for the first time in a long time, i saw beauty in the mirror as my eyes met my eyes. finally i could see.
This smile pulls in the lines of my face, and my eyes shine like nebulas.

its been so long since i've seen that face in this light.

fleeting moment as i'd seen you

pass out and then i'll die here.
everything inside
the silence that opens us.

felt feeling with kiss before,
except I had not 
yet been in such moments.

spoken word, empty thought, as
the tensions rise we
crumble like the flesh we are.

L Dmt

Watching an explosion at a distance
but there's no shielding the heat from our faces.
Reds like blood and Oranges bursting like flame,
marked up madness pouring over every pore.

Certainly there are hopes dashed on the sidelines of this experience,
some other narrative pushed to the border.

Wild, though, passion ignited furiously;
spilling out, pushing past the edges of sanity.

~

I have no fucking idea what just happened,
but now my room is empty of her mania
and I'll slip back into comfort,
just after I erase the image
of a mad woman smearing toxic paint on her pretty face.




Thirst

Before the first touch... I am consumed by desire, rabid, obsessed with the taste I'd imagine your sweetness to exude. These bodies are heavy with sweat primed to spill into our writhing euphoria. Wrapping spines around skin, pulling you into the embrace that I push forth; becoming much more than one. For these few supple moments of premonition we are freed from the listless reality of finite embodiment. Fantasy commingles with expectation as I inhale your aching passion. I will take you until there is nothing left to give, hold you down to lift us up, scratch your flesh and make you feel. Deeper into my gaze, heavier into your breath, the blood rushes through your veins so that I might drink you in.


01001010111010101010101001010101101010101

glitched out wannabe, maybe you'd come home with me?
there's lots of glitter in the pocket of my plaid flannel sparkling.
giant chunks crunchin e pills in ecstasy,
though for a minute we looked past our biology
and talked aloud bout living free;
love not centered on the goals of procreation
but instead focused on channeling this vibration.
it could be real, fake, illusion bleeds into the known,
this dichotomy of plugging in when we're all born alone.
i trust in fate but believe nothing of it,
all i see in my eyes is a path that i covet.









a sollicitudo pro virtus.

smiling through the tears,
finally sensing the next steps forward:
mercy, forgiveness, patience,
(i bless the life outside, i respect the life inside)
hope, understanding, endurance,
(hurtling forwards into the life ahead with virtue)
and a maintenance of self-respect.
it's gonna be hard going from here,
please believe that it will get better.


and then the sun went out

there is an absence of light all around. 
no, not darkness; 
this is where light should have traveled. 


i am enveloped, 
raptured by black talons, 
torn to pieces 
in the silence of my screams.

Sanguine Maniac

Sometimes

Forgetful missings, 
the repetitions of a year and half now behind me. 

A most bizarre sense of duality: 

seeing clearly our insurmountable incompatibility
(thank gaia for the burn alone, for the money that stays in my pocket, for the openness that i am blessed to retain, for the arguments I haven't had to have, for the words of a wicked woman that tore me into puddles of emasculated hopelessness, for the jealousy that no longer overwhelms my disposition, for that empty hope that I no longer have to strain to keep nestled against my heaving chest), 

while also rationally perceiving what cherishments are now lacking
(somehow still pining for that distant bosom, for the adventure, for the intensity of endurances before unknown, for the sexual achievements of those two impassioned lycanthropes I clearly remember tearing into each other, for those moments when I did it right {the right song, the right words, the right apology, the right direction, the right lessons absorbed}, that fucking mouth drawing raw magic from my spine and toes, for the precarious energy that neither of us hesitated to embrace, for those fleeting moments when I could picture my own spawn emerging from the walls of her body {into the world, to learn, to teach, to just be goddam cute!}, for the memories).

There is no doubt necessary to understand that we both did it wrong. So much to learn about respecting and being respectable for both camps; it is overwhelming how much understanding is left to gain for us each. 

I made countless mistakes myself; these stand out to me with more significance than any trespass that she left unhealed, for I know only one person that can be helped from my reflections. 
I was outrageously unfaithful, weak by anyone's standards, impatient, too horny to function as a reasonable being, impulsive, and dishonest. There are few things I can imagine that I would not have done to get (back) into her sensual graces. I was a monster.
It's hard not to grin, looking back on so many times that I was just a complete fucking bastard. Silly bear, what was there to gain? This is no exercise in blame, though, for our combined energies were innately dangerous in enclosed circumstances. With enough pressure to burst or break under, I recall countless savage and primal flesh wounds enacted for reasons we may have not even known in the moment... I know I did not deserve respect, even though it was hard to resist asking for.

BUT...
I dont regret any of it. I forgive her. I forgive me (although I still deserve to be spanked horribly for a long time to come for some of my exploits). 
I had an often unbearable weight of love in my soul for that human, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So I embrace this sense of simultaneous missing/repulsion that I now carry. It is fucking heavy, though!
But here I am, learning, loving anew, finding so much more to learn than I could have imagined. Gaia has been so kind to me. The shattering sound my heart made attracted new wonderful wolves to scarf me down. 



Ah, it feels so good to get this out! Out! Out! Into the light of the moon, to dance in the flowered whispers of the greater spirits, I call you OUT! 

I love this life, and hold great gratitude for the ride.

<3, 
Bears

Anger Rests Deeply Upon A Bosom

Bad kids, fighting against the abuse inside. 
Righteous heart that's trapped like bars on a cage.
Empty words, 
Empty head. 
Zealous,  
Yet so vulnerable to apathy. 
Inside of heated moments, 
Searching for a clueless slob to devour. 
Going in circles, 
Only expectations to fulfill. 
Nothing is left here to spoil 
Except the future that you approach.



Piss and Vinegar



Wandering desert winds conjure 
wondering dessert wins; 
elves that ride ponies, 
rhythm spaced for miles, 
and a gallon left to drink. 

Heart away from home inside my head, 
stumbling through serendipity to find 
a sprite of sunshine's spray 
springing, sweet Tigger come to life; 
paths now merged, 
tears have dried from my eyes. 

There is opportunity here, 
lushness unexpected in the dry 
spiteful winds of this empty plane. 

Welcome mats aren't needed 
when such sparkles shine in gazes, 
diamond smiles and open arms 
wrapping my heart so tightly 
it'd be impossible to feel anything else.

There is something I can't quite 
put my finger on within the swelling laughter 
that she always seems to unravel 
in the spaces between the words. 

Absurdities arching my spine, 
as my revelry seems so poignantly 
reflected in her absolute ease 
inside the chaos of a passionate life.

Orange haired gypsy, 
made of funk, 
piss and vinegar; 
How does one follow 
the path of fire's flame?

Onward, ever forward, 
outside reason 
and in between 
the constants of 
straining senses; 
deep into the mix 
of hot sauce, 
whiskey, 
and relief 
that this glorious goddess 
has shown enough mercy
to shelter this moonlit beggar 
from the cold, 
until the fire is again 
stoked within his open gaze.

Wounded healer, 
what madness must be endured 
in these chosen tribal trials?

Back to the trees, 
the wonderment of defaultia 
again embracing our perceptions; 
what new paths we are to travel, 
i gratefully traverse 
with a yawp of my own, 
and with thanks I rejoice.

insight

there is a great debt left to be payed in my life:
a calling that i must no longer create art and expressions for others. they must be for me. for my tastes, my sensibilities... too often i have missed great opportunities for the sake of feeling a lack of social validation.
i cannot write good music or craft beautiful works for her, for them, for you. i can, however, create meaningful expressions when they are meant to better allow my light to shine.
this is something i must ponder further, of course. i do not seek the path of the hermit, of the introvert, of the man with no ties to community or the cares and needs of others... i do know, though, that it has not been working so far, and a conscious effort is needed to reclaim my potential and bathe my world with the most righteous lights that I have within my capacity.
love is in my heart, and fear will not be held any longer against a bosom of shame.
i am shaken
vibrating 
head spinning 

somewhere in the middle 
a formless and distant bear 
is beckoning 

molten rock 
splintered wood 
writhing seas 

we may be behind and ahead

FIRE FIRE PHOENIX FIRE FIRE

love in no short supply, i reach into my own infinity and realize it wont be coming back with me. i am finite and yet my grasp encompasses the very duality between existing and the cessation of this consciousness.

BURNING SOUL AND PASSIONS RELEASE

incarnations of glory find their grotesque channel through my fight and this body of work i am burdened to create. my sensual fury will penetrate your being, i will take you and we will remember what it was to be as one.

LAUGHTER PUSHES OUT OF MY SWOLLEN WOMB

boundaries be damned, touch me where its fuzz for miles. god lives and dies all around, and the flames lick my skin away. i am your infant son, i am the ballerina spinning lies into well-woven basket holding hands.

::::;/~0~\;::::

I am the dreamer,
visualizer of untold fates and digressions,
master of self-deception;
I am Horus,
dragging talons of tragedy.

Spinal impulse,
receptors at the ready,
I storm the castles of ghosts;
observing new undulations
of action and tact.

Looking passively for utopia
when my eyes are ajar,
I shiver in the hollow space
of a mind at rest,
tempests swirling past the dark.

Surfacing often crystallizes
all these sights left inside,
now without wings
here in my default world.

she is now one less great deception, 
although I still remain deceived. 

Telephloranization

Bliss is a luxury afforded by ignorance.

If the brain is the great sculptor of ones sensory and cognitive perceptions into an efficient and survivable understanding of reality, then might, on a larger scale, our very lives be some edited version of an infinite diversity of converging existences?

~

Taking so many gulps of air when I finally break the surface.

Love is a contradiction; a cold streak of fear rolled into a deeply-rooted sensation of destiny, the burn of raw fire crackling up my spine. Why do the most profound and sacred loves always push me out of balance?

I put my head under the water, just to feel submersed.

There are never nearly enough cigarette butts in my ash tray to make me forget about the maybes, but I puff and puff until I choke. Two pills, twenty four fucking doses at once, and a handful of grass to keep me fly. Shot after shot after drink after wine before I crumble into dust, with a thousand less chances to get you naked and inside.

I have no fucking idea who's towel this is, but it is soft as hell and its bringing me back.

~

There is romance in the sorrow.

Too many weeks to count, hidden inside from the sun. Laughter distracts; moments of clarity are suspended like droplets of rain when I'm already soaked. I heave with passion as my libido grasps aimlessly for absolutely any chance at indifference. Isolation beckons brightly in the haze of my addictions.

~

More chances at triumph further my elation, yet the commendations granted to my eloquence and loyalty only suffer the same tawdry fate of all the prior epiphanies; I still shiver in the spring.









get out from between my loins,
oh rage'd and spiteful swelling slob.
There are good people that you're missing,
and so many other tenderness' to enjoy.

Syncopation Salivates


Had tasted the dust 
once consumed with exuberance, 
and brought sweet delight to fruition 
in a few tasteful words. 

Cannot grasp the desire, 
as the reflections cast out 
speak with resonance 
through well-shouldered epiphanies. 

Expansion of the heat source in my soul, 
oh rebel wit and scoffed remorse
words toyed and hunted 
with a certain ballsy sunshine; 
nudging me closer to the edge 
of sexual tension, 
towards the dance that called me out. 

Heavy momentum towards
new freedom that could seek such hopes. 

Enthused. 


There's a twinkle of madness in every eye that sees.

nothing

the ash and embers left behind shall stake my claims,
for the smoldering carnage abandoned in the wake of retreat
serves as my last will and a testament
to the disturbances one little person can inflict upon us all.

forward through some new reality, i must traverse great lengths
to escape the confines of an outdated mentality.
wrapped tightly around my wings
are the shiny chains of an aggressively entrenched ego.

ascending higher between the waves of icy wind
until the air is empty and my breath is ragged,
i've felt new freedoms and an inescapable urge to plummet for far too long.
falling, twisting, bruised and ignorant; I become the weight and release.

carrying pouches of stones
smelling fire from afar
we are celebration incarnate
as the movements set them free

Emissionary

"Sex, drugs, and insanity have always worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend them for everyone."- Hunter S. Thompson


There is something I've got to sing out: 
an overt inundation of inspiration, 
a regurgitation of the bass frequencies rattling around inside, 
and all of the beauty i seem to have witnessed 
out there in that sunny meadow soaked with life. 
I became a festival in my soul, 
and the hippies just want to dance!



 
Another drop on my tongue 
as I begin to remember the exaltation. 
Our potential energies were set on fire  
in the rich air of celebration and excess. 
Eyes met to precede the embrace 
between our arms and hearts.




 For some it became a revelation 
to lose their fucking shit 
and become a conduit to the grime; 
for others it was an expedition into chaos
that pointed their curiosity towards the magnificent. 
Dressed in the patterned garbs of mischief and elation
given healthy opportunity to share in the bounty of love.


Photo by Julie Hanna (https://www.facebook.com/juliehannaphotolovesyou)


"If you smile at me I will understand because that is something everyone, everywhere does in the same language."
- Jefferson Airplane


There was a calm inside the storm.
On the shoulders of gods we eloped, 
hand-in-hand, praising circumstance and grinning hope.

~

 The heat, the madness, the flight of new absurds;
 each of us alone, together.

~

 The swirl of cannabis smoke expanding from her lungs, 
 the wink between lovers at sunrise.
A hug from a stranger that feels like home, 
glistening jewels surrounding his smiling eyes.
Infectious laughter bubbling in their midst,
the perfect gift from a new friend. 
New understandings in this diversity of wisdoms 
becoming epiphanies that make this life brighter.

~

This is new family that I choose, 
these are new minds that I am blessed to worship. 



"I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures. "
 - Jack Kerouac 



Love, thanks, and bacon!!!
Bear <3 

China Grade Rd.



out here in the starlight my mind had given up any hope of comprehending the violence of my new reality. i saw the immortal spiral branching off and away from my tiny shivering form. i felt the infinite rising its crooked head in protest. i was a god again, and this plane of perception had been crafted for my pleasures and fears to dance like children in the sprinklers. i was dead and forever, i had never really lived.



it had seemed as though my entire life and everyone within it had simply been manifested as a test, a game, a bored deity's only natural course through the unending circuitry of the constant. i saw anger, hopelessness, pain, and torment in the faces surrounding my broken form writing in the tick-infested brush of that ancient forest in which we digressed. the few remaining shreds of my innocence had dissolved into entropy... i am reborn now, or perhaps simply dead anew. i remain infinite. i simply remain.

One More Grateful Push Tonight

 No ticket to Burning Man...
but clean drinking water

She doesn't care that it wounds me...
but there's a roof over my head and food in the refrigerator.

Leaving work again with stress knotting my spine...
but I received a free education and a new sense of dignity.

I could have been more or less...
but I  am.
And in the absence of all other illusory absolutes,
this perception alone keeps the sorrow at bay.



Back From The Sky

The Pulse. The Rhythm. The Fighting To Get Off.
It Sinks Into My Skin...

All Of These Memories Could Surface.
But Now, We Are Silent. We Are Ready.

It Amazes Me To Be Alive. To Breathe.
Idealism Doesn't Serve Me Well.

So We Take That Step. Together.
And The Wind Rises To Welcome.

Weight And Form. Trust And Hope.
A Sheet Of Matter To Slow The Descent.

You And I Share These Wings And Plummet.
Graceful Falling Back To Earth.

I Saw Your Feathers.
I Felt The Flight.




A Prayer To Gaia

Sweet, supple Gaia please hear my voice:

I am not worthy of your unadulterated majesty, your trees, your rivers. I am but a single creature holding so many others within me, and I have spoken these words to ask you for help. Please, glorious Gaia, hold me to your bosom in this period of unraveling; please, ancient Gaia, show me the path towards the ocean so I might swim within your depths. I pray for absolution and mercy, oh great Gaia, for my spine is kinked in the light of my foolish hopefulness.

I ask for this in broken humility; I ask for light in my squalor and decay. I request a rescue, for my own intuition has faltered and failed.

I pray to your creatures, I pray to my self; I pray to your teachers, I pray to your hells.

To the light, the all, the emptiness I pray.
Om Ni Pa Di Om
Amen
Such anger, such hostility...
Emotion clouds your judgement. 





You have done well 
human
but the prize you seek is still beyond your grasp.





Such potential... I will teach you to harness it; I will make you immortal.

with words like "I Love You" and other less memorable forgeries

We used to play 'house': I pretended to be the father and sister, you were always the infant's mother and maybe even the infant itself. (so hard to tell now that we've forgotten the rules)

With artistic license we spun around the room hand in hand. We named everything over, as though the craving for reinvention had consumed us wholly. Here's the crib, this is the changing area, and oh yes, we'll make this the dinner table... Wont you stay for coffee Mr. Postman?

~

We cooked and cleaned, danced and fought, insulted and apologized, slept and woke, cried and consoled, loved and hated; we manifested our fantasy into simultaneous evolutions within ourselves. I became the roles I had spawned to play; you seemed to foster the narrative with similar devotion. The hours became a day, the weeks became a month, the past became the now.

At a certain point along the way, one or both of us forgot the game... all of a sudden we had been married, accepted responsibility, and given in to the finality of this burden. But the game continued, independently from our awareness of its constraints and implications. How were we to prevent the dissolution of our understanding in this actionable shared reality we inhabited?

- ~ ~ ~ -

One night I found that I could no longer hear the infant's cries in my slumber, and I awoke to find my wife nowhere to be found. After calling you too many times, to no avail, I immediately called the imaginary police. An inspector was able to come by in the early morning to take my statement. I was so worried; I remember how badly we had argued the night before and it tore me apart to simply wonder. Before the inspector had finished with me the phone started to vibrate in my pocket. It was you.

I asked if you were all right, and you said that you were. I thanked the officer and showed him the door. I noticed his face as he turned to leave: some bitter mix of understanding and frustration, ending with a slight roll of the eyes because 'he's seen it all before.'

~

Putting my ear back to the phone, I weakly said hello, asked you where you had gone... You told me that you were ok but didn't speak any further. My heart started to beat a sickeningly fast rhythm in my chest.

After I pressed you about it, I finally got the response I dreaded most: you had spent the night with another man, taking both mother and infant along for the ride. You eventually revealed with icy precision that it had not been the first time, and told me it wouldn't be the last.

"But," you said (and keep saying over and over in my head), "you're the only person I love."

~

For the first time in my short pitiful life I actually cringed at the word. Love had only been one little part of the game at first; but now, as though it had a life of its own, it rose up to clamp frigid hands around my neck.

I told you that I needed some space, which was the perfect excuse to give me the time to get the divorce paperwork ready. I told you that we needed to figure out what we both wanted.

I, of course, already knew that in two week's time the papers would be signed and you would again be free to live the life that you deserved all along. No battle for custody will likely ensue, and whatever alimony you might owe would surely get lost in the mail...

~

I hung up the phone and stepped back into what had long served as our quaint little home. The kitchen table now looked oddly like a simple dresser, and the crib seemed to eerily resemble a clothes hamper in the light of this new sunny day. Nothing seemed to be in its right place. I felt sick.

I looked at the bed with sullen longing, remembering that you had given birth to our infant child messily on those very covers. The stain, however, of that most grimy entrance into this world had faded beyond detection.

It began to dawn on me that this had all been pretend: there was no child, no sister, no crib, and no marriage to be found.

The anger began to rattle and quiver in my chest. This was not the first time I'd been fucked over, but it was now clear that it too would not be the last. It all seemed so murky. I sighed deeply and walked over to the window to look down on the sun-soaked revelry that waited outside.

~

To this day I have no idea what was real and what was not... but what I do know is that next time, I'm gonna play cowboys and indians instead.





Homelessfull

morning is my new sunshine
and I welcome her sultry stare
into my dissolving hesitations.

i live and breath in a freedom of sorts,
i die and decay without shackles at hands;
wash me, feed me, love me, know me,
then push me back out into winter to try again.

expiration

compassion has been extinguished.
a commodified relationship looms behind me like an impotent ogre,
and communication hangs by a dwindling thread.

Pestilence

Too high,
Can’t come down.
Losing my head,
Spinning ‘round and ‘round.
Do you feel me now?

With a taste of your lips,
I’m on a ride;
You're toxic I'm slipping under.
With a taste of a poison paradise:
I’m addicted to you,
Don’t you know that you’re toxic?

-'Toxic', B. Spears
"While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind. " 
- Mary Wortley Montagu