the promise

in the woods in the sun,
life was perfect then.
the girls chosen
run around bathed in innocence
and the father was
just being him
the world paused, breathed
a sigh of relief
we didn't need signs,
we don't need signs

I pushed you on the swing.
your eyes looked back into mine
and when though my heart was someone else's
I caught your sign
I caught your sign
I felt the flame inside
I said a prayer and I cast my dice
the universe nodded to me in the sunshine

so much time has passed
since my hands rested on your back,
but I can't forget.
I wonder can you forget

can the universe forget?

The Curse

The Curse

I dealt our hand my love

And it all came up the Major Arcana.

Death, The tower, and judgement.

The Angels and the Demons all tried to whisper through your pride.

Do not fuck with the Scorpion.

Death for the truth.

I made you speak it.

I make you face it, daily.

We both know what you are, and there is no escape.

Not in sleep, not in Wine.

The White horse rode by,

And stepped over the King, the Priest, and the Whore.

And left nothing but the bleached bones of your heart behind.

Tower for the end.

You can sing your Siren’s song,

You can regret all night long.

You can work on the problem to solve

But there is no resolve.

You will finally know your actions have consequences.

You will finally know there is a final.

Judgement.

May God and all the Angels and the Devils judge between us.

May they judge how much I loved you,

How much I tried.

And the night you laughed about you infidelity,

How much of my heart died.

May they judge the deceit and the lies.

And now, what lies ahead;

Who is the living and the dead.

You got the spoils and the pleasure,

I took the pain.

Now you dare come back again.

To spread your seeds and your lies.

The land is salted.

Nothing will grow for you, and you will still be there,

Your own haunting. Wherever you go.

Jezebel

Captain Jezebel
dammit to hell
I'm standing on the shores now
watching you bear down on your white whale

you'll ride the bow,
but bow to nothing
hell bent on a perfection
you'll only find in hell

everything is thrown aside
to take that harpoon inside
that pleasure and pain
what did you gain?

and everything
is a sacrifice to your pleasure and pain, what did you gain? what did you gain?

Captain Jezebel
you finally got your whale
and when you proudly went down with your ship,
not a word from your lips, slipped

but your eyes meet mine,
just one last time
as I stood on the shores of paradise
and you slipped beneath the foam.

Tear

What is Sin?

What is Man?

What is Woman?

There is a Chasm so deep that yawns under every single one of us.

We stare down and shake our heads at those who have fallen in, and some survive the fall. And then we watch the claw tat the sides of the slippery walls trying to get back to the tightrope we all walk over the chasm; the tightrope we call peace and happiness.

When someone falls, that rope vibrates and we all desperately try to steady ourselves and those around us; this crazy circus act of unintentional actors, trying to not meet our inevitable fate.

Yet one by one, into the chasm we go. Fathers, Mothers, Children, lovers we watch them fall, and we in mirth laugh and sing “Not me! Not me! Not me!” and all the while we know our turn will come, but not really believing it.

What is Sin, Son?

Have you been to that chasm? Have you stared into the eyes of the fallen? Have you known the pain of knowing that there is NOTHING you can do to stop the progression of the death of everything? Not even crying out to the God that created it all will stop it. We are as theoretical as he is. Everything grinds to a halt. Nothing is forever.

What is Sin? Is it the opposite of love?

I have Sinned, Son.

I have done Evil. When that chasm yawned beneath me and swallowed up what I held dear, I cried a cry of despair that is the sound of the Universe being ripped apart; torn in half.

And then I took everything I could and shoveled it into that chasm to fill the hole under me and around me and in me. Alcohol. Women. Work. Religion. ANYTHING.

What. Is. Sin.

What. Is. Love.

Love is not something you do. It is something you have. This may be the most valuable lesson I have ever learned in my life. If you are choosing to love something or someone, you do not. Period. You are living a lie to cover up that which looms below you; the unavoidable.

Love is a natural thing that occurs. You love what is lovable; what is right. And you love it because…I don’t know why. You love puppies and babies and you love innocent young women because they are innocent, and you love youth helping the old and you love young men in camaraderie; you love all these things. They steady that vibrating rope.

And then you watch as all of these things are slowly poisoned and tainted; the dark of the depth of that chasm reached out and slowly chokes them and twists them and transforms them into the manifestation of the darkness below, until you finally succumb and start believing that innocence is gullibility, that vulnerability is weakness, and that all there is is distraction and pleasure to pass the time until that chasm that we don’t believe in swallows us too. And we quit trying. We just throw ourselves to abandonment and do anything to pass the time as we wait around to die.

Why is something or someone lovable to us?

Because it is right.

And this is something I have never understood. I have always had this little secret on my heart and never understood why and I don’t think I ever will in my lifetime. Why is it right to not deceive? Why is it right to not cheat and destroy families and to not rob and steal? Call it God’s law, call it Karma, call it justice; we don’t know, and we’ll never know. But we KNOW. Every single one of us know. We will think and twist and choose and spiral out of control all the things we know are right to avoid that chasm, but we are all going there.

And perverting what is right and beautiful and natural will not stop that. But what’s worse than that, honoring and loving what is right will not stop that either.

Death will equalize us, The good, the bad, the beautiful and the profane. We will all fall into the chasm. We will all cry that cry that tears a hole into the Universe. We will all do everything we can to embrace the right, or pervert it to avoid the unavoidable.

Tao.
سفر الجامعة

safar aljamiea

Manifestations

the final movement

We're all trying to make these memories mean something to everyone; someone.
We're all trying to deify...
Chips of red baked on enamel, and
photographs' faces, and memories, that our grandchildren will forget about.
Our legacy is dust.


Dust.


I wanted to build a legacy for you, my love.
You built one for me.


And I...Have been tearing it down,
Destroy.
Destroy.
Bring the world to it's knees and burn the damn place down,
Cause you're not here to share it with.
I've been to the mall in Washington,
I've stared into Lincoln's cold eyes
They didn't reserve us any spaces.


I would not contaminate your stone with my name.
Your granite.
Crushed into granite; there is a speckle of Neutronium at the center of it all;
14 billion years. They say it is old. It's just a worthless number,
When you step out time out of mind.


You stepped out on me.
You cheated. We weren't done yet. You left all the good things,
And took my reason for being good.
I look for you in my dreams.
Sometimes I find you, and I can't bear it. I can't bear it cause the laughter is so loud, and the light is so bright.
The girls, they dance around us, and sing. They sing as we sing; spin together.
I sing now, it falls to the Earth like rocks.
There is one in my throat, love.


I want to build you a legacy;
A Zen garden built on quicksand.
A murmur in the tempest.
And you, your memory.
I slowly slip quietly into becoming a crazy old man, Scorned by all around me
Intolerable, unwanted, misunderstood....And I am so good with that.
Who could understand?
I haven't slept a handful of nights in two years,
And I fear it when it comes.
I fear the pain...of dreaming of the happiest times, to wake with such a start.
Bolt upright and gasp....


And once again, you're not there; to put my arm around....
1:37 AM.
And the rest of the night....



Is mine to regret

'October the 19th. Wine, blood, deliverance.

   I wrote this post, then deleted it. I deleted it, then lost it. I deleted it, because it was dangerous to me, for many reasons. This post has to do with something that I have not ever seen within me before; let me rephrase that. This post has something to do with something I have not seen within me in a long time. And, I was afraid to make that public. The whole point of this blog was to help me and others to understand. I looked for clarity in these things; the universal solvent of life and faith; as it were.

   See, faith used to be easy and convenient for me. Now, faith in the God I love and cherish is a dark and treacherous thing; it is a closed door that resonates deeply when I bang against it. There is something on the other side which I thought I had known; and yet now, knowing I might not ever have known, I long deeply to reside within it. I'm terrified of that door. I'm terrified that it is closed. I am terrified that sometimes I hear what is mirth, or a dirge, from the other side. I'm more terrified sometimes I can't hear anything...Most of all, I am terrified that I am the door, and this is the true test and measure of faith. Is my fear and trepidation impenetrable? God help me, don't let it be so.

   So, after I lost this post, I decided to rewrite it. Quite simply, I don't know why. The posterity of human suffering, I suppose. Not that we don't all have our own suffering.

    Perhaps somewhere out in this wasteland of exchange of human quantity of knowledge, this desert of our lowest common denominator, I felt like maybe there should be the howl of madness. Perhaps, as we go through our time pretending to be concerned with all that is inconsequential, so that we might convince ourselves to ignore the only real pivotal singularity and concepts of our existence, perhaps, there needs to be a bit of this discomfort. There needs to be a minor key to this simple tune we are all trying to hum; there needs to be the mark of the villain that life is beautiful and we are all going to die, and why is that?

Disclaimer: These events in this post are, as far as you are concerned, fiction. I am a very capable, functioning individual, and I suffer from no mental deficiency whatsoever. Mentally I am sticking my tongue out right now. Without further adieu, I present for your consideration and dismay, October the 19th, 2012. Wine, Blood, Redemption.

OCTOBER THE 19TH, 2012. 

WINE.

BLOOD.

REDEMPTION.

   I should have come with a warning label. I craved for human contact. I was desperate to love and feel loved again. The pure enmity I felt toward myself and Christina after her death is not something I completely understand, nor is it clearly understood now. Even the left behind, the still alive can feel, rejected, forlorn, and forsaken. It is a selfish, ugly feeling. Yet, I daresay it is somewhat natural. I do not ask about these things; who can be the expert and arbiter on such matters? 

   She should not have been there, this poor girl. She wanted to be with me, on the first anniversary of Christina's death. She wanted to comfort me, talk to me, understand me. Such naivete. How can one understand another, when the one they strive to understand cannot understand themselves? How could she plumb the depths of my pain,  when I had become the master of deceit; a wraith of emotion, and an illusion? 

   I myself did not know. I was numb, and I had called it healing. I should have known, for a Scorpio perhaps. And I such a dark complected one; I was merely the calm surface that masked the airless void of the bog underneath. My emotions lay buried so deep, they had sucked all the light and oxygen out of my soul. That mire to escape the pain I had suffered with Christina's death, as deep as the love I had held for her in life. 

   The girls were away. I had planned to go to Winona Tn, to the land we had bought, to scatter some of her ashes. I had planned. In the end, like so many other things, I simply could NOT bring myself to do it. I picked up wine. I went home. There was company; distraction. There, I would drink and avoid myself. There, the waters would calm, numbness, by my design and by the wine, would settle, in. Thus I would make it through this day. 

   I came in. I took out two long stem wine glasses. I poured the wine. I had a glass. I poured another. I had not said a word. Quiet minutes slipped into an hour. I poured another glass. The wine, and the murk were at war with the images in my mind. Things I recalled in such vividness and yet they had become as surreal as the rest of life had since that day. Everything; every moment a walking dream; a waking nightmare. This was my purgatory. 

   There is an old Irish song called "Brother, pour the wine" I heard Dennis Day sing it on the Jack Benny program. 

   "Do you want to talk about it?"

   The first words spoken. They hung in the air like thickening Merlot clinging to uneven glass. I tried to form a word. Nothing would come out. There was nothing there. 

   I tried to speak. I laid my head in my hands, and began to sob.  

   From deep within me, a guttural cry arose.The room began to spin. The thoughts and remembrances I had been pushing down all day began to break the surface. That cry steadily crested into an ungodly scream. I screamed over and over at the top of my lungs. I kicked the wall.

   The wine glass sat there beside me, delicate; fragile. I struck out. I shattered the bulb with my fist. I snapped the stem with a slap from my palm. Wine sprayed the wall beside me. 

   The base of the glass remained on the table by the couch. A thick, cruel glass spike, the remainder of the stem arose straight up from the base. two inches long, and a quarter inch round, that stem stood proud and defiant. All the black of that bog of dead and buried emotion wretched up inside me. My face twisted into hate and anger. I screamed, clinched my fist, and raised it. The girl saw what I was up to, and shouted "NO!" at the top of her voice. It wasn't enough to break the spell. I slammed my clinched fist down onto that wine stem as hard as I possibly could. The stem buried itself so deeply into the side of my hand I felt it grate against bone. I buried that stem to the hilt of the base; two inches of cold glass burying itself into my flesh. 

   It was the most relieving feeling I think I have ever known. Immediately all the pain and despair disappeared back into that pool. The waters calmed then went still.

    She stared horrified at the circle of the base of the wine glass seemingly glued to my hand. "Why did you do that?!" She shrieked.  

   All I could do was laugh. A deep, foreign, horrible rumbling laugh rolled out of my lips, beyond my control to stop it. I reached up, and gingerly pulled the base of the glass. The stem slid out of my hand. I 1/4 inch gush of blood followed it. I bled, and bled, and bled. I walked around the house, gushes of blood squirting out of my hand. The girl desperately, and in vain, followed me around, trying to get me to quell the flow. I could not stop laughing and laughing maniacally. I passed out. 

   I woke up the next day, my swollen hand wrapped in a blood soaked terry cloth. I walked from my bedroom floor, where I lay, into the living room. 

   I have never seen anything like it. The entire living room it seemed like was covered in puddles of blood. The blood had dried into flaky deep crimson pools on the floor. There were puddles of blood in the kitchen. There were puddles of blood going outside. There were puddles of blood in my truck. I had bled until I had passed out. 

   Needless to say, the girl was a bit freaked out. I was too. 

   I was freaked out, but something had changed. I knew now, how deep and desperate my pain still was. I understood so much about myself that next day. I was and am a broken man. And I'm OK with that. I don't and can't need to be anywhere else. 

   I suffer from PTSD. I will be OK for a few weeks. Then, I will fall apart. It may be the smallest of things. I brought in that special tote from the garage to protect it; the one with all the pictures and memories. That wine glass base is in that tote, by the way. I fell apart. I haven't bathed in five days. I've barely moved from the couch. 

   But I know now; it isn't hate. It isn't that I'm suddenly too lazy to deal with it all. It's because sometimes, I've fought as hard as I could. Time to go to the cave, Elijah.

   It was a hard fought battle to just be able to love and be loved by my girls again. It hurt too much to be so close to something knowing that losing it will cause you to lose yourself and your mind. I lost my mind over her. I lost my relationship to life over her. It's all different now. 

   There's the Wine, and the Blood. Where's the redemption? I guess it's right here. It's on the sleepless nights, when I know that madness is killing me with lack of sleep. It's knowing in the morning, I will get up, make coffee, and then make waffles for these little girls. It's knowing that one day I won't. It's knowing I had better really, REALLY appreciate these mad, sleepless nights, these grubby little hands, this messy house, that stupid un-trainable dog on the porch...It's knowing nothing is perfect, and nothing ever will be, and I can't make it that way. I don't live for it. I live in spite of it. Maybe that is where perfection lies?

   It's knowing that...I can never know. I can never be Holy enough to know if my unholiness keeps that door shut. It's knowing that door was always shut. It's knowing, it has to be opened from the other side. And I don't really even know that. I really don't get very preachy anymore. 

   Who will I look down on in life? Not a single soul. If I can ease someone else's pain in all this, I want to. God knows I caused enough of it, especially since Christina's death. 

   It's knowing God can forgive me and love me, and I can forgive myself. And I do. And if it sounds pedantic, it's so much more difficult than you think; that bog is still there, and I muck it out just a little at a time. 

My pinky finger still goes numb at times. Apparently I did some nerve damage. I don't mind. I don't really mind at all. 

Eyes burn,
Throat