i want the title to be "purposefully vague"

to arm or to disarm,
a problem of violence,
i am a prisoner to perception,
and your eyes are the bars of my cell.
in the darkest of nights,
my face is but a mirror,
giving everything away,
showing you my ace, and more disastrously,
my heart in all its grand debility.

be still, i know you,
frantic though your body may seem,
tranquil is your soul and, Baby,
calm as a guru is your gaze.
i used to know what life was about,
which Girls to take, which Drugs to avoid,
and it seems as though our pattern is coalescing,
into some infinite series of gasps and pauses,
no substance, just some shadow of truth,
anything else,
a caricature of intimacy,
a puppet-show lust,
wrapped in a blanket of tears,
awaiting a latent transformation
which will forever wait in the wings.

warm, i will keep you, Baby,
as we wait forever,
if only your weathered hands would feel my face,
as if i meant something,
and if only my heart, solemn as a stoic monk,
would leap from its cradle,
crying all the way down an abyss
of ecstatic joy,
our unfaithful lips fused at the edges.
God's unholy vengeance,
is apathy in response.

and/or

and so it seems that life and death
are just some pleasant accidents
between which we sit here, struggling
with whats, hows, whos, and whys;
but why do we care? and why should we?

and, by the way, who are we? and who is you?
questions, billions of them, unanswerable,
crawling almost ceaselessly,
down magical filaments of endless light,
towards a nonexistent finish line.

you'll never make it where you're going,
and not from lack of trying or some
deficiency of moral fiber:
it's just that that finish line, and all its glory,
is nothing but another beginning.

tired, weary, stumbling slowly,
our heart does something new,
having spent so long beating,
like some tribal ritual gone awry in your chest,
now rests forever in this world.

cross over, into the other,
the dark, the unknown, the nothing.
nothing is everything, just as ending is,
ending is, ending is, repetition,
full stop, and breathe.

and so it seems you are no more,
a pleasant detour life turned out to be,
and now, you sleep, or dream
of grass growing to the heavens,
or maybe a field flowering, just once, forever.

from elba

what am i to say?
when your tears are his,
his dreams are dark,
and i am, here, exiled.

the songbird tells of strife,
but sweet harmonies through the bars,
entrance the ear and heart,
almost forgotten now, the woe.

the stars, of course, point backwards,
sacrificing holy rules and codes
merely to get their fix,
before returning to their stations.

sit. silent. feel it. definitely.
i can tell there's something missing,
but as for what? what matters?
and as for how? why bother?

drift, eternal drift, so cruel,
that drags you from the top,
and gags and binds you with every word,
how empowered he must feel.

still, no way out,
but the slow, benign hand,
ticking lonely seconds,
sinister, and dripping with time.

lucid

devouring, always,
thirsting for words,
jonesing for dramatics,
yearning for redemption.

the keyboard pounds,
some inglorious Beethoven
composing some dilapidated
Archduke Trio, just for the hipsters

the action repeats. now. now again.
in spite of its supposed purpose
a mere reflex?
or the essence of self.

more more more, i say
why should not the skies erupt
with rivers of euphoria
and other useless miracles?

the city, overrun with ugly serpents, makes
the whole gambit crystalline:
permanent, frozen, and most of all,
clear, as a may afternoon, laid out on the Front Lawn.


so, always, never does it come.
the chalice spills forever,
and i must lap it off the dirty floor,
because why cry over spilt milk?

nothing grieves me heartily indeed
but that i cannot do much at all,
that i can do everything and don't,
that i need everything evil and beautiful.

ether

the seconds chisel the ice;
the thaw, it has begun.
as old woes come to die,
new paths are clear in view,
if distant and unwanted.

return to past hallucinations,
don't trust your withering eye,
and always have in mind
the sad contempt you held
for him. (but who am i?)

old world across the ocean,
torment me with vivid lies.
i ask for salvation
and all i get is you,
ether, slipping between my trembling fingers.

she had an accident
but all i can do is drink,
until the scars and bruises
dissolve and melt into
the atlantic, or at least the bath water.

i read because i must,
and listen to the beats
that others love to death
but i just want
to get laid (but what do i know?)

i fear that god has made me so
no living soul will comprehend
that i don't mean harm
when i do the things
that hurt the most.

dread and happiness comingle,
like awkward exes at a party,
their hands touch at the punch bowl,
but they were never really
in love to start.

this love is

the path of wisdom dwells beneath
the open sewers of the street
and far above the ancient pylons
of a lonely gravity.

the sea of roses flows between
an old forgotten shattered dream
and young, immortal gods of new,
creating truth, or so it seems.

the strings that bind us to this place;
they are the same that make her face,
the beauty and the horror, truth,
beseech the strings to truth, erase.

this parade of fiction shall cease
only when the gods, with ease,
decide to shatter dreams once more:
how beautifully impossible this love is.

on the game

if the world as we know it, the universe, and our objective reality (whatever that means) is made up of physical matter conforming to scientific principles, then it follows that whatever science continuously and/or ultimately discovers is the nature of our existence. so if we take the grand unified theory to its full extension, we accept that no "space" is empty; everything consists of some form of energy which exists at a level perhaps unfathomable to our current human intelligences. further, that i have a consciousness; that you, presumably, have a consciousness; and that our consciousnesses are communicating via an established societal system of understanding reality: these are all testaments to the abstract nature of our system. it is suited to our minds, our natural evolutionary concerns, what we've interpreted reality to be.

but now we reach the end of this era of the individual, this age of -isms that have sought to isolate us from one another, divide us and truly, masterfully conquer us. the time has come to realize that life is but a game. the fact of the matter is that there will always be conflict. but this conflict need not be caused by things of no consequence. religion, money, government, capitalism: these are the current rules. but if the players decide not to play, to switch to a different game, there is nothing the game can do about it. first, it will try to allure us and then it will attempt to destroy us like a possessed video game might corrupts its users. we don't have to play. these systems were set up to bring us this far. religion was developed to mobilize peoples into making amazing things and creating beautiful art. government to acquire resources for an elite and ostensibly "protect" the populace (as much as is necessary). money was designed to allow us to more effectively distribute capital, and by extension, labour. capitalism gave us competition just as socialism gave us forced compassion. and now we have come to the point in our existence where it will be possible, according to most estimates of technological capacity, to outcompute the human brain in a mere decade. the time has come to turn to a new game. we can now become the people we want to be.

all you have to do is decide to play.

imagine: a world where a computer programmer is free to develop and innovate in free association with other programmers. a world in which artists depend on farmers, shoemakers depend on doctors, writers depend on builders but no money is exchanged. we use the resources we have, as a globally linked society, where they need to be used. every person realizing that they are not fundamentally different from anyone else yet they, by some beautiful miracle, have a purpose. the game allows you to do what you were meant to do...by doing it.

the ironic thing is this seemingly profound observation on my reality's situation and it's true nature doesn't change much. it doesn't change the way i feel about anything essential to myself as i see myself. all it does is make me feel free, unbound by parameters of time and space. while i am continuously here, in this "dimension", in this "reality", i know that whatever i do, everything will be. however i feel, whenever i speak, whenever i die? what is death in a game of cosmic reshuffling?

i've decided to enjoy this reality. i want to see and speak to and touch and hear and think and create with as many people as i can, telling them what i think about it all on the way. i want to feel love and make others feel love. and beyond that, it's all a matter of objectives, inventory, rules. it's all a game. which game will you decide to play?

circa 2009

the story of the year was nothing but an escapist fantasy.
she took it, she read it, and she understood it as such,
yet she did not point it out so as to make it less real.
across an expanse of water and an equally daunting stretch of time,
she assumed my unjustified and unjustifiable love would dwindle,
would crumble, would fade, and would die.

and in fact, her plan is working.
every second, like a cancer,
the love that courses through my brain is being transformed.
through sheer pain and disillusionment,
whether she likes it, whether she knows it,
whether she wants it or not,
the waves of infinite love,
the ones that used to lap at her feet when she,
alone and too beautiful,
would sunbathe on the shore of my ocean,
they are turning toxic.

something has gone wrong.
like a tormented planet, choked of all good, deprived of love,
my wrath tempts my restraint.
will the hot and angry sun scorch the lush rainforests of affection and goodwill?
will the bitter waters flood the plains of balance and reason?
will my mind,
whether in retribution or in self-defence,
turn to thoughts of cosmic revenge?

but then,
with a flash,
the drugs kick in.
or are they wearing off?
and i realize that it's all for what?
and i remember what i want.
and i smile.
it's a simple wish, really,
but it's proven elusive, at best,
at worst, beautifully, passionately,
revoltingly unattainable.
i hope it stops.

but will it ever begin?