Author: K. Samways

Constant observer. Ad hoc responder.

Categories
Poetry Saturday Expressions Visual Artwork

Risk Taker | Session 12

Leaving the salt lamp low
I undress close to the open
window, watching the wind stir the trees
feeling the breeze on my skin,

Living on the edge of losing it all
pretending with non-attachment I won’t
care, at all – I love this type of faith
but still mine runs deeper than that

What illusion is this appearing to minds,
that makes material risk seem most perilous,
the highest stake. Meanwhile, everyone
puts their future on the line for a brief escape
regretted in the end, when such pleasures
almost always bring such pains

And still, deluded most times
I’m sure I would risk it all again,

If only to learn the swift lessons
needed for permanent escape, liberation
and if only for the benefit of others, complete
Enlightenment – the highest state

The greatest risk to reward benefit
of all, to all, for all.

Categories
Dreams Firescape Fridays Poetry

Port McNicoll | FF 16

Winter 2020, a dreamlike recollection

Recalling a Midnight Walk in Port McNicoll

Help me shed 
my exoskeleton

I feel like like setting something on fire
I feel like crying
I feel like creating
I feel like destroying

Port McNicoll
cold night
walking in the dark
see the stars
hear the crunch
forged by footfall
don’t slip on that ice there
crunch crunch crunch
silence punched
with pursuit
breath audible
visible
in the dark
rub my eyes 
to clear the dark
crunch crunch crunch
two people making one
set of tracks in the snow
around the inlet now
find the path
to the narrow
a strip 
no longer tying boats
to a bustling port
just dried up 
riparian plants
taking their
liminal space
beneath the snow
grounded by ice
liquidated by spring

I feel like setting myself on fire
I feel like filling my pockets with rocks
and following the wolf’s path
though already a rebirth of her future
still struggling
same shit
different lifetime

I have a lot of
feeling

I feel a lot of 
energy
inside but it wants
to escape
a timid body 
no longer sufficient
material 
for a growing
energetic field
unknowing
that it’s simply
a trap of 
attachment
to retain such runty residence
wanting to scream into the night
finally
screaming into the night

Port McNicoll
cold and still
crunch crunch crunch
snow changes to gravel
and we have found
piles and piles
now we need to climb or run
to keep moving forward
I’m the Queen of the Castle
I’m the King of the Castle
you’re the dirty rascal
YOU’RE the dirty rascal
made true by the rusty
sand on his face
dust on his clothes
so much gravel here
we wonder why they
wanted to convert 
the cleanest aquifer 
in the world
wanted to subvert
sustainability
for another gravel pit?
Did they get dust in their eyes?
Have they so quickly forgotten the ruin
of the planets they abandoned 
after their resources ran dry?
Or is the pleasure of the kill?

A Great Horned angel in the night
hoots his rendition of
Something in Blue

We long to hear a duet
but it’s a solo performance tonight
a prophecy in part
if not a command
one not heeded for a year still

I am pretending
I’m a superhero
free of mundane existence
but feeling the
weighty entrapment 
of earth life
human wishes
and someone else
constantly trying
to attach his leash
to mine
though I’ve
already 
been cut free
he can’t see
and
I can’t see
the further I run
the further he follows

I am searching for a memory
within this memory
5 years old
visiting Grandpa at work
he has an office
on King Street
Mom points to pigeons landing on the balustrade
rooftops next door
we’ll feed them outside
I like Newton’s pendulum on the desk
3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1
concentration born from curiosity
and then starved
can’t last
so I flip the bubbler upside down
and watch the trellis of weightless 
globes travel against gravity
and perhaps my airy nature 
too yearns to excurse upstream
while pretending I was first
to swim against the current
last to observe
salmon beside me
same difficult journey
they got there first
yet
diluted to desk ornament
just the same
ultimately for
one other pocket’s 
profit

Port McNicoll
cold night
walking in the dark
catch glimpse of the stars
favourite constellation
shines down
three suns his belt
Orion poises his arrow
toward the next step
I take
not out in the lake
the mild wish
nothing compared
to enlightened craving
this time ’round
why are we like this
I want to cry
without replicating the search 
for why
negative feelings arise
in my perfect life
hauntings of a past
I’ve not lived
being just twenty-five
so where does it come from
hoo-hooooooot
sings the night
as tears sting my eyes
crystalline drops fall
tried to outrun him
so he can’t
see me
small

For this emotion
it broke me
I could not comprehend
why my mind became crazy
and I couldn’t defend
my inner wisdom being
so delicate, so fair
trampled to pieces
with curses, warfare
self-sabotaging poisons
injected nightmare
mind became muddled
emotionally impaired
reason deceptive
self-cherishing deceit
reason defective
self-deprecate, repeat

Port McNicoll
still and cold
never felt one 
could feel so old
he stood beside me
tried to take my hand
I hated myself and 
my life so unplanned
I couldn’t regret
the good things I gained
but it’s still hard to forgive
the way I chose to behave
and still sometimes continue
to choose bad over good
and without self reflection
feel so misunderstood
until a burning desire
a need for change
drove me out of the house
and into the street
just his following footsteps
held me down
from behind
I’m still grateful for
how patient
how kind
he was
most times

Just the 
one thing 
he and I 
could not fathom then
was how witchery brewed
when he denied my freedom
“It’s not safe” or “I’m lonely”
I longed to ignore
silly cries of unjust fear
thrust upon me once more
those were never my fears
just the cage just the light
always pinned down
always in sight
created madness such madness
the introvert curse
visibility birthed insanity 
death couldn’t be worse
some time to heal
a winter alone
a fire for warmth
all others gone
only in such
secret silence
can I recuperate
my song
only in secret
stillness
finally, raison
wisdom
sensibility
freedom from earth
release from silly senses
imagination rebirth
writer’s block lifted
hateful stories destroyed
my reality shifted
compassion deployed
a new strength within me
to combat the old
and at last my destructive 
tendencies controlled

Yet
if the process isn’t
respected
or worse left
ignored
the insanity boils 
despair restored
reason deceptive
self-cherishing deceit
reason defective
self-deprecate, repeat
energy overflow
must go somewhere
to make a living punching bag
not at all fair
it’s time to heal
and how is that done?
questions I should have asked
before I moved on
lacking foresight
seeing only the past
heart break by hindsight
present don’t last
soon gift is gone
life moves too fast
future moments with him
I lost too soon
tortured by choices
a steed of Doom

When the energy
comes shaking
my rib cage vibrating
a hungry ghost
screaming from within
a need for destruction
as I can’t face the fear
I can’t feel the sorrow
As anger burns thin
It just turns to tears
Though I long to clear-cut
Whole forests with the rage that I feel
I simply toss a rock to hear
the splish splash splunk
in frigid water
or tin cold plunk on
and not yet through
the ice

Port McNicoll
empty and cold
brought me to my knees
made me feel so old
first so angry
then so blue
first shaking with rage
then wrung-out-rag-used
perceived imprisonment
before breaking loose
restraints granting rope-burn
inebriated bickering to sober truce
rebuilding future
from broken past
always keen dreamers
’cause madness don’t last

Lifetime different
but shit the same
struggling still
future rebirth already
though, virgin’s path following 
and rocks with pockets filling feels
fire myself, sun setting, like I feel

Madness, an exoskeleton
help me shed
shed my help

Categories
Poetry Thirsty Thursday

Thirsty Thursday | Why be sad?

Why feel misunderstood,
when there is someone to understand you?

Why feel empty,
when there is someone to fill you up?

Why feel left out,
when you could feel included?

Why feel unappreciated,
when you could feel respected and admired?

Why be hard on yourself,
when you could be soft on someone else?

Why be grounded,
when you could be a lucid dreamer?

Why live a dull existence,
when life can be fantastically magical?

Why manipulate,
when you can flirt and persuade?

Why remain ignorant,
when there is someone from whom to receive wisdom?

Why feel lonely,
when there is no separation?

Why feel grief,
when love never ends?

Categories
Poetry

The Fairy Tale Dream

Written in 2011

As soon as the words leapt from my mouth like some dancing flame I couldn’t control,

I wanted to scream: I LIED!

But my mouth swallowed my words, and my tongue swelled so I could no longer speak.

I have fallen down some Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole

Caught in between a world I desire which I’ll never have and some stark reality which is playing tricks on me.

How can I be the only one deceived by these mismarked potion bottles?

When I drink the one which says courage, I grow smaller. When I drink the one marked power, I become a pawn.

However, unlike Alice I was not drowning in my own tears. It is not my sorrow I fear, but my words.

And I’m not a dumb blond like Alice, easily confused and fooled by people.

I see that Cheshire cat, always willing to smile at me; I’m never willing to smile back.

(Once upon a time were the words that I spoke.)

I drink tea like the Mad Hatter and I’m wicked like the Queen.

Maybe the best place for me is the Rabbit Hole, where I can pretend it’s all a dream, and soon I’ll wake up on the banks of that flowing river – well-rested with an attitude adjustment, and some new found appreciation like Dorothy after she returns from Oz.

If only lessons were so easily learned as in fairy tales.

Categories
Poetry

Worn Out

You thought I was slipping you
on and off, like a worn jacket
but I had carved you on my soul
a long time ago, so you were –
are – always with me

If only you had respected my needs
not the ones you wished I had,
but my actual needs, I think
I could have fulfilled your desires
had they been anything more
than temporary, but you didn’t carve
stories and you had no
purposeful plan

Even Bonnie and Clyde
had a plan

Now I’m rinsed like dishwater
and you’re onto the next old bag
easier, to escape, when you
can attach yourself to star light,
star bright the gasses burn tonight, fast,
and you’re quick to eat it up, put it out

It’s naturally sick you play the songs
at the beginning that we’ll sing
at the end … your poor girlfriend
how many nights she’ll spend
waiting for you …

If I believed in God, I’d beg
may He have mercy on you both

Categories
Good Fortune Poetry

All here, hear!

Never again will I get upset
          when a crazy person offends me

I live in a madhouse —
              why would I act outraged,
                              surprised?

No. I’m an inmate, too
                deluded & samsara-screwed

        But I’m not all here —
                   & neither are you

Categories
Philosophy Poetry

Out brief candle

What character am I today?
Oft I strive for studious, disciplined

Yet my ego shakes those keeners off
and lets me where a suit
I’m likely to get in trouble for

In grade school I was sent
to the lost & found to find
myself in another’s clothes

after boldly wearing my own
t-shirt listing the names of the
popular kids in the class

under the stamp
Cool Girls Suck

something ran amuck —
I cannot comprehend
my own ten year old mind

that thought her teachers
were arrested in the head

these past life impressions pressed
back out, creating misery this time ‘round

Attachment to the ego,
character Thomas B.
never did bring happiness
so I won’t be attached to thee —

what kind of actor am I today?

Who will I be as I create
causes for ultimate peace
not just for me — 
          what purpose for that?

If I truly love others,
   I’ll escape and come back

Categories
Poetry Saturday Expressions

Overcoming a sad weekend through imagination | Session 11

Read time: approx 4 minutes

written in December 2020

I’ve started to root my feet as I walk
so as not to fly away
my head is up inside the clouds
and clouds aren’t here to stay

Appearing normal as ever I was
so it appears I walk on ground
yet inside my mind the streets transformed
a different time, a long lost day, reality unbound

You see, I hesitate to admit
the spontaneous overflow of emotion
that overwhelmed me this past weekend
uninvited tears and two ice cream cakes

Later and I feel better than before
and stronger without falling
feel I’m falling safely to the ground
after being so far away in order to survive

That is the key. Traveling far away
my way costs a little less these days
when travel is forbidden on a political –
I mean for-your-safety and conspiracy theories

Dismissed once more completely unlike
twenty years before when a 9-11 call
came to distress a nation continuously
paying for the evil deeds it continues

To commit. So it seems unfathomable that 
I should be able to arrange words
in a way they’ve never been arranged
before since everything is repeating itself

How did they find their way
here now to your hands
to your eyes. How many parts 
of your mind are you using 
to comprehend this basis
and how many senses are
liberating you or
simultaneously imprisoning
you in samsaric pleasure seeking
yet no endless bliss
I could be anywhere in this 
warm hazy gloom I’ve created
in this room
electric guitar riffs and
smoke lifts, incense and candles
burning low, low like my gaze,
low like the spirits of the masses
drawing near the end of what
some may call a “fucked up” year
check it out as a meme somewhere

I want to be held by arms that love me
even though arms cannot love
and to pretend the body and mind
want the same thing is deceit

Smokey blues, and my bare feet
stretched over the back of the 
kitchen chair in front of me. Not warm
nor cold and so I can no longer 
sense them and my mind in a trance
disconnects from my body and 
in the flickering candlelight dance
with the clear, thick sound in my ear
I lose myself, I lose the moment into
a single sensation of the moment
tactile functioning ceases as auditory
rapture plays a different sensation
across the skin. What’s that, pores?
Bring a friend! Goosebumps rise to no end.

If you run your hand against me now
to this solo I may literally die of overstimulation
and it’s not just the copious blooms
of Mary Jane’s bouquets floating through the dark
nor is it the magnificent high
although it helps
it’s this fucking art to heart music in ear
and olfactory tickling dense breath via nostril
and the trance of expression while
simultaneously bearing witness to
manifestation and expressing and perceiving
the metaphysics of this existing in the
future space of your present moment.

This tragically ignored dependency
worse than the drugs used tonight
has mutilated our minds into ignorance
rooted deep.

And so this skin feels music as touch
and yet feels touch not
from within this dream realm which is
impaired life, I feel the strings as fingers
strum on skin and percussion as too much
at times too intense but oh that brass
really gets me from the inside out
really putting the sax in saxual intercourse.
The woodwinds in my hair and as whispers
on my neck – over the top sensations
that would give anthropologists cause
to study: what drug is this? 

And gypsy magic would be the reply
because the music is the magic
and the roots run deep
the attachment runs deep

Yet rooting
here I am attempting
to root also
so that I might not fly away
this time, at least not today
I’ve got busy work not time for play
touching my hard nipples
to rock and roll and blues
outside of the dream
the kitchen chair is damn 
hard on my ass and I have to
adjust my position and
leave the reverie behind.

Categories
Firescape Fridays Philosophy

Temiskaming Shores | FF 15

Late spring 2018

What you risk reveals what you value. — Jeanette Winterson

When one finds themselves in an unexpected or surreal place, I think it is normal to start reflecting on the events that led them to that point. We go back in time and wonder if we could have forecasted any or all of it. I think leaders, public speakers and the ilk do it often. They think back to being the shy kid in school who didn’t put themselves “out there” and then appear on stage as if it was an inherent gift.

I can’t help but reflect on the adventures that led me to lying on the rocks of Temiskaming Shores on a cold spring day in late May. My fingertips chilled as I type hastily into my phone. Pen scratches on sticky notes with ideas for a blog post, poem or book. If I don’t write it down now, it will be lost forever. Or so I think.

temiskamingShores
Lake Timiskaming, North Cobalt

Everyone experiences their inspiration differently. I met an author the other day. We had a decent conversation, and I got the name of his book. I sold him a subscription to Microsoft Word. I do that now. Sell things to people. In a way, I always have – in retail and non profit. And perhaps I always will. Somehow never in order to or with the intention of actually making personal profit or gain.

When I reflect back to my “old life” in Niagara, I didn’t imagine myself here. I could imagine adventure and travel and I had hope for some kind of success. But I didn’t know how to bury my acorns and have something grow. I didn’t know I could make my dreams come true. I was cynically optimistic or optimistically cynical, and I didn’t think that real love or happiness was possible for me, would be possible for me.

When the impossible happens to you, when you experience a miracle or a have a dream come true, you believe that experience can be true for everyone.

They just have to work harder, believe in themselves, cut out pictures from magazines and post them on a board they look at every day. I’m not so sure. I think we can all manifest our desires and a type of happiness that can sustain us in this life. But it’s not so easy for everyone. Some of us are born with a four leaf clover stamped on our souls (or a lucky horseshoe up one’s ass, as a friend would say). And others must face each of life’s hardships, often over and over, even watching others do the same.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I love an unlucky one. Luck is non-transferable, I’ve learned. It’s not even inspiring. It can cause resentment. Sometimes luck is not fortune. Sometimes it is hard work. But when you were born and raised in survival mode, and you’ve gained the knack or XP for surviving, it looks like fortune. It can even feel like fortune. Sometimes it feels like you don’t deserve what you have, and when things are good that they shouldn’t be.

This life is hard to navigate. You need people that make it better. You learn from them and they instill in you their hope and values. Sometimes, perhaps more often than not, people teach what not to do and who not to be. I have a running list of what not to do and who not to be. I have been burned and scarred from those I once respected. I have been stabbed by those I never trusted, but they got close enough to leave their mark nonetheless. I constantly yearn for a mentor. Someone who can teach me something I do not already know. I am such a fast learner. But my path has been made slow with obstacles that I would not let myself move around. Oh the amazing lessons I’ve learned and the gifts I’ve received! But none are what I’ve asked for.

Isn’t that the point, though?

Categories
Poetry Thirsty Thursday

Thirsty Thursday | How shall I fall in love with you?

written in 2013

Entice me with your words
pierce my walls with meanness
show me you have the power to break another person
yet you refuse.

Show me you have the willpower to stand up 
and alone
have the ability to open your door
welcome a stranger
and trust they will not throttle you in your sleep.

Tease me with kisses and polite dialogue,
an intercouse of exchanged language
with kind innuendo but no
biting sting of
regretted words.

Demonstrate your strength
not in feats of power
but in exploits of courage,
the deed which you complete though 
you know you’re licked before you start,
see it through.

Toss your speech with abandon
but not your ideas – 
your ideals are by your heart
and you live not beside them
but by virtue of them
unto others
though they do not the same.

A vital man with an Achilles heel
I in turn choose not to sever,
a choice my own — as all my acts
are of my own volition.

For I have power too.
As you penetrate, I consume.
As you guffaw, I may also laugh.
As you devastate, I ruin.
As you toy, I play.
As you adore, I love.
I am passionate, above all else.

Prove you have a compulsion for life,
you choose endurance over death,
you have potential to be a
raft for those without
water-wings,
for my exigency for life
is almost extinguished.

Demonstrate a lust for adventure
that is comparable to my own
so we can rid ourselves 
of this boredom, tedium,
this dullness, together.

You are a collaborator,
a fellow conspirator and colleague,
a fellow traveller on this quest,
upfront and honest,
sparing only of the sensitivity of others,
unless for a private laugh —

For laughter is god above all —
the ability to laugh at good and bad,
strong and weak,
not others, but ourselves,
in the dark and in the light,
a reason to go forth,
and conquer 
not all,
but love.