At the Moment of Surrender

At the Moment of Surrender

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Enjoy Selected Poems from Fractalverse: Volume Two!

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A to B,
a sand sea,
a setting sun, a clearing sky,
steel and rubber and white dashes blurring by.

Miles like waves or a mother’s love,
miles like dreams or a pair of gloves,
a sand sea,
A to B.

The sun dies.
Night is its over-painter. The lights above like those here,
racing by, lonesome cries,
a desolate race for the starry fainter,
a vantage point atop a crumbling tomb,
a dusty womb,
a sand sea,
A to B.

❧

A star: my guide.

A mood. A feeling.

“Voice.” That’s what I call it.

“It.” What a blunt word for something that is and isn’t,

that waits for me to gaze into the wide skies of my spirit,

that sometimes hides behind the clouds there,

that sometimes lights, not sounds, a path of fear, or loss, or grief.

Light. Voice. Sound. Shadows. Paths. Skies and clouds.

From where I exist, they appear many times as one.

To see them as they are requires time, and quiet, and solitude.

To spy my guiding star, I must both divide and consolidate;

I must burrow and fill; I must flow and step discreetly.

I have apologized for being who I am far too many times,
and in so doing damned this precious bit of myself.
Others had no lasting or serious care for me;
they had merely destroyed their own Voice long ago,
and now sought that I should do the same to mine.
A day passes. Today. My ship sails on, rightly coursed.

❧

Life without this or that: unacceptable.

This or that,
this and that.
This must be, and then that.
This or that makes you a man.
This and that make you complete.

Deemed a failure because no this and no that.
Left to die.
This or that gets the job.
This and that get the women.
Raise the kids to believe in this or that
above all other things, including their own beings.
Make them feel worthless unless they devote their
lives chasing this or that.
Make them feel inadequate if they don’t
worship this and that.

You want me to tell you what this or that is.
You want me to explain myself.
I won’t.
You already know what they are.
I won’t help you get honest with yourself.
I won’t help you save your dying soul.
Only you can do that.
Only you can do this.

❧

If I should have to spend a lifetime impoverished and isolated,

alone and abandoned,
forgotten and scorned,
made to suffer endless abuse and discouragement,
kicked into the dirt, and beaten there,
bloodied, torn, left to rot,
I would still not walk from this vision, this grace, this time, this place.

I stand on a summit far greater than yours in your multitiered suburban palace.
You have your bricks and precisely cut grass,
and your precisely cut children,
and your perfect trophy wife.
You’ve got your career,
and your skank affair downtown,
and the kickbacks,
and the offshore accounts,
and the timeshare in Vail.

I’ve got this.

Take your so-called life and build that glorious sand castle

before the incoming high tide of your mortality.

I wouldn’t trade what I have for any castle, not once, not ever.

My soul is intact.

Yours will be gone the moment they stuff you in that fine crate.

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Adrift | A Quote by Robert Smith (The Cure)

I think, at heart, unless you discover faith in something else, something other, it's very hard to shake the thing that you're adrift alone.
~Robert Smith

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Ocean Beach Pier, San Diego, California

At the Center of Controversy

At the Center of Controversy

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