I thought about going to sleep

but the bottle isn’t empty yet

and I simply refuse to be called a quitter

I thought about going to sleep

but then remembered that there are still two more hours

to bleed dry until the sun dawns on the horizon

and I’m not one to waste the last hint of darkness

with my weathered eyes closed and my frayed mind switched off

I thought about going to sleep

but the striptease pillow just isn’t sexy enough

to lure me into that spider web tar pit trap

I thought about going to sleep

Hell, I thought about a lot of things

but none of them really stood tall

above and beyond the rest

so I thought I might as well stress

these adrenal glands a little further to the point of popping

I thought about going to sleep

but there are words yet to write

and cigarettes yet to smoke

and dragons yet to chase

and lightning yet to bottle

and truth yet to seek

and gods yet to kiss

and love yet to birth

and death yet to taunt

and disease yet to fuck

and mistakes yet to purge

and hope yet to find

and faith yet to leap

and souls yet to shine

and stars yet to sing

and wounds yet to heal

and doors yet to open

and intentions yet to manifest

and roads yet to travel

and fires yet to burn

and floods yet to surf

and madness yet to laugh off

and tears yet to weep away

and crosses yet to carry onward

I thought about going to sleep

but then I thought

crank up that noise

and put on my dancing shoes instead

Two poems out today in Dead Snakes:

Crusted and Cracking; and Collapse

Also, here’s a short piece I wrote back in January:

The Heist

They say imitation
is a form of flattery, oh so sincere,
but gone too far
it just looks like a thief
in the night
trying to get away with a heist
from the shadows
where no original light shines.

Trying to get back into a rhythm after falling off a bit last month in my productivity. No let up allowed. To slow down is worse than death. Or maybe I’m just a hyperbolic, sensationalized, exaggerating artist…

20 poems published so far in May:

Sucked Dry – Social Justice Poetry

Going through the Motions – Poems and Poetry

Melee – Yellow Chair Review

The Things That Go Unspoken – Dissident Voice

Test Tube – UFO Gigolo

A New Obsession – Section 8 Magazine

Turning the Cycle – Section 8 Magazine

Ripped, Shredded, and Ready to Go – Illya’s Honey

High/Low – Crack the Spine

Feigning Ignorance – Poems and Poetry

Trump Hand – Degenerates: Voices for Peace

Gone to Pot – Visual Verse

The Low Down Dirty Blues – Dead Snakes

Vomited – Dead Snakes

Futurist Spring – Snapping Twig

Crash Course – WritingRaw

So We Might As Well Dance – WritingRaw

Burning Rags – WritingRaw

Big Shark – WritingRaw

Drain Until Complete – WritingRaw

One short story this month:

Stealing Roses from a Grave – The Haunted Traveler

If you need a fire, I will burn this world to ash

If you seek entropy, I will fade away and disappear

If you are suffocating, I will be emergency resuscitation

If you need an ear to bend, I will lean in closer

If you want a lover, I will rip open my heart

If you are lowdown and out, I will be the high entering your veins

If you are sad, I will be a jester

If you are happy, I will dance beside you

If you are starving, I will be a blooming garden of fruit

If you are thirsty, I will be a vineyard of wine

If you are tired, I will be energy incarnate

If you are weak, I will drain my strength into you

If you are bleeding, I will be the bandage

If you are lonely, I will be a friend with a smile

If you are confused, I will be clarity through the storm

If you are filthy, I will be a flood to wash over

If you are cold, I will be a fiery sun

If you are hot, I will be the winter cometh

If you are lost, I will be the rescue mission

If you cannot go any further, I will carry you to the finish line

If you cannot get going, I will be the gentle push

If you want sex, I will enter your womb

If you want death, I will arrive as black cancer

I am the chameleon

On the surface level it would seem that this has been a successful day for me. I had five poems published in four different venues (Dissident Voice, UFO Gigolo, Illya’s Honey, and Section 8 Magazine). I had a short story published in The Haunted Traveler. I had another poem accepted for future publication in a zine I have not previously appeared in. I’m very thankful to the editors and publishers involved, and while I’m happy to have had a good day with my writing, the fundamental fact is that there remains some sort of existential emptiness in the hollow space of my soul that has been present since I was a very young child. I’ve tried to quell the horror that such darkness brings through the years in every way I could think of: meditation, fasting, various spiritual practices, renunciation, abstinence, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, feasting, binging, sobriety, humility, prayer, minimalism, materialism, and, of course, artistic pursuits. I always held out hope that my writing would eventually serve as the catalyst which could bring my karmic balance into alignment, easing the pressure from whatever unidentified demon wages war inside my psyche. What scares the hell out of me at this point is that even with the initial success I’ve begun having during the past year as my work is published, there is still something very critical missing inside me. I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly intuitive person with at least a modicum of intelligence and common sense, yet I cannot seem to figure out how to sustain health, happiness, balance, goodness, decency, honesty, peace, and love in my consciousness. The questions are never-ending. The answers remain elusive. This human existence never budges nor gives an inch as the experience of life plays out. It’s all trials, tests, and tribulations. It’s all a process of order breaking down into chaos and then emerging again in a higher state of order. It’s constant, continual, progressive, evolutionary adaptation. Or else it is all just a cruel and twisted joke to which I am the perpetual punchline. I suppose that in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter whether I am ever able to heal completely, or if I am destined to use the suffering at my core to create art that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Either way, I will continue to place one foot in front of the other. Either way, I will continue to seek until I find (or don’t). This concludes the woe-is-me, confused portion of the evening. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming…

The serpent and the fire….the shed scales ….rebirth in the garden…absolution has no center…I’m a hold out on the good life…wait and find me in the next phase…God is elusive…The self is a better bet…play the long odds…fuck it, Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride….Enter apocalypse…this is how I roll…without sight…without touch…without feel…Intuition is the only muse…the world didn’t let me down, I set it on fire…I have no regrets….Every time it hurt the most, I found my strength a little more…Abstraction is my playground…Reality is the night sky…Best moment I ever shared alone in the arms of nature…I wish upon a star…I fuck it all away…I lose on purpose…I lie like a habit that needs to be properly developed so that it can be used for artistic purposes…I used to believe in Utopia…now I cry out for stability…This is my first try at tomorrow…yesterday was a daydream I never woke up from…Moths are flying on my screen…I am the Bug Man…here comes the next wave…I did the whole black phase…it left me empty…I need a chalice to sip from…I need an inferno to swallow…

I don’t have a notebook handy…I don’t have a pen to suck dry…all I have is cold metal keys…so I’ll use them…abuse them…fuck them…drive them to the abyss…rise them up to God…I need a better high life…I follow rabbits down the hole for fun…I am conspiracy incarnate…I am the harsh truth set to jazz…I found my core in the heart of entropy…I was born to be alone…Facts reincarnate…Circles are cycles are rhythms are vibrations are frequencies are nothingness are everything…Easy on the eyes…Hard on the mind…Broken…Haloed…God struck…Nasty…Brutal…With a heart of pure gold…

The next day languished in its wanton desire to come alive…the future was aborted in a flash wave sent from Horus…The dance was primal…The Phoenix laughed in my face when I asked it to rise…So I went and did that shit myself…Trust not…Sing not…Wait not…Speak no…Hear no…See no…Evil is my enemy…Righteousness sucks my tongue dry…Jesus is my best friend…Buddha pointed me toward the flowers…The Tao is just a dream…but so is everything else…

The power of freewill is the greatest force in all of creation. It is the primal energy from which pure consciousness takes directive. A mind that is sovereign and self aware cannot be led astray, nor tempted by the low energy of this fallen culture.

This is why the institutions of this world seek to smash freewill by placing each person under a spell which leads them to believe that they need whatever type of snake oil any particular institution happens to be selling.

The churches sell God from the pulpit.