Vignette V

Lately my patience
has been riding the razor's edge
of
thin.

Behind the wheel I wear
warpaint.

I get into struggles
of will with
someone on
a daily
basis.

The cocktail mix of
seventeen hour days,
lack of sleep,
and a ruthless drive to hustle
is making me
slightly
unpleasant.

Here is how the world really looks
underneath all of that rat race and
Maybelline:

You are a human being on a lush and vibrant planet.
Your only non-negotiable is
that you must work the land in order to
eat.

Otherwise -
you are free to learn,
free to discover,
and free to commune
with those
like you.

Your career isn't real
and your forty hour work week is
a mild form
of
slavery.

However the times are not a-changing
tomorrow begins anew.
I hope to break seventy hours
this week.

See you then.

I Have Enveloped Myself

I have enveloped myself in art.


Like a suckling child I
cling to it.
I have returned to my roots.
I retreat from the clinical carbon copies of
popular culture.
I embrace the esoteric and
find euphoria in
the
unique.

I go it alone.
I sit in halls, theaters, and
auditoriums with
with no one.
A sea of humanity
yet a single
I.

Without distractions the
movement of limbs,
precision of play,
and spoken words
wash over me.
I breathe in the work I,
I vomit applause.

Life is so very tactile and
I want to touch it where
it hurts and
heals.

I suggest you do
the
same.

My grandmother died today.

My mother called to say,
"She passed away."
I thought about the poetry of that -
a wisp of smoke,
a dandelion in the breeze.

Death is as constant and relentless
as life.
Whether it be living or dying
it is unending
and unforgiving.
The one thing left
that we haven't managed
to
cheat.

We are not immortal.

Today death collected its due
and they took her flesh
to the furnace
by wagon.
Where she became once again
what man is born from
and hopelessly destined to
return.

In the passing I
solemnly nod to her memory
and say,
"Soon so too shall I,
soon so too shall
I."

When you become a man
you learn
that a man is not so easily
forgiven.

They stop ignoring
your slip-ups and little
mistakes.

When you are young
the world lets you
get away with
frivolity.

There is
freedom still.
Weekends and summer evenings
light and airy,
conversations on the hoods of
cars.

But then,
when grown,
the texture of life hardens
and everything is suddenly so
serious.

The line is suddenly so thin
between breadlines
and
jail cells.

If you let it slip -
let them see you sweat
even just for a minute -
they'll eat you alive
kid.

Mark said the other day that
people are just trying momentarily
to escape their
miserable
little
lives.

The bars are full every weekend
and so too are the cubicles
every Monday
morning.

Our decisions used to be just
experiments
but now the wrong one can
steal the food from
a baby's
mouth.

It is at this point that you are left
wondering aloud
asking,

"What is this all about then?
What are we to do with this newfound knowledge
and understanding?"

The girls, the cars and
the friends
are all gone and
its just you.
Creating a tiny existence
in an expansive universe.

We used to dream.

These days I would just kill
for a decent night of
sleep.

But sleep yields no crops and
crops keep
the collectors
from
calling.