At Eternity's Gate

I came to a clearing at the edge of the woods
Leaving behind me the arboreal blanket
That had mostly shaded and hid me from the sun.

The sun, unrestrained, beat down oppressively
A stifling heat misjudged, catching me unawares
As I, tremulous, gaped at the tremulous scene.

Standing upon the edge I saw, looking ahead
Infinity playing at my periphery
And some distance from the woods I'd only just left.

At first I quite eagerly made my way across
Spurred on by the temptation of exploration
Lost in the hold of fantasies of the unknown.

But I soon grew weary and my footfalls slackened.
Sweat dripped from my brow; I saw my spirit blacken
As I burned beneath the indomitable sun.

Oh, how I wished to turn back knowing I could not
I had gone too far now from that which I once knew
And knew that there was only forward: nothing more.

So I trudged on and after an eternity
That seemed too brief, my quest ended but in its stead
I could only see a different forest ahead.

Commence to Begin

Dear god please grant me sweet nepenthe
As the sinners in outrage cry out “Repent, ye”
“Little of faith, less of heart and soul,”
“What blasphemy you utter, you do not know.”
And yes this began in medias res
If this midlife is my half-life I'm less than blessed
This is where your aimless faith will get you
Unanswerable questions do not beget truth
But this is all a ruse I'm sure you'll see through
Fuck these bitches and let that money accrue
If we're lost when we die I'd rather not cry at rain
This total perspective vortex will destroy your brain.

Yo enough stalling, let's commence to begin
This'll be the first track I say the title in -
And the first I assure you, where I'll be direct
At least more than you should've come to expect
Let's go way back when to when all this shit started
Woke to a gray morning, weak and broken-hearted
Rubbed sleep from my eyes but nothing was there
There's no rest for the wicked or so I hear
But the steely gray sky like life past prime
Belied the warm morning that met me outside
And as I breathed deep I knew the sleepless nights
This illusion of time ends with the sunrise.

We're all like Prometheus – we know too much
And try to steal things that are hot to touch
Each little moment like we're thieves of time
Each day we awake to confront our crimes
But there's no eagle coming for our livers
Just one before whom we'll stand and deliver
So count the hours that you lose to sleep
And count the hours that you lose to people
And count the time that you spend on yourself
Does the weight of your soul slowly tip the scale
Or would the weight of the world borne on your shoulders
Look any lighter to another beholder?

Let me ask you, would that balm in Gilead
Finally conclude this unending Iliad
Or must we traverse mountains and valleys of shadows
To find a Pyrrhic victory in these hollow battles?

Winter Wondering

The ground is covered with crack cocaine,
With the same upon cars' window panes
Yet the streets are black and dull as coal
Look! Modernism and chiaroscuro!

The winds hold softly the dancing frost
To places where they are found or lost.
Entropy in times of stagnation;
References and personification!

This is the start of the end we fear
To die is to have resolved affairs
For living is just like to splinter
Pretensions! This ain't just about winter!

Arboreal

The seedling too small to sway in the wind –
How frail is life when it first begins! –
Will as time flows and it grows and swells,
Hear the tolling of countless funeral bells.

The sapling's first halcyon snows –
A tremulous life in the bone-white glow –
Will, if it braves the bitter chill,
See a time again when all is still.

The flowering tree in the rising sun
Before the harvest has even begun
Knows that the fruit it will come to bear
Can not last long despite its care.

The summers gone and long since passed
Though slow to go never seem to last
And so hearing the end of another season sing
The tree marks off another ring.

It stands amongst the grassy graves,
Roots entrenched against the end of days,
But a stump and rings is all that's left,
They came and went and the tree is dead.

450 Degrees

The wind whispers, how trite it seems,
Broken words through shattered dreams -
Stained glass shards upon concrete -
Who cares if they'll ever be complete?

No more will shine the colored lights
That once was God for proselytes,
And now with no one left to see
Who cares about what we believe?

The scent of ashes: heavy, cloying
Like playful sprites, more than half-toying
Upon these dead and empty streets -
Who cares without hearts to skip a beat?

If any souls looked, flying by,
Upon this beast that's slowly died
Upon the threshold of eternity,
Who'd care for thoughts that none can mete?

Weightless and hollow in an empty world,
Who'd care if all this sand were pearls,
Or who'd care for burning memories,
If the city were razed to plant more trees?

Tique Toque

Spreading shadows cast by a melting hand
Over the blank alabaster face
Briefly darken its pristine countenance.

Softly, the fragile facade obscures
Obscure reminders of potential times
Burying them in the growing night.

Silenced voices grow monotonous,
Overcoming the stifling sounds:
Broken and inevitably entropic beats.

Soon there is no hint of it remaining -
Only a blank intangibility
Bearing heavily down upon me.

Don't Go Swimming With 40 Dollars In Your Trunks

I've never skipped pebbles from the beach
Onto the waves into the sea
For I know that on that final dip
I'll have let more than a pebble slip
Into the timeless waters where
It seems that time is always there.
It never changes but always moves -
We can never find the things we lose.

The shifting sands feel warm with life
Beneath the sun but dead at night
Or when they're scattered and torn apart
As I dig for shells and natural art
And ignore the paintings my fingers make
Of their own accord - but they quickly fade.
By the time I can truly understand
What is lost I have only empty hands.

The waves, the ocean, the sea air
If I were told that they're not there
That I could step off from the sand
And plant my feet upon dry land
I'd head to the horizon and then no more
Then walk myself back to the shore,
And only stop to tie my shoes
Or pick up a pebble that someone threw.

Life is good sometimes.

I decided to clean off my cleats at 12:30. My eyes felt like they were filled with molten lead - burning and heavy as hell at the same time, and the world tilted alarmingly with each step. I opened the door and stepped briefly upon a wet welcome mat before clearing the threshold to my home. I was struck instantly by the brisk night air and a disquieting moist sensation on the sole of my foot. With cleats still dangling weakly from both hands, I breathed deep and felt the night within my lungs for the first time in weeks. I'd forgotten how electrifying the night air could be. I stepped away from my door and loudly clapped the cleats together, dislodging a small clump of dirt. I heard the clap echo through the streets, weaving in and out of the houses and shadows. I was struck then by the incredible beauty that is a tranquil urban setting, and for a while there were no cars to intrude upon my musings. I struck the cleats together again, and heard the sound like a clap of thunder running wild through an empty city. Still no cars.

Diving Board

Stare into the abyss and wave to a philosopher
Don't you know if you disseminate your observations to a gossiper
They will propagate mindlessly the agenda of the void
Slipping in their insecurities like their names collectively were “Freud”?
When did the word of mouth become something other than language
And take on deeper connotations while the literal languished
Are we not just simple animals aspiring to something greater
Are we not just existential crises rebelling against their creator?
But hey lets not get heavy handed with the conceited rhetoric
Pretensions are just pretending that verbosity's a successful shtick
Dive deep into the meanings and ignore the aestheticism of words
It's the shallow end of the pool but you can still drown, ya heard?

You can call me opaque, assert I'm obtuse
I'm just circling and angling to try to get at the truth,
Stretching and skewing before your very eyes
A professional doctored image worth at least a thousand lies
Or a hypocritical oath sworn before an iatraphobic
Court to protect and serve, twisted around a broken rubic's-
Mind-fuck, Necker, abstract and subjective
Cubist insanity but be sure the primary objective
Of the rambling words is to get at your soul
The encultured byproduct when men were first bought and sold
Not just as property but as what made them the fact
Humanity isn't worth much but it's worth more than that.

At Five

My eyes open wide but my body's dead
My mind's alight in my matter's stead
And this stark sobriety from the nascent draft
Is my perception cleared or have I succumbed at last?
Is this the awakened senses of a primal beast
The instinctive struggle to die on my feet
Or am I just insane when my thoughts are clear
No worldly influence to keep me here?
But I see through the gloom that I'm not alone
Another empty soul in an empty home
She's as dead as the grave on a moonless night
Is this what is meant by a “waking life?”
But the grave's at peace I can see, god damn
That's how she is, is this how I always am -
More wasted potential I don't understand
Another byproduct of the ascent of man?

Once again I'm off to the daily grind
How trite, I guess, but I no longer mind
Numbed to the disappointment of reality
Cut off from the fantasies I'll never see.
But I see her smile as I wave good bye
And beneath it all I smile back inside
Thinking how well her Sisyphus bears its load

Incredible. Indescribable. I just. I don't know what to say. It's humanly impossible for me to convey the incredible joy and affection I feel. I can't say enough. And I can't thank you enough. And nothing is enough. You're worth more than the world can offer.

Life's happy pursuits of liberty.

I don't LIKE this.

Her criss-crossed, tangled, fucked up mind
Had failed to leave the past behind
Where it was she couldn't find
And without it she was not alive.

He tried to see with his own eyes
The world as seen by other guys
And completely failed to realize
That he had given up his life.

I worried that with man's demise
He would be forgotten by space and time
But then it hit me that when I died
I would no longer be alive!

A Final Disposition

I saw a Cheshire grin as sweet as sin,
Golden in Glasgow when it first began;
A forced smile wider for a friend
Than lips would part for me again.

I saw a renaissance grin of smug delight
Enlightened by an ephemeral sign;
A worse smile had at my expense
Than I would ever see again.

I saw rapacious grins as black as night
Take to my person like a deadly tide,
Their smiles betrayed their intents, alas
What I saw next was what I saw last:

I saw bullet-teeth in a leaden grin,
Golden halos around a violin,
Or silver coronas like the angels' wings.
And it was a fitting passage to Heaven's end,
More than I would hope to receive again.

Thoughts on science (ignore the TERRIBLE punctuation)

I've recently been reading H.P. Lovecraft and while I've greatly enjoyed the strength of his writing and his imagination with all things horrific, macabre, and science fiction-y, it was not his Cthulhu Mythos – the reason I looked into him in the first place – that most impressed me, nor was it his attempts at writing “scary stories”. The single piece of work in the collection I currently possess (but will not for much longer) that had the profoundest impact upon me is, interestingly enough, one of his least-liked stories by most of his fans: “The Silver Key”. Now, I must admit the actual story itself is not particularly well-written, and the rising action, denouement, and ending truly left quite a bit to be desired, but uncharacteristically I was able to overlook these flaws, their impact mitigated by my identification with the protagonist who, as many have suggested, in based upon Lovecraft himself. This character is described in some length as having once been fascinated with the fanciful and the fantastic, with worlds far beyond the understanding of modern man and with things that, truly, man may never have been meant to know. However as this character grew older and supposedly wiser, he was indoctrinated in the sciences and logic, a process that eventually stripped him of his foreign landscapes and credulity surrounding them, replacing the childlike wonder with half-hearted skepticism. This is a process that many undergo in their lives, and had the story stopped there, I do not think I would have been struck as I had been by the sense of fellowship I felt for the protagonist who's name - which I neglected to mention previously - is Randolph Carter. However Mr. Carter did not strictly adhere to the scientific and worldly mentality, recognizing that the constructs of man were inherently flawed and uncertain, perhaps even more so than fantasy. This is a thought that I've also often entertained, wondering why is it that ancient knowledges that were once so certain have been replaced by sciences which make unfounded assumptions and indeed even expect their subscribers to accept in faith that what has not been discovered eventually will be. I can not, though, say that I am a follower of ancient ways and beliefs, raised as I was on a curriculum of modern-day logic and science, but recognizing the shortcomings of both, I've come to adopt an unskeptical view of antiquity. I maintain that there are things man does not know, and that everything man has discovered can be quite different that what he believes, or simply incorrect. I've often wondered anyone can be sure of the formulae they place so much stock in, or in the truths they believe they've discovered. Newtonian physics were once the accepted norm until Einstein, working patiently for years, shattered those long-held tenets with a radical conceptualization of reality. Then Einstein too was dethroned by radical re-imaginings of quantum mechanics, which created a world of uncertainty and probability and, in Einstein's view, improbability. My point with the very short and extremely incomplete history lesson, is that each time the workings of the world were made anew, the concepts and formulae used were vast departures than those previously held, though they undoubtedly stemmed from their predecessors. How can one be expected to do anything more than take these new developments “with a grain of salt” as it were, understanding as they do that if the foundations are weak, that eventually the entire structure must collapse? I've often wondered how we know that the systems of primitive man are worthy of developing vast empires of knowledge upon. Another thought that worries me is the homogenization of knowledge and scientific pursuit. True there are many conflicting views and beliefs, but none of them deviate from the accepted views of the world. There are none that are truly revolutionary, simply derivative-yet-dissenting. In the end though, I am forced to admit that while I have entertained these notions, they do not trouble me very much. Arithmetic may be wrong, and the entire foundation of mathematics be full of incredible holes as a result, but what of it? If two and two does not equal four, what does it matter? If logic and the like are false, what would change? They suit our needs and in our current lives major upheavals in knowledge may not be met with much personal change or indeed much gravity. The point is, regardless of whether or not microphysics is based upon a dice roll, life still prevails and no one would be duly concerned. How many of us notice the effects of the machinations of atoms? How many of us are worried about the location of electrons? It may affect us, but what can we truly do about it? And if we could tamper with it, would we want to? In the end, the questions that Randolph Carter reminded me of were all answered simply with: It doesn't matter if the world is run by science or magic, because in the end there isn't much differentiating between the two and so why worry?

P.s. I would like to clarify that I am not advocating apathy or disinterest, simply suggesting that man should not be so jaded in his beliefs. Nothing is certain, nothing is concrete, but that should not cause undue worry. Life prevails, does it not?

Moths to the Light

For each brave astronaut,
Each intrepid explorer of unknown realms
That dares trespass where none have before -
Into the blinding light of knowledge
To flutter fitfully before enlightenment,
Then lie exhausted and wary -
But not defeated,
I notch a roll of newspaper
With the dusty smear of broken wings.

More Weight

Sunlight plays into my waiting pupils -
A school of eyes blank, unseeing, open wide,
Receiving a tender caress and a warm embrace.

The lingering miasma soon dissipates;
The sun is left to beat a tattoo on a blank board,
Stifling without the comfort of the shade.

Shielding my eyes from the glare,
I traverse vibrant desert places,
Seeking shadows and knowing
That if the day does not kill me, the night will.

This Still Life is Electrifying

Crazed scribblings of rotten minds
Dance across a porcelain canvas,
Dripping venom from tarantella footwork.

I ask the primordial brew for entrance,
Exhilarated by the nascent cosmos
My mind is taken to pieces by the darkness.

Shadows being devoured by shadows
Flare novas before a tremulous stage,
Shunning allegory in stark colors - contrasts.

I send my soul out from a hollow shell
Feeling its ascent into the world,
Leaving its insane dreams behind.

Ephemeral jaws fleck the cosmos -
I see the flash of rabid organs detonating like depth charges;
This still-life is electrifying.

Men die as the army
Soldiers on, stoic
As the holocaust dies down.
Excited by the flames of victory,
It marshalls its
Obliterated limbs,
Ignoring the knowledge that
By tomorrow its life,
Limbs and excitement and all,
Shall be spent.

WIP: 99% completed (Revisions Possible)

Watch the clockwork losing time
On gears of glass and teeth of light.
Worn smooth by their consistent grind
Scarce can they catch a brief respite.

Watch the machine's unending dance -
A mesmerizing, unsteady affair.
Its peculiar, almost arrhythmic romance
Turns slowly upon the autumn air.

Watch the gears grind on with dread
As the facade eventually shatters.
Its final act before its dead:
Its immaculate innards scattered.

Watch the hands grow limp and and cold:
As its face reflects the world no more,
And though a clock will cease to toll
Time continues moving forward.

Narrow Streets of Cobblestone

Our progress on a narrow road
Is patient with nowhere to go,
And though the earth quakes at our feet
(Just cobbled stone and not concrete)
The path we walk will never yield
Its treasures for our hands to steal.

Believe me now, you can not leave;
There is no stopping or reprieve,
No going back to times before
There's only forward, nothing more,
And though you twist your neck to see
There's nothing out there you can reach.

Now ev'ryone we know is dead;
The only path we knew to tread
Led us astray into the night
Can you imagine what that's like?
We only have a single way
And it's just leading to our graves.

Well still walk on, we'll soon be there
Beyond all time, beyond the years
Beyond the coming end you fear,
When even nothing's disappeared,
For there you'll see the one-way road
May have a better place to go.