Tag Archives: light

syntheschism

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there’s a need for it like nothing i’ve ever known: a growing, changeful thing—a nuisance to itself and others—a thing that separates itself into anxiety, rhythm, bright darkness and understanding: things we tend to treasure, as if such things were remotely unique.

but it is a need. an intrinsic need: a part of the underlying conditions. a hopeful, insistent, semi-sentient, nearly-autonomous thing that seems to take control and drive us, and the only part about it that makes any sense is that those who experience it nearly invariably come to identify themselves by the virtue of its touch.

and then it changes, shifts, coalesces and divides again, trailing off in multiple directions, accomplishing different things, becoming far more than what was intended, sometimes until it’s far too large to rein back in. it becomes the light, the dark, the in-between, and eventually, it is everything and nothing: both more and less than what it was, and what we ever dared become.

it doesn’t matter what it is.

it is us.

and so

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there are many things that come to mind, many things that seem to be, and the seeming is the arrival, and the arrival is the impetus behind other thoughts. there are days like this one, and in it, the seemings, disarranged, facilitate the extravagance of all that waits to be known.

i try (and the attempts are trials), to maintain composure, but sometimes, the way in which life coalesces merely compounds the idiosyncratic tendencies of everyone around me (or at least my perception of them) and every plan, every expectation, every hope, turn into something other than what we supposed it would be—what we had dared to dream.

fragments of other people’s songs, their lyrics, their own communion with the world: these things i use, to trace my life throughout the confluences of existence, and even to define my interrelation with the world. there was a time when those were my songs, my lyrics. for a while after the spirit died within me, i was bitter, but the music never really left me. it lingers yet.

waiting.

waiting, like so many other days in my life.

but this waiting, this moment, this churning, has a glimmer: a spark.

a recalescence.

there is something about this time, this moment, that shines. the waiting, this once, is a good thing, for i wait here, willingly, at the end of the all which never was, and the dawn of the all which might now become.

(earlier this week, I took an old draft and turned it into this. something significant had happened the previous night, which i’m not going to explain it here, but it was a good thing: one which changed the entire tenor of the original draft from July 8, which was a much darker time. i am driven by rainstorms of late, and they drive me towards a glistening light.)

been broken, brave, and blasted borne

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what color hides within the light of the moon?
what peace lies in the shapelessness of forever?
and when morning comes at last transcended,
what life descends the heavens to slowly die?

what rapture churns in misery’s wakefulness,
entranced in a light still hidden
and yet still mysteriously unknown and shrouded
by the color of the moon’s last echo—
rippling waters shadowed in forgetfulness—
of how simplicity grows in sanctity?

and glowing through eternity,
does it shake the whispered sessions
in the crimson of the pool?

what in sage remembrance borne
truly hangs despairingly still in thought
(though triumphant still in an ecstasy now broadened)?

and the humming of the muse astride
the trembling cloak of midnight
is wrapped in the moonlight’s shivering wonder.
it stills the morning’s wondrous glory,
opaquely shimmering and enfolding itself
in the transcendence of time.

how faultless does the morning lie in memory,
though bordered still by truthfulness,
and entranced in a lightness, hidden
by the significance of resplendent terror
and the sanctity of a screaming night.

fully sacred in these trials of doom,
when morning at last arrives,
what rapture churns in misery’s wakefulness?
and what peace lies in the shapelessness of forever,
that the colors of the light of the moon on high
become the granite facade of the weightlessness of time?

(original: January 6, 1991 ~ near An’-Nu’Ayriyah, Saudi Arabia)
(edit: January 14, 2010 ~ Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA)

drained…

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There are days, and then there are those days that seem to last a lifetime. One such was yesterday.

But that can almost always be said.

Each yesterday, when viewed from the perspective of tomorrow, becomes something other than what it was, what it had been, but when yesterday lasts a lifetime, it hardly matters now what I think of it.

There are moments, and then there are those moments that awaken us. One such moment is now. But each moment, when lived in the here and now, becomes more than what it might have been. And whatever this one might have been, changed without my knowing.

i see you with a light undimmed. i know you with a thought unturned. what stands within my heart is you.

“Sometimes” is a lonely place, but it’s by no means an abandonment. Shifting perspective has a particularly insensitive way of fucking with that, but that’s just the joy of being human.

What we get is what we are. What we know…has yet to be understood. What we feel, is just another different thing, shaded and tinted by what we suppose…what we hope and dream.

And dreams are living things. Living, quizzing, perplexing things. Tender, but rough. Sueded by the fold of all days.

And so, we turn, drained and oddly satisfied, to those things that give us the only satisfaction we know.

i see you with a light unstrained. i know you with a thought unbroken. what grows within my heart is you.

It never mattered before, all the things that seem to be. The tighter, unbending, immobile brain-slumber. The jaded afterthought of the miserable ways we were raised to believe in the structured paraphrases of Bronze Age man’s dedication to structure, hierarchy, and bending other people’s will.

And where I used to find release through many, there is only one, now. only one.

for how many years now have i felt exhausted? and suddenly, i am whole, enlivened, invigorated, emboldened, entranced. there is a structure to this that will haunt me forever, and that ghost is the most welcome thing.

The darkling thoughts, the maddened hours…I am drained of them, and without them, I am left full.

i see you with a light recalescent, powered by the spirit in you. and there is only you. at the core, there is only you.