Tag: growth

Reflections on how I got here

"Beware this reckoning,"
Glares a spectral pair of eyes.
Blood quickens in frozen veins,
Stricken as though paralyzed.

Leering back from inside 
The mirror, a crack which grows
The distance facts drift at one's
Insistence; then slackens, slows.

And crawling over shards,
Wounds are all to show for wants
Slicing black weals of static
Lack of any real response.

The daunting pain of silence
Spawning deranged interviews—
A prison with no orders,
Visions thrown to trinkets' truths.

Worst is when it's within 
The first sentence of doom speaks.
Overpowered by black bile,
Loathing and foul wrath it wreaks.

The dreadful sensation
In the head made manifest:
Seizing trips that mark the sick,
Squeezing grip of panic's press.

Heaviness dimly drapes
Every limb, as though submerged 
In water's lips; every move
Murmurs, stripped like a soul scourged.

Beneath this awful weight,
Seething, clawing to maintain;
While fearful of this deep hole,
Here the soul can greatly gain.

It's a cage, and no skill
Engaged will, it confounded
Me; but blessed with room to pace,
They dressed patience around me.

Basically life support
Is the grace the dice produced
To hand me a family
Withstanding my sorrow's sluice.

To think they looked at hell
Without blinking, it took more;
More than courage, more than faith,
The surge of strength love looks for.

Looming death, fate diseased;
Assuming the weight of both,
How they faced it despite dread.
They allowed my glacial growth.

They paid for my prices 
As I laid, a dying mind,
Withered body torched in hate—
Delivered by a fortune's find.

They believed in a time
When even I am able,
Condoning this path to shed
Loneliness's black label.

It was pure chance to meet 
Him, to endure and advance
Past privation and piss-drunk
Starvation's soul sunken stance.

My family props the sky
Up while hammers drop on nails;
And my head has turned up for him,
Ready to earn grace's grails.

Am I a wretch reborn
By a lucky catch? Of course;
Without either my life's in
Doubt, but strife still stalks its source.

His presence builds me up
A pleasant hill to defend,
But misaligned spheres can soon
Find my spirit brought to bend.

We've grown this better sense,
Sown medicines, worked what found
Subsistence, a miracle
System sheer as sculpted sound.

Our one-room made of smoke,
Blunt and bespoke, fleeting home;
In a flash what saves me could
Crash like waves of frothing foam.

I cannot guard, protect,
By forethought or by power,
Against illness, accident,
Killing events' furled flower.

There's much I can't make kneel,
A touch could steal all I care
About. My dear, meekly tread
And scout ahead. Best beware!

You

You may not think highly 
Of your lot, but blink away
The tears of now. Look ahead,
Peer into how struggle strays.

Turn forward to a new
Force that can burn through a phase,
Work and time to find you've found
The circle you'd roundly raise.

Open your mind, even 
to slopes and blind, snaking slants.
Emphatic mood resonance:
The attitude makes the man.

There are some, very few,
Who are coming. Share your hand
Fearlessly and even-willed;
They'll appear, you'll build the band.

Someday a collective
Will plumb technics you design.
You shall aid their creation,
Trade views from your mended mind.

So for now, don't dismay;
Don't throw down your efforts through
This blue weave of depression.
I do believe. Yes, that's you.

Fragments

Ask stupid questions,
How can you request
A serious inquest 
For a jester's bequest?

***

Prepare for losses,
Expectation lessens;
Then make actions listen
To life's painful lessons.

***

Staring at demise 
Can tighten a dream's seams.
Resilience made demure,
Repentance hope redeems.

Confucian Cup

The Master said: “A cup not a cup: A cup indeed! A cup indeed!”
-Confucius, Analects VI.24

The best thing I could ever be
Is a cup.
                I wish to be filled
With all that destiny will pour;
I wish to hold it all, and yet
Be nothing more than the vessel,
Be able to pour it all out,
Be capable of emptiness,
Yet still the same exact vessel.

Let me fill up with the ideas
And dreams of contemporaries,
Finding methods to mold their shapes,
To hold them each without spilling;
Let them fulfill triumphs with me,
And lift victory to their lips
With me as humble implement, 
One of many who may have helped.

Let me bear the mixtures of fate,
The windfalls and catastrophes,
The tragedies and elations,
Moments of otiose ennui,
Humdrum days into humdrum weeks;
The little words that shouldn't mean
More than laughter and love of life,
A cup with the integrity 
To keep all that held together
Until the time to pour it out.

A cup is perfectly empty:
It can be filled, it can be drained.
It can hold and can toss away.
Fill it, empty it, wash it out;
It's still a cup that's good for use.
When there's nothing at all inside,
Its potential is at its peak.
What a brilliant skill of being,
Bearing it all without a split
Sundering its function and form.

Whether tippling, whether toppling,
Full of nectar or of poison,
A good cup will hold either.
Allow me a way to contain
The good, the bad, and the water,
Our everyday necessity.

I want to be the cup and not
The contents; I want to accept
That and embrace that in my way
As fluid occupies volume.
I want to be the cup, and when
The time is right I can let go
Of anything and everything.
If I am spilled I can refill;
In the end it's not a big deal.
No cup would stress over these things.

All we know’s falling

All we know's falling
Into troubled feeling,
Every minute filling
Conquest's dreams with kneeling.

When one feels alone,
Two depressions align:
One, the separate ailing;
Two, the need for a sign.

Belief is crucial
In the face of crushing
Monotony, cruising
Along with bleak rushing;

And if you believe
In the soul that belies
The sordid facts below,
You can let lives be lives.

About Us

Struggle's wage daily
Denigrates so wholly,
One slogs away dully 
For sustenance solely.

But what is lifestyle
If inertly cold steel;
Rather be a leaf: still,
Humbly held, yet genteel.

How many millions
Of years flown like gallons
Through waterfalls, hellions'
Unstoppable talons!

Lives beyond number,
Each unique in timbre,
Awake as an ember
Slumbering in amber.

About C

A pain to linger
In the darkness longer,
Yet possessed by languor
Which proves itself stronger.

Longing grown severe,
Desperate for some favor,
Praying to the savior
That things not get graver.

We want to go home,
A dream that could becalm.
Teach this one the anthem
To be a true bonhomme.