#0145 - Fool's Errand

"It's a fool's errand."
But a fool's errand
was never so sincere.

Climb that gargantuan mountain
with naught but the clothes
on your back.
Cross those vast plains
without a pause.
Swim along the turbulent river,
for it may lead
to the Spring of Eden.

By considering your steps boundless,
discover where a flourishing mind can lead
when guided by wandering feet
and unnamed limits.

#0144 - An Imagined Forest

The crowd of trees
and shrubbery
and bushes
uproots itself
and dances
to a soundless groove.

The splendorous landscape,
the immersive soundscape:
they're already engaging.
But when one walks along the forest path
with a healthy dose of
imagination,
life can feel more alive
than ever before.

Footsteps echo:
the crunch of dirt
that might lead to a fairy's grove.
Riverwater
trickles down rocks and logs
and tickles the eardrums
like the tapping fingers of a
playful drummer.

The mind's eye
can invigorate the simple scene
with a routine practice
of perfect perception
and ambitious imagination.

#0143 - Six Strings

Vibrations rebound off the walls:
richochet.
This makeshift echo chamber
—cheap carpet,
stained mattress,
leaky faucets—
holds a boundless symphony.
The six strings
are seduced to synthesize
a universe of sound.

Silent passersbiy
with averted gazes
when he sits on the edge of the sidewalk:
a silent expectation
to divert attention.
But an extraordinary soundscape
radiates from this solitary soul
when he brings the strings
out to the streets.

#0142 - Everything is...

Everything
is as elementary
as you elect to make it.

Everything
is as deep
as you decide to dive.

#0141 - A New "Order"

This cement, these bricks:
they seem odd to me.
They are the atoms of stones
and sand
and sediment,
cleft apart
and glued together in patchwork.
They represent a rough approximation
of the resplendent order
of the natural world.

Machines and mechanistic manipulations,
though uniquely utilitarian,
forget the aesthetic efficiency
of a scheme
that has permeated
the sum of sensation
for centuries upon centuries.

...Da Vinci
studied flight
by drawing birds.

#0140 - Opened

The bellicose beast within
was shattered apart by the beauty of existence.

An immensity of experience arose
and crashed upon animosity
like a diluvian flood.

#0138 - Reinvigorating a Dimming Memory

It's been too long since I've written here,
or, for that matter, anywhere.

Here's a toast to the forgetfulness inherent to my humanity:
that which leads me to forget just how beautiful free-flowing words are.
And here's a "thank you" to music:
the enlightening beats and chords and walls of sound
that remind me why I picked up my six strings in the first place.
And an offed hat to those people that have bothered to say
"that's incredible" or even just "wow,"
for they remind me that my story and existence is not just for me,
but for everyone else as well.

As immersive as this life can be,
what makes it divine and beautiful is not that it's fun,
but that nothing you do is in a vaccuum.

Pursue your limitlessly expressive words,
and your infinitely explorative notes,
and your traveled, choreographed footsteps,
and your inimitably powerful eyes,
and your endlessly vibrant colors,
and your uniquely enlightening perspectives,
and your secretly immersive euphorias,
and your aesthetically magnificent designs,
and your perfectly precise constructs.

These are the multifarious and intimate hues
which color the simple base and outline of your live.

...Your mind, heart, body, and soul all seek exploration.
Do not feed them with routine or mundanity.

#0137 - "...a sinful aesthetic..."

Cerberus suggests a sinful aesthetic:
salacious suggestions
amid incinerative incitations,
screaming "Anarchy!" in shallow-minded tones.

Oh, the frothing fiends that our forefathers feared:
they've emerged from the shadows
and dropped their masks
and now eagerly rush
towards devious tasks.

Bullets let fly:
      more small, bloodied hands
      lay still on the pavement.
Grand masses of currency
      fuel isolation
      and fuel the insurgency.
And as growing pains are injected
into our weakening lifeblood,
we take on more willingly
our addiction to anger:
an anarchic scream to drown out
      the pained scream.

All tortures end
      in acquittal
      or death.
And the decision draws near
      as to which end we'll get.

#0136 - Месте

Это не Россия.
Здесь не русские горола.
Здесь нет русских домов.
Здесь не русские люди.

Однако,
Если ты не думаеш
Я русский шпион,
Это может быт мое место:

Как Россия,
Как Америка…

#0135 - Return

Ah, the return!

For, though those neverending adventures,
meandering or maestro'ed,
bring into focus
a far-fetched reality
of unreal (or too real) proportions,

it is this place of seven-year-old covers
and unchanging hallways
that draws us back into historical routines
and coveted familiarities.

Here,
where the baggages lay in the closet,
and where the distant memories gather
from ganders and passings
to pleasurely pastimes
and eternal empathies.

#0134 - Day 1

A toast to the New Year!

Herald a new stretch of time:
unwritten words wait upon wisping nibs,
and as the gym memberships are dished out
(like Halloween candy)
the far-off future (background)
flies into focus, now foreground.
Some fear,
some fly.

This opportunity feeds off of the
audacities and intricacies of before:
those memories that are now
antiquity, but which now
pave the path to posterity.

#0133 - Violence

Sometimes,
all you need is a little violence
to get through the day.

But fire your shots into the void,

for neither the light
nor the darkness
will appreciate an assault.

#0132 - Keyboards and Ink

You are as a keyboard is to ink on paper.

Tactile
—easy to handle—
and predictable.

Words run off of you
like the flow of displaced water:
overflowing cup.
And so many pages
and stories
and memories
and images
have been written off of you.

But you lack that uniquity
and that run-your-fingers-along-tangible-words quality.
You stare back from a harsh screen,
while ink
—dimly framed by candlelight—
does not settle,
but speaks.

#0129 - Wires

Today,
the telephone wires connect us.

Across the road
sit obelisks of cement,
casting shadows and casting lines:
Those cables travel across
a phantasmagoria of forests
and fields
and factories.

Beneath the earth
—amidst the burrows of
little-seen critters—
they extend their tendrils,
traveling onwards.
Across the floor
of a trillion tons of tepid water
—the ocean offers no obstacle—
electricity has flown
for over fifty years.

They sprint across a continent
to reach where you now sit.
And when you look at that bit of cable
—suspended seemingly insignificantly—
I look at the same bit of cable
right here.

#0128 - Early Mornings

Before the alarm even hits,
my mind jolts me awake.

Sigh,
as I recognize that it's still closer to last night
than tomorrow morning...
(today morning?)

Ah, the familiar fatigue and hunger...
maybe it will leave sooner rather than later.

Or,
maybe,
this moment in the dark-skies cool-fog oblivion
will last for longer than I'd like.

#0127 - Birds and Bottles

J’ai observé une mode:

Écrivains ont les titres françaises
mais écrire ses poèmes en anglais.
C'est comme sa poésie
et rimes sont affichés.

Je présent mon contraste.

Maintenant: un poème
écrant en français
(mais le titre? anglais)
concernant ces sujets:
les oiseaux et bouteilles.

Le oiseau:
liberté.
Il est la insigne
de sa facilité.
Un grand chiffre de personnes
—leur regard vers le ciel—
souhaitent pour les ailes...

Parfois,
les bouteilles
peuvent lever.

Mais beaucoup des personnes
sont noyé en ses bouteilles;
ils sont seuls,
sans les ailes.
Ses breuvages, dur comme la pierre,
les confiner sur la terre.

#0125 - We will dance

through fires,
and frostbite;
‘neath sunlight
and starlight.

We will leave footsteps
—pellucid relics
of spirits lifted high
and worries hung to dry.

There’ll be paths where we’ve been:
Waltzes in the frost of snow,
Polka ‘pon the coals of fire,
Charleston in the sands of time.

The world will tell
a simple tale:
Entranced,
we danced.

And everyone will wonder
how, in darkness immured,
we laughed in the night
as we kept our sights centred
on the light of our gaze
and our endless embrace.

#0124 - Drawing Board

{Prompt: "Back to the Drawing Board," from Poetry Riot! on Tumblr}

“Back to the drawing board?”

No: the drawing never stopped,
and the board is in my back pock-
-et. Don’t imply that I fell into
this with a printed
plan and a presumption of surety.
I’d like to think I’m a step closer, surely,
or have at least kept from falling be-
-hind,

          but don’t assume of me
that even a color-coded spiderweb,
three layers deep, of connec-
-tions and free-associations
could allow me to ascertain
what the hell I can expect
from this, or any, aspect
                of spontaneity.

#0123 - "My bed without you"

A little too cold,
a little too small,
a little too quiet,
a little too empty.

No one to steal the covers,
No one to steal the pillows,
No one to approach,
No one to accompany.

Nothing but inanimate covers
laying like forgotten rags.
Nothing but inanimate cushions—
fabric instead of skin.

That's my bed without you.

But I'll think of your company
and maybe you'll think of mine:
I'll make do for the night,
'til we're again side by side.

#0122 - The Non-Pains of Solitude

Solitude?
Sure.
But not sullen isolation.

Moments between moments,
when the mind is free to wander,
when I divine to take a gander
at this little pause in time,

here I think
of long-past memories
and evolving realities
and revolving thoughts:
breathing and living
and observed from each corner.

Should I be lonely?
separated from 7.5 billion people
by only a hair’s width in the span of the universe
and spew out appeals
to other lonely hearts reveling in lyric and verse?
Should I be wary?
gaze at ubiquitous verdure
as a diaphanous armour
against the world of unknown
to which I’ve been born?
Apoplectic?
at hate and injustice
when the reality is:
in the world there’s more peace
than there ever has been?

As the pessimistic news rolls through the television,
I remind myself of one important omission:
that for every act of violence or hate in the world,
a million happy occasions have also occurred.

As I hear of pain and sadness and loneliness
I remind myself that these disconsolate voices
arise only because they’re no longer obstructed
by labour, survival, and the novelty of action.

Lift your spirits my friends, and don’t be afraid
of a world seemingly filled with multifarious pain.
What you feel is not strange: many others have felt it.
You just have the freedom and time to think and evolve it
and the freedom and time to create change and effect it.