writing published August 22, 2021

The muse left me

The muse left me for a polyamorous cad who grew tired almost immediately. Now our visits are plain-spoken, almost sad. Take place on the ground without wing or abstraction. It is as if we are at a holiday party catching up with a run-down of our accomplishments: How was your year? Well, I’ve been fine. Ron has faced some changes. They rounded up the men and put them in a pecker house where they were trained to work as peckers. He took right to it; world’s oldest profession. 

One very lucid day, the muse was going on about Venus being a disco ball. And “Kiss me with the radio on. The waves they bend my favorite song.” It was a complete creative cop-out. I think the muse was trying to look unaffected by the actions of the cad so broadcast this big happy-happy-joy-joy routine. It was hollow. 

Here’s hoping the muse will become tender again without needing a twelve-step program or a priest. I will wait and meanwhile try to provide a motivating soundtrack. 

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Exposure to the abyss

A good friend will hold you by your feet and dangle you over the abyss to show you the footholds in the walls. A good friend will suggest a twist or kick for momentum or that you use bat technology to scream yourself off the walls. They’ll send you training tools like books or quotes or brushes; suggest new mediums: bristles dipped in tears, malleable dreams where sleep is a long luxurious blink. How it all works together to flush the sight of shards of memories worked around the nerves in sympathy. The body forgets its process while a good friend refuses your censorship, rides the shame to shamanic exodus. Holds the flashlight while you climb out of the abyss.

published August 27, 2021

Horrors of everyday reality face collective indifference/ routines and ambition/ dollars against indifference/ state of the country/ the persona mask/ guns allow kids to be shot; anyone they’re mad at, shot/ defenseless people identified but not sheltered or soothed/ confrontational device implicates reader/ army of invisible sufferers/ male authority: father. profiteering boss. turncoat angel. god/ inferno: suffering, dislocation, hidden spiritual costs, rapid social transformation/ industrial evolution: altered community, personal identity, social values/ city as darkly paranoid as the remote/ chartered: mapped, liscensed,  controlled; choked with commerce/ reserved and rented as buses, boats, planes/ rent your mind/ intellectual property with a rental fee, subscription-based agreement/ own a physical chunk of brain with each purchase/ else streamed for 20% or 15 for complaining; 13 to automate a response/ signs of illness, exhaustion, anxiety, despair; healthcare/ eat what’s bad for you; watch, cry, die what’s bad for you/ rush to the gloried doom/ hereditary authority from the palace to the board room/ proletarian pawn of selfish higher powers/ authentic intelligence/ consumer, consumned, sadly died of consumption

Aspiring angel, tell me enlightenment solves suffering
                              tell me detachment is true compassion
                              tell me you know about righteousness 

I put laughter in a time capsule/
you thought the box was empty/ and so it was
Everyday I become longer details/
a barricade of What and Where/
the Who more undefined/ still there

A road uncircumstantial till it’s gone/ I walk on/ pause 
to chomp on elder loss and sibling witness/ 
love & awe, the next meal

Time can flick the value of a lesson
to come back overgrown in the lusty spring
you’ll “take care of it some sunny day,” 
said the epiphany worth repeating