Scenes

I accept my transience....begrudgingly, but yes!

I will accept the fact of death if only

Because death implies life and life implies

Everything, but no! I'm no fallen god.

I carry no memory of heaven -- I live in heaven...

And hell, all at once and it really is a wonderful, horrible show

And I wouldn't miss a single act:

"What have you seen?"

I've seen liquor store Aristotles

Asleep as they walked, awake in dreams.

I've seen broken-boned toy soldiers

Who peered a little far over the shelf edge

And discovered earth and discovered air

And discovered pain all in a blur.

I've seen philosophy kids freaking out in hallways,

Their heads rich with words and systems, you could almost catch

Their lips smacking and drool pooling on their tongues;

And oh the dew on sleepless mornings rising with a not-sun:

That is to say one no one up that early would count

On a gray day still sticking to winter

Even though it is plainly March.

I don't rise much with them at least not when I can help it.

I've seen machine gun marionettes dance on screens

Kicking up dust, trying to stay relevant,

And I could never help but think

That it's all so BORING to watch and I prefer

The stateside puppet-show, thank you very much.

At least I know the players, and the hands up their asses. And mine.

I've seen tick-tocking grey men and women

Just waiting. They're the only ones I'll ever pity.

I've seen Cassandran dancers weeping for

Minds old and new, not-yet-dying minds,

Because they were not blind

To the poisons swimming in the ventricles

Or the gasping need for tomorrow growing louder

With each subsequent yesterday and they begged

The ravaged souls to only be quiet, calm, for they were doomed

And need not rage against the universe,

And I watched the flashing lights and colors in ecstasy.

And I heard the pleasured screams and pained cries and it sounded

Like a symphony, it ought to have been a symphony, it was.

I've seen nothing beget nothing and everything beget everything

And nothing beget everything and everything beget nothing

Until my head was spinning and the only things that were

Real were poetry, whiskey

Love or lust or

Whatever I happened upon.

I've seen some of the most disciplined cursed artists do a swan-dive to temperance

In some last ditch effort to catch a toe-tap

And I wanted to hurl the great hulking mass of my heart at them

And beat them with their own pens and brushes and chisels and say

"HOW'S THAT FOR A RHYTHM?"

I've seen the plains bow down to mountains,

Insecure, the both of them, the both of them

Impermanent, and I think that's why I always feel at home --

But I never feel at home.

I shift with the wind. I've got wind in my bones,

My crooked bones, aching for a change.

And insonorous whispers come at long last to speak their minute,

Pastiche saintly they long not to be heard

But seen, to be waveformal on the oscilloscopic breeze;

They know they can be real, we can

Be real, static sounded on the mechanistic plane

But I do not pray for that.

Don't dread bereavement from certain chaos,

Uniform-clad clades of nothings floating in the abyss,

Easy, sure, but soulless.

Dread the loss of beauty. Certainty means nothing

If not for chasmatic discord.

Discord is us, we are

Beauty. Everything. Un-nothings or perhaps

Once-nothings that are breaking the habit.

If you are to be a fire,

Don't burn for the destruction but for the prideful light;

If you are to be a wave,

Don't rise for the crashing but for the glorious swell;

If you are to be a storm,

Don't burst for the flowers but for the enveloping dark;

If you are to be a human,

Breathe for yourself and love and beauty and never think of death.