What Could Possibly Matter More Than Meaning What You Don’t Have The Answers For?

What’s the point in asking the question

If your voice is already defeated

I’d go blind just trying to see it

You know everyone is trying to beat it—

If there’s pain then that means there’s a reason

If there’s truth then it’s hard to believe in

Still it’s hard not to relive this feeling

Where everyone everyone’s stealing—

It’s like selling your grief for a grievance

Why the hell would you even break even

Doing all we could to deceive them

It’s all wasted time wasting time healing—

It’s like playing pretend dressed in your skin

Or saying the pledge of allegiance

When there’s no one to please or believe in

It only matters as much as you mean it

Rudimentary Silence

Only in the slightest

Contradictions find us

Taking a piss in the back of a waiting

Rudimentary silence

Little acts of violence

Testing the waters like leaving the bathtub

Full of standing water

Babies left to wander

Dipping our beaks in a pool not so shallow

Now—

Actions without reason

God I’ve got this feeling

Down like the old folks whose tennis balls are wearing out

Obligations find us

Contradictions bind us

Tight like a truckers hitch secured to nothin but

Ourselves if we’re willing

To hold someone who’s willing

To kick the creator for all the stupid shit we’ve been through

Now—

Everybody wants their own way

Standing on clouds there’s no reason to shout out loud

When everybody gets their own way

I can guarantee somebody won’t be pleased (laugh out loud)

A Tale of Two Cities—Broken from Birth

People were always

Dying to get in, or

Dying to get out.

Nobody ever wanted

To be where they were—

And it was always that way—

It was A Tale of Two Cities.

Cruel and hostile, broken

From birth—The bread

When shared, had long since spoiled.

So left were the people’s

Disgruntled denial, who’d sacrifice

Even their own mothers love—for lies—

Because, the truth was tough

and too hard to swallow.

And it was never their fault.

But neither was it His.

Call it a wash

People were like soap operas—

So when I could,

I’d turn them to sonnets.

And when I couldn’t,

I’d call it a wash.

Cheers with my Moose Mug. Dec 2020

Patience and Surrender

Most things can’t be unsaid,

though in my heart—

under the mess I’ve made—they

can be understood, in time

with patience and surrender.

I’ll always surrender.

I just haven’t got the skin,

I just haven’t got the heart

not to know better.

November 28 2020

Rorschach Test

Funny, how a song

sung over the years

can seem, so foreign

even to me, with a chorus

not even I can relate to

any longer than it takes

to finish the mornings

cup of coffee, spilled

to form a Rorschach Test

no longer necessary

to indulge or engage,

just enjoying the view

from a bridge overseas.

Streams

Whatever stream it gets to you by,

it’s still a stream—leading nowhere

to some, somewhere to many, and

to others it’s—already there.

Florida Sunset, 2018

You just have to live.

Being sober’s

as overrated

as being drunk—

nobody wins.

You just have to live.

If nothing, I knew better

Yes, I knew better

with every fiber of my being

I just couldn’t stop the show

even if I’d wanted to

The dancers danced regardless

while the showmen sang,

underpaid and underdressed

If nothing, I knew better

than to give them validation

or the contents of my soul.

Cassadaga, 2011

Ecstasy in bloom.

Santa Monica

city street bum

sits, full lotus

thoughts rampant

running through

his charcoal beard

wild, I witness his

ecstasy in bloom.

Mural, Santa Monica.