and recordings get made
and they end up in our ears and seep down through the veins even when the sky is bleached and our eyes blind
our dreams touch something fresh and alive and cool beneath the surface dust
the crust is only as thick as the apple's skin
not even
and that wellspring may seem untouched but we drink deep sometimes
when something sings
that sorrow and hope hydrating dried up cells and
rejuvenating without reason

so purposelessness has its own surge of life
and suffering has its seasons
and laughter has its bright lies so shiny in the night
lifts us up in the face of not much you know
not much at all shielding us from the void
shimmering shapes of souls awaiting transportation
on the other side
a supple and thin skin dividing the material from the divine
and try as we might
there is no breaching that line
only in that moment
where we are born or where we die

a single split second glimpse before we get redefined
and forget until the next time
the same cycle over and over the same patterns untwined
revelling in the unravelling is all we can try

make a sound into the empty
listen deep and dream

***