Risk-taking in art often leads to misinterpretations, and just as often it can lead to revealing your disgusting primordial self. Unraveling your flaws, your cross looks at ourselves that you don't want others to see. Hitting yourself against everything you've learned consciously or not. Questioning everything about who you are and what you've done to yourself and others.

The fear of the artist is twofold - that he will be misunderstood, or maybe worse - that he will be seen.

At this point in my life, I'm quite certain that I always error on the side of hiding myself. I live within metaphors, which is beautiful and abstract. Metaphors lie in the realm of Apollo. Chariots flying in the sun, shielding our eyes from the pain.

The tragic nature of everything, consistently drowned in our dreamscape post-modernity. I ought to feel my wretchedness more, instead of writing about it. But I feel the most when I write - when I pivot around the feelings welling in my stomach and exploding up my chest. I try to give it words, to give it life that otherwise would corrosively contaminate my body.

So I love my writing, I have to do it. But I have little faith in it. I can only believe that I write for myself, and that others may like it because it hits something within their being as well. I've never tried to publish my poetry because the leap of commitment goes well beyond myself at that point - I'll have responsibilities.

Sartre and Camus always wrote of commitment. I agree that we must live with a conviction of commitment toward life. But, as of now, the best I can do is commit to myself without an idea in the world of what anything I'm doing is heading toward. I ride the edge of being alone and loneliness, but at times I sort of embrace loneliness.

And somehow, despite all of this, I still feel so vulnerable with all of my writing and it is all I can do to hit "post" each time I finish writing each entry. And for every entry I post, there are probably 3-4 that are left unfinished or deleted entirely. Perhaps that is the biggest indicator of my vulnerability.

So, with a sigh and a look toward the future.

Post.

Navigating a New Poverty

Talking about women as currency
leaves a great sense of poverty
jawing at the grates.

What is really mine anyway?

My body vibrates
to reverberations
of pitches clamoring
across the globe.

I've become unanchored.

Catch me

and whisper

nonsense
into my ear

before

I float away.

(I will probably fall for it
in my degenerative state.)

I will navigate to new seas
that echo light red to red
across her delicate skin.

Dusk and dawn elevate
the senses to her colors
and sensuous breezes.

The taste of an other's tongue
like a ballerina's figure
in a well-formed Chaînés turn.

Impoverished and slinking
behind the implied motions
on an improvised stage.

I tend to respond well
to questions crafted
by artisans accidentally.

Waging the wind and waves
with temperate patience
pulling a heavy tack.

Fragments unending, I
collect pieces
to live on.

My currency is words,
trailing thoughts
to die on.

And women touch me,
plunging me
into the moment

asking me to feel
the coarseness
of my edges.

To my friends returning from South America

Golden hair flies easy
on the ocean breeze
when the whispy winds
on the Equatorial expanse
breech toward Autumn.

The weight of colonialism,
my gilded legacy, welded
to my skin. Somnambulate
dreams, hot to the touch,
swell and collapse.

Fighting against destiny
with broken mirrors, soft
hands reach into the ruins
and carefully collect
edges to piece back together.

But the beast lies awake.
I feel my skin catch on fire
and the vision collapses
with the stark horror
of equillibrium faltering.

Brother, save your arms,
and live for another day.

We extend to our limits
and find compassion
pushed back against rage.

Sister, save us all
with your courage
that we lack.

How we live in this world
that has slipped to us.

Weakened limbs dangle haphazardly to the side.
What is left
of me

here

weathering
my storm.

I have to excuse myself for every transgression against the human race in order to return to the scene with a clean slate. Not exactly a return to innocence, as it only affords me the opportunity to experience guilt freshly. The old guilt weighs too heavily and shelters stones from rocking home. The horror of new guilt exploding in the stomach that smothers the breath and reminds you that you're alive instead of floating in the murk.

If I had to tell you anything, I'd probably wait too long to part my lips.

It is probably worth noting that being loved is different than being loveable. There doesn't have to be an exchange. There is no currency for love. The evening can catch on fire for a variety of reasons, and we can watch it burn without a thought of ourselves. The stars can learn to loathe themselves silently.

All attempts at finding refuge are regretful. Shameful ministerial whispers from the sacrosanct altars rise to the rafters. They tell you to look away. Brothers and sisters, together. They tell you to look away.

The roaring din clammors 'til midnight like a rising sun. At times, I am sure I hear my voice echoing within its midst. But at some point, I just can take it no longer, and completely stop listening and look out the window. I hear with my eyes and the dark sky, cratered, craddling itself somehow relaxes me. Lulls me to sleep with a morose lullaby.

There are equal amounts of pain in freedom and bondage. The pain caused in bondage always seems less preferable; the more intense the pain, the path to alleviation seems ever clearer and easier. Seeing a solution which is just in sight but out of reach.

In freedom, clarity escapes us. The suffering caused from ambiguity is vacuous. Sucked into the gaping maw.

But let's not fool ourselves, freedom has its bondages too.

Myth Re-Making

in my world
Orpheus begins in the underworld
and then must ascend
to find his love

and instead of that desire
consuming him to lock eyes with her
he instead is told
he cannot ever look away

but he breaks his gaze
and she is lost from him forever

the simulacrum inverted:


the wind is stale
trees hang docile
blanketed flowers
extend languidly

the sun the same
lips glazed shine
dimly in reflections

the tragedy unfolds
from its conclusion --

nearby
unwatched by all
Sisyphus sits atop a hill
and rolls stones lazily
uninterested where they'll crash
at the bottom

absurdity lost its vigor
and no-one noticed

virtue is reinvented
an implicit implication
redundantly constructed
from synthetic glass
is reproduced to exigency

now we search for the real
with the one thing left to us:

hammers and fists

virtue in destruction
starting (calmly)
with the self

Caldera

which whispers carry
wayward like time
blowing apart the sky
in the thundrous distance
tailor-made fingers
delved into my skin
hotspots glowing

the valley's greeness
belies everything

cratered

time has her way with us
I ride the wind
whispering nonsense
with absurd clarity

the burning touch
expanded upward
shapes the landscape
passengering me
in an ancient ritual

the swelling earth
and the frost heaves
eroded arced hills
flow into riverbeds
fill the reservoirs

and I always brim with awe
perched on the highest precipice
gazing below at the caldera

but when I am in it
I am more alive

Submission

With nothing to hide
I glide by.

Between hell and heaven
lies reason and subtlety,
which is why it matters
how you touch me.

What kind of man
I am. Bewildering
thoughts jilt alive
muscle twitches.

Hair folicles buzz
awake. I am electric
and I will catch fire.

If I feel
I will lose control:

- I submit.

The man behind the door

is me.





I miss Romania.

grit

I can live on the edge of the surface
to protect myself from fraying

once frayed
I'll tell you everything
you never wanted to know

somehow I'll forget to yell
"stop me, before its too late"
and then I'll implicate
all humanity

accidentally

the freer my words make me
I become more inaccessable
in my openness

one day
I shall share myself
to such a degree
that I will become
completely indigestible
so I will walk anew
along a dark lonely path

superior to nothing
lurking in the shadows
truth rings out
entreating the shade
to expand

completely covering the light

truth is as dirty
as the rest of the grit
afixed to my fingernails
accumulates ceaselessly
for my life