poetry

The Way Better Day Than Tomorrow

by 
I'm told to live my life like
There's no tomorrow
But truly
There has to be a better way
For if the morrow never comes
And it's my last breath I breathe today
How will I know to appreciate it
For won't I be too enthralled, too focused, too busy with
Living
As much as I can, as hard as I can, as fast as I can
Before the day's end and the morrow that may never come
To simply catch my breath and just
Breathe
Slow and steady
In and out
Filling my lungs
Feeling my lungs
Expand and
Contract
And listen to the fresh-filled blood pounding in the ears
Echoes of the patient heart
Sounding throughout the rest of today and in
To the morrow and beyond
Forever

The River and the Bed

by 
The river winds around my head,
Fish before my eyes.
I lay my cheek upon its bed and
Contemplate the skies of
Morning's red, of
Midday's blue, of
Twilight's pink aglow, that
Filters through the rushing stream
Born of mountains long ago.

Where does it go in such a rush from
Rushing 'bout my mind? This
Is the thought I can't escape;
Its answer won't unwind its
Liquid coils from the root where
All such knowledge grows. And
Like the river born of distant mounts,
Its seed sown long ago.

Where do all the dreams go

by

In the 12-month period that ended in April, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses, up almost 30 percent from the 78,000 deaths in the prior year, according to provisional figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. The figure marks the first time the number of overdose deaths in the United States has exceeded 100,000 a year, more than the toll of car accidents and guns combined. Overdose deaths have more than doubled since 2015.

Overdose Deaths Reached Record High as the Pandemic Spread, New York Times, November 17, 2021

~~~~~

where do all the dreams go
when the hope for tomorrow
dies along the way

Redeemable

by 
There's nothing Fixed that can't be Broken

Praise Jove, for without them, the Broken
And all the Hope and Possibilities for which they allow
There is nothing Redeemed
There is nothing made New Again

Beam of Sun meet Fall of Rain

Aye, mourn not the absence of the Sol
Relish instead the cool quenching of the Aqua
And the Unbounded Inactivity for which it now allows
For it is that, the Idleness, the Nothingness of Inactivity
And the Silence, the Stillness found within it
That beckons forth the Dreams
And the Inspiration

The Dreams and Inspiration of the Marrow
The Dreams and Inspiration for the Morrow

All I’m Conscious of…

by

Is what I’m conscious of.

You dig?

Put with brutal succinctness, Damasio’s brief goes like this: Mental activity consists of a stream of “images” that map aspects of the world around us. But these images, by themselves, cannot be conscious. For that, they must be related to a perspective, an “owner,” a self — this, after all, is what subjectivity means. And here is where feeling comes in. As Damasio uses the term, “feelings” are “the hybrid, interactive processes of the interior, at once mental and physical.” They register how well or badly its various subsystems are doing at maintaining homeostasis, at keeping the organism alive and flourishing. So feelings point within, to the interior; images point without, to the world. And when feelings and images come together in the brain, the result is conscious thought. To adapt a simile of Damasio’s, feelings are like a musical score that, when added to the silent reel of images in the mind, produces cinematic consciousness.

Is It Possible to Explain How Consciousness Works? New York Times, November 2, 2021

ONE SONG ETERNAL

During that half-measured beat of our lives
for Heaven, we look upward to Sky
for Hell, downward to Earth

All whilst desperately,
dependently, desirously
existing within an infinitely
expanding Universe –
our One Song Eternal –
a Rhythmical Void void
of Direction
of Time

A Void where that which we seek
be it that Heaven or that Hell
can only be found within
that Composition of
our Mind

∞

From Short Verses & Other Curses

A Pebble is a Rock is a Mountain is Me

by

I look at the little pebble at my feet and can’t help but think

But for the grace of god go I

And then laugh

Not out of humor

But of fear

Because he’s nowhere

But within the magic of my mind

The madness

For, but for the grace of chance goes that pebble at my feet

No more purposefully than the patient rock at the corner of my lot

Having had waited a million years for me to move it there

Or the mountain I’ll never climb

Or the moon, or the sun

Or the boundless galaxies in the sky

That are as real to me as the oxygen molecules I breathe

I just have to take your word for it

And yet you admonish me over and over

Essence before Existence!

An a priori on high

And I want to take your word for it

Like I do for the oxygen molecules I breathe

And many times I almost convinced myself I had

But then comes the horrible news

Relentlessly so

To remind me that

Nope

You got the order all wrong

That the only a priori meaning there is

First and foremost and forever more

Is only that of my mind’s making

Of its madness