When we look around at each other; at
the floor where we walk, the walls that hold us in and
apart, we think about what we already have and
we know that the things we don’t…are
the things we look for.

Once we have something, or think we have it, know
we have it…we stop looking…it is ours, it
becomes a part of who we are, who
we want to be, an echo that stains the ground
around us.

We are known by that shadow, then, that sliver thin
emptiness in our eyes…for not looking we are someone
else…but what happens when what we look for
is never found seen known had and is only
only only a dream.

We become that too, I think, we are also the absence
of things, the empty spot on an emotional
shelf, an untouched dusty corner of a long forgotten
closet…these are us like the car in our driveway, the
look on our faces.

There is a divide, many many many divides
actually…all based on differences; what we have and
the things we look for…making us seem to be
separate but reality nudges with a reminder
that have and not have are the same.

They are each a side of a coin, a perspective, a
view inoculated by society into silent looking
people, us, into an advantage that we think we
have but separation is no answer, no
advantage at all.

The things we look for and the things we
have, absence and participation, while they float
inside the perimeter of our souls, they
are don’t own control command us, they
are and are not who we are.

When we look around at each other, we
make decisions, we can change, we create our own
futures rolling out in front, the past lost
to those echoes that stain the ground…the
things we look for are…

choices.

It all becomes background, white
noise filling distracted ears; the
low rumble hum of life…something
just on the other side of seeing–just
out of reach–like smiles on WWII
concentration camp prisoners; ribs
bones, teeth, black and white, naked
barbed wire…
smiles
it all becomes background
livable forgettable…old news
why?
I think about this body, this breathing
living beating eating crapping sleeping
ultimately closing eyes and
dying thing…and it is, what? A
vehicle to get me from birth
to death…a means to my end, a
label on a box in a building where
people mourn all
of their yesterday’s.
I want to know feel
love live learn that
I am not my yesterday…that I
am my today,
my now,
this moment
rolling onward toward this moment and
this one and this one and…
I want and will, I need and do; I
listen deep into the background to
find what I have forgotten, what
has become the low rumble hum
of living
and through tears and laughter
joy and pain, confusion and
certainty
I hear
life.

They are out in front of this life, the
sons and daughters of destiny, faceted
dreams, limitless motion upward outward
always always moving
toward…not from.
They are behind the scenes, schemes, minds
that dream of crystal clear
beginnings…majestic meanings with
purpose and direction.
They are…
where?
Us ordinaries, we roll along within our tracks,
within our small orbits; wondering big thoughts in
our tiny existentialism–the out there–lost in
tangents, messages from our future.  Where
are the sons and daughters?  Their destiny lay
bare, waiting as we toil in small fields of dreams
concerned only as far as arms reach
legs carry, eyes differentiate dark
from light.
Our sons and daughters immersed in media in
miniature motion replicas of reality; played out
in indignant internet society’s unhinged from
emotion and substance…watching bits and pieces
unable to think of the whole…and
ultimately unprepared.
The new new NEW AND IMPROVED! service economy
gathers shadows in big baskets, spreading itself
along trusted pathways, toward a greater good
that is filled with local pain; ideas without
structure…
wishes and rainbows.
The sons and daughters of destiny; one day
consuming nothing they’ve made, living
in houses of borrowed intent, laughing
at a reality held at bay by the television
their limitless motion upward outward
always always moving…
stopped.

          Listen to yourself
quiet the noise the calls the songs of
hardship happiness hatred, the moments
filled with the low hum of life, of living
in an age of motion without consequence
          Define your edge
see contrast where lines fade to simple
transition; tomorrow into today and
yesterday sinking over a blue black
horizon toward irrelevance
          Move your boundary
fits and starts and long long long
thoughts between pulling yourself forward;
holding yourself back…always hovering
in the small distance
          Create your future
ignoring recipes following winds watching
game shows for clues; revel in the
insubstantial knowing it all is, it all
has a part to play
          Live in your dream
with abandon with meaning with
a small dog named Milo…with all the strength
of an impartial universe channeled
exercised moved and devoted
          Die one day
not today not everyday not on a schedule
with planning marketing deliveries of
forgotten flowers on gravesites lost in
the crowd; the inconsequential
          Ignore all advice
go back to the beginning as many times
possible as many places probable as
many people you can and always always
always; listen to yourself.

I imagine we are
a huge crowd of people
living in cold bright days with
whispers of clouds across dark
motives, we think
I imagine
wandering amongst ourselves
shadows crossing
searching the ground, looking at
gray shapes
looking for a connection
we are wary
scared, alone
in the crowd
we have ideas silly little ideas
of tomorrow, of the future, of
everything lined up
dominos toward an end that is
smiles and happiness and…impossible
but we have
ideas
I imagine us moving like fish
waves around central points
changing direction but
always in sync
more or less
the future looms and blots out
today
it’s prescription wholly
incompatible with reality…
shadows fall
across reason and
the crowd
us
all of the one and one of the all
continue searching, not
knowing
we are standing in
our own light, casting
a shadow
of destiny that
too busy searching
we don’t see.

There’s another one and there’s another one and there’s another…in a fog of
advertiser competition; who gets–who pays–who wins the market for double
income no kids upwardly mobile wallets attached to ever wanting more more more
as a cloud wraps around and engulfs where upper floors once lived

Strangely warm ice and razor blades; a voice like hail stones slamming the message
home like it was on fire, like it was last in line for all you can eat, like nothing
was better than nothing and it knew it well…so we listened; lemmings standing on tiptoes…
elbowing aside our own good fortune in order for a better look, a better seat

Doesn’t matter that noise is noise is noise is noise with no meaning just what we hear
again and again but the TV, the nightly news, the talking faces all jovial and laughing ha ha
describing burning bodies falling from great heights pretending to be watermelons on
sad concrete beds they finally rest as we go to commercial…but who knows

Not us! ignoring our own favorite genocide with bacteria and good intentions, god
and caveat emptor we sell our eyes to others for pennies while always expecting the
streets paved with gold to be our gold, our land our ideas of right and wrong, of
strength and truth written in books of paper and plastic and everlasting glory

The highest bidder sits on a thrown of the transactional afterlife, a crown of achievement
lay haphazard; a sign that we don’t know what we want until told so, until we are forced,
make that “lifestyle” decision..removed and separated from our insides, our guts
we live in that digital stream between product development and consumer database

The twin towers stood and then didn’t and in their place we run 24 hour infomercials
selling fear and loathing to a willing world gone astray for meaningless materialism for
bright pieces of metal for night and day for MY message over YOUR message for
a god that changes PO Box numbers based on which book sells better.

We blame externally as that makes sense but is wrong; we know it as we flip the plastic, we
spend what we don’t have, we define the fear we hold dear and important and is packaged
and sold back to us…the nightly news the blog the twitter feed the never-ending all purpose
everyday and every day pound pound pound into our naive consumer heads.

Haa haaa ha…I want to laugh and push the button, pull the switch, trip the trigger that
reverts us to some time that never was, people we never were, never saw had was and I
want to shake my head until the bad parts fall out but, but, but my hand in the ocean only
gets wet when I try to move the Atlantic farther away from me…

We asked for and received the cloud in an always spinning spiral toward an end
planned and designed by industrial fiat; we buy what we sell to get money to buy what we
sell to get money to…until one day we look up and the twin towers don’t hold the sky hostage
anymore, don’t define the majesty of a future bought and paid for with too far extended credit.

The cloud is our confusion; our souls lost on cable channel 3046…it is where our destiny has an
address, the place our Bible’s & Koran’s and the books of the dead all point to when we talk about
the end…when we talk at all…and we can pay now or pay later or pay never by forgetting
that we live on a round ball in the middle of nothing…in our own personal twin towers.

Reaching out with
genuine interest, genuine
concern, a smile
that walks across the room
tickles.
Sprints to the next
the next
the
next…
holds life inside, outside
asks the
question:
leave with me? Go
to the sand
the sea…?
Reach for tomorrow
combine
become more than
one.
See the beauty that lies
beneath us
around
you…me;
us.
Gather the
smiles…
gather the children, call
names
see faces
and feel the
sea, feel the freedom
of being
there and here
and always
smiling.

Underneath the surface of who we are
inside dreams we’re afraid to guess
toward far places we’ll never go;
a feeling that is more than less

The expanse of living learning moving on
ideas playing tag with a missing minute
we try to decide what it is…this life
and whether we want to live in it

We have a choice but doesn’t feel like it
feels preordained and written down
like we’ve known for a while about it
someone’s been playing us for a clown

And she wants her life to be happy…she wants to learn to smile again
And he wants the moment to last forever…now until the end of the end
And she wants to feel safe…like she did as a child of eight
And he wants to feel inside…that thing that made him feel so great

And she wants
And he wants
We want for all that we’ve gotten
We want all that’s been forgotten

Underneath the surface of who we are
inside dreams we’re afraid to guess
toward far places we’ll never go;
a feeling that is more than less

And she wants
And he wants
We want for all that we’ve gotten
We want for all that’s been forgotten

We want for
all that’s
forgotten

When I think of grand beauty, so large it suspends disbelief, I think
of archaic poets,
old bones writing sonnets…
an homage to the day; O glorious day! As the spun gold of heaven’s
sweet tears, woven and sewn into resonating harmonies; a risen jubilee,
a triumphant return…and I cry a little inside…that beauty can be contained
in such pitiful words, can be splayed for autopsy as the need arises, as
the moment comes, as spiteful as we are; we can read and be aware
that beauty is immutable yet
never the same to any.

Our bias and filters, the emotional channels we watch on
the high def television
installed in our souls…
a closed circuit for monitoring grief and loss, happiness and success…our
view of beauty is always somewhat restricted, somewhat distorted yet we
can stand in tight circles, stand among peers, stand for nothing at all and
all agree on beauty as a concept as a vision held in concert with the crowd,
the public, the audience and all feel quite alone in our
embracing of the common.

Human beauty as written by the immortals,
by the poets of the soul,
by the time we got here…
it is imperceptivity moving from here, where we see the advertisement, where
we feel the cold warmth of neon, where we stand and look look
look for truth…it is moving with a color fading another brightening, a line
of eyelid dipping dropping slightly until next minute week year the style is not
the same, different and familiar; a rewording of an apology to ourselves,
that what we want desire hold is wrong.

But we are beauty because it is defined by the common us,
yet we all look outward
not peering into the dark, still
and waveless ponds we call our souls because they have no production value
(we have learned); our direction is juvenile and strained, there is a language
we don’t know for describing beauty so we read and watch others translate
say do spell out for us, our small and meaningless lives as footnotes, as
minor supporting cast members waiting offstage for the lead to fail to
call us in and read our lines.

Beauty is simple, it is us, it is the moment we forget that we don’t know
it is the moment when our fear is eclipsed by our want and need
it is a tide of emotion running solidly up against the sands of our souls
leaving bits and pieces of remembered life for us to find, washed clean
of failure, of disgrace, of opportunities wasted and lost…beauty is
us…it is us.

We are afraid of things, different things, mostly small
meaningless things but they loom large—to us; casting long
shadows begun as insignificant events, maybe miniscule…
too small to notice, passing details, molecules of motion
lost in everyday breathing living moving forward, or
maybe not, maybe huge life altering, car crash sized circuses
with chaos singing a grand chorus of death and
destruction watched by impossible eyes in slow motion as
music-less songs of our lives ideas thoughts and dreams
were ending, were slipping into that last flash of sunlight as it
sets…disappears behind crested waves on blue black oceans.

But we don’t die, not from these small large miniature colossal
fears, no blood flows falls from wounds suffered…no bruising seen
across slowly aging skin, no mark, no foul but we feel…we think
we will die when these shadows rise and become solid reality, well
our reality, the one singular to us, held in trembling hand, eyed
by nervous thinking waiting watching…the second shoe, the
last first thing done…we imagine and that is enough; our reality runs
the same trails, the same roads—along passages—though our
brains…the same and different and all of it means that we
feel it..we really really really

feel it….and…

that is

enough

to be

afraid

of.