Thank you unwitting guru

I love all of you. We are all profoundly inspiring each other without realizing it. Those who do realize it often take it upon themselves to become the guru of others, and for that we should all thank them.

For those of us who are imploding upon our selves, please remember that the people in your life are pillars, and often enjoy playing that role more than you are aware.

World spins without us and we choose
To see that we are not important enough
Or too important to be effective
On daily movement, planet life continues.

Vagabond dreamers hold truths precious
To hearts soldered shut by days passed
Lovers gone and love whisked away.

Now softly cloaking our eyes
With veils of egos, boost our smiles
Quickly, now let no man peek
Inside a haunted dream.

I was following the pack of swallows.

Sunday night. I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't dread Sunday nights. It is one of my greatest accomplishments in the last few months that I now revel in the glory of Sunday evenings. I generally get to spend my Sunday evenings with a group of people who have proven to be vital in my sanity since I moved up here. They are beautiful and amazing people who have taught me what is valuable and important in this short life that we all live together. And even when I don't see those people on Sundays, I take that time to think about how important the people in my life are to me. It's a new revelation for me to be so positively and consciously engaged in the relationships I have with, well, everybody.

As I'm sure you may have noticed, I've been posting some poetry. That is because about two weeks ago, I began to write again, after a four year hiatus. I couldn't be happier. The same person who inspired me to begin writing again told me last night that once we focus on the love we have for the people we spend time with, then that love becomes the only thing of importance, and the world just has to come to terms with that. I can feel the world around me shifting towards this notion, and it fills me with indescribable peace.


If birds could walk like humans
Would they proudly march
In bubbles made of their own egos
Or would they flock?

Rush around in mad scrambles
To follow the wind
To no avail, because their wings
Are gone, not just clipped but
Taken away completely?

Hold their heads up high
And preach convictions,
Thinly veiled bitter gems
Cloaked in righteous beauty?

Or would they fall,
Crippled by the loss of
Wings that used to carry
Bodies less burdened?

Pick up where you left off.
Don't let a second pass without
Telling the world what is wrong
And why, and who did it.

Raise the alarm wake the guards
They've missed the coming of
The enemy to our gates as he
Breaks them down and threatens to
Build them newer, better, stronger, fiercer.

Set your arrows upon the man who
Tells you you are wrong and all that's true
Is false and your fear is false just like
Your pride and sorrow and the
Only truth is in your love,
Which you've locked away and lost.

Set the dogs upon the scent
Of love long lost, it hides
Somewhere deeper than we know
But we will look and
They will bark even if it's dead
It must be somewhere and they will smell it.

Just like the scent of fear, so palpable is the
Aroma of love even smothered
We will look and they will bark
It must be somewhere, we will find it.

Try as we might...

Try as we might the stars won't shine for us.

Streaming down in silent ways,
We say that stars are like eyes,
Peeping toms in the night skies
Staring, daring us to go further.

Who says planets don't align
To bring us pleasure, life
A sign that something's right
Now, here in the ether.

Daily jumps through daily hoops
For treats, rewards that rarely
Come through, but still
We try and try again.

Someday soon, not now
Not then, but when
We do break the hoops
The stars will smile,

Then as we try, might the stars shine for us.

Who's the realist now??

As I sit here in my cubicle, perusing various blogs and trying to delay my lunch as long as possible in order to ease the suffering of a long and tedious afternoon, I keep coming back to one thought—the strength of a negative mind-frame, and how important it is to fight against it.

Rarely in the past have I ever considered myself, or been considered by anyone else to be the optimistic member of any group. I usually was labeled the cynic, or pessimist, to which I faithfully replied, “No, just a realist.” But I’ve since learned that reality is not static or fixed, but rather some foggy combination of fact and our perceptions thereof.

It is far too easy to allow the world and all of its inhabitants, tangible or otherwise, to step on you and keep your head under water. The challenge here is to fight back, come gasping back to the surface, while still knowing that there is a long line of people waiting to push you back down. Those people who manage to successfully resurface over and over again have discovered something that others have not—that our attackers are mostly fictional; it is generally our own thoughts pushing us below the surface; usually we are only drowning ourselves.

The most successful people in my experience are those who do not give the negative, invasive, all-powerful constraints of “the real world” enough merit to do any permanent damage. Our dreams as artists are delicate and must be fiercely guarded against the savage beasts of those who have failed before us and wish us nothing but failure and desolation. Unfortunately for the artist, most of those beasts easily roam throughout our psyche due to the fact that our consciousness is their own birthplace.

If you reach out to the world with a vision of something powerful and bold and important in its own right then the world will reach back. There will more often be times when everything seems lost, when you’ve lost the will to continue reaching because nobody seems to return the favor, when the tree in the woods stops trying because it has come to the conclusion that nobody is watching anyway. These times feel like vast and utter failures. But it is only when we lay down and allow our own demons to drown us that we truly fail at anything.

We cannot rely on others to make our world beautiful and complete. We cannot wait for the permission of others to allow our dreams to come to reality. It is up to the individual to create a situation that lends itself to his or her success and happiness. Whether this means changing yourself, your perception of yourself, actively changing your settings or instead molding the surroundings in which you already find yourself to better suit your purpose, it is regardless no one’s responsibility but your own. Strength and courage may be gathered through those that we love and trust, but true success and happiness is borne from a seed that only we can plant in our own consciousness.

Radiolab. Check it out.

I went back home this weekend. Each time I go it messes with my head a little bit less, but messabout it still does. It's painful. But I think it teaches me some very valuable lessons. Lessons which I hope I can understand at some point down the road.

I feel myself re-emerging these days. And then I disappear again for a few weeks, and painfully come out for a few hours, then scurry back into whatever secret hiding spot I have found, the location of which I have (purposely, I'm sure) neglected to reveal to anyone, including myself. I have decided that we are all multiple entities, and it is only when those entities are all honest with each other that one is truly peaceful.

I am frustrated that my heartbeat
Is not in rhythm with this song.

Can a true sage,
A master, really learn to control his heartbeat?

To make the interior and exterior a unified rhythm.

I wish I could sing it to you,
Perhaps then we could understand.