Moth

I am a moth
and I am dusted
in the silvery anticipation
that keeps hope alive

I am one of a million
and one in a million

Drawn to the light
of your heart
and the warmth
of your soul

I travel onward
into and out of the darkness
losing my way
only to find it again
when I least expect to

More questions than answers
More answers than questions

Sunny winter day

I turn onto the path
crushed limestone
freshened and graded
prepared for winter grooming
This same trail is used year round
I anticipate the start of
cross country ski season

The sun is out
it is above the freezing mark
only a slight breeze
just enough to ruffle and lift
a leaf here and there

I meet no-one for a mile or so
No birds calling or perching either
I hear only intermittent
shuffling every now and then
a started squirrel or chipmunk
I imagine

The crisp crackle of spent leaves
underfoot, they release
that smell of autumn's end
and that scent mingles in the breeze
with the unmistakable perfume
that announces snow is on the way

PATTERNS II - Free Assoc Group 2018.03.03

I step and I count
I can count to one hundred
Then I start again
My clinical mind takes over
and tells me the number of steps
I take in about a minute
and tells me the number of steps
I take in about a mile
I have always done this
Elementary school
waiting for the bus
I knew how many steps
to the bottom of the drive
I counted them every morning
And they always stayed the same
Every space I have lived in
any place with levels
I knew how many steps
to the top of the stairs
I counted them every time
And they always stayed the same

Even now

I know how many steps from
My doorway to my car
From my car to the doorway
of wherever I end up

If I have never been there before
I feel that touch of excitement

A new distance to count
And to commit to memory
In order to challenge myself
Next time I happen to be there

I am not one of those crazies
those peculiar folks

who turn lights off 5 times
before leaving the house

Or have to go back to make sure
the oven is off
the iron is off

I just enjoy the silly math
that goes through my head

It is not just the counting
I see points and arrows

Misc.

All the colors of heaven and earth
float across the universe of your eyes

The pattern of chaos is painted
in music across the skies

I can take this, you know
I can take this hell
and I can turn it into heaven

Every end is a beginning
A beginning to an end

The truth of it all is that
nothing is real
All reflection and perception

Shadow forms that can see the future
but are too clever to tell it
But they can see the past and do tell
the truth that hides within

There are trap doors and tunnels
that lead to secrets and treasure

Bring me secrets and lies
on a tray to my bed
Feed them to me while smiling
And no matter what's said
Never let me dispute
What's come out of your head

Yesterday, a year from now.
Today, a year ago.
Tomorrow, a year ago.
Today, a year from now.

Driftwood

I have floated here
from other lands
riding the swelling waters
languid and without care
tossed about with the
foam-edged waves

The current brought me
close and pulled me out
and finally pushed me ashore
bumped me against the sand
absent-mindedly leaving me
as it turns to other things

I am dark and swollen
salt water saturated
the tide rolls me up further
on to the beach and
I find myself firmly
set into the sand

I am burnt and bleached
by the unending sun

______

Fractured
Shattered
Cracked into pieces
Out of my mind
Inside my head
Alone in the crowd
Can't stand my own company

Broken and hollow
and turned inside out

Floating 2

Floating by

A leaf, a feather

A stream has it's own purpose

The leaf, the feather

seemingly random things

but are they really?

If a leaf floating by

beautiful in its autumn colors

or curled at the edges from

premature death

floats by for me or you to see

and I have a thought

and the thought is important somehow

or just provocative

or just lovely to behold

Is it really being carried along

for no other reason than

There it fell and there it is carried?

A leaf passing through one's

field of vision can be

just the thing to spark a thought

a thought that could change the world

a thought that could change the viewer

a thought, plain and simple

Thoughts change us

they can present solutions

they can present other issues

they can represent the entirety

of what we have or want or need

It's funny what happens

Funny? Maybe not funny

It's interesting, intriguing

frightening, emboldening

Nothing would be anything

We would never advance as a species

If we did not have these sorts

of thoughts from having a glimpse

of a thing, and action,

look at your fears

Look at your fears
they don't lead you, they follow
Shouting from behind or
plastered onto you and
whispering unknowns
deep into your ear

I will look beyond all that
I will look beyond all this

Everyone acting as if
today is just like yesterday
nothing further from the truth
nothing closer to the past
nothing beyond the horizon that is
nothing inside that what is not

Sun goes down and
you're putting your face on
like there are others to look at you
I see you as you really are

Bare-faced and afraid
but you are beautiful as you are
and you need not be afraid
We are here together
Although we oft forget
We are here together

Once Again

Once again,
I am doing nothing and I don't care

Once again,
I am doing nothing and I tell myself I am worthless for doing so

Once again,
I am being inspired by someone to follow my dreams and desires
and
I feel shame for not already being in the midst of the action
and
I tell myself that what I do could not be compared because it is not good enough
and
it never will be

Goddammit.
Here is the reality:
Nobody cares but me.
Why judge myself and become the jailer and executioner?
Why stop before I start?
Why hate myself so?
Why so much disdain?

Because
I hate how I am
I hate that I have let myself become this
I hate that I hate myself so strongly because of it.

Sealing/Ceiling - Feb 22, 2020 Free Assoc Group

02/22/2020

Free Association Writers Group

THE WORD: Sealing


I see the introductory interviews prior to intake.Some are very, very dramatic. And sort of silly, if you ask me. Memories and regrets seep through the cracks in their minds. Does everyone go through the same experience? Nobody knows because nobody says. It's all very messy.

Have you ever dropped a bottle of olive oil on the floor? A jar of honey? How about a combination of the two. Just imagine it for a moment and you will understand why I use the word messy.

More and more people show up weekly. I am only in the conference room, several floors above the reception area, once a week, on Fridays. If every day is like the Fridays I've seen, we are going to hit capacity before we know it's even coming.

They, we, all are required quarantine and debriefing when we find ourselves at the tall, glass doors that lead to the interior of the next phase of our lives. It is an interesting process when looked at scientifically. Myself, being in a job that could loosely be described as the equivalent of R & D, can't help but look at the much wider, slightly chilling, scope of the consequences of what we do.

Without going into it, and you probably wouldn't understand it anyway unless you are a fellow academic of the sciences, I will merely suggest to you that you think about an olive oil spill and a honey spill converging and surrounding you.

Nobody every thought that memories and childhood dreams and trauma of every kind could require so much physical room. Or that they would demand the level of security needed to keep them all calm and contained.

Personally, I think that so many people are choosing to enter this realm because they are learning how to manipulate the system, rig the analysis reports, and custom build a state of being that they have spent a long time deciding upon.

The internet is filled with so many facts and so many falsehoods that you could decide to hand everything over that you have, that you are, and have your future in this realm built to what and how you think you want to be.

All of them forget, though, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It's a little bit sad, but mostly funny as hell for us to share stills and vid clips back and forth as we play "Guess what this guy was expecting". You wouldn't believe what I've seen, honestly.

So jumping forward to now, there is a growing movement to shut down the process that we've developed over so many years. They think that by shutting down and sealing up the operation, that will stop what we do, it'll evaporate into thin air. They think that life and society will eventually reestablish itself, like the jungle swallows up abandoned settlements. They couldn't be more wrong.

They don't know how many have willingly and enthusiastically moved forward to the next level of being. And how much more equipped they are and always will be to take on a challenge like this. They are doomed before the revolution ever begins.

Chapter 2

Nobody ever asks and I don't make a habit of announcing it, but my grandfather on my mother's side was instrumental, more than that, he was a pioneer in the sciences, social/mental/physiological, and was single-handedly responsible for creating the method in which we begin to groom those who either needed to make changes before they made trouble, or those who would be of help in the creation of and the maintenance of the operation as a whole.

So much goes into it. You would be, I think they used to say, "flabbergasted"...such a funny sounding word...if you even knew the half of it. I certainly had little idea of how vast it goes and I grew up in an environment of being aware of and being told of the improvements through time. Almost everyone, in one way or another, is involved in the workings of the system. It is so...let's just have you picture a complicated fractal image that you keep zooming toward. You'll never reach it because it never stops growing and spreading. The tighter the focus, the bigger it becomes.

Back to my grandfather. He was an odd one. For some reason, in his academic and life studies, he furiously gravitated toward advertising, I guess you'd call it back then. Truly, it is merely the practice of the manipulation of the masses. Let's not sugar-coat the process and what it really is.

Because of all the troubles and issues and push-back from society as the times became more chaotic, and anger and discord were starting to spark the organizing of those willing to rise up and fight back, there came the need to make society controllable. And to do that, they needed to become controlled.

Granddad had interests in the field of intentional ambient messaging as well as mental/emotional manipulation through audible stimulus. He also was a huge aficionado of those vintage television programs from the late 20th and early 21st century. Oddly enough, these two interests of his combined in his twisty brilliant brain and came up with the idea to pipe certain sounds into and throughout particular areas, troubled neighborhoods, areas that subversives were known to frequent. Places that too often erupted in the conflagration of social anarchy.

So he developed what they called "spheres" of ambient sound: birds, low voices murmuring, even just the sound of a breeze sometimes. These recordings were merely a thin skin over which a systematic barrage of messages were arranged. Be complacent. Do not rise up. Stay calm. Do not think too much. He put together a team of talented scientists and linguists that came up with probably hundreds and hundreds of subliminal commands that began to groom the inhabitants of these chosen areas to stop demanding what they want and start asking what they can do.

Granddad died when I was 13. He willed his books and his journals to me. I was elated. That library of his held most of my favorite bits and pieces of childhood. Before he was taken, that is. But I was in the process of emerging from childhood into young adulthood. It was a troubled time for most families but not mine. I'd grown up within the system so I didn't know any other way. It was weird, being one of the only kids I was aware of that were not pre- or post-processed. We were just living it. We didn't know any different. None of us did. And we never asked.

At first Granddad's experimental methods were tested in small, controlled environments. But as proof of their effectiveness emerged and spread, the areas were expanded to include parts of New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles...the places you'd expect. But they went deeper with it. They created a web throughout Berkeley, hipster Portland, Austin, parts of Colorado now that the state had reinvented itself as a far-reaching and well-organized communal society, even Minneapolis, despite the long winters, saw its fair share of activity. Any place that showed a potential for or an emergence of free thinking became an area needing dampening. It was important to keep things controlled so the transformation of the individuals, once within the gate of the New Realm, was desired and was rarely questioned by those succumbing toward the new way.

So the ambient spheres spun and rotated. Every moment was new. Not one was the same as another. But out of chaos, there created order. Every moment was new.

Of course, with the subconscious bending of the will came the conscious creation of a visual method of manipulation as well. The two senses work so well together when hand-in-hand on a mission. Phrases like "selling ice to an Eskimo" resurfaced long after that group of peoples were disbanded, their history was white-washed, and the origin of their story as a people had been homogenized out of existence.