Bang

I am the trigger, you knew it
before the solid springs tightened
and the first piece of icy metal was chambered.

and we held on in these black hole streets,
running, metal clanging, legs springing forth
from the surface, manifesting in a sprint
through the heart of dirt, grime, decay, concrete machinations
this is downtown, do not ever forget.
We are sharks here, the moment you stop,
the moment you lose your spring, your step
becomes slow quicksand pulling and taking momentum.
It is not fatigue, the city is tasting you,
ready to swallow you whole. And now, tense,
rigid, the hammer being pulled back, cocked,
frigid springs tightening, ready for the first round,
I am the trigger, you knew it before it all began.

Rainy Eyes

Tonight your eyebrows are dark and furrowed
Clouds, the filling smell of humidity and wet earth came
On the eve of the evening showers, sliding
Down cheeks and quickly wiped away
Just trying to endure the heart of the storm,
Or maybe the other way around.
There is no umbrella, no protection this time
Only the emotional wind tossing you,
Like it cannot decide where you should go,
And the rain slowly hiding the tears
Falling and forgotten amongst the sorrow
Of the city who never sleeps.

New Poem on delirium, and an old rant on the nature of beauty

On the edge of quicksand or quicksilver,
we stop for a moment, to look within at the
nature of causality and other merry nonsense.
We say and we wander without purpose in sleep
and awake, or maybe on the edge
of the fire that burns before it was lit,
of things we convince ourselves are real.
And become real, as we are a form of reality
I think,
therefore I am more certain.
Yet the curtain is crashing, form is forcing itself back in,
on the edge of the morning light.

I wanted to publish this rant on here so it would not only be on facebook. I wrote this 2 years ago I believe.


The true nature of beauty
Some say that beauty is another form of truth, yet I would argue that beauty, by their implied definition, is the exact opposite, it is deception. In fact the only truthful works of art about humans, whether photography, literature, sculpture, etc, are ugly, for that is the heart of man, there is no beauty in mans dark and primal “Heart of Darkness” rather all perceived beauty merely masks the turmoil and imperfection of humankind.

True beauty is raw perfection, which of course is unattainable by humans, and therefore is distinctly inhuman. Therefore any beauty seen within humans, such as true empathy, and self-sacrificing love and the form that is the human body, is not human at all, it is divine.

Yet how can I find beauty to be in anything that is imperfect? That is ugly or crude? That is primal or dark? Because it is truthful, not truth, but truthful about itself. It is honest and unpretentious which is what I would prefer rather than the deceit of what men call beauty, which is selfish and vain. I can find beauty in honesty, whether or not it is perfect. Maybe that is what I have been searching for in my friends and others, I find those who are honest (or I believe are honest) about their shortcomings, and I stay away from those people who seem too good to be true (that is why I dislike david beckham). This is one trait I have to have in my spouse, an unpretentious, raw, honest ugliness. Not that they have to be physically or emotionally or mentally ugly, but rather they have to be human, not raised on any pedestal. I would like them to be slightly beautiful (in the most perfect sense of the word). But I must know that they are human (I know there are no aliens among us, I am just trying to exclude robots, :P )

Meekness

"Souls get trapped,
from time to time, in
fires" His face characatured by light thrown
across his wrinkled, bark-like skin;
Hands clasped for dramatic effect.
Standing there in the midst of the wood:
a leather scarecrow. "And you know how they are caught?"
we shook our cantaloupe heads vigorously.
His weathered, red-coal eyes smiled with mischief
"They go to roam the earth, before returning
from whence we came, and they are so attracted by the heat,
they are mesmerized, and caught in the white flame.
And when that mystical thing happens, the fire
ROARS" He threw some magical dust into the lava's palm,
And it rose up two stories tall, as tall as the pines,
pillar of flame, pillar of burning memories
White hot, and silent.

And now when you stand by the fire,
I wonder, what was burning?
Was it achievements? Was it pride?
Memories? Hope? I do not really know,
but I want to believe that it was love,
I want to believe that this humble, noiseless, ivory inferno
could only have been caused by something,
that burns in so many, for so short,
and burns in so few, for so long.

As Wise as Serpents, as Harmless as Doves

I know that not many people read this, maybe one or two, but I am still nervous whenever I post something. I feel this way even though this is supposed to be just for me creating whatever I can.

You can scroll down to the bottom to get a one-sentence summary, though you will miss some backstory.

One thing I want to share, that I have alluded to in my poems and my rants about Omni-benevolence etc., is my struggle with God. As you know, I have grown up in the church and going to Christian schools. I have always been a skeptical person, from the time I was very little until today. I needed reason, logic, to be on my side, I must have a reconcilable universe. I am usually not one of those people who could hold two opposing beliefs simultaneously and not question either of them.

I tried to shun anything that would lead me astray, I stayed away from girls from elementary school and even through high school because "no good could come of it" according to my parents and coaches, the idea of drinking was anathema until sophomore year of college, and drinking itself avoided until I was 21. I still refuse to do drugs or smoke, just on principle. My whole way of thinking is centered around my upbringing, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is still one of the things I live by.

But I have been really struggling with the idea that God exists. Every time I wonder that though, I strongly feel that there must be more than this material world, but then the skeptic in me yells at me saying "that is foolish, you cannot prove there is a god, it is a delusion." And I yell back that I know I cannot prove it, but I feel it must be so. I point to the beauty in the world, the wonder of our mind and photosynthesis, and he promptly explains the mechanisms behind it. Almost every time there is something inexplicable and "magical" that I can say "see God is responsible for that," soon after a reply with scientific documentation comes and shows me the exact mechanism and how it was put into place. There are still some things out there that have defied explanation, the origin of everything is one. That is always comforting as the big bang does not always make sense.

And I think about how I have been blessed with so much, a family, parents who love me, peace, food, I want for nothing. Is it because I am so good? no, is it because my family prayed? Maybe, but there are thousands of people praying to the same God in South Sudan right now, waiting to die from starvation. Why am I given so much? What is the purpose of this? Am I just to be thankful that I am not them? I can pray for them, I can send some aid, but it feels like throwing sand into the ocean. I really do not have an answer. He must have a purpose for all this but sometimes I don't see it.

I started just trying to understand things without assuming that God exists, or does not exist. I wanted to find Him without assuming His existence.

Really that led nowhere, I got a greater appreciation for the world maybe, but that is it. No proof was found either for or against His existence. I should have known this, He is not something that could be measured.

Being with my family had changed my mind. There are some things I will never understand (that is so hard for me to say), even though I want to understand everything, I will never understand Him, it is hard to accept but it is true. I still have those warring voices within me but I feel like I have some assurance that He is real, and really who He says He is, especially with the testimonies of those around me.

But believing something is not enough, if you truly believe that someone is going to suffer in Hell for all eternity for not believing in Jesus, then you should act on it. This is one place I get stuck, I am timid when it comes to asserting myself. Usually I do not try to convince people to believe how I believe. I listen to what they believe, and if they ask what I believe, I tell them. Is this enough? How should I speak and live? Some pastors say things I do not agree with, is that a problem with me? or with them? That scares me sometimes. I need something I am sure of, besides the fact He exists. My time with philosophy deconstructed my beliefs, and now I need something to replace them, this is where I am at right now.

As I grow more mature, I begin to see the human element in churches, and it makes it tough to see God in all this. My main example of a Godly man, is fortunately my father. He is so similar to me it scares me. He went libertarian in college (I have those tendencies), he tends to think rationally and we debate often, we are both honest to the point it hurts, and we both try to be intellectually honest. Not deceive ourselves, but allow the truth to be seen as such, not allow our preconceptions to reject the truth. I want to rebuild my belief system into something strong, something I can hold with intellectual honesty, yet be focused on Him. I need wisdom.

TL:DR I've struggled with belief in God, but I do believe and I want to have a stronger, yet more accurate belief in Him, one that I can act on without fear.

When my parents married, my father was not a christian and my mother was one. When he proposed the only condition she had for marriage, was that he seek after God.

I want to seek after Him.

Only the Fastest

Impaled snails, gurgling and bubbling
cheerfully almost, where you left them
on the palm spikes along the path.
Terrifying monuments of your godlike power
over all things slimy and slow.
A ward against more phlegm-like intruders.

So when you talked so happily of divorce
corporate, separation of business assets
and liabilities: "Lets really screw em!"
I was a little terrified, and not a little glad
to be on the right side

But I really could not help myself
for feeling a little sad
when the latest snail was found skewered like a trophy
on your dinner plate, as we discussed your
latest hostile takeover.

The wannabe comedian

Part of my sense of humor is to be able to laugh at anything and anyone, including myself. Even in very difficult situations I just laugh at myself, others, or the incongruities that are happening around me.

I still remember in football when one of our teammates messed up, did something he should not have, and the coach punished everyone except him. We got down and did more pushups than I could count, while the coach had him watch. This was far more painful to him than punishing just him or even punishing everyone together; it served to shame him.

I still do not know why I did this, but I broke out in shrill laughter in the middle of the drill. Everyone looked at me like I was insane, but I think I was just relieving the pressure, the tense environment we were caught in, the ironic situation we were in: the person responsible was the only one unpunished.

And I still laugh, bitterly many times. I laughed when I felt my ambitions were falling apart. Whenever I do something I later regret, I look back and laugh at myself, not with satisfaction, nor with joy really, just kind of a hollow, tense "well crap" laugh, and I slowly and bitterly smile at the difficulty of the situation.

The things we do

Sometimes humans just need someone to love them, a voice of acceptance, unconditional and open. Sometimes we need this to move on from past scars that hurt from time to time.

I want to be that voice.

Accidental Disconnects

Trembling at terrible choices,
portents as unknowable as my mind,
heart attacks, insomnia, and paralyzation
bitter tastes in my mouth
and in my mind,
Cornered in false dilemmas
I choose with fear and trembling.

I want nothing more than to embrace
to love, to cry these solder tears
scarring copper hearts, trying to establish connection
to get the electricity flowing again,
but a connection needs two sides.



the beautiful lyrics translated: http://www.netwave.or.jp/~tierra/Gipsy_Kings/lyric/pediratu.html

Alternate Endings

Dreaming for the first time in so long
in color even, though black and white features are all I see
ink alive with motion, curving into strands
strokes of hair and eyelashes blinking
and nearing to kiss, but right there our pupils meet
black holes absorbing the view.
And suddenly a smile, rose watercolor
splashed across the perfect canvas.
Colliding into supernovae
I woke up, and finally remembered.

Consumption

"We thrive on corpses"
Spring declared as she consumed the dead landscape, claiming
the decay as nourishment, I too, felt her pulling me under
gripping my chest, filling my lungs, luring me to the earth
with lavender scents that sensuously mixed with rosemary and sage,
with freshly cut grass, and freshly cut skin.
And now she has me, locked in with roots and nostalgia,
with the bones of my grandfather and my own weakness.
Let me have my hibernation after all, your dead
keratin has nothing on the weeping willow's long locks,
and our bed has nothing on the warmth
of the winters sweet decay.

Still working on this one, it will be alot of work too.

sometimes I wish to become nothing, to just kind of painlessly dissolve with no memory of me left behind, if you have read my other poems you would realize that I face these desolate feelings every once in a while. I am not entirely sure where it comes from, take a look at my "some thoughts on suicide" post if you want to know more about my past with this. It is not a "pretty" side of me, but if you are reading this then you know that I do not try to be a "pretty" person, I try to be an honest person, even if the truth is ugly.

For all of you Tuning in this Fine Evening

Maybe if we just run in one direction long enough
we will end up liking it.

Maybe that seemingly important question:
"What do you want from life?"
is an exercise in futility, because
whether we want it or not
Life is already here.
See? There, you are doing it right now.

It is made up of these insignificant moments,
a summation if you will, modeled by your path,
the one you accidentally took this morning
because of the traffic, your dog, and the caffeine content
of your bloodstream. And we keep on running from our shoes
but we are our biggest influence.

Maybe this road, this beauty, this pain
is its own reward. Or maybe not...

Blood Rust

Black bones and blood,
the creaking dinosaurs bobbing their triangular heads
pulling, sucking, with terrible purpose
their own essence from the earth.

Herds of them for miles and miles
stretching to the skyline, a desert necropolis,
mired in place in a graveyard of dust, the killing
rust stopping joints, grinding until
there is nothing left.

Today you bought the blood, I did too.
It runs through our asphalt veins and arteries,
fueling our vampire soul, if only we could be weaned.

The poetry I write is influenced heavily by the music I am listening to at the time. Which is why I often post what I have been listening to. Here it is

Synergy

Flowing through paths of least resistance,
like electricity, or blood.
We met on oppositely charged plates
and discharged though veins and arteries
beyond my understanding. So
I measured the transfer functions
mapped out the schematic, went to work
on modification, duplication, amplification
in hopes of reincarnation.
That spark of life in the frankenstein vessel,
prep the springtime, organize like children
sick of school and longing for mischief and ice cream.
Hopefully it will make it out alive.

Accidental Art

You brought me my skeleton.
A driftwood representation of my soul
is the explanation I would give to the art society,
gnarled and contorted, hollow and brittle
it sat, being examined, scrutinized.

The jagged gashes represent missing pieces of myself
torn out during the storm of life,
they nod politely. The dark black staining:
my mistakes and/or shame. Yes yes, very nice.
The worm holes, now those I could not explain well,
but it is something about the surprising fragility
of humans and diaries and poems and relationships
and how they are shattered so easily.


one of my favorites

Reddit Poe-em

basically I just took my favorite poem (dream within a dream-by poe) and replaced them with reddit themes. Nothing special.

Take this Upvote upon thy karma!
And, in parting on my saga,
Thus much let me allow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my votes have been on a meme;
Yet if karma has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
On some bacon, or on none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a meme within a meme.

I stand amid the rage
Of an up-vote laden front page,
And I hold within my hand
Arrows to the golden land-
How few! yet how they roll
Through my fingers to the troll,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One for the pitiful slave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a meme within a meme?

Bigger Pictures are Cruel

The day you were born
your father came home sober
and your mother, drugged
on painkillers. And the snow
suffocated the landscape with its
purity. He peered into your
nebula eyes, while you lay in your reed-basket,
swept along the nile, terrified of tabula rasa.
How dare you be born at such an inconvenient time,
was his first thought.

His second was on the subject of existence:
Do we persist after we are forgot?
Can we exist if we are never known?
And you floated down the nile,
out into the vast delta,
into the constant change that is life.

Fetal Pigs

Dissection is an ugly sport,
was written on one of your bio papers.
But really, it seems so clean to me,
just a scalpel, latex, formaldehyde
and all systems are go. First you cut
the memories, time for picking the brain,
next is the assault on the senses and emotions
then the rose that blooms somewhere inside,
it happened too fast, cut, butchered, gone, then
the wrists, but in all the wrong ways.
Now you are propped up,
well preserved, yet falling into pieces.

sorry for the morbidity, I got carried away with the theme set in the first line, and once that happens I just run with it no matter how crazy it gets (actually I do censor myself to a certain degree). This poem makes me sad.

Vagabonds

Prodigal clouds wafted in this evening,
gilded and gaudy, they moved with the santa ana winds
that swell and ripple through our rocky valley,
bright travelers in a strange land, worn and tossed
they followed the inevitable path over mountains,
blessing deserts with rain, loitering over florescent cities,
and finally, drifting out to sea.
Lost into the coffin that devours us all-
Dissolved with the dusk.

Pondering Wheat and Tares

Drop me off here, on the ashen asphalt, I am feeling just fine,
propped up between two cars, just like uncle's cobwebbed wooden crucifix,
benignly watching over the dusty floor of
somewhere I forgot to remember, to forget about
because I'm feeling just fine and this old conscience of mine,
rusty and sharp, has been smoothed abit, but it still bites.
So come here. Yes, really, I'm feeling fine.
Help me forget that I care.

I have a very strong conscience, and sometimes I wish it would shut up, sometimes it would be easier to be amoral or just have a more lax conscience, but I cant escape from it. It is part of me, for better or worse, as are many other things that I was taught since birth. Sometimes it feels as if our breeding is inescapable, I am molded, set.

Other times I am thankful for it, I am thankful that I really do care about people and ideas and places and things. I am glad that I have some ideals, but it is crushing to realize the reality of the world: the realization that no matter what you do or try to do, the situation is only going to get worse. I am thinking of the economic, military, and political situation of the US. We are screwed no matter what because the system and situation is just too entrenched and complicated to be worked out.

So I just sit here with my headphones on, read the news, shake my head, and just enjoy the music.

gnight yall

The Eyes of Orpheus

He was going to be president,
someday, lost to the transient, raging
wind that flows from east to west
as the earth, clutching us and binding us,
turned ever so slowly.

He really was going to be Someone
who lived up to and exceeded
the expectations of each dew-kissed day,
who knew his path, and was strong enough
to force his way through the walls
of air that blow from nowhere to nowhere,
now just scattering ashes
until they condense into form:
to lean pale features, to sinewy and scarred hands,
and the cold, focused eyes of someone
who has seen it, lost it,
And still desires.