Intertwined in an unending present,

Eternity rumbles across the bedrock scrubland,

             Thunderstorms range Across vast slopes, anvil cloud-ships sailing in slow procession towards nothing at all.

                                          Mother Mountain holds them tight,

                                                            Unyielding, squeezing in desperation

for every last drop they will part with.

                       

           

            Juniper claw scrapes at the sky, scorched Earth to the naïve,

                                    But here, amidst the scalding dunes and broken talus slopes, Life has a way of flowing in mysterious directions,

blurring realities of the living, of the dead.

                                    Shadowless inferno screaming in the silence of late summer,

            Only the wicked of heart could love a place such as this.

                                                                                                (I am home.)

                        Black figures float on the thermals above,

            Death cloaked in clarity, vulture guardians soar in eternal flight,

Keeping watch for the glazed eyes and cooked flesh

                                    Of the next wanderer to succumb to the unrelenting rays of the ominous fires floating above.

                        (Truth is the desert.)

           

                                    They say the dead whisper here…

                        In the lands of Trinity and Chaco,

The Glanton Gang and Geronimo.

Blood runs thick in this ground,

                        Infinite turmoil soaked in deep,

                                                Saturate.

                        Scalp hunter nostalgia in the sunbelt of empire,

                                    Always asking “What happen to the Wild Wild West?”

                       

…but it never left.

 

                             ---

 

(Here,

            She keeps me seated here, in this moment.

Wrapped tightly, tightly wrapped.

            Entwined, tangled here in long breaths and quick glances.

The setting light instilled in her eyes,

Intoxicated by circumstances this fool doesn't deserve,

            Destroy me, I will never know better.

 

                        Silver rain materializes in the clear void above.

Slapping drops strike the chipped windshield,  wipers

                        Scrape back and forth over the dirt stained glass,

            Creaking to the mutant pulse of a straining engine riding atop skipping, balding tires.

Dusk in the desert,

                        Awe in the heart,

            Life spiraling towards the in-between,

I am lost to passing seconds.

“Keep me here,”)

           

                                     ---

 

New Mexico,

            New Mexico,

                        Fuck Tibet save New Mexico.

I am reminded of a dead man, a man who had not so long ago convinced me that, “This is the most beautiful place on Earth.”

            If only I could have known the magnitude of letting such a thing enter my heart,

For nothing has meant more to me since,

                                    And I’d die for nothing less.

           

            But what’s the use?

                                    What’s the worry?

            Enculturation in pure observation,

                        We were born to watch, to take note, to forget...

                         "The Earth (creator)? What more is the Earth (creator) but a feeble gift which has long run dry?"

Stripping her naked,

    and raping her to the fucking bone.

                                    Pants slide to bony ankles,

fingers type the endless fantasy away, clammy hands keep the heart confined,

                                                                         glared images reflect pixelated flesh off stoic hollow eyes,

                        Shame leaks in,

sometimes,

                between the electrostatic of heavy breaths and the tinny scrpited conversation of a false love shared by all involved,

audience and actor alike.

                          Onanism for

                                  the masses, the human married to the machine..."I don't need anyone but me."

The circles grow and conquer.

                                      Anything to fill this void, anything (DOMINATE!!!) 

                 

                        Hyper-individualistic credit cruncher

                We can't do a damn thing for ourselves but we'll go to the grave believing

                        otherwise.

                                                And we’ll call it normal, routine, even progress!

                                    As televised armageddon wages war upon the colonized mind,

                        Hope and Change interwoven into the sitcom of your choice.

            Sit back relax sit back relax sit back relax

                        As we pause for a short commercial break from this

 Compromised life brought to you buy Starshit Coffee.

            Birth school (work?) work (school?) marriage (divorce!) death, and that’s if you’re lucky...

fake love fake tits fake heart fake thoughts..."honey i'm home(?)!"

                        to a white picket nightmare where they're all smiles and everything's "A-OK!"

 

            Motto ingrained...

“Suck it up, keep it in,

            time is money…Time is Money, time IS money!, TIME=MONEY?, … = $”

                                                (Give me a symbol for wasted life.)

 

            Surrendered to white noise, there are too many voices, .

                        We can only add more.

            Each and every, a talking head in their own right.

                                    Us and them, forever

                        In repeat, us and them, separation and

Dissection, excuses for isolation.

            But life’s better without compromise,

Isn’t it? Without inconvenience, without struggle, without meaning at all?

                              

 

            Maintained and manicured,

9 to 5 forever, until you’re dead and gone and all you’ve to show is a paper trail

            of half completed forms and stacks of old paystubs.

                                                 …just keep busy until you’re dead and gone…

 

Whirlwind waste in the zombie disco,

                        “Life here is great!”

 

                                 ---

 

(Rift valley home

Pulling, tugging,

Warfare imperceptible to our eyes.

Geologic conundrum,

            Humanity is a rift valley.

                       

                        But driving north on 528,

I don’t really care…

            Fucking Rio Scumhole, the California Fever spreads in its decay across the ancient mesas. Hand-pecked inconvenience,

            Sweet sacrilege,

                        Sacrifice made to the Pixel Gawd for a quicker route home...

            (God is the desert)

 

 

                                    But anymore, I can't keep from fixating on this blinding idiocy of

                        Track-home dystopia we call Modern Life. The insanity of every waking hour, the psychosis of every dreaming second.

                                                                                                              "I'm Lovin' It!"

 

"Just forget it," I'm told, "just let it go."

"You're right, you're right, I'll do my best..." with the bullets arching out of Ciudad Juarez to the south and La Floresta dividing and

conquering to the north... out of sight, out of mind, sleight of hand puts the heart at ease...

                                                       "you're right, you're right, I'll do what I can to forget."

 

                                                And they wonder why I’ve been drifting away for so long…

                        (Am I growing in reverse?)

 

                        

And all the while she stares out the car window,

            Talking some, but it all goes by so fast...

Constant complaint pours from isolated lips, but lately I've been determined to show that I’m something more,

that I'm a better than this apathetic shell I've seemed to have grown so nicely into,

                                                            Show that I’m not just another misanthrope,

                                    Another hostile,

                                                Another angry soul screaming in uselessness over abstractions and lunacy,

                        Another twenty-something stuck in a fucking ditch.

Lost to this bitter self doubt that swallows so much,

                        But this moment is too good to care...

Erratic human nature sure beats the hell out of a day scratching thoughts into a

journal that will never respond, no matter the volume of blood or tears poured into it.

 

“Take it all in”

I keep the thought alive,

It’s all I can do.

 

But these dreams merely fuel the fires of impossibility, nothing ever matches this wild imagination of mine.

            Expectations spoil under the blessed sun,

                        “If I said what I meant would she see me the same?”

The thought poisons as it stews and ferments in the mind,

                                    Soon, too soon, it will spilt and spill from this loose mouth of mine

                                                Heavy thoughts in a heavy world... when was truth ever taken well?

 

But god damn (god damn!), she's pretty, every color leaking from that piercing gaze, those canyon lips, her sandstorm-sky skin.

                                                 (Beauty and the Fucking Lunatic?)

                                   Like the glint of autumn seeping into my weary heart,

             her presence consumes me, then she's gone...)

 

                                            ---

 

                        Constant unending sensory input from a million different points

                                    All screaming “Attention, Attention!”

                        Just For You!                           Just For You!

            Hum static engine roar television billboard parade… the lol insomniac never rests.

Cityscape mirage… all just a dream, some say this city will dissolve…dust to dust, just

                                                                                                drain the

                                                                                    Blood and it will all be gone…

            But these years sacrificed to the pixel gawd have got me spinning...

(Time traveler’s remorse?)

                        Info junky, heavier doses in ever increasing need, “Give Me More!”

 

                        The patriot continues

Defeated by 9 to 5 (8 to 6 7 to 7 eyes wide to eyes closed)

            Their Chairs and Their Desks and Their Standards and Their Opinions and Their Needs

Defeated by the bachelors of the psuedo-arts and the collage of the UNIVERSity.

 

            And all they ever ask, as though it were my defining characteristic,

                           is what I wish to do when this dull ride is through and the paper tiger is obtained?

        While I squirm and grimace and never have the answer their looking for,

my truth lay surfacing in my eyes:

“Slave to none,

            When I grow up, I want to be a slave to none.

                        …to live the day for the day’s sake.

I want to be a slave to none.”

 

                           Aspirations as thick as the dirt in the air,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                        

                                                                If only they knew...

 

                      

The dark histories left abandoned, undisturbed,

                        In painstaking earnest, they are kept hidden in layers of flesh and bone.

When such deviltries are made by no mistake, the ticking populace has only a to be pushed over the edge.

                                                                Civilization is a time bomb, humanity is a fuse.

 

            If only we could run from all the lies we so eagerly tell ourselves,

                        If only we could stem this tide of unabashed insanity,

                                    If only we could awake,

                                                If only…

           

(The mantra of if only)

 

                                    Telltale Truth under the cerebral floorboards,

temples pulse with the constant reminder,

                                    “This can’t be right.”

 

We all,

            Wounded wanderers,

Isolation sinks deep, leaving

Us with memories of a past

                        That haunts even the most steadfast of souls

How it captures our attention as though thought could will it into another form,

                                                                                                                        Another story

                                                                                                Another outcome.

Wayward gaze,

            Horizon stare,

                                                Always,

                                                            So far away.

            Plugged into a plastic present of noise and light,

Always,

            Staring blank.

 

Post-traumatic despondent,

Perhaps lips wrapping the barrel of a gun in the morning sun will silence the pounding

Juggernaut hidden under the plain clothes of a working man.

Standing in front of a fill-up station,

            Morning rush hour, the sane race with their maddening intensity, cabin fever empire.

                                    Now, a screaming man, mind aflame,

 suddenly surrounded

                                                By a mob, a sea, of black and blue badged anger.

“Mountain majesty, take me away”

                        Gunshot ending swallowed and forgotten

            By mechanized hordes inching impatiently towards the coming green.

 

                        A bullet in exchange for a routine, there is no difference…

 

            A witness to the everyday,

Blind to a violence coated in normalcy,

            But it’s everywhere,

It’s everywhere…

                                    Just keep driving…

 

                        The fever grows in the heart of America, we stir so seldom in our restlessness.

            Impossible to reconcile why one has it so good while the other has it so bad,

But our fates were never hidden in the smoke and mirrors of this tepid holocaust.

 

Existence bleeding out, never

                                    To return again, the only constant we’ll ever know. Journeys may

be shared for a time,

                But ultimately your path is yours alone. Your own messiah,

your own master, your own mentor, your own executioner,

                terrifying (beautiful) isn’t it?

 

            This life,

                        This busy grind,

                                                Could never deliver the salvation so many seek in their turmoil, their despair.

                         (How much does the the large Fulfillment(TM) cost?)

 

  Happiness

lay in the spontaneity of each and every moment,

                                    in the in-between. If you long for a destination, you will

                        be disappointed as the path continues still, fading ‘round the next bend.

 

Despite all that is done to counter,

Life continues all around,

In its unending struggle.

            Medicine wheel tribulation, enshrined and enthralled

                                    In the eternal return.

                        Many ends are near,

                                    As are many beginnings.

 

                   Death venerated...time tumbles along, a wagon wheel spinning into the arcs of unending.

 

And when, at last (!), that glorious day arrives and the setting light finally meets your fading eyes, in that

Moment when all moments cease, when eternity’s hand falls upon your left

shoulder, beckoning your frail heart to become one with all, when you

finally die, will you leave this life saying:

                                                “I lived this life a slave to none.

When I finally grew up, I was a slave to none.

                        I lived the day for the day’s sake,

                                                I lived this life a slave to none.”

 

 

Or will the emptiness fill in, leaving

                         you to the same sickening feeling you were lost to your entire life... never quite sure of

                                                the here or there, just certain of the oblivion, the nothingness creeping across your heart and mind.

Eyes kept on the prize,

                         but what did that mansion full of shit get you beside a wedding full of acquaintances and a funeral full of strangers?

 

Decisions, decisions, decisions (distractions)...

When it was all so simple,

Make your mind

You are God

Decide what to be

and go be it

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