Oceanside Meditations

Silica gives way beneath my worn feet
As a shuffling amongst the atmosphere awakens
Freedom in a gust of salty levity.
Flaming balls of plasma perforate the heavenly darkness.

Under each breath in this fleeting silence
Hide wisps of magic, perpetuated by the spirit
Of discovery, the passion of knowledge.
A thousand questions are buried in each exhale.

Here, I feel nihilism disintegrate.
Now, tears flow of their own accord.
In the expanses, in the infinitesimal,
Hope finds its unyielding roots.

Most days, I would look up
And wonder, “Why am I here?”
Tonight, another thought overwhelms me…
“Thank goodness I am.”

Uncurl

Fingers bent in clenching fists,
We know no other than what we’re given.
Accepting of culture so natural, factual,
Actual, practical – it only makes sense.
And my how we’re quick to offer defense.

But who is to say one people is right,
And others must reform their ‘plight’?
For when culture is broken down,
The term itself means nothing more than the next.
It’s only invention, a convenient convention
Shaped and structured by each who use it.

But understanding revision is never so easy,
Tradition is not so simply dismissed.
Sometimes it’s as painful as unfurling the
Fingers long curled in tight and tensing fists.

Out of the Apartment

It’s funny all the things you miss
When you’ve lived somewhere awhile,
Like the way the shower seems to hiss
Or the tired tarnish of the tile.

I’ve lived here for who knows how long,
And yet so many things I’ve overlooked:
The worn-out whisper of the air ducts’ song
And the way the pictures on the wall are crooked.

And now that I’m leaving, I see it all:
The weary drooping of dying hedges,
The way the roof appears that it will cave,
And the chipping paint of each wall’s ends.

After many mired months I’ve ended a loan,
Now I can take heart in knowing wherever I roam
Away from this apartment, through the vast unknown,
That I’ll always have somewhere to return: my home.

Revival

Beaded

w–o–r–d–s

hang together on broken

strings, incomplete thoughts an unfinished

necklace of pearls knotted off too quickly before it

fits, choking instead of cascading elegantly, each

forgotten phrase or abandoned idea

a shackle to the progress

of newly birthed

inspirations.

The rut grows

deeper as the c-h-a-i-n

grows longer, until new ideas are

cut off  just to prevent them from

adding to the unbearable

weight of dissatisfied

stagnation.

Complacency

turns the rut into a valley where

progress is a dangerous mountain to scale, an

impossible feat to gaze upon from the

warped angles of the

comfortably flat

grass.

Ambition:

the light and the key to

reveal disappointment still weighing

on inactive minds and to set free the

chained spirits contained within

iron grips of neglected

dreams.

The climb is

not short, nor is it easy, but it

reveals the ditch masquerading as a vale, the

sinkhole hiding behind the

peaceful meadow’s

façade.

Frigid

air at the top is a

slap in the face of laziness as the broken

n-e-c-k-l-a-c-e-s of long ago are allowed to decay and

fresh revival brings with it a newfound

fervor  for the creation

of beautifully

beaded

words.

Break

Lost in the twisted cavern of a wandering mind,

her feeble ideas cage her in and depart.

Echoes of the voices that beat her down crash

against the walls. They keep coming back,

tormentors.

Decay drips slowly from the rotted branches of

impossible limbs, bars that hold her in.

How can they live in this absence of light?

If the trees were real, they would already be

dead…

But if they were dead she’d be free.

A rockslide falls heavily on her back as her

mind comes apart all above and below her.

The bitter taste of ginger fills the crack of her

mouth and the odor of death invades her mind.

Sanity returns for her, but too late.

Too late.

Her mind is a cavern and she has already caved in.