DEFLATING THE GODHEAD DIRIGIBLE

Confounded again,

Peering into the tinted windows of the asylum,

Wondering who are the caretakers,

And who it is that needs the care.

I wish to move into view,

Make myself known to the distressed

And convince them

I am not one of their bespeckled ghosts

Plaguing their doldrums with insignificance and inanity.

But as the group therapy session continues

And the lies and the profundity emerges

Those truly sick and truly lost

Are the shadows on the wall,

And the liars parade around in pseudosickness,

Propped up my sympathetic ego strokes and cowtowing.

Disingenuousness is the Devil’s condiment,

And both sides are guilty of its overuse.

I pray when the disturbed no longer use politics

As a miserable excuse to duck actual human responsibility,

Accept the reprehension of their actions and inactions,

And begin to act like they possess a sliver of sanity -

Leading us from darkness,

In calm, rational and collaborative steps toward the light.

I await the changes,

Anxious, delusioned, and alone.

CRACKING THE PILLAR

Spiraling downward, inward,

Falling forward, outward.

The slow-motion stumble of chaos

Revealed each and every day

By the inaction, ineptitude

And insensitivity to the world around us.

Where exactly did we go wrong?

And what, if anything,

Have we ever done right?

Content to follow separate paths,

Focus on separate agendas,

And forge separate futures -

The fractures in the pillar

That holds up Heaven

And holds down Hell,

Continues to splinter,

Little by little, bit by bit,

Until there is nothing left

To keep the weight of the world

From caving in on itself,

And crushing the lifeforce of this world

Forever.

A MIND WITHOUT VOLUME CONTROL

There isn’t any room for silence;

My mind is turned all the way up to scream.

Not for anger or frustration or grief,

merely because there is a crowd of directionless thoughts,

Jumping up and down like hyperactive kids

Going through ritalin withdrawal.

The Nephalim are juicing -

We haven’t time to waste.

Like a stampeding herd of zombie buffalo,

The thundering doom takes far too long to get here.

All the volume knobs appear to be broken,

I can’t even hear myself think.

I am dreaming from within an exploding jet engine,

Stuck in an infinite loop.

Memories, regrets, forgotten little notions -

Artifacts for a cacophonous mind.

Screaming in a scream inside a scream,

And I have already forgotten what was on my mind in the first place.

PART AND PARCEL

The human condition is an unavoidable experience,

Something of which we were pushed into upon exiting the womb.

God said, “I give you Life, now go do something with it.”

Along the way, each day is like Karma in a particle collider,

The impact of those tiny moments of your life

Slamming violently into your path -

The consequences truly cannot be predicted;

You find out when you get there.

The long, winding road, filled with sinkholes the size of Kansas,

And the wreckage that litters the shoulders,

Delivers you to that final place,

Those last moments of your confounding existence.

What do you do?

What will you make of this strange life you have had?

In the end, all you can take with you,

Are the choices you’ve made,

And the memories of their outcomes,

In an existence that pales beneath the shadows of Time.

THE EXSANGUINATED STONE

Reason left pooled beneath my slumping head,

No use fighting anymore.

Piled up in the corner are all my journals and expositions

Expounding my weariness and dissillusionment:

“Where do I go from here?”

Animated conversations of self,

The spiritual tug-of-war that will never know a victor,

Convoluted and self-ingratiating,

A reservoir of personal contaminants,

A litany of fear and loathing -

I am just ranting now…

PANORAMIC VIEW

Wide eyed youth

Giving way to bleary eyed man,

Taking the world in

As it spins so violently,

So strangely out of control.

Breathing in, breathing out,

The simple act of stopping,

For just one second,

And watching the Architect’s vision

In all its calibrated and anarchic glory,

Its end nowhere near,

Its majesty unparalleled,

And its beauty unsung.

IN THE ARMS OF NAIVETE

I still believe the world can get it’s act together,

Put down the guns,

Shine a light into the darkness,

And reach its hands out to the struggling millions.

I still cling to the hope that love will trump money,

And that peace will replace war.

I want to live and breathe in a world

No longer divided, but united.

Each night I go to sleep,

My dream is filled with such hope, such faith,

And each morning, I awake to the same nightmare.

Fear and death and hate and violence,

Against ourselves, each other, and the world.

One day it may end,

We may all be a union of faith, hope and love.

Or we may be destined for darkness eternal,

A hollowed kernel of pain,

Spinning violently through the universe,

A pebble, a speck, an ever-revolving turd.