P . O . E . T

Perspective yields power. 

Streams of consciousness pacing in disconnected steps. 

Dance, re-enact the drama. 

Theatricality for performativity.

Disguise in convoluted schemes. 

Tracing the lines of life, seldom shading in the depth.

Rhythmically constant, artistically evolving. 

Seeing spotlights in new light. Discerning from the stage, ultimate truths.

The character speaks, she feels, she emotes an exterior so tragic. 

An interior so tortured and dark.

Ownership yields opposition.

Repeat your line, the audience can't hear.

Memory faulty. 

Reliance on those who spark neurological triggers, on sensory associations.

Experience preceded by motivation,

Motivation proceeded by interpretation, 

Artistry interpreted through recognition, 

Recognition comes full circle in opposition.

Dialogue between the two standing so firmly in place. 

Physical meets a purging of the emotional.

With so much give, comes rampant take.

Expression yields exactitude. 

Commanding directional instructions from the pit. 

Moulding the outcomes as though naturally, they evolve.

Anticipation, 

Repetition imprinting eventualities.

Step outside of the choreographed box, 

Expect abrasive retribution. 

Voices spewing the real pained heart. 

This a soul bared for an audience to read.

Exposed, crushed and damaged.

Visible to every discernible eye.

Taunting yields torment.

Spin with greater accuracy, your precision is nearly covert.

Give the camera more, 

Remove that claustrophobic apparel choking the voice from you.

Dig to the bottomless pit of your experience. 

Take your anthropological tools, carefully extract the layers.

Illuminate your insides. 

Don't make me beg to see beyond the veil.

Step up, the stage is calling.

These Are The Seasons

Deep down, it hurts inside.

Words puncture microscopic rings, 

Seething paths to a genuine blood-pumping organ.

The exterior, mistakenly labelled ferrous metal. 

Protecting a spirit with so cold a face, so sorrowing a set of eyes.

Informing an antagonist who claims a veritable link between the visible and inconspicuous. 

Propelling darts,

Scathing away at sensitivity, 

Mollifying humanity.

A misunderstood mortal, standing unlike a statuesque stone figure amid the dead of this world.

Penetrate the layers, I beg you.

See that I am tarnished. 

Your words, mobilizing a world's worth of pestilence.

Possessing a power that moves a well of water to overflow from my visual aperture. 

Powering through the seasons of welcomed warmth,

We are distressed visitors of our present. 

Ill prepared for the frozen vapour.

I, sullen.

You, indignant.

We, sit here, in the coldest of winters,

Shoulder to shoulder,

Silent on a dilapidated park bench.

Harmonic Dissonance

Free falling into a chorus of scattered harmonic progressions.

Swimming vertically, so as to avoid counterpoint.

Questioning whether disharmony is any different.

Loathing your movements,

Travelling above, sauntering below, 

Never standing conjoined. 

Pleasing concords to those who watch, who listen.

As I continually assume, 

Provoke, 

React, 

To your movement. 

Drawing from previously established, 

Previously notated,

Compositions furnished with familiar harmonic landscapes. 

Tired of our functional dissonance,

Frustratingly yawning my way through motifs,

Begging to play the game of modal catch up.

I stop, I powerfully emote the most latent of note.

The distance is chromatic, 

And with each interval, its sound evermore beautiful. 

Yet, with each root, the note intransigent, 

No matter the letter. 

Dissonant realities seldom colliding into a viscerally melodic path. 

Questioning the possibilities of a consonant resolve, 

I tread forward. 

Carefully weaving, prepared to untangle if you so will. 

Looking to minimize the disturbance for the listener.

In a singular act,

I leap, bound, full of frenzy, 

Into an act of statistical destruction. 

Climbing the staff, negating the harmonic tensions that have been so very essential to our compositional drama.

Standing horizontally, 

I force a common path.

A Sauntering Bubble, Refracting Disambiguation

Pondering. 

Pondering the imponderables. 

Rattling the neocortex as does a roller coaster traversing the winding tracks.

Stinging. 

Stinging words grafting third degree distress.

Nullifying all human feeling as does a highly potent opiate analgesic.

Lachrymating. 

Lachrymating bottomless wells in a highly subjective mode of unpleasant awareness.

Defensively triggering a reflex to purge animostic and visceral uneasiness. 

Frantically, to the point of ruthlessness, grasping at objective realities. 

Rising, as does smoke, beyond the mundane. 

In fragile bubble constructs that threaten to expire once tangibly overwhelmed. 

This is our truth, 

Escaping. 

The anatomy of our codependency, suspended between the axiom and the theorem.

Calling upon phenomenology,

Deciphering the strangest of codes, 

Questioning whether it is safest to depend upon empirical evidence. 

I can coddle, 

I can administer an accelerant, 

Contemptuously disregarding the procedural plan.

The very schedule indicating the time and sequence of each operation assigned to our name. 

 

Poisoning.

Poisoning doubts disseminating agents of negation. 

Seemingly depleting, 

Obviously misleading, 

The thoughts that skewer around  in modulated consciousness. 

Here, In the Garden of No Mercy

Reciprocity erased, 

Laying contemplatively in a lush valley of circumspection. 

Deciduous ivy,

Ground creeping, 

Leeching, rather than cultivating. 

No longer your sycophant, I seek the act of purging the malignancy visited upon me. 

Grating layers,

Impregnated in years worth of epidermis.

Hastening in its squirm,

Fashioning tunnels of escape, 

An ophidian sinuously crawling out in whimsical darkness for the taxing breath of abandon. 

Left paralyzed, 

Morosely still,

Convulsions of trauma suspend the irrational. 

Mid-air hangs the balance marking our metaphysical polarities.

As a deficient consciousness inoculates itself with unaffected vendibles, 

I am, but one step closer to the fountainhead of our dependency. 

Substantially parasitic, 

I harbour, I nourish, I shelter you,

The commensal symbiont. 

Incautiously calibrating the long term damage. 

Ruminating your words and wishes, 

The act is violent, 

The experience is horrendously calming. 

Heaving over in consternation, 

I catch my breath, 

I vigorously clutch with each moment a renewed sense of self, 

And watch as the twilight of our essence fades into obscurity. 

This is the point of reckoning, 

This is the moment I repudiate tenancy. 

Here in the garden of no mercy, 

I stand reaffirmed, with tottering feet, and heavy heart. 

The Struggle, IS Beautiful

Take these words and re-empower yourself.

The Struggle, IS Beautiful.

Face to the ground, 

Animus exposed. 

The weakest competitor falters in this moment.

Afraid to whisper, 

To plead at their feminine feet. 

Nona, spinning the thread of life from distaff to spindle.

Decima, precisely measuring vita with her ruler-like rod.

Hovering over, 

The Fates arrange the civility of assault. 

Conquerable cowardice,

Victimized by the looming beats and bruises.  

Clinging pathetically to barbed bush, 

Afraid to lift the proverbial head.

Dust in mouth, pebble and sand grit caught in the sharp teeth of life.

Eyes re-fuelled,

The oil lamp called spiritus, 

Reignited for the steady drive on the darkest of interstate stretches.

Graduated evidence of worth, 

Against the building blocks of character, 

A compounded sense of privilege.

Without the map, 

The corners masked by shadiness, 

The bends sharp and caustic.

Equipped with a singular weapon,

Fides.

The struggle has purpose, 

It is loathsome, 

It is objectionable and sacrificial.

From it,

Blooms.

There is middle ground in this.

From the ashes of strife will arise a god.

Achromatized is Memory

Lying there, 

Connecting popcorn ceiling dots. 

Heart pounding violence.

A god inspired bone cage,

Pressured by heavy breathing, 

Anxiety compounded by the pretense of hypotheticals.

Vague lines forming, 

The artist's brush in motion, 

Etching figures that look just as we do.

Imprinting your likeness in my cerebral cortex.

I want so much to believe in our potential, 

In our natural right to exist.

No borders, No restrictions. 

An endless expanse.

Your animation trafficking itself for imperforate repose.

Motionless, 

Picturesquely fastened in anatomical corners of my cognizance. 

Never retracting backwards. 

Seldom retracing the footprints of heart.

Propelling forward, 

Capturing every sequence, 

Cementing the imagined into the vividly real.

The spotted darkness.

Simulating a set of manifold patterns. 

Mimicking the familiar, 

Abducting phrases, bottling gestures. 

Releasing an outpouring of scenarios.

Puzzle pieces, jaggedly neat, 

Figuring squarely into this retelling we call ours. 

Speaking faintly to me,

As entire days erase. 

Words first recognizable, now painted over with one skillfully crafted stroke of time. 

Quizzically on stand-by, 

Wondering how to reach for, stretch for, 

The rewind button. 

Befuddled. Brow furrowed. 

Vapourous clamour. 

Your lips venture softly, 

Caressing the words that prescribe termination.

Memory, recreated, 

Tarnished, 

Blanched, 

Achromatized from my retention. 

  

Kinetic Envy

An energy so deeply seeded, 

so vigorous and cogent,

its origins remain unknown.

Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

Ceasing to demand restitution, 

I admit to willfully committing the greenest of your seven sins.

Hiding in the cavernous shadows, eliciting information largely off limits to mine eyes.

I took pleasure in your misgivings. 

Partnered by sharp, caustic anxieties, I recollect...

Every contrary thought.

Every loathsome word.

Never once pondering the weight of threats.

Never once recanting the relentless baggage of ultimatum.

The calcified water palpitates rhythmically from the 7 year old shower head.

I stand, guilty as charged.

Culpable of the caliginous offenses brought against me.

Nonetheless aware that these ill-willed deeds did not entirely come from a place so misty.

Misdeeds?

Unquestionably.

Rationalized on the grounds of a chapter so thick,

One burdened by ruthless definitions,

One compounded by hysterically profound alternative motives.

Pleadingly, I ask you to remember this one verity.

That to each yin is its respective yang.

Seemingly disjunct forces, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to one another in turn.

Slow, soft, insubstantial, feminine is yin.

Hard, fast, aggressive, masculine is yang. 

Gradually trading places, revealing the obscured and obscuring the revealed.

Kinetic envy.

So rampant, it bleeds.

For all this and then some, 

I owe apology.

The Coffee Break

Sitting cross legged, combing the crowds.

Against Sade's "King of Sorrow," a sea of moving bodies, jutting forward in insanity.

Sounds emanating from assorted lips all but silenced by my insulated ear buds. 

Tracing the elaborate floor pattern, my eyes trail to the end of what sits before me. 

A sea of stories. 

An unwritten novel of experiences.

Eyes battered, swollen and puffy.

A woman made victim by the years of her very animation. 

I wonder what led to the hollowness that emanates from the depths of her soul. 

Neighbouring this stranger, a handsome and aged duo. 

She, engulfed in a full-length splash of suede.

He, dressed with a look of intellectualism. 

Engaged in discussion, yet fantastically disengaged from one another. 

Years of weathered marriage made clear by the evidence of an outmoded band.

The white picket fence of their lives in need of clamant repair.

Across, a grey haired veteran. 

Talking rhythmically, yet only to himself. 

Shall I strap to him a label of insanity, or simply reserve judgement? 

Seconds later, clarity.

A gentleman simply discussing the deteriorating state of his stocks and bonds. 

Conversing with technology, a talking device nestled in his ear, invisible at this limited angle.

 

Interrupted, his server removes the used cup.

Green apron, polarized by rosacea-prone cheeks and awkward braces.

A teenager who hides beneath a rock of questions.

A set of which bet dollars upon the demise of her ugly duckling stage.

From my peripheral vision, a young man. 

Red hat, swagger.

A sense of virile and pronounced masculinity imprinted upon his face. 

Scarred by hardships, an exterior mapping and directing strangers where not to travel.

Soundtrack change.

Otis yearningly wading through the soul's notes.

Sitting still, privileged yet complacent, I witness the warm bonds, the empty solitude.

The human condition. 

Fascinating.

With a half empty cup of coffee, a book spine cracked and blistered, I wait for the mysteries of my own world to reveal themselves.

Tapping my left foot to James Brown's wails, I track, I pace...

Time.

Never fully understanding the weight of another's baggage, even after lengthy periods of observation.

I swell with emotion to the sounds of a heightening horn section. 

From the brutish words of Chapter three, I raise my bewildered eyes. 

Slow and steady.

Taken aback by the acrolith that stands before me.

A caramel hand, resting on the unstable chair.

The broad weight of his sculptured torso, free-standing in contrapposto, mimicking the famed Kritios Boy circa 480 B.C.

My mystery.

Fascinating.

Eyes of marked intention.

An invite, from me to you, to fill in the vacant seat at this two person table.

Kismet

The corridor.

Stretched out over countless measures of length.

Tireless bodies.

Frantically launching towards me, sweeping beyond him.

Amid the traffic of motion, at a distance, I notice his pause.

In a singular act, an ocular rendezvous.

In this, the meeting ground of kismet, 

Reactionary smiles beam extroverted sunshine.

Falling culprit to gravitational force, we move closer.

Finally, 

Confabulation.

Formal exchanges, loaded glances.

Psychological magnetism, corporeal contact. 

Arms tingling, you opt to rest your books on the protruding ledge.

Your approximations, spellbindingly enchanting.

Profound and complex, you launch into countless theories on the axes of marginalized oppression.

Cognizance divided in two,

I absorb your allocution, conjure up an intellectual response,

Synchronously pondering your bona fide allurement.

Internally screaming with excitement, 

Evading the proverbial timepiece.

Predetermined, fixed in the natural order of the macrocosm,

Our moment. 

Minutes later, or seconds sooner,

Stands the possibility of erasure.

Expunction of our brush with fate, 

Eradication of our chance tete-a-tete.

A tryst set in motion, 

A meeting of the minds.

I lean in closer, 

Eyes aflamed, ears ebullient,

Ignoring the sibilated reminder gnawing away at our time.

The Inheritance

I grow weary of the world you face.

A heart so forgiving, a soul entirely naive.

The mentality of innocence finds itself competing with a world so consumed by a named business.

One that torridly tears away childhood.

Primping our youth for adulthood in one quick sweep of events.

The intake of ceasefires, genocides, and natural disasters burns a pernicious hole so permanent.

I want you to put your trust in me.

I aim to coddle your screams, absorb a well of your tears.

Your endless questions set my existence in a state of unease.

My eyes, trimmed by wrinkles.

Marks declaring passed time.

Scars of horrors re-lived.

Your small windows remain untouched.

Skin unblemished by the swelling lacerations of life.

Encountering nothing of trepidation.

Still implacably puerile.

Custodially standing over you, I witness your eyes crack open.

Sang-froid, you stretch.

The poise of our future, featured in one meager and unenlightened body.

I want so much to crouch, to whisper to you our secrets.

To instruct you in the latitudinarian and magnanimous code that I choose to live by.

To wish upon you the foresight, the profundity, to classify baneful acts.

To light a fire, one burrowed deep within, capable of contesting those who defame your worldview.

Fighting the urge, I resist.

I will not take hostage or dragoon your innocence.

To do so would bludgeon a mind so pure.

An act so heinous, so entirely reserved for the evil minded of this world.

Instead, I crouch.

I stroke your tangled hair.

I meet your eyes.

I make the promise to protect you.

I reach for such an undersized hand, placing it within the guardianship of my own.

Lowering my head, I vow to hand over to you a world that I will be proud to relinquish.

One that you will inherit, 

One you inevitably revolutionize.

 

 

The Buried Critic

I heave apology.

I camouflage the prodigiousness of my personalized abstract.

In agonized affliction, I am keeled over, disfigured by your indignant covetousness.

Entertaining your critical projections, I sense the judgemental undertones.

The fraudulence in your compassion.

The spite in your congratulatory flattery.

Continually proscribing your singular vision, 

Ineptly detecting the uphill battle I face,

You crave my haves, you desire my wants.

Succinctly pouncing upon my esteemed goal, obliterating the positive eventuality I had hoped for.

A single tear free falls.

You reach out, 

You hold it firmly in your malevolent grasp.

Ignorant of the well oiled detriment buried deep in the root of my soul.

Neglectful of your role in this drama.

This is not a novelty coaxing you, a bauble awaiting theft.

These are my emotions.

My vision for life.

They are not to be high jacked, 

Used in order to make a mockery of me.

How dare you superimpose your inadequacies on my reality.

Yes, your disappointments are tragic, but they are yours to confront.

My allegory will not reset their parameters. 

The characters will remain in tact, the script with its original penmanship will breathe the same life into your narrative.

Irreverent of the outcome you fancy.

Grant to me the unadulterated honesty of your disposition. 

So that when I hear your words, I recognize the person I thought I knew.

I know that you are hurting.

Appreciate that I am as well.

When you finally trip into your future, its reality is alarming.

The plausibility of happiness, unnerving.

I see me, shrinking modestly so as to avoid the surefire power I hold within.

I recognize him, a finely sculpted vision of my forthcoming subsistence.

I contemplate you.

You with all your judgement.

Your facetiousness masquerading as concern.

Dangerously, the diagnostic conclusions flow freely.

From your mind to mouth.

From our conversation to my subconscious.

Penetrating, extending in time and over space, I willfully become my own buried critic. 

 

Psychological Battlefield

Circumstances stir the least of us to forcibly re-evaluate any given predicament. 

Most times, it is within the parameters of our nature to systematically develop a rationale for all of what seemingly is.

The process of examining, of turning scenarios on their head...

Marks a tendency to give purpose.

Questions so often arise challenging actions and re-actions in order to create necessary pressure.

And so...I begin.

With the turn of a rejuvenated tide and a freshly conspired rationale, I formulate a search constructed with the sole purpose of unearthing answers in truths that are yet meant to be available in open book format.

I boil over the plausibilities...

Undoubtedly, and masterfully may I add, constructing scenarios meant to provide solid footing for the reasons you do what it is you do.

Yet, not one of my carefully crafted projections seems to entirely put an end to the psychological warfare.

On separate schemes of the battlefield, I hold firm to my motivations...as I am undoubtedly sure do you.

We both arrive at this place, in this time, spurred by diverse indicators, moved to act by alternative rationalizations.

In the vacant space between us, where the truth of our attraction opts to occupy itself, realize we are never entirely honest about the depth of its personality.

And so I realize that to audibly voice my intentions, at least at this juncture, is problematical. 

Reluctantly so, I trace...back...my steps.

Fully recognizing that I am not entirely comfortable facing the rushing tide of my subconscious.

With no plan to retreat entirely, I contend with a denied reality of sorts.

One that highly demonstrates the need to face my internalized demons.

 

What puzzles the skeptic in me is exploring the wildly sporadic cosmos.

If time could shift...could slow...

If I could have but one question answered, insofar as it related to you, I would ask....why.

There have been a multitude of instances in which I have consciously chosen to resolve our page. To tag to it a final "the end"...

Fascinatingly enough, the universe has an interesting method of interrupting my process. 

In a proposition of sorts,  to contend or at least suppose, that the universe has forcibly communicated to me that the time to proceed to the next chapter has not yet arrived is not entirely a stretch.

To all these things and more, my inquiring mind seeks answers.

To rationalize the grand scheme of things is a phase that I can not entirely eject myself from.

In my current state of being, I exist on a higher plane...

Seeking a rejoinder while in a process of unmasking firm truths.

Understanding that all matters will be revealed to me in due course is a matter in which I must possess patience.

...Patience being all things difficult.

Belabouring the flaws of this universe is hardly necessary, especially when I myself can not adhere to it a logic.

From this battlefield, I take one morale-prone lesson.

We can and do have the capability to inquire, to rationalize the very plausibilities of circumstances as they will invariably confront us.

From our inherent being, we typically comprehend certain intercourse to confirm volumes of unspoken truths.

What we can not do is place a timeline on its materialization.

Everything happens in its due course, or so they often say.

Unless we seek this out, we can only fall prey,

...fall victim to the very real and absolutely escapable plausibility of disappointment.

For the psychological warfare that so often consumes us, so too has the power to wear down our reliance in the Cosmo's ultimate reward.