NEW YEAR / OLD ME

Even though we have entered a new year, we are only hours away from the previous. There was no magical switch or worm hole that has rocketed us into a new era with all our previous problems and issues erased. Life is a continuous minute by minute, day by day process. However, this is the time that we often take stock and review what has happened the past year. Remembering the good and the bad, happiness and sorrow. I don't want those things taken away, not even the most painful. Those are the memories that have shaped who I am and how I think. The loss of both my parents in 2013 was one of the most difficult things I have gone through in life. I miss them horribly and will take everything I've experienced with them into the new year and beyond. I will also hold onto all the wonderful things from this year as well. Even if they occurred for just a moment. I will continue to learn, love, heal, and even continue to feel pain. Most of all I will progress and grow.  At the end of this year when I take stock, I can look back and see how the times I have yet to experience will continue to mold me into the person I am to be.

Days & Nights

Days you don’t understand

Filled with mixed signals and emotion

Mornings you fear the day

And nights you fear more

Trying to make sense

Of jumbled wires and connections

Puzzled beyond solutions

Pain with every thought

Stop asking why

No one can tell you

You can’t tell yourself

No answer exists

Light to dark to light again

Time is escaping

Staring flatly at the clock

With defeat

Why can’t it make sense

At least a little

This may be tolerable

If I new what it’s for

WHETHER

Whether or not it will cooperate
The weather, its tethered
To my mind, there I find
It's all changed, rearranged
Back and forth from the extreme
To the mild, my mood
Seems to follow, like a feather
In the gust, yet I lust
For a peek behind the clouds
The illumination hides
Like a tacit secret it must
Be revealed to my insight
Nowhere in sight, but I fight
To crack the code, but whether
It is possible, I'm buried
In the nether, deep under earth
What it's worth, no one knows
And so it goes, like the weather
I'm just tethered

TEN YEARS PAST

How can it be ten years past

All the times, I thought they would last

I was younger a time, waiting for life

Thinking eternal, chances were rife

The angst of youth, kept me at bay

The wrong things to do, forget what to say 

Rising too high, a trip to planes

Faces put on and the things I feigned

Wanting to fall, maybe in love

To far up to fall from above

Waiting to have it, I already did

Beneath layers of life is where I hid

I carried it with me all along

The paths I’ve taken had been wrong

Why didn’t I see it ten years ago?

I’ve been here waiting for myself to let go
Kept waiting for the changes to come

So Tired of being angry and numb

I’ll travel to there and stop over here

Keep running into all that I fear

Another drink will pass the night

But merely enhances the inner fight

Lost in the song, can move the mind

Deep in the lyrics is where I can find

Some meaning to follow something to guide

Ends up being somewhere else to hide

The learning comes, new places to tap

Won’t stand out here, can’t take the rap

Too many here to remember the names

The ones close by still handing the blame

Let me sleep on it, start it tomorrow

Within the out, some things I’ll borrow

Get up, get out, nothing has changed

Let down, let in, not rearranged

NOT TO BE ME

I don't want to be me anymore, maybe someone else. I'm not sure who and I'm not certain that I care. I could be somebody that I envy, a guy who has everything I've always wanted. All the qualities I'm attracted to. I could be more motivated, more together. Not so scattered. A focused mind versus distracted, calm as opposed to frantic. Not to even mention the physical appearance....

Then again I could be someone in worse shape, one in true suffering, destitute and forlorn.  Perhaps that would make me appreciate my own life more. How about a monk who has come to peace with the lack of outside forces. One with the spirit, totally at peace with myself. Enlightenment!

But I am me, and regardless of my magical thinking, I doubt I have the power to change that. I wish I could say that it's ok, but for now it isn't. I have not reached acceptance yet, nor am I at peace. Not to say that I am totally miserable, but I have a long way to go. So in reality I guess I am changing who I am.

HURDLE

The pistol echoes around the circle of spectators following a commanding READY, SET! Lean bodies lunge forward in a concentrated, well-planned stride. As their speed approaches sonic the first obstacle appears. An L-shaped hurdle with a brightly colored bar. The athlete leaps forward like a gazelle, the only hint to the bar is the wind he creates. As he begins his decent the last part of him to glide over caresses the hurdle and it falls as if in slow motion. It strikes the ground with barely a sound, but he knows he has failed.

         Like the athlete, my stride is often complicated by the nuisance of the proverbial hurdle. Although there is no time to train for these events, they materialize with little warning or clue. From such a low starting point, the jump seems futile. Even if I attempted it, not only would the hurdle be toppled, but I would be wounded in the venture. It’s not like the hurdles are placed in an orderly fashion where one could plan the next jump. They are random and of different heights and weights. Only if you strengthen yourself through past experiences can you make the jump. Anticipation of the next one can be a deadly strategy, setting yourself up for failure through worry and a defeatest stance.

         Each catch of the foot or banging of the shin leaves a bruise or abrasion of learning. The hurdles will continue to form on the track of infinitum which is life. Ready, set…

POINTLESS

The pencil point is dull

Worn from years of sketches

Faded to grayscale

Black and white memories

Views of obscure shading

Achromatic twisted figures

No color or movement

Graphite on bristol

Deep in the fibers of pulp

Layers of a point

Once was sharp and fine

Detailing life gone by

Depth and contrast

Meaning and interpretation

An artist’s view

Tainted by critics

Peer further into the outline

Delineate the truth

How beautifully macabre

The depictions turn real

Shadow and dark entwine

Filtered light illuminates

The figures dance

And the page is turned