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.

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.

My lover called me to the riverside
Where the breeze dances in the humid heat
Mercurially, not for him or me,
But a power far greater to decide.

In the heat where cycles of sweating dried,
He requested I witness this conceit—
Towering higher than being can be,
A dark, cloud-crafted fortress amplified.

What glorious court was held there inside,
With godly deliberations replete;
Can one down here imagine the decree
Their sovereign thunders which these great walls hide?

Beyond the grasp of where the seagulls glide,
The summer castle flickers at the feet
Of heat lightning sprinting its circuitry,
Lighting each parapet like distant guides.

Then he bade me view the other side,
And there was amassed a force to meet
The stronghold of the clouds: far as can see
An equally dark but blazing host skied.

A haughty army of luminous pride,
Or the pitted face of magmatic sheet;
A cloud wide as the other vertically
Inclined, burns an orange sunset-supplied.

They seemed two worlds preparing to collide,
Drawn for more than life or death to compete
In a great clash that fulfills sanctity
Between sunlight and night when it's complied.

Golden, gleaming besiegers far off ride.
The brilliant armor and shafts of elite
Soldiers gathered up in resplendently
Obscuring light in their rows multiplied.

The chateau sat across dark, dignified,
Feeling no fear, thinking not of defeat
Or even its own magnanimity,
Stoically on its dusky sky undyed.

We inconsequential observers spied
A bit of something senses can't entreat.
A grand mirage of scale and majesty,
Gawked at but not fully identified.

Theorizing and projecting we slide 
To many a fantasy indiscrete,
But even a beauty's simplicity 
Evokes different truths for each eye applied. 

Some find beauty in brief things that subside
Like rainclouds that fade when their stores deplete,
Or an interaction of amity
With a complete stranger who leaves untied.

Things that will survive after we have died
And things that we'll outlive, though bittersweet,
We love; and with their mutability
We stretch them in thoughts kaleidoscope-eyed.

And by stages our analogies plied
Obvious things into things less concrete,
Metaphors and symbols, perhaps a plan
We ourselves could be also magnified.

So far away, so huge, titans bestride
Their cycles; which we can never complete
As micro pieces of infinity,
Yearning for more than our portions divide.

The greatest minds where genius can confide
Carry the weight of learning, which they beat
Into the DNA of progeny,
Making the best of what they can provide.

To know the world not just through what we've tried,
But experience things as more than meat,
More than myself existing chemically;
To know the reasons why so many cried,

To understand how disparate forces vied
In enigmatic epochs to delete
What was, which for most ends in tragedy,
And after all this to not have shied.

What is dismantled and what's fructified
In how many patterns repeat
The machinations of life's mystery;
Can all these things by clouds be belied?

The sun descends before his head designs
To let its weariness allow decline
Into a pillow or a blanket's touch,
With hours of work at his bench left behind.

Despite exhaustion plying overmuch
Upon his downslumped shoulders, tired as such
Would make his sleep necessitated, though
No rest he finds, no flight from tiring's clutch.

Insomniatic paramores bestow
Their anti-inspiration from below
The liminal request, but wakefulness
Prevents the blossom: rest, its growing show.

No dreaming glow within the tired's duress,
No nightlong calmness that the beasts possess,
Gestaltly seething in nocturnal sounds
Insensible, unlike his waitfulness;

Though sunlight tenderly extends around
The back of earth, caressing with the down
Of nightshine from its lunar elbow strewn
Upon the moths that seek its midnight crown;

And frogs in hidden choirs intone the tune
Of nightling drones. Their covert throats balloon
In waves of sonic darkness. They reply
To one another and beyond the Moon.

The song they sing for just themselves is wise,
Far wiser than what can be known: their I
Is not the same as mine. And from the marsh
Their din might indicate the Way's device.

The Way in its inexorable march,
Unseen, unheard, mistaken to be harsh
In its obscurity, we seek in vain
For traces of it in the chthonic karst.

In "where it must have been" a thought explains
Itself and reconciles with one domain
Near truth, but only so far, lost in mist;
This senses must be fluid to attain.

A million forms of matter does it twist,
A million pores in states and senses list
A million paths, yet most escape us still;
Divergent millions toward a single tryst.

To one eternal colloquy they will
Return, and even now might oneness fill
The chambers of a soul ecology
One sometimes grasps before it overspills.

A glimpse affords a little peace to me,
If only it could be to him some key
To access feeling whole, my friend who said,
I feel no god within when there I seek.

I take him at his word, though I'm not led
By any means to think him lost or dead
Completely. Oh, but how he feels alone
Among it all, the hermit of his head.

The water tracks the way throughout the zones
Terrestrial, and spiritual's own
Domain alike is replicated deep
Within the journey of a droplet's koan.

An ancient riddle? That's what he's to keep
At dawn when he's exhausted in a heap?
We transient things need despite ourselves,
For wisdom makes poor substitute for sleep.

I hear at leisure all the host that delves
In midnight's niches, yet that same dispels
The hope of sleep for my poor friend who's still
Unrested in so many hours past twelves.

Hiding on the topmost of paramnesia's bunkbed,
All around the rivers of seeming metamorphose,
Roiling and effusive, rebounding on the portholes
Of perception; what are these waves of oft defunct dread?

Infinitely glints the kaleidoscope perspective;
Universal tears in the ever changing floodplain
Once distilled by focus on one's particular pain,
All of living's sorrow becomes a sad invective. 

Mystifying waves of empathic agonizing
Pulverize my vessel, the tiny heart that sings out
There across impenetrable deracinating
Bouts of torture, someone can hear you harmonizing;

Someone hears you crying with notes to match your sorrow,
Giving chords to death and to loss. Are you aware that
Even I, another small ship, am taking care at
Night when you are grieving and when you wake tomorrow?

Always feeling touched, but not once while on the breakers
Can I find a path to the deepest wave your spirit
Rides on; in the tempest of suffering I hear it.
Singing back, I try to get through, but no such takers.

Who can ride the storm of another, what discerning
Sense can find the entrance where neither space nor time nor
Thought can claim a trace of it truly? No diviner
Sees it, though I feel its divine attempt and yearning.

Every soul desires to be known, and every one in
Turn has doubts. Appearing alone, unreachably so,
Never grasped within as was hoped but meekly–echoes,
Semblances connecting two souls that fate has summoned.

Do they ever join? Can their lamps send out a gleaming
Hail across the waves of the infinitely lengthy
Distances from person to person? Could a strength be 
Powerful enough to connect, or is it dreaming?

Something reaches me, for I hurt alike when you do.
In our isolation is there a way to breach through
Via song or tears to another, somehow reach to
The most sacred self that is not my own to soothe you?

Where inside myself is the song, and where the aching
Friend I long to touch? Is the transience of singing
Like the transience of the human spirit's stinging?
Something says inside that a song's the same in making.

Dark your night, in line with the rest of them, compounding,
Wearing down on you in your lonely home of stressing
Sirens and distractions. The slowly sung, caressing
Lay will be your refuge to weather woe surrounding. 

So presumptuous to believe a poem's power;
Yet my needing soul has but art and tears to cover
The expanse between a repression, that which hovers
All around the self in its loneliest of hours.

Singing, yes and crying, to you in hopes that maybe
I could be let in, and the gulf of separation
Shrink to one embrace in a union of elation;
Just to share a moment I’ll ever weep for daily.

All these substances of elusive nature, such as
Love, depression, fear, and aloneness which are dwelling 
Deeply and inchoate themselves, there's something telling
Me the song of souls is the missing strength a touch has.

Verse will be a promise from me, for never could I
Face the gripping notions of misery unless a
Song could there be sown for a little shade and rest; a
Solace that I'm hoping you too are done some good by.

How that touch–communion!–eludes a solitary
Drifter in the cold of a beating storm beneath the
Eyes, unreachable and afraid to bring to grief a
Guide, but one should know that the song is voluntary.

Pouring out of dreams to be felt in waking sureness,
Heady like a sorrow and piercing just like longing,
Every tendency of my mind becomes a thronging
Want to carry into your deepest heart assurance.

Now my days are constant reflections on emotions
And the ghosts of dreams that are breaking on the surface,
Shadows of the feelings I long to give some purchase
In our real world. Do they exist outside our notions?

Can the love inside of my mind advance beyond and
Occupy not only your heart but somehow link two 
Souls that hide in ether, the am upon the brink who
Only knows itself, can I know we both are bonded?

Something senses it in my deepest unknown seeing.
Thriving, with a hand on my chin so gently turning
Upwards my whole soul from the darkness of a spurning
World, and smiling into my eyes for love of being.

1

The washer's water rushes as it soaks
The same as ever–droning, eddying
Then whistling when it drains, as though it spoke
With just the dryer; me: said not a thing.

And nothing said to me seemed fittingly 
Displaced among this lonely night; so pure
It flowed and washed so unremittingly
I thought myself upon the river's shore.

So tell me does the river carry names
Along if lovers bundle them with tears,
Or like my washer is it all the same–
Awash downstream with nothing more to hear?

2

My dryer roars and rumbles fissure-like
In heated animation; nothing more
In my apartment makes a sound, unlike
My heart which pounds and turns inside my core.

So like a quake and like my dryer, this
My heart is shaking too; and warm, alone,
But warm because of you; and though I miss
You how it jumps, excited to be known.

A day fleeting and pirouetting,
Torrent of moments cascading in light,
A flood played in with childlike vetting
Which is to say unappraised til the night.

Yet life savored without reserving
Terror for hours we relinquish with ease
Was gold streaming, too much deserving
Hands that could only travail as they please.

So soon seasons are reified and
Slumber in eddies of restless repose,
Then time rushes and crashes high on
Rocks of diversion beyond youth's control. 

The New Moon in the black sky rises,
Cloudy the twilight opaque is aroused,
And time's current is catalyzed, is
Rendered so vicious in midnight's dark shroud.

The font flows in the hazy cover,
Often unseen and elusive in sound,
When young leisure like leaving lovers
Swaps all the pastimes to idleness found.

The young Moon with its novice lantern
Casting its waxing and slanting caress
Upon night like a journeyman who,
Working new wonders, is ever impressed.

The new night is now lit up slightly,
Partially visible now in the stream
Which too gambols, pretending spritely,
Calming its tempo like moments in dreams.

It shows some of its pace so freely,
Stretching its waves like the hum of a drone
When, what changes? The pace discreetly
Morphs through a tidal mechanic unknown.

The night passes in strange distortions,
Warps in a swirling temporal delay;
Its flow quickens then lacks all motion,
Even seems still as it speeds to the day.

The deep hours in their coalescing 
Over the cup of perception beguiles
The sense subtle. The waves progressing
Faster and slower than sense reconciles.

As day surely ascends upon the
Misty horizon though only half-seen,
So too after enduring longer
Reaches of time than its wingspan would seem.

A sense stumbling through every midnight
Into the sunlight's eternalized now
For one moment: the fleeting insight
Teaching how fickle a sense we're endowed.

I lie watching the coming, going
Moments parading deceived by the show
To think, time must be slowing, showing
Now in my aging the way that it flows.

It's not so. And the time is ever
Subject to passion and boredom and need
In my eyes; so despite endeavors,
Moments will never relent to one speed.

In truth never its pace adjusting,
Constant above less the turmoil inside;
My want (always a wanting something)
Turning attention to patience defied. 

A clear moment inert and empty
Offers a chance to observe and be felt,
The tide's changes from flowing gently:
Faster or slower are symptoms of self. 

The time slipping between my fingers,
Powerless days that will always feel lost
To blank history's dustbin linger
Ever repeating themselves as the cost.

I am young, well, comparatively,
Dreaming my daydreams as yet to appear, 
And time's distance unravels from me,
Stretching the seconds from that time to here.

Those days waiting in unfulfillment,
Patient but restless, unable to hold
The now blending together till then
Pouring beyond me in murmurs untold.

Unreal present of concrete moments,
How can you fasten my heart far away?
I live errantly, so expectant,
Waiting, unable to live in today.

And so, drifting while sadly singing,
Must I accept for companion the moon
And no other among the flinging
Foam and the waves while I drift off to Soon.

One drop of water 
To sate a perennial thirst.
The trickle with violent burst: first,
Last; lasts no longer.

Spent quickly, driven,
Received, as it were, a lone thought
But never so emptied: no draught 
Dries what is given.

This droplet's ringing
Aloud on the lonely sandbar,
The splash on my forehead sends far
Notes sweetly singing:

Front, back, replaying
Across the interior soul,
Invoking the melody whole;
Please, craft its staying.

Please do remind me
Of cups that have yet to be filled;
Behold there that final drop spilled
Itself will find me.

Show me its roundness
Reflecting inside its globe all
The beauty of living, writ small,
Which flows around us.

How everything in
A tiny wet sphere revolves, then
Re-evolves! Its dance dissolves in
New tones it brings in.

Hues stretch as you do,
And were you to pop, those sights split,
Appear in your troupe as light flits,
Song changed anew too.

Teach me to mutate,
To harness an angle without,
To sing for the song and not doubt
Whence comes the music. 

Teach me to fracture,
Apart and in pieces, whole still,
A different portrayal, song will
Be manufactured.

Then you be swallowed
And then I'll perceive my thirst, worse 
Than ever before, with love nursed
Once more and hallowed.

You drop, become me,
Like you am I drunk by Earth's view.
I'm finding myself in need too:
Songs must come from me.

Cry water, water!
Encircling around, but don't think
Or else you'll forget to drink; sing:
Songs; music: foster.

A lonely morning wakes the same:
My bed I share with none,
And back to bed I fall asleep
Alone when day is done.

And you, my love, so far away,
I love like you were here.
I write you letters everyday;
We talk as though you're near.

The horror house I'd save you from,
Were I your gallant knight,
Of moldering confinement, lost
Potential, souring spite.

Entrapped in circumstances that
Necessitate the wait,
And forced by plague to stay in place
Or risk your mother's fate.

Oh I am hale and fear not death;
My nerves, though slightly swayed,
Yet turn towards our meeting but
For cancer, I am stayed.

I cannot hold you while she wails,
Not even glean your pain;
I cannot find a way around
The risk to her, it's plain.

I like that you're a bit on edge about it all–
The gloom without the loss of pure emotional
Connection, doubting fortune yet maintaining hope.
The torture in your mind and body speaks to mine.

The fear of bleakened chance descends as if designs
To weaken us are formed beyond mere fortune's scope;
The fear extends from each of us, a bonding mope
We're both despondently entrapped in, like a wall

Prevents our mapped out meeting and so deigns our fall.
But ever rapt by how alike we strive, I cope,
And drive on gleefully alive; our love entwined
Has tapped a strength that never wanes if you just call.