i think
(i think)
an artist or a poe

before the sun dies
in its last and sputtering death throes
and coronas
i will walk the halls
and bid each fitful sleeper
a quiet kiss
and turn their dreams away
from what will
what must
come.

and the world
and the world
will spin on in its orbit
its boundary of love and fear
as it has always done
and promise and pretend
an "as it always shall be."

sometimes we keep our mouth shut. the hurt done by others may have been intentional, even, but we still don't speak, because what good would it do? to wage war, to be motivated by the insult or the injury, only makes matters worse. i know my mouth bears fangs when i speak from that place, and i can't abide the apologies and the sight of blood afterwards. and besides, i will have to file down my teeth to keep from cutting myself when i speak again.

people misunderstand this gesture. so many people prop themselves up with conflict, that they don't understand what you are doing when you withdraw from the game. they call it "impotent passivity" or even "irresponsibility." why don't they understand? why can't people stand up by themselves and not just for themselves? why do people need to push off to stay up?

show offs, braggarts, all... each in his own manner and fashion. i get tired of it.

i suppose i have this disease myself, perhaps i have it in an even more virulent state... but it just seems as though the machinations of others seem so obvious and hurtful. obvious. child's play...

it's funny. i idealize the purity of childhood, and have a cynical view of the "maturity" of adults... and yet, i also shy away from the "pure" energy and the obvious aggression, calling it "child's play." i suppose i can't have it both ways... i suppose i don't want to answer any contradictions or inconsistencies anyway.

i just want to go away.

***

i'm tired. i suppose people like me don't really have a strong sense of justice in them. i mean, i will defend a weak child to my death if need be. but in the contradictions of "normal life," i'm not so clear or determined. there is no "principle" that i would, without hesitation, raise above the heads of others to beat them. i have the eyes of a sponge, and i "see" everyone's perspective given even a short amount of time... and like some sort of reverse osmosis, conviction in any single viewpoint leaks out of me...

yes, maybe i don't have a backbone.

all i ever wanted was for everyone to be okay. (this is like the question max asks bob and ted in "where the wild things are." 7 words. "how do i make everyone o k?") i don't believe in a right that makes someone wrong (except in certain obvious instances). and i never wanted to hurt anyone.

i am in a situation right now that demands a change and a rippling of circumstances. and there will be tearing and trauma no matter what. it is all for the best, i suppose, but by nature, something in me resists... i keep leaking, my will is squeezing out of me...

***

take the position of the least among you. if nothing else, it is a safe and true position, because it is so close to the ground.

don't just take this as a platitude. understand it. live it. not in its superficialities, but in its spirit.

i think if you are humble, you can appreciate the universe. it will speak to you, and share its secrets, because it will think it is talking to itself, or, to be more precise, it is talking to nobody at all.

i haven't the foggiest: garage band cover of radiohead's "fog"

kindness

the irony of kindness is that, if it's capital, then once you spend it, no matter on what little trifle you betray it on, it's gone forever.

if you are kind, then to maintain it, like a perpetual motion machine, you must be kind forever.

kindness is based upon a kind of trust. the trust that you are gentle, and would never introduce anything of force or edge to the situation. that you are a friend. a smiley face.

the danger of kindness, of course, is that you are taken for granted. and, in certain situations, that you will not only be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, but that you will be disrespected, nay, even hated for this.

it is only with children and animals that kindness seems to work in its unadulterated state. "adults" are a different matter entirely, and run on a strange mixture (the "unleaded version") of cruelty and morality.

i tend not to understand adults, even though i am one. they are either totalizing, future-extending, or whiny... and they never pay attention. and, by the way- case in point- they are hopeless hippo-crits.

i would run with the children, if they only knew where they were heading (that is, despite it all, to adulthood).

radiohead's "fog"

i love this song. will attempt to "garage band" it... can't do a live record, cuz my camcorder's got lockjaw... and we can't operate.

and he cried, "help me, would you? help me find a way out, would you?"

but they all walked around the pit, heads turned away, ears deaf to him.

and who could blame them?

it was he who had dug the trap. and what's more, they all knew: his dark secret eyes held the power of a gorgon; his voice could summon forth fatal maledictions and unfortunate storms; and his touch could roll heads as easily as dice. even if they could see that behind all of these things, he was a kind and well-intentioned soul, they dared not approach: they were all too afraid.

and so, he was alone in the pit, in the center of a crowd that drifted around him like an uncertain river. and in time, his voice grew hoarse, and he gave up calling altogether, and the reaching out slowly turned into a reaching in. and it was not a pleasant reaching in. for his hands, as i've said, even the figurative ones, were viciously cruel in shape, and what they touched, they cut and scarred and bled deep. every face of innocence that healed over his heart like a scab, he peeled off again, so that the raw edges could feel the air, and feeling could flow again, flow and pulse like an angry red star and its wavering corona. and when the sensation dulled, and the scabs stopped forming, and the bloody feelings stopped being deceived into emerging again, only then did he stop everything, both the reaching out and the reaching in.

and that is when he turned into the stone of the world, and its deepest and most secret heart. a thing frozen and unknowing, secrets buried within secrets, darkness tumbled over in darkness.

and for a time, he knew a measure of peace, or, to be more precise, he didn't know anything... didn't know anything at all.