tell me what would change
i’m already a ghost
it would be the same
i’m already a ghost
i’m sorry for the pain
i need to be a ghost…
empty in my chest
forgotten is the soul
though i did my best
forgotten is the soul
how could i forget
the rot inside my soul
farewell, farewell,
it’s time to be a ghost
this is the real hell
and all of you are ghosts
know that it’s been swell
to each of thee a toast
so if you feel a breeze,
know that its just me
the ghost.
a butterfly joined me on my walk
floating with grace
her painted canvas wings
a fluttering heartbeat.
they made me pause.
what are you doing, butterfly?
i saw its past, i saw its future,
breaching its cocoon,
then faltering, returning
to the earth’s womb.
i wondered:
what are you doing, butterfly?
why?
you emerge,
you return,
simply to grace our path?
why?
nature, so peculiar,
this thing you do.
the whole of life,
it seems to have no other reason
than to be briefly beautiful
The song of your moan
is an echo in my mind,
What a beautiful chorus,
your cry, so sublime—
Beneath my fingertips,
you became poetry —
no shortage of meaning
in each line of your body.
Buried to the hilt,
in your velvet heat —
and as you came undone,
you thanked me in repeat.
Still in you, I held you,
mere embers in a cuddle—
we melted together,
dissolved in our puddle—
Still can I taste
your need, so sweet,
you, my last meal,
there’s nothing—
no, nothing
I’d rather eat.
That family rug. ornate patterns. passed down for generations. progressively woven by each hand that possessed it. expensive threads. prized.
one speck of dirt tucked under. another. another. a mole hill. then a mountain. “it’s a molehill” they’d say. “that’s a mountain” i’d say back.
secrets passed along with the rug. secrets tucked under. eventually whole identities tucked under. me hid under.
to you — protection. me, under the rug, footsteps trampling all over — bearing the weight of the family’s shame.
a heel on my throat. can’t breathe. can’t speak.
i wanted to add my thread. they don’t use rainbow silks.
Darling,
let us indulge indulgence,
that Epicurean cure.
Let touch be our salve,
my lips be your balm,
and let us yield
to what we feel —
what, my dear,
could be more real?
Let go of thought —
be free, my darling,
think not.
Break that dam,
embrace the rains —
surrender, my love,
surrender, and let your heart
take the reins.
And I look out to a sick, lonely world.
I am sick and lonely.
And I am enchanted by all of creation, its love and its beauty.
It’s love. It’s beauty.
And I am despondent
at the hatred and the venom,
the wrongness
and the blight.
I fear for the world
as the beast swallows the Sun —
cast are we
into the night.
But I’ve seen
a certain kind of Sunlight
fell from the heavens —
caught by none other
than the miraculous gleam
of my best friends’ eyes.
…
Life itself. I stare, I stare. It shifts, illusory, feigning fixedness. It is a solid liquid, the coldest fire, burning ice, benevolent evil, malevolent goodness. The darkness is blindingly bright, the light is its own shadow.
I’ll never know who I am. I mimic the world out of sheer adoration. Water! Water! Water! Just when I am certain of my reflection, I touch. Ripples spread outward, the image changes, now that’s the real you, what were you thinking? I touch again, the cycle continues. I would be Narcissus if there was a self to admire.
I was staring at a pond. The ponds are pupils. The pupils of every passerby. Every friend. Every enemy. Every world leader. Every vagabond. I see me, but it is not me, my selfhood is not localized, like a drop of water in the ocean claiming the ocean as itself — the ocean claims the drop as itself.
Individualism is a prison, you form a self and are separate. You defend your cell bars with your life.
Collectivism is a prison, fall into line. All of our Selves are nailed to pseudo-sacrificial crosses, die unto yourself for some greater, false “good.” Die for us. Die for us. Die for us.
Where is the freedom?
Is the freedom the liminal space between every opposite?
Desensitization, the enemy of presence, of gratitude. May I never forget what a gift it is to awake to a home filled not with loveless jabs, but with sweet song. That frayed nerve at the bottom of my spine will get the message eventually — that there is no threat to stay primed for. Time’s lazy waves will lap at this old rock. It will erode this old pain.
…
Periods of so-called solitude — they weren’t solitude at all. They were a rekindling of a forgotten connection.
The fall of modern humanity is in forgetting the beauty of what some may think is “anthropomorphic” projection; but truly do I tell you that we are always projecting ourselves onto the natural world — so if you see the natural world as lacking in soul, inanimate, and unintelligent… well, you get the point.
These periods of solitude can only be considered solitude if one regards the only relationships worth maintaining as being with other humans. Those are important; however, there are other highly important relationships widely forgotten.
So, when you see me talking to the Moon, the ocean, the stars, a tree… you might see insanity, but truly, I am remembering. I am honoring. I am learning. These great teachers always have lessons to whisper; sensitize yourself to the subtle. There is always something to be heard if one would only listen.
A life characterized by an inexplicable longing, an incommunicable yearning, that abates when basking in the sublime.
The spirit of the Romantic, erasure of the boundary between humanity and nature. Toes in dirt. Hand on bark, fingers tracing that natural Braille.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 