Nothing left?

In an empty house
Pacing in an empty room
For all of this misery
Emotional starvation
I keep bleeding
And I can't find any wound
Is it inside my chest?

I know my fears keep breeding
Eating away my mental stability
All of my memories, my history
Everything eaten by the angst
The day I discovered total joy
I know I created my own doom
Take my good days, I'll keep the rest

Life is a bit of castration
But it doesn't matter
Anyway...
There isn't a final chapter
Unfinished works leave a sense of mystery
That and utter abandonment and frustration
Not to mention an author's damnation

"It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.” Christopher Marlowe

Beauty and Duty

In despair I called her name, she just laughed.  I thought of her first, she thought of me last.  What was my heart thinking, choosing one like her? I must have been drinking, for now I'll demur.

I dreamed of living upon a world, where only she was waiting.  For me this girl, was even more than a lady.  She walks in glory, her smile is beauty, I wasn't part of her story, still, her joy was my duty.

“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.”
― C.S. Lewis

Transformed

You kissed me, and I felt my skin become electric.

You touched me, and I began to feel as though I could outshine the sun, burning hotter than the fires of  hell.

I wondered how you'd changed me from liar and heretic.

Yes, I began to feel, for the first time, I could know how life could be beautiful again, without farewells.

By knowing you I was renewed, made to know the truth.

No more fear inside, no more tears, no more suicide, no more pain from abandonment, the pain vanishing.

Whatever I'd endured before you came, whoever I was, before you called my name, I was transformed. 

And I believed, I do still.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”  William Shakespeare

Fade

With every attempt, I know that I will fail

This life of regret, burns down to my entrails

Nothing I can do, I know my words are true

I can't start to pretend, I twist, turn, and flail

I was to be left, as a weak, foundling male

Burning truths still damage, a fear sacrament

I who have nothing, refuse offers of sustenance 

Blood flows rushing, sealing an unholy covenant

I am here, through an act of hate, and

My life burns away

It burns away

As every hope decays

Day by day by day
I fade

Fade

“Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.”   Samuel Butler

Introvert Hell

Behind my eyes, there I judge the world
It offers only lies, my opinions hurled
With each thought suicide, stomach turns
To become God almighty, behold my rule
My disdain done rightly, these are the fools
Hell's condemned grow more nightly, cruel
Yes I am so so very cruel

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”  Oscar Wilde

The Ride

They ride
Upon the clouds
The Valkyr maidens ride
There is a battle upon the field
And warriors and fools die
The Valkyr sent from Odin
To harvest the dying and the dead
Sweeping them back to Valhalla
Where they fight forever instead
So they ride upon the thunder
They appear as sparks and lightning
None who live can know them
Only the valiant who fall
Of those men called Vikings
Valhalla is now their home
And chosen by the Valkyr
They ride

"Better to fight and fall than to live without hope." Volsunga, c.12

Exchange of our lips

We taste each other's soul
With the exchange of our lips
We invite and experience ecstasy
When we choose to know another
We are warmth in a world cold
Others may scream and twist
Love come's without penalty
Life is a painting without color
Until we love
Until we live for the other
We are nothing
But a soul waiting
For completion

“Being deeply loved by someone 
gives you strength, while loving 
someone deeply gives you courage.”
  
Lao Tzu

Cessation

First will come the rains, the storms, the lightning
Then will come the earthquakes and tsunami
Lastly there will be the realization
That the orphans and elderly are not alone crying
In the center of the storm a seer will sit calmly
The voice will speak damnation
All of the earth will endure woe
All of the earth's children will suffer
When all our life meets cessation
Then we will know
We've invited this cataclysm

“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.”   Søren Kierkegaard

Flee

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”  Henry David Thoreau

Scholars tell us that humans have triggered the end of this world.  Often they wring their hands, concerned over our excess.  Politicians ring the bell of alarm, or in skepticism, over what we've been told, will kill us all.  It plays into our fears, our conscience's perceptions that we do not deserve such a beautiful planet.  And we've been told that nature's creatures know when an event is happening, even before it happens.  They are sensitive to the rhythms of the earth, and all of its sounds.  We have been told that we are dulled to the rhythms and sounds, because we are modern, we are deaf to empathy, perhaps we are even simply made of meat.  We have become, or always have been immodest and empty.

The same nature that made us human, made us from nature's own designs, and we are from the same world, the same laws of nature, the same physics, world of sound, and the power of fire.  We have come this far as nature, we will die as dust as nature.  Many of our kind arrived at this very point in our history, from a place thinking themselves of higher and evolved minds.  But we are not.  We are different yes, we are able to destroy and reproduce in numbers that give pause to idea of ever worrying that there could be such a thing as isolation.  Should extinction beckon we could scarcely last any longer by fighting it.  Should destruction and devastation wipe us from the earth, there'd be no one to mourn our passing.  For all of our great developments and minds, we will have left precious little of note behind to know we'd been here.

At this place and time, if we have a notion that the world is hanging in the balance, it is, to some great degree false.  No, humans have changed the surface, we delved to the depths and stirred a change there as well.  But this world will go on. Many species will go extinct, and those who lived beside us, as friend and food, will die as well.  But others, despite our best efforts to change them to bend to our whims, will survive us.  The world and many species will go on whereas we were called to a full halt.  Despite the forsaken lands left from our existence and passage through, despite tell tale signs approaching, the fears forboding we do not have a way to leave. As of yet we do not know how to abandon our biome.

We cannot flee.

As much as scholars call unto humanity to soar into space, we've yet begun to fully, and actually roam.  For all of our great intellect we cannot escape the natural world that we were born unto.  We cannot flee our home.  Some see this as a destiny setting standard.  We were born of earth, we shall die upon earth.  That may be so, but we cannot beg upon ourselves death for the wrongs done by us, we have children, they will have children, our future is not to stay and die.

Yes we must flee.

But no, not in retreat.  Flee yes we will, but not to abandon and care never to return, earth remains and will always be our home.  Flee, to save the germ of our species, and to begin again, this time with knowledge and forewarning of what we must do better.  Humans have gone to the moon.  With imagination and renewed desire to find the rest of the universe, we can reach out and find exactly that. Whatever that holds.


"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million, our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space." Stephen Hawking

“Regardless of how you believe the universe was created, it is there waiting for humans to explore.”  Buzz Aldrin

With Final Battle

The war of good and evil is not one with victory

It is about the flesh weariness and fear of loss

It is about fighting for the thing that matters most

The battles take life and are fought most bitterly

And the knight's armor only barely deflects the cost

Battles are not won with words and no idle boast

The knight faces death, and demons, inside and out

Days wane, enemies growing in number, in legion

The castles walls will fall, and footmen die

Whatever the journey, the knight will face doubts

Most knights die when their souls show treason

But the knight who knows victory is pure inside
No human flesh ever will last forever
Knights fight, knowing their days will end
 But they give until their time is severed
Dying most likely with sword in hand

7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
— Revelation 12:7–10

Try to smile as tears fall

I try to smile even as tears fall as I try to answer when he calls, because there is nothing more than to serve.

If there is nothing less, I will get what I deserve, even if the world is unfair.

I know that I am wicked

No one needs to care, where I might spend my eternity.  I might endlessly walk, separating me from deity.

I have none to blame, but me.

No way to even survive or to find sleep.  My heart is locked, a diary full of secrets.

My mind is reminded of all my bitter regrets.  I try to smile when the pain is great.

I try to be aware, I might forever sleep in my grave.  So now I wait

Will I be redeemed or will I linger so frigid and broken in this fetid place

We fought, without hope

The millennium passed without his return
All the while our castles were useless
And the walls and ramparts burned
Still waiting on our Lord
We faced the multitudes of various tribes
Wild men, who defied the Lord almighty 
In anno Domini nostri Jesu Christ 1390
Our day had come, the end was near
The last days, these were the end times
We fought demon spawned numbers
Masses gathered to fight as one
Victories were meager
We saw our towns burn down
Even lands we called sacred grounds
Our borders and people were destroyed
Treated without respect, hatred and shame
The knights of the land were hunted
Each of us who lived stood to defend the land
The enemy using all forms of attack
Our numbers fell to below one hundred
And the crops taken to flames
We fight still, but the end had long since begun
We cannot fight for long
Our dead litter the fields
As crows and ravens gather
The bones of our kin rot under the sun
And we are weary oh God
Please come back Sweet Lord Jesus
What have we done to deserve this

Unequal, Injustice, Unrigtheous

In fear, our advocates hide and cower

They aren't looking for answers

They're there to obscure what you saw

Without looking to find the truth

All they want is soundbites, quotes

They compile it, release a "news" hour

We have no leaders, we have only masters

We are screwed until our backsides are raw

Holding themselves and their class aloof

They say our voice is found in our votes

But all of us know we don't have power

The government hides cures to cancer

And then forces on you unjust laws

They want us to change without proof

While junior senators take notes

For their post assumption money showers

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”   Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Anecdotes

You can't cry when you say goodbye because you always wanted me to leave.  I can't pray to you, because there is a different god I believe.

You've whispered those things in dark of the night's space.  Things you'd now find shame in, as you do when I've reach for an embrace.

It isn't that I am bitter, how could I possibly be?  You've been telling what to think, even how to pretend that I'm a human being.

And now that I've left this world, leaving only this note, will you tell the others why and how I've failed, with a spectacular anecdote?

“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”
Nietzsche

Sun in Winter

Her hair was like the sun in winter
Warming a frozen corpse like me
Her voice sweet as the song of freedom
To a tribe of joyous former slaves
Her eyes spoke of a future bright
Though forever dark I might be
Her heart beat louder than kettle drums
Announcing that Jesus Saves
Come now, come now my love
I've waited for you, for so long
Come now, come now my love
Come before all hope is gone

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”  Franz Kafka

If I regret

I live without fear, but I have so many regrets.  Looking at my reflection in the mirror.  Seeing myself in glass, first I know, I am flesh, a being without permanence, no lasting time, no pretense. 

Having lived through many lifetimes in few years, I have nothing to show for it.  All there is, is love,  hope, and regret.  I can repent, I can pretend, but, all I really have is tears.  Nothing else.  There is nothing left.

So do I go forward, if I regret?  Do I continue and make the same mistakes, because I am unable to change? Why do I bother, in the face of all I do, that wounds me, wounds others.  If I regret, why do I go on, into oblivion?

“In their images they had thought to find some small immortality but oblivion cannot be appeased.”  Cormac McCarthy

Unredeemed

What is there for the innocent

When the guilty have stolen all

What is there left for the children

Since the elders sent the world to Hell

Punished for the sins of others

Born to an earth without mothers

There is nothing but fears and dust

We are ruled by tears and lust

We are the damned, 

So what shall our portion be

A life amongst the broken

The suffering unredeemed?

Will there be nothing left

Consumed by previous gen's theft

Of a future everlasting

Of anything worth passion

Stealing every privilege 

Standing upon the edge

 Where the danger beneath

Beckons us to leap

Nothing left

Every soul bereft

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”  Charles Dickens

My Crazy Brain

I said, "My heart is sad for all I've done."

She said, "You just like being sad."

I said, "I'm breaking inside tonight."

She said, "You think too much.  You seem to never know when you have enough.
Just like how you see love."

Then and now, I never know when to be stunned
My heart has broken a thousand times.
Still I thought I must be wrong it was me who was fucked up
I am a bit crazy and she knows me better than I do.
Sometimes though perfect people don't know the truth
Even those who know you so well
It makes for living in a certain kind of Hell
Where everything you do, everything you say, everything you think
Labels you as being weird, or stupid or as a freak.

“Thus I remained to myself an unhappy lodging where I could neither stay nor leave.  For where could my heart fly from my heart? Where could I fly from my own self?”  Saint Augustine

Winter winds at the pole

Her beauty pours over, like fog or winds at an arctic pole
There is this stark perfection awakening in my very soul
But I cry, awash in memories and fears of my own making
I know that her efforts are useless, I will always be forsaken

Souvenir

My mind will never forget, my life was empty before you but flourished thereafter.

Thoughts of you are artifacts of a blessed time together, in another phrase, souvenirs.

Mementos of our love, memory is never lost, but for the temporary nature of living.

Please keep forgiving me, though I am unworthy, I seek to know your being.

But this torn flesh bears the cost, and despite once being young, I am now old.

The memories I have of our time are still stark and lush, but my flesh grows cold.

“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am 

in them, and that is eternity.”  Edvard Munch 

Paint turned Gray

Broken from the beginning
No salvation, all my sinning
Forgiving me is impossible
I've a heart turned stone
And still the earth keeps spinning
And I know there's no winning 
Life and love implausible
I know I'll be alone
What is left of me, is only pain
Knowing that your stark white paint
Has turned gray
Is a result of my being insane
Leaves me without hope
My darkness has stained you
A stain unwashed by the heaviest rains

An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.”  Yukio Mishima

When life strikes me down

Every time life strikes me down
I lose my place, driven to the ground
The words strip me from illusions
The hate leads my ego to ruin
When you said you accept my apology
You forgive me, I am free
This world can be seen in the mirror
Going home, sinless, light growing dimmer
My chest inhales dust from the atmosphere
But the horizon approaches ever near
Someday soon I will be unchained
Bleeding tears, into the rain
Your forgiveness let me live
Bitterness passes
As love lasts
We will be facing trials together
We've endured now, will so forever

pain, fire, and dust

We fear death
But do not change our ways
We have walked a path
Taking us to a post nuclear age
The end of time will bring pain, fire and dust
Acid rains, boiling oceans, as machines rust
We've had our time, so many generations
We've spent efforts, to expand our creations
But the world we've changed, never created
Is bleeding, and our enemies have retaliated
Time passed so quickly, now that we see it end
Life was beautiful, until humans made it bent
Holy wars
Drought
Genocide
Pollution
Famine
Nuclear accidents and wars
Cloning and AI
All of our hatreds
Left wounds and scars

“It was not unless one lifted one's gaze from all the allegedly normal events occurring before one's eyes and looked at the executioner's sword hanging over everyone's head that the normality was revealed as a sort of mass insanity. . . Passengers on a ship who are . . . engaging in all the usual shipboard activities appear perfectly normal as long as their ship is sailing safely in quiet seas, but . . . deranged if in full view of them all their ship is caught in a vortex that may shortly drag it and them to destruction.”  Jonathan Schell

Life blind

I drove for hours becoming blinded

As the sun burned like fire in the sky

I was confused, my vision was lost

Amidst a nightmare of steel and glass

Don't ask questions that you don't want answered

If there was destination I couldn't find it

 I knew the reasons, the how and the why

Yet didn't know that this modern life had cost

Money and finding pleasure from first to last

 Life might seem akin to catching cancer

 With every death

But I think life only has meaning 

If all who live someday will die

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each  other. 

But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means  accepting the risk 

of winter. To become presence, means accepting the  risk of absence.”   

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Just a boy

You held my hand and said look at the stars.  I looked above, straight up, seeing little white dots.  You wanted me to know wonder, and joy. All I knew were the scars from the turmoil in life, wearing a rusty cross, but I smiled, after all, I was just a boy. 

My life was never lived outside your shadow.  I watched as the darkness and sorrow grew.  Time and murders of crows watching, left me in fear.  Crows aren't evil.  But somehow, I knew, they were called by one who wanted me to be aware, and this brought tears.

Day after useless day, I walked from the quiet to the school. But that wasn't living, not life.  It was a sort of drama, and the curtain fall brought dark.  And I was only alive when in the light.  Speaking on stage, my soul's sole delight.

So instead I found a place to hide, where I birthed a new life.
One made of those characteristics that I saw and admired in others.

This was not me.  But it made me happy.

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”   F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love is not fleeting

The smart folks say that love is fleeting
But the love I feel for you is nothing but permanent
It will never leave this soul
Some others suggest that to enter love is defeating
But my heart refuses to relent
My love makes me whole
So never fear
My love might not be your desire
But I will never leave
I promise to not cause you tears
Despite my inner fire
You will one day believe
Because I love you
Love is enough
I will be true
No matter what you do

Stain

What does it matter your tears? After a life time of revelry you are simply being paid for all the years of indiscreet debauchery, getting laid, and getting high.

This is your destiny, well earned. Now go lay down before your flesh leaves a stain behind.

Prophetic words

(This poem reflects both my fear of the future world catastrophe, but also, of an awareness that I've been made to feel urgency of such fears by the news and information I view and use.  But, while it is true that they've been saying for almost 50 years that humans are going to be extinct in ten years, or something somewhat similar, we haven't gone extinct or anything similar yet, and the literature putting forth such a view goes on.  We are not the last generation, nor will our children's be, barring any sort of catastrophe that is unseen in any way to this point.  But knowing that, being made aware of future issues is important, and I believe we must change for the betterment of the earth, and for all of the humans upon it.)

He spoke without mercy for we deserved none
And when he was finished
We felt like we'd entered oblivion
So have no fear, it is the jubilee year
As we fall from grace, it is time to enter space
There is no planet that will have us
This is the ultimate justice, we've lost our way
Floating in the atmosphere
All we do will not be forgiven
There is nothing to save us
There is nothing now but us
We've killed our planet Earth
We are a danger, to ourselves
We are in danger, of being left behind
On a world where we can no longer live, we are the forsaken
The world is our dying mother who we have killed
Unspoken mysteries, that lead us to slay
All we love and could ever be that lead us to betray
Our children and our legacies
Covered in blood, wet from birth
The newborns scream
They know, just as we do
That to our mother, we've been a curse
Yes it is true
The death sentence may have been signed
Except that we are also native to this world
And however we fight it, the globe still turns
Whatever our fears, there is a system, that will go on
Whatever the fate of human kind

(The top row of books were written from the 60s on, the bottom row are some responses to such, as well as skeptical scientific looks at the true issues that might cause such disasters).

Run

The mist burns with the rising sun
Crows chatter, watching from a branch
Winter is gone, Spring has come
And the sun will not forever last
Summer passes, before our eyes
Autumn comes with the memories
No I can't forget her suicide
Depression is such a treachery
Life goes on, with you aboard or not
You have no choice, so continue to move
Run like a child, wild, free, without thought
Life doesn't forgive, it doesn't need proof
So dance, every moment you have
So dance, there is no one watching
Hold upon the things that make you glad
So rise, even when gravity is calling

Lives are as sand

From birth to death

Our lives are as sand

Escaping through fingers

In a blink of the cosmic eye

The eternal cries, tears of rain

 With a gentle smile, we remain

We are bound to this flesh

But are awake in dreamland

Past times echo, and we linger

In a time so young, dreams alive

But we will leave bloodstains

No matter how sweetly we lay

Where can I go to find the truth

I long to sleep forever more

Let me swim to meet you

But I must be willing to leave the shore

And I know I cannot swim

“Scars have the strange power to remind us 

that our past is real.”    Cormac McCarthy