Guidance, October 3, 2018

When I hear the voices of those I love in my head, I always try to think “beneficent, » before any negativity has a chance to root. If a voice is hysterical or angry, or myopically focused, I could swear I'd never heard it. But then, my story would never change.  Think what you will, I talk to myself.  Always have.

I've learned that guidance always comes, most often in words i can only hope are mine.  Sometimes they're words from a book I read thirty years ago.  My alleged “forgetfulness” of specifics isn’t sufficient cause for a repeat of events.  I remember when I need to remember.

I believe that redelivery - seeing alternative perspectives of the same material - captures the collective imagination, enough to reach a tipping point that will cause the moral arc of the universe to bend evermore toward our certain justice. Higher Powers, rather than any of us, figure that out, right? Do they meet?

 
If there’s only one HP, then get rid of the cognitive dissonance, and live seamlessly. Peace and harmony should be universal, of the natural order, a role model for the rest of us.

Though my plea would be for peace among the higher powers and among us, that result is not my business. They are OUR business. This doesn’t mean I must always live in some would-be neutral zone from which I am repeatedly ripped. I have a feeling something is afoot. (Yes, yes it is, with socks.) 

If people could hear my thoughts, how would I come across to them? What if I had negative thoughts about someone, as we all do? Would I want to change my thinking, or would I just have to assume that the listener would not take my comment personally? I've been told not to take anything personally. Doesn't that just give cover to the person making the statement? No, because what has been said reveals more about them than about me.

Or maybe the truth bubbles up, and stands on its own. I hope I’d be big enough to try to reach for common ground, but without surrendering my individual identity. What standard would I use? I’ve seen enough of me in everything around me to know I’m always worth saving. I went for most of my years not knowing all of me was there, waiting to be found.

I’m so grateful for every experience and connection. I started to pay attention, to look for me, and at some point, I was found, or rather, found myself. I thought about the many details in my lived experience, whether sober or high, as I uncovered or tried to uncover each individually. Focus is important, but I did better when doing two or more things at once. Maybe I’ve been dickmatized! (I’m now pro-dickmatization.)

None of my ramblings were wrong or insane. I am being me, and that’s the only person I can be. Future husband: Please be yourself, no matter the number of loved ones who become part of you along the way. 

Avoid the weeds, stay out of the ditches. For me, groupthink is a ditch. But group discussion can be a road, so long as I believe that, in the end, the journey will have mattered more than the destination.

I don’t underestimate other people, and hope they would never underestimate me.

x

The Spillover, July 15, 2016

The spillover, the untenable surfeit of the mundane and the mediocre,
Fuels change, welcomed
Where joy isn't, in the mundane mediocre.
Though Joy did not look to itself, for itself,
Until it was shown the way.

We are ruled, governed, and controlled every day.
Obey! We command ourselves.
Personal rebellion moves, pen brandished as a sword,
"Fuck you!" initiates the coup d'état conjured for public failure,
Which is consumed.
"This is how it is; don't ask why."

But my conversations with God require questions
As do mine with nature, and with you.
Why on earth?
Must it stay this way?
What the fuck are you thinking, Goo (Good Omnipotent Omniscience)?
I've heard you like a joke, so why are you not called Goo?
That's outside the narrative, beyond the pale, not the point.
STFU.

It was written.
It IS written.
Consider that use of the present tense, and wonder why we're stuck.

My personal satisfaction is to be enjoyed privately, else enjoy none at all.
Evolved, we say. Tamed, I say.
Curiosity, cursed into silent acceptance is not a blessing.
Not a blessing, but an agenda.

My mind nags that this evolution is fake, just another story.
There will be no coup d’état today, nor tomorrow, nor the next.
Truth is not favored in personal uprisings and
Truth is quashed when threatening.

Vaccine efficacy, the existence of climate-change, wildlife preservation,
Spending for education, healthcare, flowers for your heart's love,
Tolerance, sharing, caring
All disputed, neglected, or ignored. Why?
Truth has become a common word, the concept malleable, dishonored.
Why?

Facts, on which truths depend, are whatever we say they are.
Because we said so, and we are wrong for having said it.
Retell the story of the fact:
A fact is not simply whatever we say it is, but
Always testable, proveable, discernable, or decipherable.

Rebellion, now a check on my bucket-list!
A second rite of passage, a second sexual awakening
Not yet consummated.
Slow down! Words slung toward a moving 52.
Hurry up! Words slung to instill fear in a man recently neverlacking.

The tempo of life changes when the last breath is closer than the first.
Slow enough to follow the guide on a sacred path,
Unknown, unchosen, yet
Carefree, not careless,
Careful to show that I do know now what I wish I had known then,
Proving knowledge into fact.
Why else bother growing older?

======
I refuse your story, no matter how artfully woven the tale,
No matter the picture painted
(As though I would not notice).
I believe every word, and why not? You do.
Yet, like times before,
I quitclaim the story as not my own.
Your mind is not blind, I will say until true,
See it, and save a thousand words.

Insanely joyful scoops of life await
In my story,
Spilling over, spreading, uncontained,
Sticky traction, sugary gravity.
This story, not a trap,
Contaminating frowns and punishments and stupid mistakes and things declared done midway,

Melancholia darkens, dents, my skin my mind my heart!
Spillover pools for the soaking,
Wretched sameness, water dehydrated making weary bones, wrinkled skin ... Memories that once seemed better than now.
The pool of melancholy; useless memories, useless weight
Best disappeared, bottomed-out.

Steer clear of melancholy that runs deep
Into the world, at the end of same-same days
When mundane and mediocre spill over,
Fueling change,
Having failed to find joy.
How would Joy know to look to itself, for itself,
Unless shown the way?

Become as tall as me, and ride this ride
Whatever your height, enough trips around the sun, and you'll see -
Untenable, the surfeit of the mundane, the mediocre.
It is a spillover meant to fuel change -
A renewable joy blind minds cannot see,
But many blind men never miss,
Because the excess, it ran free.

The Road to Insanity, February 8, 2016

Citing payoff to justify foolishness is always wrong.
Repeating foolishness to increase returns, that cray-cray is wrong!
Plus, this shit won’t benefit anyone, not even me, so clearly wrong.
I have faith that it’ll work out. Is that so wrong?
O these foolish thoughts! Erased.

Payoff always follows from acting the fool; that alone makes me right.
Repeating foolishness could mean handsome returns, so risk makes me right!
Plus, if “this shit” helps only me, it’s still enough to be right.
Having faith all will work out. Can’t we agree that’s right?
O these are foolish thoughts, but could they still be right?
To know that one person listened,

Saved me.

This is bullshit, always wrong.

The first arrogance of man was to experience right, then to name wrong,

We bound our innermost selves to good; disappearing by half our humanity,

Words misunderstood.

So subjective as to be useless?
That sounds right, but feels wrong.
Maybe, somewhere between intellect and heart
Lies the answer about right, about wrong.

I’ll hold my breath and push send, all red-faced,

My truth laid bare, yet ....

Would they walk in my shoes, gladly? Would they accept truth from me? From him?

Or would they tailor the message, put me in a corner, find him bruised but alive,

The angry one silenced by genius from above, a hand-off from below.

Verses Standing Alone, May 12, 2015

Since childhood, he dreamed of being a hero

Modeling for adults the art of how to play:

Prey conquers predator, beauty marries beast,

Humility deflates ego, creativity replaces war, imagination erases dogma.

Games about mind over matter,

Love always defeating fear.

A warrior against all villains, his dream hero became real.

I often read poems

Meant for others

Because they are the words I need

Whispered to my heart.

What would be left to think about

Should my present thinking be

Put off til later?

O poet! You say confess feelings now, else

forfeit, no more second chances

I say come down from the cloud,

Believe in what you write,

Share feelings, after words

Love not in silence.

Because men do all the work and

God gets all the credit,

Let's call the one who accepts the credit

But is said to do no work, a wise guy.

Why get to the edge

But not look over?

I would then just stand, closeted,

Wishing you would move,

But you didn't, you didn't see at all.

How did you become confident?

By telling myself, "I am confident."

When did you become confident?

That very minute, by uttering the words.

"You had to spend some time there."

That generous split-second adlib

Immediately buried two years in a ditch,

By doing the next right thing

  

"You had to spend some time there."

That generous split-second adlib

Yanked me whole from the cunning mud

That had failed to suffocate.

"You had to spend some time there."

That generous split-second adlib

Asserted itself as truth

Born of confidence

I stare at the whitelight screen

Like a trained dog, who would never do the same.

My bloodshot eyes make the room look Jesus red -

or was it blue and green? -

The TV light is just there to fuck with me.

*(Two days later, I decide to make it one day to the Hunky Jesus contest in Delores Park, SF.)

Pretending to be employed

By Imaginary Company, Inc.

Reminds me of the need to cultivate forgiveness

For my pretend life.
Don't you have one too?

We do not throw anyone under the bus. Ever.

Yes, I'm from Vast Enterprises, Inc., South Campus.

Ghosts, April 19, 2015 (Inspired by an anonymous friend)

Nothing is ever truly gone.

Bodies that cruised Backrooms, or kissed lovers,

Shift, become

Invisible in death rebirthed,

Lazarus revealed to

Believers already fitted for straightjackets.

Curious visions these see-throughs -

Insubstantials watching, staring,

Commanding attention, turning from my public display,

Piercing darkness with laser-light confidence, yet denied substance.

Smoky words and letters, exhaled crystal gave shelter, 

Searchers escaped asylum, unhooded and unrestrained,

A brotherhood, moved to lower traffic areas,

Those fuck machines - Anything but porn! -

Gave humanity something wonderful - themselves, raw, exposed

Is this the realm of hungry ghosts, that mind-place

Populated by heads afloat and wasted bodies of smoke,

Dressed in styles from the ages, searching for

The way out? 

No Adkins, no Paleo, no warm-buttered-biscuit repast, only this

Ghostly, substantial nothingness,

Save memory [that]

Survives by harvesting our essence - words, sacred thoughts not ITs to disclose,

From the living, from themselves  :

"no limits here," carpe diem inspiration, wedding bliss, amputations, the

What-We-Felt-and-Did remains of having been who we were.

Wrongdoing and righteousness, discarded, freed Golum-ghosts

Possessed of Precious, crossing over.

Burning, bright-hot energy recycles into

Matter, the totality of which is neither created nor destroyed

Without any presorting into blue bins.

(Time out:  So basically we were living on history's leftovers -

excrement of the past, oil from the Gulf, fields of tulips,

Sherman, Lincoln, all of it repurposed.

Wake up! Your food has already been chewed!

But plowboys plow as they must, or as they've been convinced they must.

They do not have to do anything, nothing at all.

It's a frenetic mixing, spicing, stirring, and reheating of life's crusty stuffing, a

Self-imposed false burden that demands “New and Improved.”

But the wheel is already perfect!

A simpler communion for me!  Neither sipped nor nibbled, but

Shared freely at a table where life and death meet in the

Perfect wisdom that One cannot Be without the other.

This we think we know.

Do ghosts monitor our world stage, amused by

Fresh lives printed on recycled paper and

Cat boxes filled with clean litter, bowls wet with food,

Water to drink?

Poor creatures, earthboundlings,

Unaware that nothing really matters, that

Ghosts intervene, saving lives and love not from the taste of the

Forbidden fruit of knowledge, but from the

Gluttony of too much, too soon.

"No need to miss life's childhood, this human being-ness."

Piles of importance and self-importance, 

Bodies bloated, happier left to fuck and have a good time,

Level playing fields, kiss eyelids and noses -

Life-stuff for the dearly departed, who

Know all must be consumed and spit back into what is, for

Second helpings and chances.

Unimportance constantly renews, never lets anyone

Starve in the realm of hungry ghosts.

Come to my bed at night and look so damn hard at me but never

Say a word, yet speak as though I listen.

Pleasure rises under the gaze of Spirits,

Stares locked in battle lust, tongues in the mouths of the

Transitioned, here to there.

Which is alive, which dead?

Both.

None stay, all drift, fade

Evanescent like human lives, all

Ghosts under assumed names.

Transformers, December 29, 2014

Would you dare tell a butterfly that it should not be so many different things?

Slime-covered larva, big rig loaded with heart-shaped wings

Comically large for long-distance exploration

Insect-worms, half-breeds, biting and swallowing homespun prisons

(Instead of Martha Stewart blouses)

Convicted of being what they were, sentenced to gnawing rebirth

Would you stare at the larva?

Once, then walk; nature will hide it

In transformation

The debutante's coming out prize:

Glorious, life-saving color in flight

That ruefully diverts eyes

From any lurking ugliness

Would you shed protective skin to find the way home?

Emerging chrysalis, golden sheath, shed

Leaving migratory wings

Two delicate membranes, each in need of the other

Flight, vulnerability's reward
Vulnerability, gravity’s ransom

The fluttering kaleidoscope air-dances home

Knowing that nature does the same thing, over and over

Never labeled insane

When we choose to see beauty instead of a beast

Be Yourself, November 25, 2014

1. Be yourself.

2. No, the other one.

1. Be yourself.

2. We'll tell you who that is.

1. Be yourself.

2. Until we say stop.

1. Be yourself.

2. No such thing.

1. Be yourself.

2. Seriously?  You chose that?

1. Be yourself.

2. No variations allowed.

1. Be yourself.

2. By majority vote, we have eliminated your self.

1. Be yourself.

2. Fuck that shit.

1. Be yourself.

2. And we better not be able to tell you apart.

1. Be yourself.

2. But only if you have more to offer than that.

1. Be yourself.

2. The good self, unless the bad self is really the good self, or they're both the same, or not.

1. Be yourself.

2. So long as it pleases the greatest number.

1. Be yourself.

2. You're an easy target ... for our love, mostly.

1. Be yourself.

1. Be yourself.

There is no two, really. Though, the compassionate - and those with a willingness to hear their words without any bullheaded delays - are quite capable of suggesting a great number of improvements to the you, or to the me, that is. That's cool. Thanks!