MOMENTS ARE INSIDE TIME
They last just a short while
feathers from a skyscraper
dreams sifting through night
.
Behind camouflaged moon
I lock away our salted tears
raining into penumbral sea
.
Time’s ever falling mountain
sinks into subterranean trench
submerging breath by breath
.
An invisible last chance was
a simple moments freedom
returning to where it came
.
It will never be again
will never be again
never be again
be again
again
NATIONAL POETRY MOTH
Would it be the moon
or a shimmer of your wing
I come to the light
at the tunnel end of darkness
I come into you
the dream
and I receive pain
the light blinds
but still I persist
your appeal is addiction
I live in resignation
to the fate of attraction
I could not resist
typing into fire
becoming gas and ash
all to be more near
to bring into my eyes
the light that you are
the pain I ignore
for it comes with life
but why must I
live just to die?
Oh?
You said poetry month!
Forget about it.
FIRE spit out of my fingers
onto a wall without reason
a hand could send signals
through time
through lives
and all for the freedom
of taking a look
doing something
outside myself
on a cave wall
a living memory
the underside of a cliff
I touch you, see
out of nowhere
I reach you with just one clue
we contact outside of time
was it a minute
a while
a brief forever
does it matter?
.
.
.
(hand prints and all colors done by me with concrete impregnated with dye)
Logic held out its shredded hands
amid posture and probability
fear came on as kindness
and deliberation
had triplets
a clown
the mirror
and the mighty wind
.
Reason was left holding back
brimstone hailed emotions
insecurities golden calf
wore a mask of goodness
of honor and most noble cause
a black vortex was called rose
siphoning up compassion
condemning empathy
as if they were
illegitimate children
wards of the welfare state
expected to clean and care for
any hand that held enough money
.
Spinning up worried elites propaganda
pundits guided a groomed church choir
common folk packed into position
received their new commands
to march in loyalties blindfold
when a dark root cellars depth
would have held them more true
a better company that the proud
.
Logic’s air had become vacated
its home left in morbid curiosities
dreams now mixed in with detritus
insulation and roofing shingles lost
were nailed over hearts left hard
now pierced by rusted anger
.
What had been always true
of truth and of loves way
looked for evidence
any kind of history
even one memory
amidst the sorry
cacophony
.
We wailed
we looked for
what survived
of actuality
but alas
from the sky
came the echo’s
of each possibility
emaciated
by hate
by life itself
torn to thunder
.
TIME FOR LIGHT
it was the sun
shedding its photons
breaking elemental hearts
a curtain
happened to be
draped across a doorway
at days last light
nuclear chaos
clothed in all uncertainty
exponential random entropy
falling out of micro-states
broken open and free
bleed an image
that here you see
There is that illusion in youth that one is immortal if healthy. Years take an eternity to go by. I remember once hearing a boy say, his friend with him is an old friend of his; they knew each other 9 months.
We stretch our limits physically; how fast can I run, jump, climb, at least many boys do. Girls have some of their own physical feats; sometimes like the boys, or other games, jump-rope, hop-scotch(?), even tumbling and other daring doo’s, that boys might rather not be “shown up” at.
I first hurt my neck when 5 or so, secretly. When 16, I was knocked out after catching a football in a parking lot. I went over the roof of a car and landed on my head. Being “out” was curious, being that I was in a black void, wondering how I find myself, looking for my senses. There was nothing but a desperate search. Things started to turn on in strange ways, hearing in color, until everything snapped into place and you could use your muscles.
I first hurt my lower back when diving off of a high dive while I was recovering from “walking pneumonia”. It was a bad choice to go to that pool, but my older cousin invited me and I hardly ever went anywhere for fun. I loved bounding off the end of the board as high as I could.
In my early twenties was the first time my lower back “snapped” when I picked up a dropped fork, (after the prior days digging up and turning over of the whole back yard in California, huge clay chunks, some prob. one and one half by two feet thick), leaving me with those ten days of no improvement, can not lift much of anything. It is a struggle to get out of bed, then have to walk like a stick not allowing any leaning forward or backwards, or sideways.
In about 3 weeks I was back to normal, but never the same, since that crippling extreme has happened half a dozen times in my life fully, and dozens more in a milder one week recovery way. Now I can usually tell how I get into this situation and try to stop what I am doing before that. That is then only a day or two of back swelling, sweating, or stiffness. Unfortunately, the neck and lower back are connected. I most always have to not bend my head when getting into cars, or the lower back might pop.
Later in life, I went on to work in construction. sometimes doing strange stunts like carrying a five eighths thick four by twelve foot sheet of sheet-rock balanced on the middle of my head to install it up on scaffolds onto a businesses ceiling. What a pain; balancing, aligning to edges, trying to use a hand to put a screw, or start a nail with.
I did this once to get our half hour lunch ended, since no “boss” was there and guys were still talking 40 min later, lounging on the floor. I was hired to work as I promised, so I did. Usually that would wake the others up from their mid day vacation. That is how I have been; I will sacrifice myself to achieve some promised ends in the face of difficulty, even if others sit by watching.
In my late thirties, as the main “clerk” in a huge warehouse in Tucson, I might lift and carry from 50,000 to 100,000 lbs. of boxed cotton goods (boxes often 80-115lbs) in one not so unusual day. All for about 1 dollar over minimum wage. My back went out once big time there. I told the manager, who then put me on another detail. I could feel my back leaking inside. In about an hour I could not hold my hands up in front of me without extreme pain. That started a 3 week no party of a vacation.
By my mid fifties; carrying a three quarter inch think sheet of MDF board (4′-8′) on my head to get it into my narrow trucks camper top and gate opening got more and more difficult. After several of these my neck seems no longer what it was. Now I cannot use it at all for a prop post.
Moral of the story being that; depending on use, some parts of your body can suffer from experiences at an early age, or leave you with a surprise chronic pain later. In case all you athletes thinking the possible thrilling abuse will not be met again later as the aging surprise. Surprise! There are birthday surprises that may be coming to a body near you. A gift that keeps on giving.
HARD WORK AND ITS SACRIFICE FOR ALL
Throughout the culture we have some people using muscle and or being in positions that will have them regretting it later, but for many, that job was what they could get, and they might even become loyal to it, to their later detriment. The culture requires this work to be done.
These people may not have the ability to pay for health care. If you do not believe society (which depends for its existence on these people just as if they were the military) if you do not believe society owes them the decency for their service and sacrifice to it. Well you might be considered one off those heartless Darwinian conservatives, that are enlisted into Pavlovian response come election time, to blame the physical effects on the decisions of the one who sacrificed themselves; because it was their choice! Not only that. But why should I then offer anything to those suffering individuals since I knew better; was hereditary endowed (physically or monetarily), avoided hard work or difficult military service. We see this, the proud and righteous anti tax perception, promoted by predatory opportunist, as a moral value in the society. Down with the Nanny State!
This is an example how the greediness endemic to the alienated-separated individual, can be used to pivot their perception from full life connection, to defending oneself from responsibility to the whole. If one is kept in the perception of economic stress and or ego non accountability to other parts of society, which constitute the whole, I can think I am standing up for moral self accountability BY NOT ACKNOWLEDGING OR RETURNING THE SACRIFICE OTHERS HAVE GIVEN FOR MY OWN VERY LIFESTYLE AND PRIVILEGE TO BE PROTECTED AND CARED FOR IN THIS COUNTRY.
Imagine it. Conservative pundits right now as I type, are well paid to tell society that those homeless (yes, even from the military) living under bridges or a box in the alley, are mentally unfit and so beyond our province to help. That is the conservatives own mental illness of separation, often disguised as pride and moral, even spiritual superiority, to help shove someones life out of sight and out of mind. Their consciousness of the whole that is; amputated.
But this was to be a note on my life from yesterdays travels.
I avoid going to dentist and doctors, so yesterday was a special treat to see both.
Now from the doctor, I must make appointments for three specialist in differing fields. Isn’t that special. I also have another filling gone bad and have an appointment for that one. I did not know I was going to be getting x-rayed yesterday, so that was another surprise for the pocket book.
Gem Show
The tiny bit of the Tucson Gem and Mineral and Everything else Show one can see in two hours, was interesting in that there are many new kinds of stone and craft work suddenly all over, with an increasing shift, where I was at, towards Asian items.
Poetry
The poetry reading was fun. I read the poems I have put on this site, which are in some strange ways different than my usual. I just write them and post them, sometimes going back and finding mistakes or awkwardness from the process of hurrying things on-line, or speaking to interest of my concept of who is writing poetry in general on my tags. Live and learn. That is what I have heard.
There were quite a number of newcomers to that reading, all seniors. Every writer is distinctly different. I sometimes enjoy particularly the straight forward from life ones from someones past, telling of some slice of life impression, fond or difficult memory. No fancy razzle dazzle word usage, just insight. Which is just so very much; a whole lot!
It is warming up an I am contemplating making a longer and less high dam on that small stream I mentioned many post back. The one with the one dam I already made last week. I often have to judge the price I will pay for lifting 94 pound bags of cement then walking sideways downhill with them. Plus all the mixing and shoveling.
Sometimes if a thing is to ever get done, you just go up to it, and do it.
From the nations last line.
Benafia
Diversion
then deception
take claim in abstraction
it is a key to a souls control
the aim of an act obscured
closed behind intentions
we have no means
of knowing
the real
word
.
Love
and war
they are said to be
on fair playing fields
fair as in that alike way
that all of anything goes
nothing withheld out
in their completion
or competition
.
It could be said
just because we are
capable of horrible things
in the name of one or other
that we all get to visit them
free upon one another
inevitable fair
harm
.
Love
it seems able
to cause ecstasy
and extreme pain
it is odd to openly say
all must be fair about it
it may come and go now
old seemingly defeated
may be gone by neglect
without one knowing
what guarantee ever
made it fair or not
what right there
to claim it was
or was
not
?
If all is fair
in these two things
why keep fighting over
how someone else acted
what is the surprise
the issue
?
When often
when we win the prise
was it fairness in our favor
we thank the result
as fair to us
deserving
as destiny
or God
must be
on my
side
.
But
if it is loss
and now it is I
who must bare its cost
I proclaim loud and clear
someone was cheating
and must be
blamed
.
I am of the mind
to change the old saying
love should be free to be true
to be honest to what is in reality
how if not respected fully at heart
it will evaporate in truths light
enter up invisible into clouds
rain its bounty elsewhere
for it is itself,
fair
.
It was always
up to me only
to be fair with it
and to accept change
if it be by truths call
in seeming fair
or not
.
But war
with its intent
to force someone
to do something other
than what they intend
no matter whose side
more truth is on
it takes away
without care
.
There is
nothing fair
about innocence
stripped and shredded
nothing clear anywhere
about men who lay claim
to take love away by force
what was someone elses
eliciting reaction
and hates
kiss
.
Oh
how they blend in
love with passionate killing
the excitement of the chase
how romantic a pure soul
how fair an noble cause
is surely a sound case
hating for loves sake
ignoring a touch
that antimatter
annihilates
.
I see why
we think them
so alike
the pain
the broken lives
the innocence that suffers
as vanquished hearts tarry
over either word
.
But they are
of different name
love must be free
become itself same
a true bond to life
indestructible
that is the
truth of Love
when real
.
But war
the world must be
free of it and its cause
love and war are no equals
we need zero tolerance for war
it should be barred forever
it should be imprisoned
with a life sentence
never to be given
a fair hearing.
We are under chemical directivity
they are what we are, you see
DNA winds environment and history
but to us it is a blind mystery
.
In youth the chemicals
turn our eyes into shape envy
we see things old now differently
when the spiral ladder so decrees
time for that chemical dance; 1,2,3
.
They find our signature stuffed indifferently
scattered way out in distant Milky Way seas
suitcases floating spectographic identity
islands the same as in you and me
.
Chemicals have liked to claim a soul
as in love they are able to do so easily
for how has so much exact serendipity
so much perfect compatibility
come into we to be?
.
Some might say we chemicals
are on our own doubt indefinitely
Ideas, just happening to appear to be
found near hydrogen and oxygen’s
tide bound Mother Sea.
.
We live in what we call reality
and every part would need to be
purely coincidental culpability
which seems like purest improbability
that formulas would change perfectly
with a puzzle fit to unveil this diversity
all from the same redefined energy.
.
Chemicals are typing
this tales on-line plea
vibrating string theories
quarky quantum quintessence
M-brane theory
I feel my ego head swells
with idea based encephalopathy.
.
I dream of friends
in gray simple rain
I am closer to love
when nearest to pain
I am just like you
you have your own name
but how unique are we
we do not type the same?
.
Words make us as one
but who is it to blame
when a coconut holds its future
its open shell, the rain.
Growing up I did not know
And from hearing hip-hop
the same would be oh so
but poetry need not be
rhyme and time
and this word-
maybe
You can be free
saw the see saw into dust
shake formulas from your mind
stop thinking that in a rhyme
there is something special
about your life and mind
by making the numbers fit
NO!
you can free your minds reach
find a word your heart yearns for
not some formula that binds you
down under on a slave ship crew
rowing to one subscriptions beat
makes one in union bittersweet
mathematical mechanical bull
a word drilled within wheels
and sound spiked deals appeal
within these numbers game
noise that types out same
it was the mnemonics
rhyme is so, well
memorable
links the mind to sound
the enticement of finding pattern
within sound that is found everywhere
it is a calling to be heard in an echo word
words can transcend these reflecting things
bring raw connection of vowel and consonant
meanings mixed and merged in primal soup
making word energies boiling in you
turn into an awakening light
beam into someone else
like never before, or
but chains must be broken
not fearing rhyme as a token
free to be as you are spoken
the real you strong and true
in free voice or free verse
sing song along dong
can make great music
but sometimes singing
is not where the heart is at
you just saw a mountain top
lost a greatest love
free words
like your soul
may not be playing games
you might be raw and freshly bit
a poem as a flag planted on feeling
a bandage coming to a wound
a prayer to an Almighty
all of it there
the love
the losses
a most common day
full of future emerging
perfect things converging
only you can say your way
let the words fly high
and far away.
.
Benafia
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