Gold

Some say love is a burning thing
That it makes a fiery ring
Oh but I know love as a fading thing
Just as fickle as a feather in a stream
See, honey, I saw love,
You see it came to me
It puts its face up to my face so I could see
Yeah then I saw love disfigure me
Into something I am not recognizing

See the cage, it called. I said, come on in
I will not open myself up this way again
Nor lay my face to the soil, nor my teeth to the sand
I will not lay like this for days now upon end
You will not see me fall, nor see me struggle to stand
To be acknowledged by some touch from his gnarled hands
You see the cage it called. I said, come on in
I will not open myself this way again.

You see the moon is bright in that treetop night
I see the shadows that we cast in the cold clean light
I might fear I go and my heart is white
And we race right out on the desert plains all night
So honey I am now, some broken thing
I do not lay in the dark waiting for day here
Now my heart is gold, my feet are right
And I'm racing out on the desert plains all night

So some say love is a burning thing
That it makes a fiery ring
All that I know love as a caging thing
Just a killer come to call from some awful dream
And all you folks, you come to see
You just to stand there in the glass looking at me
But my heart is wild, and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free

God & Poet

"Poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso—“Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.*” 

[*“No one merits the name of creator except God and the Poet.”]

 -Percy Bysshe Shelley at age 27. 

Moonlight

Get a haircut you hippie. 

'The Smiling Moon' from 'Rosebush & The Pursuit of Dreams' © 2012

The Absolutely True Diary of a Full-Time Indian

"There is another world, and it is in this one"  

                                                             -W.B. Yeats 

Volcanoes Erupt

Man of Steel

The presentation of a grounded ethic surrounding the archetypes represented in the Superman epic is what matters most. Superman represents the power of charity, and as pointed out in Mark Waide’s “Superman: Birthright,” the power of hope. Superman's strength finds it’s power in its active expressions, and equally in it’s active suppressions. Most critically, when power learns to control itself, it focuses into a dynamic strength, and Superman embodies this ideal in our shared popular culture.

Like Hercules, or Odysseus, major characters like this hold within them the best of humanity; what we as a culture and a people most like seeing reflected back about ourselves—specifically, our strength and the propensity for good. Recognized overtly or not, this foundation is what makes these characters so important to us. They are vessels for what we hold most dear about ourselves, or at least what we’d like to believe about ourselves.

Nietzsche, the proverbial father of the übermensch says it best in his title, “Human all-too-human.” Superman is so beyond the ranges of our species abilities, and yet participates with us in the challenges of becoming and how to adapt continually to who we are, where we are, what we are capable of, and what we are actually delivering to humanity. The repeated and authentic expression of the answers to these questions, grounded in a focused charity and hope, is the ideal Superman triangulates us against.

Humans need to know that at our core we are good. As children we’re as prone to fits as to affection; learning to be malicious comes much later, while our ability for charity must be constantly nourished, and hope is a daily exercise. We must know that we fight powers we wield against ourselves. Superman reflects our struggle, and we’ve always eaten our values embedded in our entertainment.

We instinctively recognize the importance these values are for our humanity and take this part of ourselves pretty seriously—for losing it would be losing the most differentiating parts of ourselves; Superman reminds us why that matters, why power without charity and hope is just cruelty that hides behind good intentions. This communicating of values is an important function of mythos, and why these stories find a home in our hearts after being reintroduced constantly. It’s been happening since the paintings on cave walls and probably before that.

At a time when the scale of our footfalls thunder down more than ever before, we need to remember how to fly again.

PS. The movie is even better the second time.

Spread

We are an extremely complex form of life, a concentrated soup of universal energy that made this planet their home and claimed authority on every other form of life. We're a hell of a thing that is as much a part of nature as we believe we are part of the divine, or the intelligent. We look at the amalgamation of an incredibly miraculous series of events concentrated into a familiar form when looking in the mirror. Here's where we began; how and why we potentially moved; and what the climates of our travels did to those members of our species that lay the ground work for our ancestors. 

Fly

In two days I’ll address a small hall of people. 

I’m representing my graduating class and it hits me how much more education I need. “The boy needs structure!” yells my stepfather from the past. Without academics, I am just gel without a mold—more movement than substance. The after-semester lull leading up to this weekend’s commencement has been very grating.

It’s the good old times, but you know that while you’re having them because it’s just too good to be true. So many books, so much conversation. It’s about the general curriculum of all of life. Always graduating, always in school. Did you know the average four year old asks four hundred and thirty-seven questions a day? The release of a question, the seeking of an answer, the intake of solution, and the processing of experience all keep the movement youthful, and substantial.  This is how gel creates a mold.

I joined a long form improvisation class and it teaches me lessons about how to live. I am told to, ‘Follow my fear,’ and that I want to, ‘be a mirror for my partner, not make them look like a fool.’ That old phrase, ‘I am who I am’ comes to mind, and the ‘I’ is such a fluid definition. This is how gel breaks the mold.

I have to meditate again. I can hear the madman laughing. 

Relax

Sometimes I worry like its fashionable. I stay up all night pulling at my hair, wondering why I feel like I’m balding. Other times I get really anxious, like mini-anxiety attacks. I don’t think this has anything to do with life. No, instead I think it has to do with me.

I should keep these things locked away for some time. The deal gets better with patience. The new changes that come. The desire to free-form and throw up. I miss being twenty-four because bad grammar was a lot easier to tolerate.

Age brings the mirror more into focus. The years are spent making eyes to see with. There is a seduction in madness. Something that acts like a black-hole for everything I love to laugh howlingly back into.

It feels like shaky legs on a boat listlessly ambling away from harbor. I’m blessed to know water. Like a cradle moving back and forth birthing my sea legs. I can stand, but I wonder if I’m supposed to swim.

---

The knowing when to stop and when to move on, the rubber band psychology. No one hears us and one day we’ll live like two corpses together in the ash of the world. You and I are the lucky ones. When I think about my lover, I always remember how much we’re going to hurt each other when one of us dies.

Love is almost too boring to write about but it animates my pens and papers into scribes for a teeming brain. I sometimes think like it's fashionable too. Haute Couture thinking. The eccentric I was becoming, lost in the eccentric my previous-self created.

I wonder, if the cascade begins, who can be foolish enough to call it to a stop? The stream rushes forward. These words feel like rushing water from a fresh rain picking up the debris in my clouded mind and emptying the fragments of millions of disjointed ideas from one source into the vast nothing. The journey of a long sentence and the thrills of its unexpected cliffs. 

Hope

What if a child aspired to something greater?