The Ballad of trying to be

The ballad of trying to be

 In the distance at the fork of a river
 Off the coast of Canada, a grizzly stands
 He does not need a mysterious forgiver
 For he is too simple to do a thing wrong
 
 
 Long have I longed to be known for  
 Faults and virtues. To sing of myself and  
 Leave none in doubt of veracity as I tore
 A copy from the account book of the soul
 
 
 To have a disease which doubts and condemns
 To create a mess in the heart so dense
 You wish to open the door to show your friends
 Air it, get help carrying it all outside
 
 
 And if showing the truth made them hate you  
 That would be a fine judgement and an end
 You’d hope to love them still no less than due
 Sunsets over the windswept cliffs you love. Be here.
 
 
 It’s morning and the cosmic hand has swept
 The cold dark sky and its starlight guards away
 Even in the secret chambers of sleep I wept
 And the sun won’t change that, yet it is warm
 
 
 I dream of a paradise that I cannot reach
 For I am human and would unmake paradise
 At some unimpeachable place they come to teach
 Each of the seven bright arts of the gentle-kind


 In that place there are flowers and holy lights
 Because I want to be there I cannot
 And for that yellow-warm light to glow
 That place was sealed against all like me
 
 
 Let me be gentle so when the world is rough
 And I pray, heaven won’t see a hypocrite
 And I won’t wear the crown of proud white bluff
 And if I can’t be gentle, let me not pretend
 
 
 As my flesh rots my mind lashes out weaving,
 light In the void, projects, truths and lies to make
 A life after my life. In terror I am heaving
 Death is already within me so I run, write, fight
 
 
 I found you searching for communists that
 Also appreciate the swordbearer and wildflower
 Cyber dryads led me to where you sat
 Algorithm woods before a river of hope
 
 
 Ibis, peacock, hen and falcon hawk and dove
 Skylark, raven, kiwi, albatross and hummingbird
 I wish I could open the aviary of my love
 But you appraised me and found in me light
 
 
 We are dying all the time. More or less frantic.
 More or less rushed. No less dying still.
 We are unbeing, decaying, necromantic
 Please hold me till I pass on from this world 

 The city
 
 The city has its own multi-coloured stars
 So I won’t complain that it occludes
 The constellations. I never could draw them 
 Is my heart a city? Is it being gentrified?

 The city is the rich, and the poor housed in cars
 I might end up either, I might end up neither
 But I’ll never be myself or that same river again
 Is my heart a city? Am I hungry or replete?
 
 The city still has a few discotheque lit wild bars,
 Oases of maybe in a desert of noes
 But I never go out anymore, I never go out
 Is my heart a city? Are the nimbys winning? 


Glide your eyes

Glide your eyes across the blank walls
Like the clutching hands that sink
Beneath the quicksand of doldrums
Searching for purchase on
Perfectly smooth rocks, illegible
To all interpretation and mental essays
Consider a peculiar dimple in the wall
A line or knot in the wood making
Earthbound constellations a practice
As old as buildings- older indeed
Since there have always been caves
The school child and the worker alike
Achieve a state of agitated tranquility
A state that is neither inside nor outside
Time, or rather time becomes an endless
Field- again, without purchase, again in
Repetition, tick, repetition, tick, repetition
It's bloody dull.


Such altered illuminations on the mind's eye
Like a lantern made to cast a special shadow
Can generally only be achieved with illicit substances
But in the schoolyard, the office, the factory
Eternity is free. Oh churlish mind, why do you
Not grant such in the brief hour with friends
In the embarrassingly short minutes of fucking
In the days with a dying mother, or even
The last years of an aged dog's life
You have made eternity unequal in each hour
Until we die, and from that moment on, all divisions
Upon time receive their just allocation of oblivion.
Futility

New shoots
On a fallen trunk

Burns the air
 Lightning strikes
 Violet swords
 Lilac air
  
 Wicked will
 A whisper
 Justice bent
 A whisper
  
 Completion
 Fire blue rock
 Rose wind silver
 Sea ice thought