Helixes of retrospection
Coil together from the days of
Fragmentary self-reflection,
Always seen in different ways. The
Memories, withholding hatred
As I couldn't have before, in
Scenes more sensory than dated
Show me just a little more than
What I had remembered; plainly
My own whimpering and weakness,
All the shame of my ungainly 
Worthlessness remained to speak, hiss
Venomous but true. Ineptly
Did I try the task, and wanting
Was I found. And still I've kept the
Sting of it, forever haunting
Me in idle recollection,
But I see now also threaded,
With remembrance and dejection,
New dimensions of the dreaded
Failures of the past. A twining
Thread of details flowed adjacent
Facts as I had known them, lining
Up where once the thread of hate spent
All the energy in torture,
All perspective tied to burning
Self; that thread receives retort, for
Now perceived by simply turning
Over points of view are passions
Unexamined which could offer
Some experience, some rations
From within the mental coffers.

All the pain of wounds remaining
As the price to first remember,
Pull the line across the staining
Layers of the bleeding members
Of the past; withdraw with sorrow
Deeper shades within the gory
Wound to take into tomorrow.
Bloodred hues and ochre story,
Richer for that painful richness,
Shows the desperate parties clearer,
Lets me be a better witness.
Small mistakes and those severer
All displayed less passionately,
Memory more fairly meted
Once released from obstinately
Coloring with shame defeated.
Strip the crimson tint from off the
Actions past; beneath, the varied
Interplay of needs that often
Bobbled in the air, were carried
On in bruised and welting purple
Or unable to fulfill were
Left to fester in their hurtful
Monochrome desires. What will or
Fantasy or motive may have
Led to certain situations
That before ourselves we paved while
Knowing half the expectations;
What delusions bolstered taking
Roles that clashed incongruously
With our sad remainders, faking
Just so nearly-ponderously
Our desires and real affections?
Questioning not how; just peering
At the needy introspections
That performed, and with their steering
Twisted candor through denial
And encouraged them to alter
Thus themselves to give requital
To their feelings, then to falter.

Watch the prancing cryptofeeling 
Change its shape and masquerade as
Love within an instant, sealing
Sadly such a plan mislaid as
Providence. Chimeric colors
Mimic patterns for survival
In the wasted psychic dolors,
Is accepted on arrival;
Symbiosis. With another
Finding joy to not be less than
But gestalt, so hope recovers
For a while impressed but destined
Not to thrive in this relation.
That elusive feeling wavered
In its camouflage and station,
Could its counterpart have labored
Under similar conditions?
I will never know that answer, 
But can have the recognition
Of my own confusing dancer:
Loneliness or desperation,
Likely both in turns portraying
Love, but breathing love's oblation
Can't be love despite its praying. 
It was loving but too needy,
Couldn't offer up desiring
From it's emptiness so reedy;
So it found itself conspiring.
As did I, at first unknowing,
Hoping we were truly loving,
That we were in truth bestowing,
Yet that gift was far above me.

With desire, but not for someone,
Rather to become enveloped
And fulfilled by one to come from
Fantasy still undeveloped.
We were not each other's choices,
Yet we chose each other clinging 
To the hope that feelings foisted
Could be true; they stopped the stinging
To believe. And I, deluded,
Couldn't let it go; I craved that
Quality that truth precluded,
So although I could have waived that
Stupid act I didn't. Rather
I persisted dyeing fibers
Hoping newer strands could gather
And could change the hollow cipher
Of an able lover I am.
So in all the tones of desperate
Pantomime can I espy an
Interim devoid of respite.
Trying on diverse delusions,
Failing to accept the object
That my port was an illusion,
Left adrift again, a prospect
I took cowardly and shaded
Differently my being hoping
Misery could be abated.
It was all deceitful coping,
There was not a chance; my trying
To contort myself, veneering
What I am, its fruit was crying,
Merely multicolored tearing.

It was shameful but a lesson,
So we learn through painful dealings
With each other of the stress in
Form and makeup of our feelings.
I was pitiful, disgraceful,
The unmanliness I showed is
Lightly dealt with called distasteful;
But the wretch can still be loaded
With a burden demonstrating
In its wanly colored vestige
The remonstrance integrating
In oneself a cringing message;
In a self-elucidation
Of iniquity one can be
Freed from a deluded station,
And can come to understand the
Feeble grip upon emotion
That a withered soul possesses.
What's the color of devotion?
What's its shade when it impresses
On the soul its proper palate?
I can't tell, but in this cording
And recording the invalid
Vows of yesterday's purporting
Panoplies of passion, all the
Plumage of misled connection
That I blush at but recall to
Know with stoic circumspection,
I relive my lie of courtship
And discern the tint of those who
On delusions are supported.
After all the glinting close to
Vivid blotches of exacting
Woe, there dapples memory with
Embers, washed out tones enacting
Ghosts of masks and tremoring fists.
Fading, false veneer with trappings
Of fidelity; or wanting.
After that the color sapping
Out, away, into the daunting
Depths of time, elapsing steeper.
So my recollection slackened,
Leaving memories still deeper
Where beyond the thread is blackened.

And there are you, across the continent, the void
In my domain of sad renunciation: far
Away beyond my touch but closer than a thought.
A teacher sterner than self-hatred by your love;
Reality more true than matter, knowledge kept
Integral–closer even to my core than all
The lessons tragedy had scrimshawed on my bones. 
A joyous cross! An awful separation that
I wish to end immediately, yet it's shown
Me, graced me with a love my body cannot taint,
An adoration that my mind can never paint
In its diseased hues, something that my petty fears
Are powerless to reach. The obverse of my woes,
The worth within my suffering, the cause to be
Made strong by struggle, more than all of these by far. 
It's edified beyond the edifice of Earth 
My understanding of illusion: where I once
Was sickened for I knew how fake the planet is,
I now have something real–a value finally
Apart from every worldly trinket, every false
Enjoyment and duress the flesh was made to bow
To seen for what they are, the half-truths recognized,
Accepted; all the dross of sorrow stripped aside,
And though it must remain, aggrandized is the rest!
A feeling of epiphany to have this whole
Of love connecting all the misery of life,
A formula that squares the circle: everything:
The gnashing and the mutilation, the disease
And abnegation, every tear that's wrung from blood:
It all makes sense, or is at least become a sea
Of sorrow for my ship to sail upon. This love
That's more than me and more than misery has filled
The dearth of life. Invisible, untouchable,
Not unfulfillable, beyond the gravity
Of life it turns my eyes and heart toward the sky.

How strange to recognize within the prison wrapped 
In flesh the key that is the fruit of love; alone
I find myself lamenting constantly this form,
This Protean existence powered into change
By whirlwinds of mirages raging through my mind;
A sickness, an eternal unawareness of
A part of my own being. So I know that I
Do not know, cannot know about this body mine.
The liability of my perception is
A curious thing, I and others in this house
Of glass: dysmorphia; in friends appearing as
The madness, to beholders though as life in death.
I very often wonder what aversion those
Ascetics felt within their skin, aversion for
Their own skin, life, the denigration they endure
To fall just short of their ideal. The bitter fruit:
Assumption that a closer perfect form exists
But not assumption of it. Never. Likelier
As well to languish in the gulf between the dream
And harshest existential recognition of
Reality, distorted and deranged by the
Proximity to that desire. The ones who lived 
Impossibly, did they receive their vision in
The madness of their need for that perfection? Did
They find escape from their contempt for life that's less
Than it in fantasy or flawed existence? Did
They live? And did they find the seedling of that dream
That's buried in our waking world; could they have found
The key of love that flesh and mind prostrate themselves 
Before? And living in its love dissolve the deep
Impossibility of reconciling those
Two worlds: the one of ever wretched almost; and
The other: wholeness, a gestalt acceptance that
Its worth is not defined by sum, and as such loved.
Some surely did; if they could do it, then could I?

Night approaches you: your ancient father's shadow,
Primordial tradition washing over your
Luminescence in the darkness of another
Dimension. Keep delighting in your delicate
Glowing skirts and prettiness so pale suspended
Beyond in the obscurity of outer space.
All the smoothness and the scars alike displayed in
The atavistic night opaque: now waxing, now 
Waning, often hidden, always fixed so far off.
Your beauty isn't so despised while wandering
In this universe that thrives on different light; let
Your soft, reflected smile relay its lonely ray
In the solitude of twilight dear boy, gazing
Across the vastness of creation's gulf on fire,
Lit by flames that fuel dimensions drowning out your
Wan gleam, and seeing light like yours so far away.
Scream aloud in night so lonesome, shriek and howl in
The gloam of solitary hours, the longing cell,
While the distance that sequesters you compounds to
Become a measurement of time. But stay awake;
Wait. Believe a light will find you underneath light,
Akin to yours, a light unlike your father's plane.
Softer light once thought unthinkable, the light of
A smile refracted in prismatic eyes with yours.
Distance is but time, and patience is the hand of
The clock that's bridging, sweeping on impossible
Wings to touch one that's so far away; out gliding 
Beyond the sprawling skies and suturing the veins
Of the rivers. Minimizing country miles and
Connecting all the ends between your wits and gas
Mileage. Patience is the steadfastness permitting
All passion's kindling; patience is the lesson which
Puts the heart through its enriching pain, and patience
Becomes the season where an honest love may bloom.

There am I in a crypt of cosmic secrets,
Barred from any retreat; beyond the pathways
Always turning, and always choosing; finding
Wondrous feeling, but still I wander through the
Avenues with the mist of time obscuring
Every way. Indeterminate horizon
Leaving me with the here and now, enough to
See, enough to decide among the tasks at
Hand: enshrouded by possibilities and
Circumstances that sometimes I'm obliged to
Bow my head to the floor for. Sometimes storming,
Raging, echoes of mania distort the
Senses; bleak fog descends upon the mind's eye.
Biding time as though convalescent, I've been
Trapped before in the suffering and blindness
That depressive anxiety demands with
Winds of changeless insanity to whip the
Spirit into dejection, fear to crush the
Agency of each day. Compulsion of a
Phobia, a corruption of the Will from
Action to an Avoidance Need; imposing
Terror fixed in the deepest mind, beyond the
Reach of consciousness menacing, controls the
Mind and body by instinct. Time unfurls in
Inconceivable ways. All flight and yet the
Day's escape is reversed; the threat remains to
Steal tomorrow by painting days as months and
So elongating panic that the days will
Smear together as one conglomerated
Misery. And the mass of worry will feel
Just like lying entrapped in mental bondage.
Outward seeps the miasma, blanketing all
Vistas, giving deceptively impressions
That it's permanent; but the spirit can be
Called inviolate–providence reserves the
Wherewithal to reverse misfortune, even
Seeming permanence dissipates upon a
Windfall meeting. A gust can blow away the
Fog, and fate that was brutal soften by a
Chance encounter with love, a smile from one who
Never could have before so earnestly be
Looked for: aided, unknowingly at first, by
Soil unnoticed in richness, soul unnoticed
In the depth of its kindness; friendship growing
Into intimate bond, and care the motive
Dedication empowering a soul to
Live with luster, take hold of fortitude to
Walk a bit more assured with strengthened spirits.
I was walking throughout intoxicating
Clouds of blinding directionlessness, stumbling
Really, crawling and crouched when light suffused the
Cavern's blanket and for a moment brilliance
Struck me; dazzling! A beacon overwhelming
Me, refracting the wisps' illumination
Into blindness unknown before: a vista
Gleaming only a second, gone, but still the
Landscape glows for a while, the load feels lighter,
I can see a bit further out ahead, what's 
More I want to. Epiphany is what it
Felt like, only the clarity was partial,
Gradual, and at some times tidal, ebbing
Back away from my sight; but ever since, a
Spark has lit the enshrouding gloom from time to
Time. I walk alongside you–likewise fearful,
Just like me a confused itinerant here
Walking deep in the promenade, in dreamlike 
Sight confounded in hazy nightmare logic:
Journeying through a timeline painted bleary–
Worlds encircled malaise and mist thick-curled on
Paths that could be forgiven for their beauty
Could the terror of fatalist projection
Be dispelled, then one sees a field a garden.
Man is merely a man though known as danger
Or as boon; to the seer power's given:
Cherish or to avoid accordingly, and
For a lover a new cosmology–a
Haven and a responsibility to
Hope. To live as though heedless what the world may
Be or what it is not; to know the path while
Blind by heartfelt conviction; holding fast for 
My companion holds fast for me. And Love the
Armor, compass, and star above gives guidance:
Shining higher–impossibly beyond the
Night's dimensions of doubt. It blazes there, though
Seeming not for the world to touch, yet we are
Touched by it. When I see your face I know that
We are not in the moor among the vapors;
This entrapment of senses, notions, thoughts that
Seek to grind into dust the spirit, choking
Fog laid thick upon life–it's so pervasive.
Look! With you by my side my head's unbowed, your
Hand in mine is the strength of breath unlabored!
Here: unmoved and yet this is not the labyrinth
Life has wrought–how the same conundrums fly from
Us that once so imposing made us cower.
Upper light, same as light within, makes plain the
Path, the need to survive; the world I'm facing
Clears and brightens with you and I embracing.

Often I stress about writing too little,
Thinking that quicksand slides downward below me;
Pouting, despairing, I'm all too inured to
Wasting the daylight, once spent or relinquished
Plunges me into deep sorrow at day’s end.
Time's but a resource. This lesson I struggle
Daily to hold in clear thought; as the river
Flows with no driver through beds with no need to
Pilot its course, content, carving out channels
Merely because it is, likewise must I be.
Waters, like time, refill after they empty;
Swells in a cycle; now full and then trickling.
Dusk, though it settles, lifts into a sunrise
After each night; and time seeping forever,
On and on, newer days come to replenish
It. So I try to not stress when it comes to
Ebbing hours, here then gone, writing by moonlight
Suits me as well, for time is and is not for
Me to be master of: time's all around us,
Always in flow without end. If the river
Thought, it would not think, 'I dry out tomorrow,
Better get pouring now.' Better to be like
Water which rushes by nature without a
Care for its final day–vigor it has so
Vigor it uses. Ends never concern it.
Rivers will run until emptying out: now
Coursing, now slowing–no need to take heed of
Whether its waters fall, if it cascades or
Sleepily waters slide. Even if frozen
Over the river just waits; it will thaw and,
Just as if never stopped, wend once again its
Way throughout earth. So let me be like water,
Take some time out to not do and to feel that
Life and my work flow on inside the moments;
Pick it back up like no pause had been taken;
Realize making, like being, is tidal:
Life suffused with an art, paints of the mind can
Flow upon all. In each moment creative
Flexion's allowed its game; poetry lives in
Life. To be sure of one's entity, feeling
Surely without a need based in assurance;
Flowing in time with small heed of it, flowing
Lively because my work runs through my life; and
Learning to pour from self, much like cascading
Falls from themselves, and hone skill as though nature
Fuses to climate: at once as serene as
Brooks at another chance, torrents; in spite of
Intermittent desire latently making,
Crafting--not trying, just being this poet;
This is called wei wu wei; this is the lesson
Held within water. This teaching I try to
Keep as reminder–life flows, and so likewise
Flow my creation. I write, for the writing's
Mine, it is me, and made one with this living.