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.
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.
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.
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.
Do not feel special because I felt you so deeply — I’m an artist
This morning, I wept for a fallen tree, I had fallen for over these summer months
Now it lays stretched, dead over the creek bed, highest branches brushing forest floor ground eroded out from underneath the roots
The artist’s curse is attachment masked as lust, even love but the object isn’t special just because it’s the perception, the artist’s deception that gives rise to conception
We may have loved this thing before and here we are losing it, once more
Don’t be fooled
To be felt deeply is no honour, because an artist is a slut for feeling
How can one help but try and remember Even ask curiously Who is this and how do I know them from a past life As I indirectly feed them or compete for attention or laughter or share an earnest word on institutional experience I cannot help but question How do I know you? Did we eat at the same table? Drink from the same cup? Have I sensually stroked your arm? Did you birth me from your womb? Push me on the swing? So many lives lived unremembered Remarkable though they seemed At the time
Gone. Gone from my grasp. Yet feelings of familiarty arise At each and every word exchanged The touches given, stopped So weird that you could linger Like an unfounded memory Yet I know within my heart That appearance reflects karma Though unfolded memory remains Tucked away for enlightened eyes only A privilege reserved for tenth dimension beings And here we are struggling in 3D appearance I don’t hear you in my dreams No we weren’t that close so recently But previous lives are infinite Circular I like to believe So we’ve had…how many?
Now you stand before me Like you’ve never known me But you bear the name I’ve heard before Under steepled roof, through Christian door I strive for patience, not to deplore A despicable name I don’t care for You aren’t the same though it would appear that way And de ja vu is pretty peculiar So the dream I know is a dream getting weirder As if it’s possible it could be stranger But that is one thing you’re definitely not As you avoid my gaze it’s clear You’ll never shoot your shot and I think about the shit lot it sometimes seems I got – gave myself? – a dream with Suspicious people in my midst Horrid roommates taking the piss Out of my very livelihood – what a ride My karma has given me, so I turn To the cause, asking “What has given rise to thee? What led this John Doe here to me? What action have a I done or refused That left this jackoff rather bruised?”
Better perhaps to question How do I right the wrongs That led to these damned impressions? How do I purify the karma in the way Of the mind that holds steadfastly Virtuous equanimity, a warm feeling And friendly attitude to each living being? That is peace and happiness to me.
Close doesn’t cut it for a swing and a miss a near hit can’t bring the runner home
Close doesn’t count t’ward an orange flagged fall a slipped push kick never nets the ball, missed point
Just out of bounds, nearly there it’s not – kind of like a heart attack without the big ol’ clot
A close call, one number off never got the message ‘cross
A close shave, still breathing now, never put me in the grave
They say, close only matters in horseshoes and hand grenades guess that’s why it’s easier today to be okay with how it’s shaken out now I see, certainly in matters of the heart, close really doesn’t count
The Halfwit Writer 