The Sunday Dispatch 3.31.24

[you are here to risk your heart]

no easy way
no life worth living

without the harshness 
of a hundred winters

sometimes all at once

but that is what makes 
love so grand

despite all the breaking, 
the falling, the hurting
we go on…   

it is for that reason alone
we must. 
*
[in this light]

sparse and unrelenting
a keyhole in the abyss

a way out
a way in

let not the mind 
dictate your way

life is not a belief
but an entity within

through which the universe
may witness its own existence.
*  
[out of tune]

marred by intangibility

nothing mattered 
nothing held

only without 
do we know peace

a long unfathomable 
dream sublime

lost to the learned grasping
for anything within reach.
*
[dust and the narrowing way]

the later it gets
the choices lessen

but the burden the same

the darkness comforts, as always
but the light seems better somehow

softer and more accessible

maybe just a trick of life
or the joke of death

that the closer i get 
to settling in

the nearer i come 
to the end.
*
[get it over]

long as gone can be
always back around

to broken squares 
once removed

in vicious circles
taut by turns of fate

pulled from lonely ends
to walk the constant edge

of love’s last nerve.   
*
[rapture in resignation]

only after years and years 
of breaking and wanting

of emptiness and challenge
of love and death

can you realize
that it is not until 
you are fully whole

that you can 
bear the weight 
of true solitude.              
***
“I had to sink to the greatest
mental depths, to thoughts of
suicide, in order to experience grace.”
-	Hermann Hesse

The Sunday Dispatch 3.24.24

[this deep]

beneath the waves
surface unreachable

broken reflection
a shimmer of shadows

adrift in the ocean
of an unyielding abyss

knowing a smile 
could crack the sky

yet completely 
unable to oblige.
*
[how i bleed]

most of my life 
has been spent
in small dark rooms

writing words 
i can’t seem to say 
out loud

this is how i scream
this is how i cry

how i break 
and how i mend

this is how 
i’ve told you i love you
a million times

and how i stifle the fear
of never hearing it back.
*
[destination farewell]

fathomless depths
where which we bury 
the thoughts of losing 
our most beloved

a trance-like wandering 
toward an unforgiving mortality
that somehow blindsides us
all the while

knowing full well
we are nothing if not all headed
to our very own holes 
in the ground.
*   
[counting scars]

sometimes the nights 
swallow me whole

after the words are down
and the end weighs upon me

the loneliness and the longing
the untetheredness and the freefall

the grand sum 
of all the empty hours 
waited in vain

for the only thing 
ever really wanted.
*   
[blue wish]

nothing means 
everything to me

the empty spaces 
between the rest

the long nights 
away in the dark

far from the peopled tracks 
of greed and ruin

basking in the simple saving grace
of an untouched solitude. 
* 
[press play]

sweet release

music minds the mood
as words mine emotion

beneath the surface
faceless value reclaimed

reused for the purpose of exposure

the wounds displayed
to heal and learn

from strangers i’ve never known
speaking directly to my heart;

no one ever goes it alone.   
***
“There are no beautiful surfaces
without a terrible depth.”
-	Friedrich Nietzsche

The Sunday Dispatch 3.17.24

[the lure of the cave]

a simple space
of organized clutter

books, tables, 
shelves, desk

everything in its right place 
or pretty close to it

dim lighting, 
and the bright glow 
of the waiting page

i was never one for travel
outside the mind, anyway… 

i’ve taken enough trips to know

i’m best left
to a small room

plucking words 
from the shadows

in candlelight and solitude.
*
[in all fairness]

the tables turn 
beyond our control

spinning truth 
out into the abyss

while chaos holds 
the center in place

it is what we are 
and what we have come from

and for some
the furthest place 
from where we want to be.
*
[now when here is not]

blockchained to secret sources
imaginary photos retouched

gold dust 
scattered in the ether
there for the taking

invisible in the light
divisive in darkness

every piece a master
every master a slave.
*   
[happenstance and quarrel]

torn between 
tearing and mending

everything around us 
goes away the longer we stay

having no choice in the matter
why not just love who remains

over 
and over and 
over

until we go.
*
[soul craft]

you did not ask to be born
nor did the sky ask you to arrive

yet here we are
embedded in the mystery

trying to understand as best we can
why it is better to love than hate

better to help than hurt

but one cannot seek 
by standing still

nor find the path 
without taking a step

the answers are 
far from the mind

go there.   
***
“You are an aperture through 
which the universe is looking at
and exploring itself.”
-	Alan Watts

The Sunday Dispatch 3.10.24

[hold the line]

brushed away

the restless sea recedes
the shore surrenders

the moon 
conducts the symphony 
from above

yet still we seem 
to have learned nothing

from all the beauty
and harmony around us

as we bomb and 
maim and kill 
and hate

smiling for the cameras
while doing ourselves in.
*   
[port of call]

stunned by 
the silence

of dark ships 
upon the horizon

they come for me

i know not 
how much time 
is left

as their shadows 
grow longer in the setting sun.
*
[the last of the first, the first of the last, and everything in between]

time takes me
down to the river

to see 
my muddled reflection 
in crystal clarity

to hold my heart 
in its hands 

like a butterfly
in love with the rain.  
*
[for someone, somewhere]

if you’re ever walking by
and see a red light behind my curtains

please feel free to knock

i’ll just be writing about the difference
between loneliness and solitude

between love and nothing 
that ever comes close

between unrequitedness 
and the unrelenting ache 
of longing unfulfilled

and i could probably 
use your company…   

but just you, 
and only you

no one else.  
*
[index of maladjustments]

count lost
forgotten when

worn as badges now
maybe red flags to others

but no matter

i’m still here despite 
my previously destructive inclinations

unbeknownst to me
every time i fell

i was learning 
how to fly. 
***
“When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic that
let you survive your own war
You find that fire is passion
and there’s a door ahead, not a wall.”
-	Lou Reed

The Sunday Dispatch 3.3.24

[the living frontier]

seek not 
the furthest edges 
of joy

but cherish the letting 
of small victories unfold

leave be what comes
to run its course

bridging the distance
between the presence of grace

and the consolation 
of its absence. 
*
[stuck inside]

covered cracks 
flaked with gold

still this emptiness 
rests within

a hole in the whole

surrounded 
by a dull aching armor
rusted with longing

slowly crumbling 
beneath the weight

of all this nothing.
*
[through the glass looking]

shifting corners
blurred at the edges

nary a dream within reach

the heart 
cracked and golden

further and further removed
from love once known

returned to one
to endlessly remain. 
*
[the dead weight of my lonely bones]

this vessel tired
too much time
both gone and ahead

if not to be in love
then maybe best not
to be at all

as fading hope 
fills my tattered sails

i hang my heart 
from the crow’s nest

and sink like a stone.        
*
[one from nothing]

missing tonight
from the heart of the storm

a slow goodbye looms
in the wings of shadows cast

here before
here again

far too close to never
to ever dream of always

if there is hope on the horizon
please let my soul surrender

until it comes. 
*
[good to go]

caught in the waiting haste
as twilight ticks closer

as some strange ends 
seem to need to be tied

fitting or fucked
either way or none

too long this life
to stand alone in the rain
laughing like a madman

with an armful of poems, 
a heart full of hollow

and no end in sight.  
***
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
-	John Steinbeck