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Excerpt from a Tape Left Running

I always get slapped across the face by

these strange delays in feeling.

It comes on slowly but suddenly

All around me, all surrounding

My cortex

My will

My emotion

It takes over my senses completely and I'm reckless

In the presence of it 

In the presence of this feeling 

This softness I have for you

This softness you have for me

i feel compelled by it

Though...

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Scrambled and Sunkissed

I feel you close but far away -

In a way I don't understand yet,

In a way I don't trust.

In a way, without demand

I find my thoughts drift to you.

If just motioned by a breeze,

I feel you moving through me.

I find it's never free, 

But forever attached to me.

I find time is open

But steps in metered syncopation.

I find myself frozen inside of it

I look for the a...

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Caretaker

I talked her down until she was numb

She no longer wished harm on anyone.

Did I sedate her with my conversation?

I watched her eyes

Transform from callous to kind,

Looking at me skeptically.

I saw her brain splitting in half

Spilling herself all over the floor.

I implored her to let it be.

For now, wait and this will pass.

A frozen orange pressed to her face, she puts...

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Sailboat Tales

The Fear has eyes,

It sprouts ears too.

It sawed straight through -

Now it has a mouth too.

It looks at me

Stares straight through.

It came for me,

Hope it never comes for you.

The Fear has a brain,

It has a matter-of-factness.

A radical exactness that is purifying.

The Fear is a vixon,

A seductress with wandering eyes.

The Fear toes the boundary line.

The...

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A Solemn Mardi Gras

I know you won't get out of this one

Though I can feel you trying.

I know you're ready for this to be done,

Made your peace with death and dying.

I wish there were a prayer I could say

To relieve you from this treachery.

A vile of mercy that would make this swift

And let you go with brevity.

I wish there were a candle I could light for you,

To shepard you through the dar...

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Common Place

In the undercurrent of a moment

She moves through,

Toward and away from me

Out to sea.

From where she came to be

Oh so much closer, now I see

So much closer to me.

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Zeitgeber

I can relate to a fractured sense of self

The pedestal you put yourself on to jump off of.

The intensity of vision

That either collapses or dissipates the more you try to look through it.

The oscillation between two opposing sentiments,

One good and one bad.

Slowly finding yourself harder to be around.

The desire to distill intermittent waves of humor,

The will to maintain ...

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Limitless and Senseless

Running down the list of eventuals

The trivial and the medical

I'm in the clear of everything external - all I control is whatever's left

On a cylinder en route to the sun

Ambivalent miles towards the outcome.

Hard wired circuitry disconnected

Stranded, rearranged, out of range of the source.

Inside the circulation of a volcano 

Slowly humiliating the earth.

All in graph...

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Over Me, Within Me

I pray your mind was returned to you

Upon your dismissal from this incarnation

I wanted to find you floating somewhere above me

I wanted to pull you back down here to love me

I hope it’s you, with your vast mind transformed into a citrus rind sunset

The way it always was, the way it was intended to be

Rising and setting above me

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Happiness, Ever Elusive

I’ll lay here still

And wait for a happy song to dawn on me

I’ll lay here with full intent and will

That it will call upon me.

A song for hope,

And a poem for good measure

Will it hold my reservation if I’m an hour late-

To the dinner I was meant to host?

Will it hold traffic for me as I cross the road?

Perhaps in the distance, I’ll know it someday soon.

Perhaps I’ll ...

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Willing Servant

The shadows of all the wounded sparrows

They enlighten me.

I will receive them,

And I will clean them,

And I will take their pain away.

I will not sorrow, for if tomorrow 

Never comes again for them

I will clip their feathers,

And string them out on a line

One after the other, absentmindedly

Making tight knots out of loose ties to mortality.

I will see sorrow

I ...

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A Hopeful Haiku

Trembling hands, relent

Let your worried mind rebel.

You are better now.

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Unknown Caller

I'm talking to someone on the other end of the line

Convincing them to be a person

Instead of a spinning top on the brim of a mind.

It all hits at once: a sudden eruption

It all falls apart and then slowly back together.

Laying there defeated, exposed by the daylight

It strikes like the sudden slap of sobriety after a liquor-laden night

One that catches you somewhere between e...

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City-Dwelling, Unwillingly

The plight of the hopeless man

Pleading for patronage at the highway on-ramp

Staggering to his feet, waving a wand in his hand

Forcing it through the ground.

To convince them, to convince himself

Of his state of desperation.

Stomping his feet 

To an echoless beat;

An earnest declaration muffled by concrete.

No one turns a head,

No one's eyes to meet.

Mere passerbys

...

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Winchester's Mystery

This is a testament to my will

I'm jumping ship and swimming home

All the way to Winchester, where the doors lead to plaster

To neither here nor there

Nor any hereafter

There's commotion on the other side

Interference on the other line

I can't tell where I am

Where I'm situated 

Whether I was written into the grand plan

Or an afterthought somewhat estranged

From th...

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Impatience, Prudence

The hesitation

That gets to me

Things are rolling slowly

It gets the better of me

I sit with the discomfort of not knowing

Let it wash over me

In black and white,

And other colors invisible in the light.

I want a gradual humiliation to take me out -

Take me out to sea.

 

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The Defender

We will never know freedom

Underneath water, we can't breathe in.

All the fishes gawking, laughing at us

Bound by this mortal engine and all its faulty wiring. 

Worry surmounts worry -

And worry comes abundently.

We walked through the valley together,

Illuminated by the light of the moon.

But the ones who brought us hence

They faded into darkness, and gave up the fight t...

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In the Midst of Dying

This here, the idle death march;

One arm holding onto us,

The other dangling off the side of the earth.

In this waiting room where we watch over you.

Observing the strange state of consciousness you're residing in

Your soul loosening grip between each breath,

And every rattle that brings you closer to death.

I try to talk to you but the words aren't coming through,

On this ...

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The Silent Toll

I see the ceiling patched up

I see those patches peeling and giving up.

I see the toll of time -

All it does to the body

All it requires of the mind.

We are specters of our decline in slow motion;

Merciless

Unaffected by our pleas for reversal.

I see the toll of depression,

How it degenerates the mind. 

An atrophy of desire.

An acute awareness of time and its natur...

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