Implication

It is hopeless.

Is it hopeless? A strange word, hope. hope. Such a small word.

A four-letter word.

It haunts me, the sense of hope. And, I taint it. Corrupt it. It carries me, but only so far. For where hope ends, so too do I. I cannot carry myself, alone. I cannot walk where others have not gone.

But, I do not credit myself enough, at times. So much courage...

and so little.

I value none of the worthless things that others hold dear. Distractions. Opinions. Sums, and numbers. They mean nothing. I care not for a thing because it is shiny. I care not for a thing because what it implies. I care only for the implication.

And, what purpose does that serve me?

None.

Nights

Eight bottles of wine in a week,
Dry and white to
Pass the night
Alone.

I feel as though someone
Is watching.
Watching me watch television.
Watching me sleep.

I pace with a cigarette
Dangling from my lips,
Countering the cold
With drink.
Listening to the distant hum
Of traffic,
Wondering where they go
At such a time.

Where would I go
At such a time?

Heaven Demands

Blessed and wretched;
God loves
And damns us all.

Whose hands placed
The first stone
Of the tower of Babel?

Mine and yours.

Heaven demands
We be weak
But, the world
Demands our strength.

As I see it--
There is no need of forgiveness
And there is no sin
In living.
I am not marked
And I am not damned.

I never tasted the sweetness
Of forbidden fruit.

I am not ashamed of my
Nakedness.

No.

No.

Dirt. Dust.

Smoke-breather swallows the sun,
And casts his image on
The craggy surface of
The ocean floor.
There, in the dark,
Where strange creatures swim
He feasts on the bones
And blubber of corpses
Drifting down.

He is immortal, lifeless, eternal.
He drifts, alone;
An undercurrent of the thoughts
Pull him, bind him
Catch and release him.
Guilt and sin,
Fire and flesh.
The gravity of things
That others cannot
Comprehend.

The broken promises of a God
Who drowned his creation.
Who cursed his children,
And banished them
For being only
What he made them.
Dirt. Dust.
Unwise, and ignorant
Of the earth.
Birth from force;
Woman from Man.

All false. All lies.

He dispairs the death of
A God who has never existed.
Of a purpose for life
That has never existed.
Of the pace of his thoughts
That betray him--
Far too fast for meaning.
One becoming another,
Becoming another.

Home

I am home, homesick and
Sleepless, in the dark.
Thinking of people
Who are no longer themselves.
Living from a photograph--
A memory of something,
That may not have happened;
May not have happened
The way that I remember.

Even faces change,
And I cannot yet grow a beard.
Though, I have not put on weight,
And I have not yet
Started to show my age.
I also, have not had any children
While some have,
And already lost them.
Or, outgrown them.

Time moves and I move with it.
I move there and move away.
I make friends and move away.
Days and years pass,
And I count them.
But in time, have lost track
Of numbers.
So, looking back I start
The counting over.

Looking back,
I remember.
A memory of something,
That may not have happened;
May not have happened
The way that I remember.

Something from Nothing

A noise, a sound, a song--
Awoken from deep sleep
To a sudden silence,
And the ghost of a voice
Echoing, calling, fading.

I remember, but for the dream.
I have been here before,
Alone and in the dark,
With a voice, a ghost;
Something from nothing.

City on the Hill

The lights are out
In the city on the hill.
The silhouttes of
Her homes,
Her towers,
Her chapels,
Stand black against the stars.

And, it is hours yet
Until dawn.

Oath

My hope is that hope remains,
For the promise of blood
And flesh that years past,
An oath was made.

But, there is no knowing
The strength of such things.
The eternity of such things.
The truth of such things.

Will you remember,
Beyond the doubt
And beyond the
Faltering of your faith?
Beyond the tidal swell
Of the emptiness
Which in you
Consumes all things?

You, who are 'needless.'
You, who are beyond
The simple comforts
Of flesh.
You who are most
When feeling less.

You who are cause
Of my own lacking.
You who are reason
For my knowing;
I deserve fullness and
Richness and healing.
That I am divine,
And that to live and
To feel and to know
Is divine.

Being

I hold the moment,
Yet unproven by trial or memory.

What I do not know;

What will be known. 

And so too,

The moment holds me.

I am what I am. 

I am bound, 

As you are free.

Forever in doubt, 

Lacking the rage,

Or courage or fire

For life.
For living.

For being.

Swell

I swell
To incomprehension,
When the mind becomes
Everything and nothing.

I burst into a bloom
Of two colors,
Black and white or
Two shades of blue.

Ever and on
My thoughts.
Flame and fog
At once.
Hope and shame
At once.

I love
And loath myself.

Counted

Counted and uncounted,
A dead fly is missing
One wing.
I wonder,
If it was the spider who
Who got it.

It scurries along the baseboards
When I turn a light on.
I corner it,
Looking at it look up
At me.
I think of putting my foot down,
But always decide to let
Things be.

It is the kind
That spins no web,
But hunts at night when
We are sleeping.
Feeding on the corpses
Of the things that I don't care
To think about.