Messages from the Edge of Beingness

1.

Where is the power in me to muster the things that must be?

The words have been out of reach. Somehow, the place for writing has been short and inarticulate.  The questions have been few. If anything, we have had more revelation than we could ask for. The real challenge has been where to send it. It's been a heightened state of wanting, a lot of times, too.

The training imparted to me has been a high hindrance, too. The habits of old stick to me like feathers or tar. The breaking of bad technology is the challenge set before me, yet, I know that one does not cut away at the rot but also the flesh around it. I know that they use maggots to eat the necrotic flesh and then hose them away, leaving healthy pink skin. I know that I feel like a severed limb, sometimes. Disembodied, like I've left a ghost behind.

Sometimes, there are many ghosts. The many ghosts of many limbs. The ghosts of selves detached, beheaded or partitioned in the cause of a greater good. Oh, the assumed greater good! Travesties and curses on idealism.

Haunted, then, I become. By the selves and the ideas that keep them umbilically linked to me. They are the bodies of too many wars that have been fought on too many fronts.

I thought I could fight. Too many front lines manned by a phalanx of one. My multiplicity: blessing and cursing me in so many voices. "Please" and "fuck you" dissonantly merge, and I can hardly separate ascent from descent. Maybe because they rhyme. Accentuated indecency confounds the deeds that flow out of my hands and mouth. Left to wonder whether an early start or a late rise was my mistake.

So I sink into the itch on my chest and feel it for what it is. Cells crying out for attention. Short-lived babies with as much knowledge as complaints. They want to be nursed with a scratch and feel alive a little. Nurse me.

2.

This morning is another morning. I have been told they're different, all unique and filled with the potential for better. It has been said to me that the mercies of the Lord are new every morning. But I did not sleep. I faked coma until the body believed in my lies. I've lied to this body, many times. it knows the truth, but this is our game.

This morning forges weapons with the sleep that seals the eyes shut. We were not meant to wake up in a rush. Awakening is meant to be patient ritual, done to the melody of stretching of sinew and crackling of bones. Toes stretched towards the horizon, a sigh blowing the sails of this new day, filling them with the wind to drive this ship.

I did not sleep. I used to make love to words at 1AM but now I've got other partners. Sometimes one. It doesn't matter who we give our love to. There is an underlying sense of cheating, in me. Who has loved me rougher and tenderer than a flowing sentence? Who has given me more sleep and less? Who was it that made the signposts glow in the darkest winter? 

This body-driver, the driver of the body, they call it soul. They do not want to call it self, too often. There is a contract bodies have made with us. The deal is as marring to get into, as it is to get out of. Get out of bed.

3.

Here, calloused fingers reach for silken-skinned wenches. They look like my poems. Or do the poems look like wenches? I am sure that similitude is a three way street. Making sense of chickens and eggs is so played out. So I walk all three paths, reaching for silken-skinned words as I go. Darkness comes and still, hands outstretched, somewhere between curiosity and begging, I reach.

I do exceed my grasp. Stanzas fall and paragraphs prostrate their selves in awkward formations. The cost is worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it, I have said, I say, I will say.

The sounds are good here. Dissonance used for effect.

Art.

It's alright, neck of mine. Snap away. Legs, jump as you will. Silken-skinned beings surround me. Madness takes over for a few bars. Sound rules. And then, like any autocrat, it is brought down. Humbled before the ending of energy. Calloused hands reach for water. Find skin.

4.

The night is dethroned. More nights before it know that story. Sun ascends the east. Body feels broken. Feeling fixed somewhere inside. We that is I assume it's inside. The self may actually be a cloud, surrounding the matter, energy, space and time construct that we love to call body. I self may be the sun, keeping part of self on Earth warm. It's a good day. I believe I am the Sun. How powerful I am! I awake, burn my partner in the fires of my passion and throw our sweating bodies in the shower. The bodies invigorate at the warmth, cleanliness and steam. Birds sing to us. The planets call me as I dry my hair and tell me they're aligning in the formation of the day. I draws a sigil on steamed shower glass. "Message received."