FOREVER UPHILL

Atlas seems to smile every time a new weight is added,
So gregariously upon my sunken shoulders.
I almost sense the applause, elated at my newest burden.
Every day the gears in the machine turn,
And the prodding becomes more uncomfortable,
There is a visible beading of sweat upon my brow.
Pushing against the irrepressible forces
Working to move me backwards,
Down, or underneath,
My eyes close hard,
My knuckles turn white,
And the hemorrhaging beneath my eyes,
Takes on the look of tiny freckles –
An amusement to those invisible forces
Seeking to bury me
Beneath this new encumbrance.
I may not yield,
And I cannot let go of this onus
The albatross around my neck.
I keep pushing back against it,
Never relenting,
As I move forever uphill.

A WANTON WORLD

My mind has always acted as a safe have
For all the more bizarre thoughts I carry around with me.
Every now and then,
The gates are opened,
Not unlike Pandora’s Box,
And the locusts, wasps and other winged menaces
Escape to wreak havoc
On my logic and common sense.
The world gets dark sometimes,
And my mind goes right along with it.
It is hard not to think in such a way,
When we are all but saturated
With the stupidity and vapidity
Of humankind, chasing riches
And delving deep into lavish perversion,
At times, right before our eyes.
Washing away reason with a bloodbath,
Forsaking innuendo for provocateurs
Who revel in the walking pornography
That is the human experience.
And we all seem hungry, insatiable,
And unsatisfied.

THE NIGHT SYMPHONY

At night, the orchestra of insects plays out
To unsuspecting crowds,
Sitting conveniently behind windows and walls,
Consumed by their lives,
Unknowing, unfettering,
As Nature’s magnum opus once again, unfolds.

Beneath the droning of cars and trucks
Meeting invisible resistance
Across asphalt pathways toward somewhere else.
The soundtrack to a microcosm
A mere arm’s distance away,
For now, has my undivided attention.

The world and all its pettiness,
Calamity, and surprise,
Has been vacated by the infinite instrumentation
And choruses of Life in all its purity.
Clandestine, hidden, yet in plain view –
A masterpiece.

Human beings colliding in Life,
The endless promenade, these Happy Accidents,
Mere distant images on the horizon,
As a paean to Demeter is performed
Beneath the twinkle of starlight,
And the unwary breath of us all.

AEROPLANES

Shifting nervously within my seat,
The turbulent forces outside
Leave me unsettled,
Unnverved.
I cannot calm the raging storm
Brewing in between my ears,
As I feel the rising of my body,
Elevating.
The roar slides glass
Slowly across my mind,
Raking and scratching,
Scathing.
Miles to go before it ends,
All this rocking back and forth
In an effort to imitate eagles,
Or is that an Albatross?

LO AND BEHOLD

Levitating high above the floor,
Dreaming of floating
And dancing on vapors
I am my own magic carpet.
Wide-eyed yet sleepily
A small shape reveals itself,
And below me,
Lies you, oblivious.
My hands trace circles
Across the stucco ceiling,
Shadows forming streaks
And darkness befriending.
My body is your accessory
This mist I’ve become, moving
Above our bed,
Out of the room,
And down the stairwell,
Toward something unknown,
Underneath the stars.
Many times I have hovered
Like a bird made of smoke,
Or a halo, shimmering
Hazily in the ethers
On the outskirts of a dream.
Waking from my detachment
Leaves me drained,
Confused,
And lightheaded.
And I wonder,
For just a moment,
If it wasn’t a dream at all.
Looking down, I see you smile,
Arms reaching upward,
As I swing on the end of a tether,
And you cut the string.

VOYAGES IN MY HEAD

Haven’t you had one of those days,
Where you’d just rather be somewhere else?
California, Antarctica, or Pluto,
Or some alternate universe
Where no one knew what a gun was,
And everything was overtly connected?
I find myself thinking of places,
I wish I could go
At least for a visit,
With my wife and my eight little beasties
Comfortably at my side.
I’ve called these worlds,
The Helium Sea,
The Ethereal Sectional,
Or Eden’s Satellite.
The Nation of Coronado,
Or the Faeriedom of Mars.
Spectacular places all,
Where no conflict arises,
No sickness exists,
And the Evil people cannot breathe.
Some might call that Heaven,
But I have never been a believer in that –
Too much guilt keeps you out of there,
A Country Club mentality
Doesn’t suit the Afterlife.
So I sail my ship
To the port of these worlds,
Calmly constructed in my head,
With my loved ones along for the ride.
I try not to look back,
Knowing that reality calls,
Drawing me back
To my life and my responsibilities.
These are oases I visit,
Knowing I can’t stay,
But it’s good to go see them once in awhile.

WEATHERING THE EMPTY SPACES

Nearly cataclysmic,
I’ve come undone again.
It’s not for lack of trying
That I’ve pulled the pieces together,
Yet here I am again,
The fracturous me
Face down in the tidepool
Of a hideous oblivion.

Unveiling the mess,
The quiet revelation
My facade cannot cloak,
And the firmament splinters.
The line of sight,
The satellites collide,
Spilling their debris
Across my harried mindscape.

I find myself pushing
Against the cosmic tedium,
Stubbornly resistant to words
That disguise themselves as wisdom.
Against the backdrop
Of the apprehension and fear.
Solemnly I turn to the sky
And shrug my shoulders defiantly.

UNFINISHED WORKS

If ever I was to have children,
The stories I would tell them,
Would be grandiose,
Yet unfinished.
Ever since I was a boy,
I have had visions
Of tales I would tell,
They were vast, tall tales.
As I grew older,
I would take up the task
Of writing one down,
And then Life happened.
Strange the turns in the road,
The unforeseen obstacles,
How they move us
And shape our world differently.
Predictability be Damned!
I travelled many paths,
Before the one I found myself on,
Was the one I stumbled down.
Every now and then,
I look back at those stories,
Unfinished works of an Age,
Before Happiness arrived.

WHOLLY MATRIMONY, PART 1

Nervous even after so many years,
I shiver whenever I come near you.
My hands seem to tremble,
As if I am swimming in fear.
I find myself checking my breath,
To see if the dragon I ate can be detected.
I check myself in the mirror,
To see if my looks improved from five seconds ago.
Each step I take toward you,
It is like I relive that very first time we met
And how I wondered to myself,
If this moment would ever come,
The moment I realized,
After nearly ten years,
You would still say those words to me:
“KE-VIN! The litter boxes need to be cleaned again!”

THE URGE TO SCREAM

Each time I walk into a room,
Regardless of its population,
I have to resist the urge to scream.
It’s not that I wish to announce myself,
Or make some sort of statement.
It is just an involuntary response
To Life itself,
And the Hell squeezed out
From the bowels below,
Forced upon the world,
By the greed and recklessness
Of people filled with fear and hate,
Blinded by their own selfish pursuits,
And driven,
By the need to possess all.
These people snap my tether,
Scrape all that is good from inside me,
And leave me,
In this hollowed-out carcass,
Screaming,
As if anyone cares to hear.