Then what is good?

"The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressive---that's what's good for you if you're at all serious at your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life---live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition."

-Tennessee Williams

broken cell phone

you speed along asking yourself if this is a friendly universe. and this greedy-calorie-consuming-brain sucks down another glass on the rocks. and you dance at parties with globs of wasted food. and your own plastic plate finds the trash can with more nutrients than you can stomach. and the consequences of activity wear you down. and your tired feet and skateboard get you across town. and you sleep in your car. your slurred words are mistaken for accidents. like getting behind the wheel and falling asleep as the lines blur blurry white trails across your fragile cerebral cortex as it's firing on liquid fuel and intoxicants. and then you wake up. and then the news. and then the navy kills pirates and makes heroes of wealthy nations. malnourished skin withers it's last glow. the world's rising middle class get microwaves. and obesity plagues the states. and food prices are going up. and a few african fishermen use their boats to find different fish to stay alive. and we remake robin hood all the fucking time but still feel like heroes when we gun down these poor thieves. and so what if i made fun of those kids for going to private school.

tomorrow morning

i'm a side door away from peace. desperate and fearful of a meditative pause. being immersed in solitude is very different than knowing the ever-present silence. it's difficult to bare. so i've kept the music on, inebriated the mind, made my unconsciousness a purgatory for any pure energy. letting it wait. covering my ears. making noise. like a child tuning out. dodging the universe. anxiously avoiding my only redemption. the silent pain. universal patience. expansive immersion. discovery of breath. like a jagged spiritual transfusion. footsteps in the sand. nothing in my hands. it's been awhile since i ran on the beach.

wake

life feels most real when it's so dreamlike it can't be remembered

love in a sarcophagus. pleasures of flesh, chemistry, all the dreams we fail to describe. you floated into my waking and grabbed me with something real, greater. feelings intensified beyond tired confines of sleepy days. grabbed me. grabbed you. pushed, pulled, hungered, delved, laid down and listened to black quiet death, pounding in rhythm with the universe. bathed in honey, molten lava, my resolve obligingly finding the drain, sinking away. the sun's splendor, pale ash to the night's magic. on a rickety bed, the physical exchange, bodily merge, power, fire, liquid warmth, symbols of passion explaining the abstract clamouring of our loud invisibles. The banging of pots and pans, slamming of porcelain, shared journey, that's what you were talking about right? the shared journey. i said the moments were best. dynamite could probably solve the quandary of perspectives, collapsing the middle to rubble, drawing together both poles, leaving us, indistinguishable dust, merrily indistinguishable.

at daybreak

the seahorse carousel of hollywood movie ideas circumvents space and laughs in your face. Every cafe in this town serves microwaved eggs. I swallow an oatmeal life to contrast the colorful world surrounding. A nearly blind gentleman stares nose to screen and speaks crystal clear, probably the smartest guy in this town. This town. If I was in Ireland, I'd be another dirt road musician. Hawaii, a fat man playing ukulele on his porch. French Revolution, an imprisoned melodramatic or poet sadist. Arctic, a smiling beluga whale. Cold, cold, go north grow berries. Warm, warm, south avocados. Cultivating the earth provides the magic. The time is ripe. The fruit will fall. Everything into the soil, to grow again.

Life Is Out of Sight

Repopulated

Most of my friends are long departed writers. Away somewhere, busy specs of dust, earthly ruminations, global participants, stampeding tides. The rest are patient satellites, destitute sunbeams, molding cabins near forgotten mossy earth. Pieced together, unified in their human forms, fluttering words through the communal language. And we're appreciative. I am anyway, for my friends. Profound logic, morality, inanity, entrances to shared experiences. Shining light on everything we fail to recognize even as we wake immersed, bound. Our very lives, governed by documents of written language shedding accountability on primitive mechanisms. Movements shackled with compromise. Private thinking lorded over by public language. The brain belongs to society. The heart belongs to children. The soul is a shit word, but that thing, that thing which shall remain nameless, locationless, against recognition, that which we know, pray, kill to be true, flowering light obliterating the self, shall redeem, continue true energy from this communal prison, freeing that genius again.

Interchangeable

Your phone is glowing in your pocket. Misery thrives on rejection which births direction. I love that golden sheen. The caricature of health. Even as our cells rot, smoke drifts onto eyelids, resting, realizing that everyone is working in harmony. Right and wrong if we just understand, we're all destined for an interwoven fate. Like strangers on a rollercoaster.

Alan Watts