Tag: acceptance

I find it hard to believe

I find it hard to believe that it's me,
Progressing with empty steps in this way;
And yet when it changes, no one can say.

Be it family or society,
My costs are for someone else to defray.
To be sure I'm the lesser moiety
Progressing with empty steps in this way.

A mystery moment I hope to see:
Elusive success of my own to pay,
And an opportunity that I may.
I find it hard to believe that it's me,
Progressing with empty steps in this way;
And yet when it changes, no one can say.

My sheer house

My sheer house is miniscule,
But here and now a lyric
Could take sublime molecules,
Make time's victory pyrrhic.

I give you this offering:
How I lived, a wish afloat
On songs of hope, softening
The wrongs which our scopes promote.

My dream to be feminine,
To see myself seem pretty,
A princess with eminence;
Pinced instead: what a pity.

I grew into depression,
My true self refused, repressed.
Desire became obsession;
To my shame I was possessed.

My own eating disorder
Bound up a need for starving,
Alcohol, and discordant,
Maladaptive wrist carving.

Death was posing constantly,
Its threshold closing around
Each moment of wantingly
Reaching, alone and unfound.

But I'm alive, shockingly,
I survived at rock bottom.
He found me worth pocketing,
Crowned my cursed head with autumn.

Before I was untethered,
Poured my puzzled blood weeping;
When he brought us together,
He bent thoughts that lie creeping.

A half-dozen medicines,
A path that wasn't direct
At last mounted reticence,
Perhaps found something correct.

We shacked up through manifold
Setbacks, yet we grew happy
Trusting plucky animals,
Our muscovy ducks' flapping.

There's still the same confusion.
Will you blame that I re-slept
My years' yearning delusion?
I've merely learned to accept.

I've lost and gained employment,
I've tossed the rains from islands 
To focus love's enjoyment;
A voice spoke above violence.

I'll never be omniscient;
So I must weather demons,
Though I fear I'm deficient.
I know my sincere reasons.

I'm not very capable
But caught a merry lifeline.
If even I'm shapeable,
Could seasons prime our lifetimes?

To mention that important
Question: what matters really?
Is self-knowledge supporting
My shelf of solid feeling?

Am I truly self-aware,
Can I duly note defects
In myself that interfere
With my health's tender reflex?

Have I built my quality
Which sadness wilted above;
Deeply lies my policy:
To keep those I call beloved.

Peace

Peace is knowing unease
Recedes; and woe, once the wave
Which swallowed old continents,
Shall fall for the bold and brave.

Strength is trust in loving's
Length, justice, and equipoise.
Ridges rise as miracles
Bridge islands and wrecks rejoice.

Virtue waits in patience,
Hurts abate and sorrows cease.
Souls of mercy float, finding
Mirth extolled by prophet peace.

Cadmeian Dream

Cadmeian dream where do you hide,
  dream of founding conquerors?
Novel ideas glinting beside
  innovative conjurers;

Narrative man, marionette,
  dance a jig we haven't seen.
Reveal things we'll never forget
  when their forms in shadows lean.

Discovery bright magnetize
  kindred soldiers to a fate
Inspired, driven to strategize
  campaigns toward something great.

Where's the ancient magic now,
  once from caves of numinous
Mystique? What are we to allow
  prophecies so ruinous?

Almost everything is given,
  leading us, fascinated
To the hollow shells we live in:
  blank slates, deracinated.

Almost everything we're burning,
  and we know the fuel won't last.
We're capable of discerning 
  danger but speeding too fast.

What have we left now that we've thrown 
  it all in for knowledge? We
Toil to relearn what we've disowned 
  pursuing technology.

Technology is not what matures
  insights, compassion, or trust;
Rather it's a pipeline for tours 
  of infrastructural rust.

Culture is gone America,
  schizophrenia and ads:
Our tradition generica 
  of attention-seeking fads.

Recognition at any price;
  everything exists to sell
Cult-of-personality heists,
  hallmark of our living hell.

What's authentic and what is not,
  and more importantly—who?
This pre-apocalyptic spot:
  nothing revealed, all on view.

Systems and secrets, sabotage 
  lurking at the rainbow's end
Sculpt from the mists a drab mirage,
  and the powers play pretend.

Or are we the real pretenders,
  gaming life to build a sense
Of importance? We upenders
  who'd shake up our portents' fence?

Flattened, diluted, left to run
  aimlessly, as in a dream 
Whose conditions are cunningly spun 
  for a big business's scheme.

So what are we, and who am I,
  what makes of me a Cadmus?
Why should people rally to my
  ideas of joy and sadness?

Yet Cadmus did know who he was,
  let his nation come from fate;
Clearing my own self-concept's fuzz
  is enough to contemplate.

The Reason

Whip me
into shapes
of low, submissive 
apology;
               put your name
on each corner of the cudgel
you scour me with.

There's a reason—when it comes from you:
harsh reflections drawn from your own
dissatisfaction and insecurity,
the daunting vacuum of the future—
there's a reason it feels right
for me to take such heavy-
handed excoriation.
I deserve it.

When you hold peril above 
my head, I remember my mother
pleading, what could she do for me,
and my barbaric answer,
                                          kill me.

I look (admittedly with shame)
at the several scars up and down
my wrist and arm;
                                I recall
the frenzied self-inflicted batterings.

Life before you resurrected me,
I've told you, though it's impossible
to really know; but when your eyes
 widen with insanity,
  with mania,
   with sick rage,
it's a mirror to my history.

Not only do I deserve the castigation,
you deserve the patience I got.

I had wanted less and less,
 to be distilled into nearly nothing.
You want more and more,
 to overflow with endless bounty.
Neither of us excelled to such extents,
 but in self-abasement our tears are one.

Bash me with disdain
 for wanting nothing more,
  you have the right if I believe
   that you should humble your expectations.

What's more difficult,
to grow from nothing into something, or
to shrink from dreams to a single datum?
Hopefully somewhere
 in the middle,
  where we draw each other,
   is the right place for us.

Certainly it's more difficult
to be found in your circumstances,
nomadic, isolated, uprooted;
I can never fathom the horror 
of watching your mother deteriorate,
jaundiced and dessicated until
she finally passed away.
    Without Mom I would
      have self-destructed.

You're right
 when you tell me I don't know you.
We have our differences,
  but I want to give you
   the things I have that you never did.

Something I’m trying to hold onto

Always insisting 
 on the most extreme
  nothingness,

Bitter and afraid—
 not of being ignored,
  you've never been noticed—

But of having to wait
 in the incalculable queue,
  already dwindling and gray.

Unwilling to gamble
 living in vain (until when?)
  you want another nothing? Now?

Nothing is nothing,
 yet here you are:
  something I'm trying to hold onto.

Splashes of colored ink,
 papier-mâché fantabula,
  cryptic libido,

Note taken of the yellow-
 striped grasshopper
  who climbed over your shoe.

Afraid of inertia,
 quiet home days
  indistinguishable from graves.

But we have luck, not pine,
 we have four walls and more;
  we have time.

Though we're aging, yet to emerge,
 bottle up each vintage of art
  with experience and tenderness.

Each episode
 when I call you or you call me
  in excitement, look!

The cardinal in the backyard tree;
 the woodpecker
  rapping on the windowpane.

We are small,
 but we have small things
  that can sustain us.

Since we weren't born
 into great things,
  let us accumulate

These tiny, common
 miracles anyone 
  can have, yet these are ours

And ours alone;
 when you dream of blood,
  wake up beside me.

Problems of Experience

It's strange, I've always lived near water, but
I've never been on a wave-striding ship;
Never traveled on the char-belching train,
Nor to a metro ever descended.
I've flown twice, both times were quite unpleasant.
I did ride the bus once on a late night.

My own quandary of opportunity:
In some ways too much, others not enough.
Born into a lens both close and remote,
An existence both strange and typical,
A small life of idiosyncracies
Spinning on the fringe of a family,

Abiding in the shell of employment,
And scuttling among intimate sands
Which only a temporary few see.
Individuated yet standardized.
Delivered to concrete nurseries sat
On top of systems of gray tumuli.

The cloistered taste of a car ride to work,
The connectivity that bores straight through 
Hearts of peoples, a cavern of fogged glass
Hazing infinite personal corners.
A secret trend of water which becomes
Grinding dust piling in obscurity.

Everyone's. Intimate universals.
I don't think it's hell anymore, but he...
And it's only because of him I don't.
He needs an assurance that I can't give,
A worth assessment I'm unqualified
To draft. Appraisals all proffered in vain.

The art of life hides in single vignettes,
In cringe-inducing squeaks of affection
Only one other is allowed to hear;
Which circumstances set the scene for that:
The way his eyes touch me across the room,
Two dorks who somehow found each other's life.

He begs me, how will I recreate him
When he succumbs at last to hopelessness;
How can I fashion his desire's likeness,
How characterize his need for purpose,
His sketching hands working wood waywardly,
His eye that shutters on rainbow fabrics;

I hope someday he comes around, accepts 
Life as we could be sharing it right now.
He could unfold into so many sparks.
Rather than smoldering rage from the past,
He can rekindle brilliant burning tears
Dropped from a point-of-view only he knows.

Our problem lies in our experience.
What secret language is ours to convey
Nebulous commonalities distilled,
The nighttime jokes incomprehensible,
But in our bed makes laughter reign supreme.
Bike helmet with inverted cyclist crest.

If everyone has something they could share,
Is the key not in how these looks are framed?
We thirst for novelty of perspective;
What's something only we'd know of?
Did you ever hear the one about the
Famous Satanist? He Thelema dick.