Yesterday

I walked uphill like I was weightless. Blissed out by the complete isolation. That's not true. There were bluebirds, flies, and the wind. There was a huge rock. There was Bec. There was the sun. The blue sky. The dead little plant that used to survive on the rock. God, it had been awhile since I'd sat quietly. I used to run those hills and climb that waterfall in the hot summer sun. I used to push my way into the hills with a mind on hyper-thought. Oh the thoughts I've had! The thinking that's felt like a perfect dance partner. Engaged in higher rhythms. A zone of deeper consideration. Clarity of logic. Only out there in blessed wilderness do I transform. Aware of a connection to my spirit. Feeling the gateway of electric current shared from the pristine to the physical.

Then there was the weightless body.

I was floating up that hill.

I told Bec about it and she said that she was doing the same thing.

Before that, we had both enjoyed walking on top of the rocks in the creek bed, like a moving puzzle, searching for the right combination of angles for each occurring step. The high walls of green mountains gave the illusion of motion. We shared space and peace. The sense of being alive. Two siblings breathing in mother nature. My best self lives on hiking trails. My bravest self swims ocean buoys in the cold blue Pacific Ocean. My most fulfilled self is a warm feeling walking home after I've expressed a particularly resonate chunk of passing energy into a stylized form. My greatest self is sharing love. Yesterday, I lived heaven.

Dispatches From the Unbalanced

When the wooden wind chimes slap like human bones. The doors open and close, squeaking in time with the restless blinds. Every movement creates a reaction. That's why those shaking palm trees outside sound like crashing oceans, the six a.m. mornings make phone calls to hollow ghosts, and why a tiny stream of thoughts sink underground to join heavier rivers.

My hands are cold, so they move like mechanical spiders with many hinges. I roll our future in the dark. I hear my train coming. I feel butterflies in acceptance. I feel scared.

I jump into bed.

My back slams the headboard.

I take it as an omen to quit the self-loathing act.

There I am. A bird in a nest of comfort and solitude. Pleasure and pain advancing and retreating in inverse time like a drifting tide on the sands of guilt. A liberal spoonful of medicine. Mosquito nets hang from each corner of someone's room. There was sweat. There was always sweat when it was good. I'll come to my senses.

We were walking down the sidewalk. My friend tried to get into the passenger seat of a car that didn't appear remotely similar to mine. We were both dazed. The sun was glaring like it always is on those days. "It's better to be lost, then in nine to five misery right? I asked. "Of course." he responded. His certainty in the uncertainty was good for the moment.

The saddest part of a journey is not knowing that it ended a long time ago. That when you miss the sign, you wander down a lesser version of where you'd just been.

Honeybees Released From Their Jar

My downstairs neighbor is losing her mind. I'm so much better when I look into your eyes. Some members of my family are camera shy and I crave the spotlight. You and I should go to Cuba. We'll bribe the immigration officials and they'll look the other way. It's supposed to be beautiful there. I feel like we'd be more beautiful there. Pristine coral reefs are the best reason for a trade embargo. Plus, you could help me escape the lady downstairs. She is seventy-five and her mother is still alive. She yells at her about her own pain and it all seems pretty miserable. Next to her window is an accumulating cesspool that gurgles through the night. The water is green and stagnant and I'm too lazy to tell the nearby residents about their problem. Besides that, it seems like my other next door neighbor's job. She's a nosy nobody who lives off of righteous judgement like it's fuel. She's a bored indignant. I say that even though I understand that we do party too loud over here sometimes and the things that come out of our mouths would sound ridiculous if you didn't know us too well. But disagreeing with our neighbors is genetic. My mom and dad always had problems with the other sides of the fences. Sometimes they'd even argue about fences. Sometimes it looked like the Jerry Springer show outdoors. Little kids yelling insults at adults and vice-versa. Families engaging in verbal warfare. Things would get so messy. Maybe that's why I want to meet you in Honolulu on your way back from the South Pacific. I've been desiring a warm island paradise for awhile now. Everything is contained and if you're close enough to the ocean, then you have no one to argue with, I think. You see, life has been up and down. I can't believe how strong the wind has to be to knock me off of my feet. I wonder if the weight of substances helps. I wonder if the muscle-building keeps me grounded. Sometimes it seems futile and I want to disappear down to the skinny artist I am. But that's only sometimes. I'm strong. You said my grip was claustrophobic and then addictive, and in my better moods I felt the same about you. Hank said he woke up and found he wasn't as emotionally available as he had thought he was the night before. My brother turned to me and said, "you like that little speech uh? Sounds like you." I identified with it, yes. Another hundred thousand assholes probably nodded as well. That's a conservative estimate and I'm a conservative optimist. Shoot for the sky with a strong sense of worry. The past carried a heavy stick. The black and blue bruises from unfelt drunken escapades are the least of our worries. It's the ones that happened because we impulsively chose them. It's the ones that happened outside of our control that make us sick with fear. It's that unseen force that scares the behavior. It's that thing we call karma or conscience. It's that limiting element that contrives the intentions. It's the bondage that must be broken if we are to have one moment of real freedom. I saw you in a dream, then I saw you on the train, and now you're not youthful, and neither am I. I wrote that based on a message sent from the future. If you're quiet enough, you can grab fragments from anywhere in time-eternal like they're fireflies. I just realized that.

So beautiful you should burst. Your skin and the rest of the fruit. Your resume reads like a desire. On a bright screen I finger you. On a light wind we sail. Crisp white bed sheets, saltwater curled hair, and time. Cast me in your latest video, shine like a sunset. There we burn. Then we take our turns. Here we come together.

You said I'm like a train.

You said time's like a river.

You said love's like confetti.

I swallowed your sharp breath. We created stew. A bed of human fluids. A mental collapse. An emotional ballooon. A waterfall too soon. Collide like two asteroids. Spell like two bees. Smell like a pissed bed and come again. Move forward through space and our story creates itself while scratched in blood on faraway cave walls. I'm waterboarded. I'm revealing truth. The misinformation suits. I reach out. I'm going to realize you. There we are again, a glimpse. There we are again, a forever. A basket on a bicyclye, you ride, and I fly. You try and I sigh.  Wake up to a face. A snapshot of skin. You are otherworldly. I am up early. We are inconsistent. We are a shadow with a moving sun. I chase girls like you. You move oblivious. A screen page like a fantasy. A conglomerate of perfection. A trivial list of accomplishments. A contrived projected self. A digital image. A beauty reliant on electricity. A scar. A human hole. A band complete with crashing cymbals and snapping snare drums. I chose you. I chose this life. I went through women like files. We've met.

An Escalator and A Slide; Side to Side

Ze thing about Neverland is that you don't age; but, do get fat. I've been there. I've drank the wine and sampled the fruits many times over. All the while my stomach expanding into a soft pile of subcutaneous bloat. It must have grown while I slept. It wasn't a noticeable progression. It came more like a heavy delivery. A growing mass first noticeable when I'd sit down and feel the rolls accumulate over themselves. Like a nightlife pregnancy. Each pound carrying an equal weight in unadulterated fun. A currency exchange of sorts. It was easy to dismiss due to the proper ingested amounts of mind-altering medications. It was easy to forget because I'd stopped looking inwardly. It was easy. My own image externally validated in exchange for the purchase of flat-lined personal growth. Anaesthetically stunted in Neverland, I was living in a cloud of smoke and it was a dense smoke, but it was still gaseous and easy to perforate. Only, no one cared to wave it away. Everyone was either getting vicariously high off of the publicized fumes or they didn't give half a shit. 

I dared. I crept out. I stopped, dropped, and rolled, and felt better and bitter for my escape. I missed the wildfire like a boring marshmallow without flame. An erotic stimulation of an ego turned on and off like a light switch. My own free will choosing the latter. Holding out for as long as I can or could until the next time. Content in isolation until I went mad again. It's a cycle and I'm a rifle. The next time you see me, my eyes will be scorched black by the sun. Then winter will cool me down and I'll dance-step back inside of the electric caverns. The first thing I'll notice are the filthy gum-stained sidewalks covered with herds of naked female legs. The next will be the uncertainty. Followed by the breath of adrenaline that comes with walking into the ego's Eden. I won't tell you what happens there. I won't fool you. I won't seduce you. I'll continue on as though it would be impossible to describe.

Then there will be the pristine nature of time immemorial reflecting core energy. A pure light. Isn't that reassuring? Isn't that justifiable? Isn't this a journey with a fixed end, but no map, no distance, and no idea to what sort of design the amusement park waiting at the "end" styles itself? 

The hell of Dedalus's preacher lives on this Earth as one of many existences. He can't scare me. The piles of corpses sitting in the bottom of a third-world morgue are now. They wait subserviently and rot indifferent to some of the world's paradise. What could have been. Scarcity and lack and one or two souls from better distributed areas wave their arms in consternation like I did as a boy jumping off of the couch trying to fly. They bravely begin at the beginning. With heart's seeking a human equilibrium of advantage over scarcity. I admire you for taking on the world one frame at a time. You courageous ones, you can gently shake the world. Through my cynicism there is an untouched optimism that lives eternal and roots for the evolution of higher consciousness.

Bend and return. Waver and grow stronger. Embracing confusion is the sexiest way to live. I guess that was my point.

The Sky Has Been Avoiding Me

Where to begin is the same place to end. The sky has no fine line. It only reflects brighter seas from sharper suns. It's a running joke that if a conversation has to do with anywhere, I've probably had a related job.

It's a running rejection until success intervenes.

It's a fleeing heart until a faster and more beautiful ticker catches up and ties it down.

It's a dashing soul that has no home.

I found you at the bottom of a well. Treat me like a symphony. Wonderful that you care. Freak out like an ego. Dance like Tokyo. Put on the bowler hat, make a funny face, and swing an imaginary Charlie Chaplin Cane while speaking like the Dickens. One lemonade stand that keeps me fed. One drunken tight-rope walk with fate. One contraction after labor pains. A mad scientist with a calm vision before the storm. Speak to me devil. I've listened and I've lied. You take advantage of my honesty. A sweating body. A moving mind. A shifting tide. A ride. A drive.