A Toast

Here's to cool nights and quiet days,
To whisky and the sound of crickets
And  thunder in the distance,

Here's to the gold in my glass
And exhaled dragons that carry
The sweet scent of rememberence,
And the dull agony in my bones.

To the fallen moth,
The watching crows,
The hungry dogs,
The engorged sows,

Here's to learning the words,
Acting the part,
To liberty in a cage and freedom in a nightmare.

Here's to the fire in my throat.
And the frost in my chest,
May they embrace,
Like long lost lovers
In every cliche ever written.
May they be happy with one another.

And to Dharma!
Here's to Dharma, to Karma,
And all the Mantras that have ever been sung.
May they resound until the last gong,
Is rung by the last orphan,
On the last hilltop,
For the last sun.

One more time (or Day One )

Molten copper, red and gold,
In rivulets, cascading over her sleeping face,
And, across the plains of my chest, snaking, they flow.
With every breath, the land swells, and the rivers sway.
Deep in the earth my heartbeats quake,
And I prey to God she does not wake
From her dream.
“Give me one more minute”, let her stay,
One more second, is not asking much,
For a whole day I've spent away.
Let me watch the curve of her lips,
The shadows on her arm,
The sun in her hair, and feel warm,
When I touch her back with my fingertips.
Let me trace the valley of her spine,
One more time.
(One more time)
Lightly so as not to excite, but that I might
Feel and believe this bliss of mine.
This bliss is real.

The beat, beat, beat, in her breast
Sends jolts of pleasure like waves over me.
They engulf me, and shake the foundation of my faith.
(Could this be God in my arms?)
The beat, beat, beat, like battering rams,
Against the four gates of prudence,
As a roar in my ribs gathers like a storm.
Where the caged beast that abates, and is grudgingly still,
Craves the flesh and pines for the thrill,
As it gnashes its teeth on the chains of my will.

“Wake her. Take her.” It growls.
“One more time.
"Taste her flesh, drink her breath,
"One more time,
"Bite her neck.
"Rake her back with my claws
"One more time.”

My eyes dance across her skin,
Tracing the migration of autumn birds,
On warmer winds,
Chasing the salty air,
To that familiar unknown.

"When was it, that you last fed?
"Loosen these bracelets and I'll save us both."
The smell of burnt matches,
Sulphur and wax, hangs in the air.
"You need not hunger" my striped ward adds
"Heed my advice and you will dine together.
"You and I."                                  

Once more I draw breath.
Deep, and slow, life's flow back
Into me lifts the veil of dreams,
I see my bare chest,
And the beast is gone.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
     If this be error and upon me proved,
     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

This is a recipe for suffering. To believe Shakespeare's words in this day and age is to suffer silently for a lost cause. How can you believe in Love in the future when you lose faith in your past love?

A paradox, no?

How can you hope for love when you think back on what you thought was love and try to convince yourself that it was not what you made it out to be?

If you have loved and lost that love, then it must have been altered, bent, and made a fool of in the end. 

I was recently told that it takes two to fail at love. What a crock of shit. It takes only one. One who is fooling themselves that they were in love while the other was sincere. One that was willing to take the chance while the other was looking for an out. One that was planning to pop the question while the other was looking to be just friends.

One that tried to burn themself because they could not bear hurting the person they loved, because they thought they were not good enough for the person they loved, one who made all the wrong decisions because they loved truly, and another that could not see anything except that they were a victim of an inconstant lover.

The only regret is that I wasted my time being faithful to a ghost while Love stood laughing at my plight.

Karma

When you lose someone you love all that remains is the pain. Don't be fooled by those who tell you to cherish the good memories. Those very same good memories become your dreams at night. The hunt you down in your sleep. You relive them every night and they seem so real, only to wake up in the morning and realize they were just dreams. You realize that your heart is being squeezed in your chest and you feel the tears well up in your eyes. Reality floods back in and you remember what you did. You remember that it all ended as if it had ended only yesterday.

No. The fond memories will not save you. They were not meant to save you. The fond memories were meant to be building blocks in your relationship. Instead they are now the weight that crushes you when you try to go on with your life and see what you can do.

Move on. What a stupid word to say. As if you passed an accident and your curiosity made you slow down and look. Now you have to move on. Move on. How stupid can you  be? As if the years that you spent were not part of you, as if you're supposed to become someone else, someone new, and pretend that what you were a year ago was not real. Move on. The most cruel word you can hear.

You can move on if you were hurt by someone you loved. You can forgive and forget, or at least ignore the person that caused you the pain, you can move on if you were the victim, but not if you were the culprit of your own demise. Not if you were to blame. No. That crime's punishment is that you and your tormentor are locked in the same body forever. You will be entwined for the rest of your days. He will not let you forget, nor will he relent in his torture. You will be your own sadistic fiend that wakes you up at night and tears your mind from the inside out, depriving you of sleep, of thought, of a will.

What others don't understand is that you also become the grateful recipient of that torment. You accept the pain and cherish it. You feel the burning of the loss and would not let go of that burning because you know that to let go of that pain is to let go of the last remaining good thing in your life. The last remaining trace of a love you lost.

People say letting go is not easy. They don't understand that sometimes letting go is not an option. Letting go of the last trace of decency in you will leave you empty. Perhaps you lost your chance at being filled with bliss, and with your decisions allowed that bliss to leave you, leaving behind her the pain as a reminder of your mistakes. If you let go of the pain it will only leave the void.

We've been corrupted, as a race, as a species, as men, when it comes to love. We have been lead to believe that there was such a thing as absolute and universal love. A gargantuan ethereal repository of pure love in the Universe from which we draw our buckets and drink if we wish. A source of love that can heal and replenish our losses so we can be once again filled with bliss and "move on".

There isn't. It was all concocted by generations of marketing that sold us on to the idea of the universal healing love. A scam that lines the pockets of every self help guru, reiki enthusiast, holistic doctor, shaman, priest, and charlatan alike. They can use it to convince you that you have been replenished with love, and in fact you'd be living the fake life.

The real life says that when you do something wrong you pay the price. That is Karma. It does not change. It does not accept offerings. It does not offer redemption.

It is immovable, unwavering, forceful, and triumphant.

When you are the cause of your own pain you will remain its recipient to the end of your days.

Age is the Cruelest Cage

Age is the cruelest cage. That Iron Maiden of the soul with its rancid breath and crooked face, and that catacomb's embrace which leaves nothing for desire, as ambitions expire with a twist of fate and tepid luck both conspiring to construct a fabric of a universe born of idle sighs.

Age is the cruelest cage, that draws its waters from a well of memories, as its daughters spin the yarn and tell stories of Kubla Khan and the Holocaust on Christmas Eve.

The night the World stood still of its own will on the edge of Its Awakening but slumped back into that abyss of Elysian slumber. When, from atop the shoulders of giants I saw the dawn rise above the brim of my teacup while Brahms and Bach stood face to face behind my back calculating the origin of the universe with their finger tips.

Under the bridge in Nan'an, sleeping in a box and waking to see the endless line of humanity carrying its womb on its back like a mutated tortoise in exodus from the city of salt leaving in its trail the bloody spots of human dreams strewn elegantly yet random on either side.

The old woman that smiled at me and then grimaced as sunlight poured down her face like molten glass. She was my granddaughter carrying my granddaughter on her back.

Down here under the bridge the sand is cool, and dark, and moist. It smells of Tinseltown blood mixed with molasses. Down here under the bridge the thralls of human industry never tread. Down here under the bridge, smoke and books still live on their taboos. Down here under the bridge it's always 1999.

Inhale,
Exhale,
and Discharge.

Stand on Buddha's palm and leap all the way towards the pillars at the edge of the world. You'll find your answers there, written in monkey piss.

Carry me back a thousand days and ask me when the world will end. I'll say "Around the bend."

"In a day or two when my words have run their course." Through and through I would say "The end is nigh" and sit in the corner waiting to die. But not today.

No, not today.

A thousand days ago was yesterday. 

Today I'll say "You wait and see.The end will come for you and me, and , what is more

"Age is the cruelest cage, an Iron Maiden for the soul. It will be harsh and cruel and long and infinitely more beautiful than you can imagine."