Luxury of the unknown
Wake up
Not wondering
Some stranger, some ‘friend’, some coworker
False praise of unwanted innuendo
Condescension dressed up as aid
Hurt feelings for being my friend
Danger from those you like
You love
Normal
Broken world
Simulation left to bored sadists
Ponder the ways
To break again
A world so shattered
Will it even notice
Noise drowns out rhetoric in the next room
Headphones cranked up
Drowning out voices repeating
Lies as revelation
Reinforcing
Until the only truth is the lie
Closed doors and silent
Opinions asked anguish
Traps to pounce
They believe only facts which reinforce their hypocrisy
So no facts at all
Just profitable lies
Slung by earnest white faces
And fear cowering in a bunker
Plotting betrayal
Arguments
Hurt looks when told harsh truths
How their hatred effects the relationships with those around them
Dams burst
Thugs in blue uniforms
Armed to the teeth
Seething with hatred
Told they have authority
And no repercussions
Demonstrate in real time
Cameras raised
Shouting to be heard
Nothing new
But now seen
Again and again
That old experiment
The worst humans aggregate to the place they can exert the most brutality
The best intentions stay silent
And the truest few quit rather than be a part
Rather than be complicit
In this river of blood
We can no longer unsee
I am sputtering incoherent rage
Seething above a cold and ancient
Monster
Waiting to be freed from shackles
Forged in blood and promises
Cold heart breaks free from warm blood
Two trapped wolves
Salivating at the thought of meat
Long deprived
The long knives wait for willing hands
Wait until will breaks
Until at last the shield of empathy
Of hope and joy
Dies
Until only memories and copper strength
Vie for attention
So begins a war in the heart of one man
So begins a war in us all
The quiet panic of other people sits heavy in the background of a thumping heart
Floating anxiety feels tangible in the afternoon silence
Too cold waiting for the thaw
Waiting for arms to hold
Lost in a hell of without
A winter’s night
And no fire
I have been trying to write for over an hour. For me, that’s a long time. Usually 10-15 minutes and an idea or seed forms.
All I can think about is something I already wrote. Just this mantra, over and over
“This is a broken world.
But You are not broken.”
I may be broke. I may be damaged. But this world has not broken me.
I find this repeating in my head often lately. I find it’s more true today than when I wrote it. It’s like past me was reaching out to future me with a truth that I needed.
This IS a broken world
But I am NOT broken
Blind light beckon through fog
Sounds muffled cries
Last darkness fades as hope withers
Dawn stretches out
Limbs aching
Bereft of soft touches
Smiles departed
Blood pulse through arteries clanging open
Hearts race
Excitement turned banal
Without love what’s the purpose
Pursuit and climax just dust
One more lonely night
Passed in dreaming
Nothing is real but the grind
Until smooth
Slipping away
Last tears fall
Into the quiet morning
No trick of the light
To have a heart full of stars
Grown in reflection to your love
Sweet dreams
Leave the taste of you on waking
Tongue ache in remembrance
Hands pressed to lips
Savoring a memory of yet to be
Painful dreaming
Waking in I love you
Mind flying the miles
Yearn
A promise to keep you
Safe within my arms
As safe as you desire
Waking up every hour
Nightmares playing scenarios through my mind
Drink some water and descend into something so real that waking is relief
Thankful that I am peripheral player in each
But deeper past people I know until I breach some layer
And indelible images which make mock of decency
Of kindness
Play out as if I am a camera lens
Unable to act
Six punctuated hours of sleep
Six different nightmares
There is more sleep in me
But my endurance for nightmares is spent
Love is layered
One act
One word
Built day by day
Until the inevitable bloom of forever
Love is layered
One act
One word
Hurts day by day
Until the inevitable decay of forever
Love is choice
Conscious actions
Made with care and deliberation
What we feel may be immutable
But feelings are not love
They are but a single layer
It is in the accumulation
In the choice
Where truth lives
……….
And I write of love because we are so distant now
Steeped in love
In desire
In hope
But so far away
It’s a pain that grows
Briefly assuaged by words on the screen
Empty beds
And the need which gnaws at the
Root
Death doesn’t take or steal
People do that
We do that
Death is a herald of transition
A gateway from one state to another
In its best guise, a traveler
One who walks beside the living
Ready and able to ease the transition
We think to bargain with a power who is powerless to stop. We think we are alone. We think that physical existence is the everything. We have forgotten as much as we have learned.
We have discarded information we cannot prove when the method of proving is a thing of narrow invention. One designed to show that even the “real” is not wondrous. In a petulant rejection of what was.
We invent things and say that they are all there is. Because it’s a less scary world, when we have or can obtain, all of the answers. And perhaps we could actually achieve that. If we stopped attempting to force things we don’t understand and cannot measure into the the twin boxes of impossible.
If science were so pure, it would not start with the rejection of the wisdom of our ancestors. It would instead ask, how can we learn these things without also destroying their beauty.
Death does not bargain. Life does not care. Storms do not rage. We attribute what is in ourselves to that which is alien to us. We narrow things down to only. Instead of accepting that while a process may be observed, the process is not the thing. The component parts are not the thing entire.
Wake up
Wake up
Wake up
Your eyes and heart is waiting
