It is not alive in the violence babe
it is not spun out of plastic packages
or inside the chamber of burnt-honey bottles
it isn't in the dope eyes of a molly warmed soul
or three sets of naked limbs
entwined.

It is in the repetition of morning,
in the ancient strength of rising again
and continuing forward bravely
the holy burden of man.

It is in shouldering the necessary mission of God.

Its in you growing up and meaning well
but never finding the time

It's the poignant moment as
you think you may hear
a song that once played over our Carolina
season.

One day we'll meet in heaven as strangers

I'll nod and
you'll smile
and the sun will rise
to vanquish
the agony of
night.

If I reached out before me
and tore back the layers
of everything that is held so dear:
every construct
every platitude
every social convention
every concept of structure and form
every plan
every foolish notion of self-emergence

I'd arrive with alacrity
in the place where I stood.

It is an infinite elongation,
stars on a common fabric,
a seven-point-seven billion bodied
hive mind
disjointed and
uncomfortably confused.

Beacons of information
with eye and nose
chattering the status of being
over wires
over wind
relaying an unknown position to
a centralized unseen
command.

I?
I am the fist smashing the mouth of an old man
I am the final moments of an endless road
I gasp for breath just after the womb
I am the rattle and a wrinkled hand gone slack.

This is the ubiquitous ache of isolation and
this finite separation from the whole is
agony.