You can tell when I’m fighting it
Can smell it in my words
Oddly enough, the bliss is harder to describe
It takes more skill to catch the flow
Than wrestle in my own skin
Afraid the bliss will overwhelm me
Every cell of my being buzzing
Cosmic orgasmic
So cloak it with shame and forget it
Boast of my pain instead
Yet here it lies underneath
Pulsating with the intensity of emotion
Breathing, hot and cold
We dip the cup in the Stream
We freeze solid whatever flows in
Holding it in reverent fear, like precious cargo
It melts, pooling in our palms
Dripping between our fingers, numb from cold
We act surprised, appalled even
Frantic in our belief that if it had truly been sacred,
It should have stayed frozen.
Buried in our blindness
Craving the deadened
They warn us against having a messiah complex
A diagnosis of delusions, of wrongness like food gone bad
So desperate to keep us quiet, our power harnessed and invisible
Casual but constant reinforcement of the lie of our ordinariness
Cut off from our own magic, embalmed with pills and pretty things
Suckered into apologies with derisive laughter and pitying looks
Our hands at each others’ throats in mutual strangulation
We watch the glow of our eyes fade with sick fascination
A little voice cries, fingers trembling, body shuddering
Until we try again
Sitting on a park bench
Sparrows flitting about
Soft sound of feathers fluttering
They hover before me
Surprised, I hold my hand out, testing
Scaled feet curl around the fat of my finger
Reaching out to take a bit of cookie
So carefully, their beaks never touching my skin
I trill in delight as they jerk about
A serendipitous serenade that cannot be bought or packaged
While crows and hawks swirl high above
A maelstrom of wings swooping and whirling
It stares us in the face
We blank it out
The richness around us
The petty annoyance of life
Disturbing our stricken slumber
Too deep, too real
Repelled by the earth, confused by the taste
Pulsing muscle and embarrassing secretions
Subtle smells masked in disinfectant
The riling mess behind neat curtains
The squirming dirt beneath the new rug
So taken in by our difference
By the promise of our nervous chatter
I sit on a park bench
Others nearby lost in their phones
Hunched over in blue light oblivion
Kicking away the birds like trash
Designer dogs with shampooed coats at their side
Overpriced shoes jabbing at the air
Caught in the shallow thrill of forgetting
Lab rats pressing that lever for cocaine
Again and again until nothing remains
But this feeling that something is missing
That we are walking phantasms
Lulling ourselves into fancy objects
Waiting in vain for the shiny perfect gates of heaven
Scrubbed to dead smooth surfaces
Basking in our shopping mall dream
We are all switches
Flipped in different directions
Somehow one combination more precious than another
We forget we can turn them on and off
With thorny pride or bedraggled shame, we cling
To fleeting identities like sinking ships
Even though we can swim
If only we would loosen our grip
If only we could feel our nimble strength
The gentle bob of our bodies as we float
Through stillness and swells
Shadows and feathers wafting down to greet us
And the brush of strange lips as fish test out our flesh
Cringing away from the contact
We do not dissect our friends, or so the logic goes
Instead, we thrash against the drag of our hook
Fighting against fatigue, fighting to stay asleep
Finding our enemies, picking at our own skin
Creeping in every corner, spooked to fainting
To the pounding rush in our head
Running like the blood in our veins
As if we do not belong here
Sinning because we are sinners
Our stubborn hold on some uncracked code
Stupidity mistaken as sacred
And it waits for us
Singing quietly
To tell us who we are
Like if I cut out my own tongue
As if I could run from freedom
Too afraid to believe that my stories matter
What have I done, in hasty retreat
Defacing my dreams with a casual ease
Ratcheting up the blur and noise
To cover the siren scream of my heart
At least I have still have a voice
Not yet scraped to shredded bare
Though wary from everyday abuse
The cold curious gleam of vivisection
Raw twitching machine to stunted eyes
Obligatory torture to stymy my presence
Floating far away, to be anyone but me
How boring it must seem, our scramble to be less
Only so many times I can worry about the state of my dress
Waxing my ego to a fine sheen, false prophets enlisted
To carry me, feet off the ground, nerves lost in sticky thought
Forgetting what has brought me here, forgetting who I am
When everyone thinks it’s normal to sell your soul
Cutting up bits and pieces like trinkets
Processed and preserved into a pretty souvenir
With all the grace of a stuffed tiger, acrylic zombie eyes
And we think the headhunters were barbaric
Maybe it was just that they could see into the future
We make the macabre mundane
Laughing at screams, content in living death
Our hearts wrapped so tight, a disembodied beat
We float away in our precious heads
Banished to the phantom zone, by choice and neglect
Applying layer upon layer to this peeling paint veneer
Not daring to go near to what lies pulsing beneath
A topsy turvy world, a stuttering lapse of reason
As truth claws its way back, plucking at our pain
We call the signs neuroses and psychoses
We weave mad lies, in perpetual hide and seek
We tear at our own throats, make a grand show of it
But still, it remains as it always was
And there is nothing more to be done
Only undoing
Embrace the Paradox