I’ve Watched Myself Perform Small Nobilities

When I look around for proof
That I am alive, epistemology aside
I am a living metaphysics scattered

In the wind, dreams bought by books
There is no defragmenting this love
It’s the self-search of sheltered legacies
*
And I become a candidate
For door to door sustenance
Looking for proof that I exist

In these empty faces, these cynics with luggage
Perhaps I should be practicing not having
Because possession, isn’t in the cards

I’m no longer waiting, I’m simply
Pressing my ears and eyes into everything
Hoping that I don’t abandon hope too easily
*
I won’t rush death a bunch of dust
But leave what I am, stuck with you.

An Urban Afterlife

Aspiring to empty myself of information
The city carves me up with an orbit of
Advertisements, carcinogens, plastics

I am afflicted – rehearsing my escape
Where on the Earth can I leave it?
Modern life injures my spirit

Like a repetitive cognitive stress fracture
Of too much schizophrenia & separation
This world has chosen a kind of doom
*
Without volunteers, for needless kindness
I want a simple life, like fruit ripening
Before you eat it on a Sunday morning

Aspiring to coax myself back into balance
The city trespasses over my congruity
With an excess of competition

For wealth and breeding, for a restless
Workaholic’s lifetime of drudgery, slavery
I am stripped of my humanity a bit more
*
Year by year, till I reach my thirties
With hardly dream or innocence –
We believe the lies they tell us, until
We begin to tell ourselves the same lies.

A Mermaid and a Muse

How can I live here with no real Horizon/
Only the open sea, of my soul
Filling me with lighthouse contemplation
I am a simple man, with gifts enclosed
.
These years elapse with words
That sift for someone like you
Mermaid and a Muse –
Give me your hand, I’ll seal it
.
.
Upon the open sea, where spirits
Reach the mountaintops, and take
Rivers back with the melting snow
Down gazing to the docks
.
Where Sirens cry for harboured lights
To be an ordinary woman
With hearth and common labours
Until, your wild spirit unbroken
.
.
Should return, from thence you came
How can I live here without you,
It’s too late to give my hand & heart
To those who would remain a mystery
.
I need someone intimate, convenient/
To put me in my proper place
One of my own kind, who might that be?