If you find yourself needing air or peace,
Then seek me in the room where smoke is thick;
And maybe we’ll perform a magic trick.
When pace overtakes and control has ceased,
And wellness contorts into shapes so sick;
If you find yourself needing air or peace,
Then seek me in the room where smoke is thick.
It's unlikely that answers will release
Themselves spontaneously from this wick,
At least we can be lighter for a tick.
If you find yourself needing air or peace,
Then meet me in the room where smoke is thick;
And maybe we’ll perform a magic trick.
Author: Nick
I seldom get prepared
I seldom get prepared,
I've been impaired by doubt,
My ego I've seen scared,
Cowering, undevout.
But I've been forced by chance;
Death with its passing glance
Denied delusion's spout.
When faced with nothing, stared;
What could one care about
A lout who never dared?
And death won't come with haste;
First you must waste away.
Everything gets debased,
More falls into decay
Than just ideas of self:
Family flags in health
And dissolves in dark play
Between the wilting taste
Laced with their care's dismay
And frustrations they've faced.
As such I find the choice
I thought foisted on we
Unhappy-lifers moist
With tears is trickery.
Questioning if to die
Like nature would comply;
That's not what nature sees.
It could never give voice
To the dead, poised to be
Without meaning to hoist.
Somehow cause and effect
Randomly trekked, evolved
A thing that could detect
Through narratives revolved
Around themselves, which pit
Their souls against split
Realities–one solved
Death with life unchecked,
Irrespective of all
Values our walls reflect.
The other state is void,
Paranoid and alone,
And since alone employed
In rough attempts to own
An answer, an escape
From our foresight which gapes
On futures of cold bone
And uncertainty. Toyed
With, annoyed, spurred to hone
In on zones death avoids.
Ever an opposite,
The gnarly bit that leads
Hungry jaws thought unfit,
Separate, alien, seeds
Ostracism in souls
Haunted by lack of roles;
It breaks them to concede
Their selves they can't transmit.
A chasm's pit impedes.
They plead disconsolate.
Constantly feeling trapped,
Handicapped by some lack
Of congruence, a gap;
As though the line went slack
And let one slip apart
From creation, to start
Upon a separate track
Than all else that seem rapt
In naturalborn tact,
Fractionless and unsnapped.
"I'm different, I'm 'not this,'"
Is the distance that daunts
A single soul. A hiss
Of uncertainty taunts;
Instinct and selflessness
Give way to helplessness
When reason becomes bonds.
That something is amiss
It insists from its font:
Questions' haunting abyss.
The division inside
Is applied to all things,
And the conscious derides
Itself for its own string
Of differences between
Man and many a scene;
Something lacked singling
Out every petrified,
Yet-untried pair of wings
That thinks in wanting strides.
How is the whole restored?
Toward which star is truth,
And how does one afford
To dive into uncouth
Surroundings teacherless,
Nebulous, featureless,
Which direction holds use
And communion's reward?
Accord springs as proof
With greed refused, ignored.
Once I gave up control
And stole away from dreams;
Then life was rendered cold,
As each fabulous scheme
Crumbled before my eyes.
I thought it my demise.
What I thought was esteemed,
Needed even, I'd hold
No more. What only seems
Builds its themes from false gold.
Everything I let go,
Every show of desire,
The thirst to possess thrown
Away. As though expired
I laid, a corpse in bed;
Grandiosity bled
From childhood, and a pyre
Consumed wishes with smoke.
But a glow from the fire
Inspired peace to bestow.
With semantics removed
Two visions would remain:
There was death to reprove
Me; but who've been insane
And stood upon the brink,
Yet had the chance to think
Come to a new life's plane.
When "dead" and seeing through
Who you knew's eyes in pain,
All else feels vain and crude.
Slowly dying for years,
Disappearing from hopes
By degrees showed the fears
Of peers and loved ones' scope.
I may not be who I'd
Wanted, but if I died
They'd hit the instant slope
Of grief, now domineered
By sheer void. Left remote,
To cope when I'm not here.
All that we could have shared
Unfairly unfulfilled
Forever. Where once prayers
Of life dared on its hill,
Could have been anything,
Everything; emptying,
The chances of life spilled,
What time could have repaired.
Loved ones must bear that nil,
But the world will not care.
The people who are dear
To us hear, see, and strive
Alongside us through drear
And joy, cheered to survive
Together. Though success
I may never be blessed
With, they're still gratified
To have me in their sphere.
I'm steering. I'm alive.
Our revival is clear.
So long as breath is drawn,
From conqueror or child,
Human's human; beyond
That inconstantly styled
Egos who could lose touch
Bent on titles and such.
It made me feel more mild,
As one of many pawns
Of fate's ponderous guile
Smiled on as eons yawn.
The treasure is to try,
To ply my unique hand
In endeavors that I
May find or understand
A secret or a dream
Within this world that seems
At once overly-grand
And too small to describe;
Surprises and demands,
But also plans and smiles.
Writing this poem's all
I want. Should I fall down
There are some I can call
While I'm sprawled on the ground.
With these ones I adore
I don't feel less or more;
I'm assured that I've found,
After a life that stalled,
My small niche in the sound
Where I'll renounce my walls.
Aquarium villanelle
What can I do to change your days?We'll go to the aquarium,
Surpass the slow misery phase.
The Sun reveals endless malaise,
Fatigue and dread unfairly come;
What can I do to change your days?
Living's become an abstract haze,
But it's a secret shared that some
Surpass the slow misery phase.
What if we watched the gliding rays,
Green pipefish smaller than your thumb;
What can I do to change your days?
Our small hovel is what dismays
You, let's, by breaking from our slum,
Surpass the slow misery phase.
Later tonight we can draft ways
To change long-term from bare and numb.
What can I do to change your days,
Surpass the slow misery phase?
To a friend
The eve of Christmas Eve I saw
A friend and didn't recognize
Him at first; though we waved, through all
The customers and enterprise
I let him move on. The surprise
Hit me soon, and I knew him then.
I could see he hurt in his eyes;
I know you'll thrive again my friend.
It's been some time so just to jaw
With you a sec gives me a rise.
You looked good but told me how raw
Life's been treating you: employment-wise
Hung out to dry with heavy sighs.
Should you ever need an ear, send
Your sorrows here; we'll strategize.
I know you'll thrive again my friend.
Three times and more feel free to draw
As many hugs as you surmise
You need from me. A job will call
On someone with a heart your size.
I know from how we've fraternized
You're a good man, and soon an end
To this current low will arise.
I know you'll thrive again my friend.
What temporary loss belies:
Time will come you'll again ascend.
Hold onto your smile; it's a prize.
I know you'll thrive again my friend.
V: Ever More Questions
Many extant facts of power
Shape the world. My vision can't
Decipher them so I cower
In ignorance of their plant.
I'm small and rather like it so;
Having leisure to account
For little more than my own goals,
Which are but a small amount.
But even a more modest dream
Can flash nobly, with reason
To sharpen the edge of their scheme,
And cleave unto cohesion.
I'm thankful to have even this,
Call it dream or obsession:
All that proves that I exist
Is love and its expression.
Love and goodwill and nothing else,
May only these be my gifts;
May each of these old scars and welts
Nurture something that uplifts.
And don't let me be fooled again,
Taken in by rage and hate;
Don't let me sink to anger's den
Where grim cancers replicate.
When I am blind, as I often
Am, I rely on goodwill,
And other people's care softens
My heart when I seek blood to spill.
Charity of good vibrations
Is soothing and assuring.
The clarity of elation
Flies upon a strength enduring.
I live for the dream that is love,
Which is how I choose to phrase
That all I'm ever thinking of
Is a future smile to raise.
Which sounds like quite a paradox;
I do, comparatively,
Little in my life's narrow box.
Is it lived narratively?
I have deeply seated instincts
I don't know how to explain:
The crowds with anxious imprintings;
Ones I love to entertain.
With only sight and impression,
Fear of manifold judgments
Holds me in silent possession
Deep in labrynthine dungeons.
I'm not the most outgoing but,
To me, connection is key;
And if this helps in knowing what
I am, then it has to be.
I believe the answer lies here—
The flux of interaction:
Within impersonal voids, fear;
Among friends, satisfaction.
A desire for image control?
Perhaps, but even on stage
Where I can play my chirping role
My fear becomes the mind's cage.
The answer must be expression.
I'm petrified of being
And constantly fear confession;
Is it me that they're seeing?
A portion of it's conviction;
I know how I lived was wrong
Before, so now benediction
Given helps me get along.
As if I have some gift to give.
Before, when I didn't try,
I was empty, I couldn't live.
I was nothing living a lie.
Perhaps it may seem insincere,
But I try to give a care
For anyone; I'm only here
Since others sought my repair.
I can't make myself care about
Programs and propositions
Of politicking business scouts
On lucre-centric missions.
There's no way I can give a damn
About a word on a screen,
An entrepreneurial plan,
Or hands that pull strings unseen.
Is there truth in their influence?
Where human levels are breached
With their control over events,
Does the human heart get reached?
These things that we cannot react
To so much as must adapt
To; the fact of the power lacked
Feeding the sense that we're trapped;
These things bring out the sullen child
In me who'd rather not see
Problems which must be reconciled
Of most sorrowful destiny.
Do perpetrators meet justice
At the airy hands of prayers?
How the emotion of disgust
Is reduced to useless stares!
I avert my face from horror
But I never disbelieve
In the squalid state of quarters
Where the poor are born to grieve.
The poor who grieve to have been born,
Generations dispossessed
By their inheritance and worn
Down in their world without rest;
Who comforts them? It isn't me.
I've yet to reach out really,
But this shows the necessity
Of transmission ideally.
More real than the circumstances
Shaping who they will become
Are the lives that surf this madness,
More than just their total sum.
Though tinier than the systems
Bounding and schematizing
Multitudes, the spirit listens
To dreams worth realizing.
I'm accused of flowing idly:
Wasting time, writing my verse
I'll never finish; It's widely
True. It's living to rehearse.
But living goes on, as will I;
And my writing is dreaming,
It serves as the power supply
While here to search for meaning.
What will I offer history?
Is that really my concern;
Rather, what could my ceiling be
If I'm too caught up to learn?
When the ghost of complacence lays
Upon me with fatuous scorn,
I pray to see how patience plays
This game that seeks to suborn.
Within me a feeling persists,
We choose although we're destined;
When all of now seems artifice,
A voice from within questions:
Will you give up the quest for truth?
The substance hasn't truly changed;
The more we're the intrepid sleuth,
The more existence seems strange.
IV: the Poet Prays Again
I'm always wondering if I
Can reach up from where I am,
Can reach out though un-specialized,
Join us in this interim.
Am I equipped for this desire;
I'm a voice lacking a root,
As if autochthonously sired
Not from the land but from the mute.
And what is it I want to prove,
I existed and no more?
That even someone so removed
Could meet with you at the core.
The proof that is within us all
In moments without our skin,
Moments without our deeds; when small
And great in congruence spin.
The universe which supersedes
Individuality,
Which fades while entropy proceeds,
Is the same as you and me.
All visions of grandeur or wants
Are defined only by mind.
Most of the conditions we vaunt
Are fantasies we've designed.
The organ analytical,
Its power is its prison;
Conditioned into cyclical
Schemes, sees what really isn't.
The world-fondling senses receive
All that they possibly can;
They must in order to believe
That survival is at hand.
Hoarding data into systems,
Humans structure feedback loops
Into variants of subsistence,
Each with esoteric groups.
Many things we take for granted,
But the question of belief
Persists when we feel our slanted
Precepts flying like a thief.
Anything intellectual,
Is it as real as we thought;
What If without contextual
Excuses our maxims rot?
Does society disconnect
Need from soul from consequence
With abstractions of dismal sects'
Masquerades of common sense?
Can a solo mind ever know
Anything convincingly;
Assured beyond themself, bestow
Their substance unflinchingly?
There's but one way I've ever felt
Energy surpassing each
Limit I perceive as the belt
Restraining emotion's reach.
It's love which passes between souls,
Sparking across every void;
Love which finishes broken wholes
With golden bliss undestroyed.
Love the compass I shall follow
When one thousand different sights
Press me with their pills to swallow;
Love will split the wrongs from rights.
III: the Ad-vent’s Thicket
I fell into a skeptic's trap.
Agendas disillusioned
Me, and I've grown into the gap
Of fact and ad's collusion.
We live in the predication
Of mutable facts in our
Opinion-civilization,
Re-interpreting each hour.
Now meta-interpersonal
Dynamics superimpose,
Bleeding through by immersible
Parasocial scenarios.
There is a cause to champion
In each corner, no matter how
Obscure, mundane, or transient;
Everything receives a vow.
And everything has gravity;
Anything could pull one in,
And seem the ways things have to be:
A prescriptive bulletin.
There's always been a million paths
To fulfillment, so it's said;
So often they result in halves
Dualistically misled.
II: the Age of Interpretation
An interpersonal event
Superimposed on a thought,
Ego-transforming precedent
Warps one's sight to see what's not.
The information age gives way
To interpretation's stage,
Technology's deceptions sway
With the counterfeiter's page.
What we perceive was never real,
But until our time the spread
Of illusion skulked through the wheel
Of abstractions in one's head.
Known only to the psychonauts
Of traditions who observe
And reify their very thoughts
To discern their limits' curve.
Truth's nature in the waking world
They knew we all wrongly sensed,
Though practicality unfurled
In our lives narrowly fenced.
Fact's power remained paramount
In basic society,
Opinions remained in the fount
Of the mind's propriety.
Human consciousness expanded
When we were forced to accept
Knowledge was no longer stranded
By space and time, out of depth.
In our greater capacity
We have extended belief
As awareness-necessity
To keep up with each conceit.
Experience and truth divorce;
Since we can't examine each
And every report, our recourse
Is revolutionized speech.
I: Introduction
It's time to start a newer song,
Though its kind was known before;
To turn away an erstwhile wrong,
And to trash an empty score.
Time to set value in its place
At the top with our goodwill,
Alongside patience, measured pace
Framed in merit's matrix—skill.
I've given up great heights aspired
To, or maybe never sought.
Right now there's but one thing required,
Maybe it's my common plot;
I feel a life with others shared
Is my path to happiness;
Will balance how I am impaired,
For, approved of, I persist.
Sequestered from a common soul,
Portraits etched in salt. Alone,
Aware of something less than whole
While my faulty vision's clone.
We seek the individual
In mandalic circumscripts,
Communion into integral
Life-connected personships.
I called upon a desperate wish
With a corpse's muted shriek.
Others' patience taught me to fish
When my soul was much too weak.
If I could be someone who gives
Of myself with radiance,
With streaming love to feed what lives,
How could life lack salience?
It's this which plagues us in our time,
In a mode unfelt before:
Proximity of human minds
Stretched through holographic doors.
Recovery
Don't think someone can't make a comeback. On death's brink a miracle Can sway destiny's balance. Lands devoured by massive waves Resurface in glorious fate, And we who cried may too be saved. Mortals don't know who gets saved. A pendulum meets its comeback And we call it fate, But actually it's a miracle. I smile at him and he waves; She laughs with us and life feels balance. Tears are included in the balance, Totems I wish I'd saved Now buried in the waves Of decades' desert comeback. All at once it's a miracle, Across thousands of years it's fate. Laugh at yourself Nick, for fate Is a rationalization of balance; The workings of a miracle, And sadly those who aren't saved In slaughter rule games with no comeback, Alike they crash on illusive waves. As a gentle brushstroke's waves I try to bend beside my fate, Which has included a prior comeback, From close-to-death restored to balance. If even I could be saved, There's no unbelievable miracle. Love is the greatest miracle Among the many makers of waves; It shines its special light, which is saved Until a heart designs its own fate. The paradigm of balance Provides for many a comeback. The jewel of the comeback miracle Doesn't require balance on waves: We can't know our fate is not to be saved.
A place for my poems 