Stream-Of-Consciousness: From The Journal

we are our white platic lawn furniture
decked out, dressed up to resemble
the pristine nature
of our spiritual non-existance.
we sell ourselves for a pittance
rising late for morning suicide
scrambling to hide from the
hate of our Utopia
like trolls from the sun.
wait a minute past the hour
of evening when our man made roof trees
clamor for significance
you will see your own nature
written on the great arched
dome of the sky-
atlas will whisper secrets in your ear,
but you are too busy to hear,
my brothers, my sisters dying
in front of the TV
that threatens me with anonymity
puts my sanctity in jeapoardy-
dying is an art
and no one does it well.

The spectrum has many voices
but white is dumb and deaf to the
song birds and the screamers-
the prophets and the seers
a stumbling mute we enchant ourselves
with green spells, the whistles and bells
of our tin soldier cavalries
muster up religeousity
like Custer fighting off the ghosts of us
the future dwellers
the god sellers.
the time dancers, we absolve you
as best we can. when our grids
fail and ancient memory
of highlands and rough hands
crawl up out of banishment,
the great loss of nature
of silence, of words, of meaning, of peace, of imagination, of imagery, of images themselves, of truth, of kinship, of bodies, of feeling, of hope, of healing, of knowledge that we are at one point unmathematical, knowing we are unknowable
no i will not sprawl like the
cancer that eats us like we eat the world.
maybe one day you will find me on the street and
slap my face for saying so, but
you are more than what you have become.

Stream-Of-Consciousness: From The Journal

today i read words red eyes
posted on the internet and
revulsion welled up
walled up my own misgivings
of the scene.
what does it mean
to speak, to be drunk on words,
to cut the pretention with a shot glass
of open weakness, of lightning- those
self made sleeknesses
who seek to share their light
but forget to mention
the taste of their dark,
the salt food of the will
that drives us still foreward
toward introspection, like
dickens’ empty chair.
dumbfounded,
well rounded,
rewarded for speaking
and speaking i fall again into
myself, my own little collection of time
that is not was not never will be
mine. seeing reality anew, we all
die once- falling down
the dark
steps
of silence
stillness loneliness peace heartache and death.
every baby born will cry
with its first breath. clouds are in the distance
and salvation rides the storm.

A Story

I.
He came to me
when i was none
Before i was
He was most.

II.
After a little benign tapping at the piano
i losen the shoelaces of conciousness
and trippingly
fall
for you.

III.
we are both guilty
of semi filial apologies-
bleached motivation.
catch phrases and kinder-words
boxed in boxed out of
commission. go
polish your insincere compliments.

Ellusive Thoughts

holding slippery snakes of
thought by the tail i remember your stillness.
warm monotone betraying blue
eyes straying stealing kisses
through your verbatum.

what is that behind the closed
door down the hallway of
your mind?
corner darkness
someone to love
broken strings
my favorite things
opened eyes

i can see the darkened corner in the shadow of your mind,
the widow wind is blowing and the long road starts to wind.
my restless feet are staring at the footprints left behind.

Tasteless fashion is my
middle-name and want-of-sense
is like a skippingstone
across the surface of remembrance.
Innocence has bright red hair and
small fat arms that love like
old tee-shirts except better. Am i
so different?

Do you remember when we wandered
around my grandpa’s basement and
opened up his old desk?
There is no such thing as new dust,
you told me.
And I believed it.

Thoughts on Dreaming

Tonight the sun
and i will sink beyond
the sky into
the deep blue cool of
the sea; salt steam rising
from the tops of
our wearied heads
to spill over
the horizon and settle
soft on the vast black
concious of the
ocean.

Thoughts From My Prayers

come to me
from the silence of unknowledge.
believe i am unwhole,
a former self on the wind
sought seeking
weeping golden thread-
the past beat.

i carry lions in my pockets.
the red stained eyes of my pants
attest to sleepless nights
and less
and less of blinking stars.
more
black clockwork seas
of nothing, of waiting,
of Icarus before he hits the
water, of the silence of
floating Icarus.
this is a beached whale of a thought.

Excerpt From Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

-Abraham Lincoln

Excerpt From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

-Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

-Abraham Lincoln

The Star-Spangled Banner

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

-Francis Scott Key 1814