Space and time converge on a daily basis creating that moment that
we feel, that we want to have, that we look forward to, that
falls somewhere between us and them and always always and
anyways marks the line between the here and the now.

She wrote and I wrote and in there someplace was a lost
minute gone begging for meaning without recourse, without mention
of reality but guessed to be enough to bridge the deep chasm,
the crack in our mutual facade; our motives-movements-madness.

He made the mistake of stepping closer to familiar, closer to the
line between them…looking up and down the silent border, wondering
at the insistence of society to keep them watching from heavily
fortified battlements, from shielded thoughts and dreams.

She forgot that substance doesn’t travel well, that meaning once laid
open for autopsy is nothing but a shadow, a past memory used
to create the present idea…the current strategy…that moment’s madness
and she retreated to recreate the dream.

Reality hovers; waiting to fall across (as a shadow) on emotional topologies
yet to be charted, mapped, discovered but always forming and
reforming as the tide sucks loose sand from here to there, from
the top to the bottom…from him to her.

Two spheres orbiting within the same gravitational well, the same special
darkness bereft of logic yet altogether representative of decisions
made motioned monitored toward understanding where we are, where
the shadow of reality can be seen in contrast to the dark.

Once, a split moment and flash of brilliance and then…once touching, the
spheres continue their trajectories, continue fortification toward another
converged moment, another hidden dream, another deep chasm
un-bridged and waiting for the insistence of society to subside.

The hair on the back of my neck
stands perpendicular, stands
out from the crowd, stands by
and watches;  I am scared…alone
…I am past the safe part; swimming
far from land, from pure ability
and simple necessity…I reach for
what I can and see
that it is only
what I imagine.

A fickle slim voice calls out from
below; “it’s silly to think this way”
singing from dusky shadows
huddled tentatively in corners where
starlight doesn’t reach, where ideas
taper off to razor thin nothingness,
where I am back to lonely-sad-uncertain
thought patterns, a wobbly echo; a
billiard ball rolling slowly past
the winning pocket.

I feel warm gravity suppress and
hold down the fear, hold close
the idea that now is where I should be,
that yesterday left no stain, left no
forwarding address, left nothing
to chance…I flip over on my back
and stare upwards, stare at a ceiling
of stars, each one a possible
path forward.

In my mind I am doing the backstroke,
hand over hand I am sliding through obvious
uncertainty, through mobile obscurity,
through and through until I am everything
and everything is me…each
shining pinpoint above me a molecule
of forgiveness, one of a million,
billion beating hearts all floating
across the surface of my soul.

The night sky lengthens and disappears
into the distance, a distance too far
removed, too far apart from me and always
just beneath the surface of my skin, just
where I can barely feel it evaporate from
the cool wind of chance, the miniature
moments left still and wanting on lips, on
the dynamic surface
of my dreams.

I swim on and begin to know that I am
responsible for my gravity, for creating
warmth, emotional acceptance and
connection to me, to you, to
the universe…it is the evaporation
of time that leaves this oily residue…this
history or mistakes and failure and
success and joy and starlight of
opportunity shines on it all…
regardless of
paths or shadows.

Cancer is human cells dividing without control, with the ability to
move to other tissues…sounds not too bad, like we just need to get the
guest bedroom ready, extra blankets out…set another place at
the dinner table but we give kindness where none is returned or
expected or acknowledged.

I can’t see inside my body…not without help…so I don’t look but
other people have and do look inside themselves and they’ve seen scary
monsters, the kind that are real, the kind that have all the time in the
world to use all of their time…in their world…without explanation, without
care, acknowledgment or kindness…never kindness.

I doubt that people with cancer consider themselves an
analogy, a diagram, a parable or a lesson learned…as I imagine
they watch the TV-papers-news-blogs-internet and read read read
about what other people think-feel-know about themselves…about
what it is like looking out the windows of their lives.

There are reasons and there are no reasons and there is no
fairness about who gets which but regardless; knowing a bullets
origin and precise trajectory, the muzzle velocity and exact grain
count of the explosive propellant doesn’t mean much to the flesh
that rips opens upon impact, the organs waiting on the other side.

People with cancer pretty much know things we don’t…those
things we pretend don’t exist, look away from, deny and deny and
deny…because we haven’t been scanned-poked-prodded, haven’t smelled
the stench of silence descend in a clean white room, haven’t looked toward
tomorrow and seen the long empty hallway of time end abruptly.

Our lives are based on what we know, can dream of and imagine about
life itself, we move in concentric circles waiting for time to catch up, for
motion movement ambition to define the now we inhabit…people with
cancer push back on time, they straighten their lines, and motion movement
ambition becomes a snapshot held up to the light for a better view.

This is not a sad world, it is not a happy world; it is a careless and
oblivious world where people with cancer know things we don’t know
until
one day,
finally,
we know them…and then
we won’t want
to be
an
analogy, a
diagram,
a parable or
a lesson learned
either.

Gone are the days that are not today
Gone are the dreams that we had of them
Gone are negative things we had to say
Gone is the magnetic hold we had on them

Gone are the moments we lost to time
Gone are the dreams; remorse and sadness
Gone are the dirty tears, wet with grime
Gone is the path to madness

Gone are the bruises we felt on our soul
Gone are the places where anger delves
Gone are the shadows…black as coal
Gone are the ways we hurt ourselves…

…before:

We cry and wept for the forgotten, the lost, the never
was and watched-felt-listened as our world turned inward, away from
love, from life; we sat and did nothing because
gone are the days…

Listless and gray, we thought small ideas, felt small
emotions as everything eroded into sandy, contoured piles of yesterday’s
dreams that we only saw on television, only saw when we thought
gone are the days…

We failed to hold our heads high, failed to toe the line, failed
to begin the beginning (of the end) because we had no stomach, no
taste for the future and only saw the past and said
gone are the days…

…after;

We agree to disagree with life when it points the wrong
way, when down is the new up, when today is not the dissolution
of yesterday in all senses, in all ways…and we rejoice that
gone are the days…

We step into that emotional sunlight to feel the warm rays of
uncertainty, of ambiguous decisions colliding with questionable
motives influenced by knowing knowing knowing
gone are the days…

We love the fear, feel the wildness under our skin, in conscious
thought and in time we embrace with feeling arms and seeing
eyes all that we never knew and all that never was because
gone are the days…

Gone are the days that are not today
Gone are the dreams that we had of them
Gone are negative things we had to say
Gone is the magnetic hold we had on them

Gone are the moments we lost to time
Gone are the dreams; remorse and sadness
Gone are the dirty tears, wet with grime
Gone is the path to madness

Gone are the bruises we felt on our soul
Gone are the places where anger delves
Gone are the shadows…black as coal
Gone are the ways we hurt ourselves…

I try to imagine living in a little box, no light, a small
window to see out of but constricted-awkward-filtered, a slice
of a view…not a complete picture never complete…I
have to imagine what I can’t see, guess
to protect myself from whatever is hidden, whomever.

My box is next to another box and I can talk to him, in it, like
me…another on the other side, a million, a billion but farther, I can’t
see-hear-feel them close…I am told they are there so I think that
they are like me, like me even though it’s dark and I really don’t
know who-what-how I am…I just believe it; a thing that isn’t real.

I imagine I was born in the box, lived my life am living my life inside
the box and what I see is a partial view out there because the window
just isn’t big enough to see the whole of anything…so I imagine and 
ask the box next to me and another another another about
what they see, the things they think, the things they know.

I imagine hoping that asking questions gives me knowledge which
will widen the window but I can’t ask what people don’t see, have to
believe what they say…have to stitch it together with faith and sadness
and feel the unity that occurs when belief is the only thing that stands
between safety and madness.

It occurs to me that this is all I have; what the box next to me knows plus
another another another another but only within calling distance, only
as far as the small window will let me look, only what I can see and
I am scared of dying…we all are…and I am scared of what I can’t see
so we make it into something real, make it an enemy to focus on.

A ripple of conversation…from far away and from very close…cascades
across boxes for a long time; describing what I can’t see by adding what other
boxes can’t see until we have something “real” we’ve never seen but
are all sure exists…we just believe…and it assures us, it is what we are, what
we are singularly committed to (that thing that isn’t real).

I live in my box and believe in the thing that our boxes believe in…
when we are threatened…by motions we partially see, kind of hear, sort of touch
we feel stronger–brother boxes–a group as a united front toward
the threat, the lie, the difference between what I know (that thing that isn’t real)
and what my window can’t ever show me (another thing that isn’t real).

Things have names…fear has names…the cascading conversation spreads
them and unites us behind them…we believe them because we believe
them because we believe them because…another another another and still
my window never widens…I can only see the shared threat and we call out
in unison;

Queer
Communist
Nigger
Liberal
Neocon
Kike
Dago
Terrorist
Pedophile
Socialist…

…and another another another another…
one box
to
another box.

The coin spins and lands, spins and lands; over and over and
is without end, we see what we see regardless of what is…good
bad indifferent all motions toward the same conclusion, we
build futures around what we *want* to see—a world that
exists purely for us—everyone else a guest within their self-contained
sphere bobbing rotating butting up against our own tiny cosmos.

6 billion bubbles of separate living thinking moving breathing all day
everyday people wanting watching breathless scared for the bubble to
break, to evaporate and lay bare the ridiculousness we call
living, we call our lives…not knowing their side of the coin is nothing
without my side, your side or his side…or our side which is no side at all.

What is “broken” but an ailing adjective describing a comparative state, a
this over that, a more rather than less…a line defined by the contrast where
two dissimilar areas meet and that line is purely within, purely chosen by
our thoughts actions circumstance we have defined; living within spheres
constructed continuously since birth…added to…remodeled…constricted.

No one tosses the idea of how many of the 6 billion bubbles know they
are separate/confined by their own thoughts…tightly controlled by what they allow
themselves to see feel think do…all moving with ragged motion toward an
end that they will not see, cannot see with no frame of reference to
notice how close we truly are…and how utterly different it might be.

Is being broken bad or is it the first step toward the destruction of
the separate bubble that forever has delayed awareness, derailed freedom
defined space such that it is always at arms length and kept us a million
miles away…a constant frequency humming in deaf ears…and never
quite what we see when we see what we want to see.

My broken may be less or more than your broken or the same as your fixed or
her annoyance or his joy but the point is that it is the nature of my bubble; defined by
me, built by me, maintained by me and always always always inhabited by me
regardless of the coin flip, irrespective of sad or happy, up or down, right or
wrong, in or out, black or white and that is the point…

…we need to know we live in bubbles in order to break our bubbles
and live in the open, or, forever bobbing rotating butting up against
our own tiny cosmos we will only ever ever ever be just this:

separate.

We’re all broken…in little ways in big ways in
time we all feel less-outside-alone-separate-different and
without the knowledge we need to fix us, to
be more-come inside-join-mix and celebrate our sameness.

We’re all suffering…in silence and loudly…with help and
without, running from and running to, some more
than others and some pretending to not at all…but we;
you, me, them, us, ours, all and everything are suffering.

It is bad, we think, it is necessary (we know), it is inevitable
we fear…but it is simply us being us the only way we know how;
because the happy side of the coin is still only half, it feels the
sad side where it can’t see but knows it is balanced, it is life.

We sometimes step aside from that decision and watch it slide
by, watch casually-intently-longingly with all we have or
need and with that frame notice nothing extraordinary
except the absence of living…but sadly that’s normal.

We are all broken-damaged-altered and utterly without
direction or intent but we are humans; walking-breathing-waiting
for the next and the next and the next to happen, to
create the moment for us to inhabit, to live in.

We live joyous and exuberant, we live sad and lonely, we
live in the way we are able, each and every one we live a part
of this, a part of that…no one completely on either side of
that happy/sad coin; always always spinning…always landing.

Always choosing which part is more broken and which part
is less but always broken in some way and that’s not sad-bad-wrong-less…
it is life-it is living-it is loving ourselves-our faults-our
intent to inhabit this moment, this life.

Hey, this life
it’s not massive as it is minimal
not behavioral as it is chemical
obvious now it is mostly subliminal
until what wasn’t…is now critical

Hey, this life
a soon to be ending condition?
a particular kind of sedition?
no; an under-funded mission;
finding the keys to our perdition

Hey, this life
we might forget about what’s right
slide past the lack of light
and regret, but know it’s slight
we give all…to not give up the fight

Hey, this life
more than less the saying goes
longer, farther; the experience grows
always always toward the close
…the ending that everyone knows

Hey, this life
not bad not sad—really—not either
health comes from you; the healer
to be happy is to be the cheater
peace comes from you; the creator

Hey, this life
all good all bad all everything to us
while happiness is contained in trust
in the end, we know it will rust
but love will win
because we know it must.

…It is very hard difficult
impossible
to separate what
we see
from what can be seen.  Like
knowing that reality
is singular, regardless
of me, of
you, of the
universe.  It simply is and
separate, along
a different track schedule timeline
following music only it
can hear…but
do we “know” that or
just parrot the lines, repeat
the performance as
mere actors. I don’t
know.
I do know that what we see includes
every experience
every moment minute & always
a tiny speck of us in the frame…
sometimes
too much and
we can only see
us…so we go to therapy and
read books and talk to
girlfriends
boyfriends
wives
husbands
bartenders
strangers on subways on
line at the
Whole Foods…all
so we can figure try learn how
to look past
us…and
see
what can
be
seen.

In a moment deserved and meant for living, she said
leave your sleep, leave your misty mellow dreams of
sadness of madness of minutes gone waiting while
what is now reminds that it won’t wait, won’t wait for you.

The new moon sits expectant watching for the risen, the
latest greatest born in night and darkness in dreams and
silence in 2 AM restless tangles of sheets and blanket, of
strangled waiting..of straining contentment toward an idea.

That slit of a minute, a shadowed peek into a millisecond
gone sour while the crust of tomorrow still lays across the
breadth of the night…now slowly receding waters from dark
storms, it is movement cloaked in secrecy in high neon lights.

She is the day, lost once a million million times and found as
many more, she lights brave candles against the night, against
the relentless the pressing the pushing shoving moving quiet
that her nemesis creates and seeds and grows and needs.

Leave your sleep is a command—a cry—a post-nocturnal rally
meant to prod and persuade eyes now shut to eyes wide open
to eyes clear and gainfully aware of minutes over minutes over
minutes lost in that sour second; that hesitant little jewel.

The night goes gladly not so forceful in his willingness to sleep
to dream himself into being when she tires and rests, closes her
portals, her unguarded doorways, her gates of heaven she thinks
he says it is easy to be when being is all we have within our reach.

So…

The night turns the corner
as the day nudges you forward
a little bit this moment, a little
bit this time…leave your sleep
and join me she says, it is a
minute that won’t wait.