Poets & Pictures...

(Brown Dog Cafe ~ Paris, Ontario)

“If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful.” ~ J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

(Brown Dog Cafe ~ Paris, Ontario)

A Better Place To Be ~ Harry Chapin...

 "You see, she was so damned beautiful that she could warm a winter frost.

But she looked long past lonely, and well nigh on to lost…"

"And I know we both have been, so lonely. And if you want me to come with you, then that's all right with me. 'Cause I know I'm goin' nowhere and anywhere's a better place to be."

The Fugitive at Adullam...

(Claude 1658 ~ David at The Cave of Adullam)

All in distress

All in debt

All in discontent

Come to me

I will guide you

The Holstee Manifesto...

www.holstee.com

Eye...



 

The weeping seamstress

With crooked fingers

Failed to thread the needle

For the eye blinked

From her tears

Michal...

 

 

In my joy

I leapt

I danced

I felt the sun on my face

I was alive

But from a window

Your scornful scowl

Mocked my jubilation

Your heart despised

As mine descended

With the day

While the night fell

An Angel Reads...How Long?

Giving voice to the words of my ache

In awe I listen

I feel chills and tremble

An orgasm of the soul

Poetic release with aftershocks in my heart

Delilah...

Delilah comes in dreams

My anger rages as I sleep

The little ones scatter

 In my blindness

I remember the threshing of my strength

How Long?

How do I find release from what binds me?

To be back in the ebb and flow of the living

The times and seasons of humanity

To quietly sleep by still waters

Walk in the green grass of tranquility

Outside of the past and future

In the present time of the moments which make up the hours

When will the balm of healing be revealed?

To remove the splinter of festering pain from my soul

How long…

How long…

How long…

Will it be?

To be free from this depression and the dark night that holds me?

I have to be awoken from my deep slumber

What is wrong with me I ask over and over again?

Was I simply a chore to her?

I no longer know what love is

Perhaps I never did

And there’s the rub isn’t it?

Love’s taste lingers and is gone as quickly as it first comes

You May Be Dreaming...

Taken from:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/25/reality-a-very-short-introduction/

(Image from the movie Inception)

“Contemplating the possibility that you are dreaming right now is certainly very perplexing. You might think that it is also exceedingly unlikely, something in the same ballpark as hitting the jackpot in a lottery or suddenly dropping dead. There are various things that are theoretically possible, even though their probability is very low (such as a monkey randomly hitting on a typewriter writing out the complete works of Shakespeare, or the sudden disappearance of objets to to an effect called ‘quantum tunnelling’). If you don’t worry that this book might suddenly disappear from your hand due to some bizarre quantum effect, why worry that you might be dreaming right now?

(Image from the movie Inception)

The reason why you should worry is that the chances of you dreaming at this very moment are far, far greater. Let’s do a quick calculation. We optimistically assume that you get eight hours of sleep a night, which leaves sixteen hours during which you are awake. Sleep researchers have found out that there is a strong correlation between dreaming and being in so-called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. REM sleep is characterized by rapid movement of the eyeballs; the brain is highly active, its electric activity resembles that of a waking brain, but the sleeper is more difficult to wake than during slow-wave or non-REM sleep. We know that between 2-% and 25% of our sleep is REM sleep. Taking the lower value and assuming that you always and only dream during REM sleep, this gives us 1.6 hours of dreaming ever night. As there are therefore 1.6 hours of dream consciousness for every 16 hours of waking consciousness, this means that your chance of dreaming at any given moment is 1 in 10. This quite a high probability — for comparison: the chance of winning the jackpot of a typical lottery is about 1 in 14 millions (this means that if you bought a ticket every week, you will have one win on average every 250,000 years); the chance of the author of this book dying in an accident within the next year is somewhat less than 1 in 2,500.

(Image from the movie Inception)

So there is a significant chance of you dreaming right now. But does it matter? To be sure, we can’t exclude the possibility that this is all a dream, but as long as it continues, it will not make the slightest difference to how we lead our lives. Even if the £5 note in my pocket is just dream-money, and the strawberry cake I but with it is only a dream-cake, I can still have the sensation of eating the strawberry cake as a result, and what more can I want? Even if I am dreaming right now, I will still be able to plan my life, cause will follow effect, and actions will have consequences. Of course, these consequences will just be dream-consequences, but given that we have assumed earlier that I would not be able to tell ‘from the inside’ whether I am dreaming or not, why should I worry about this? The world of experiences is still the same, and this is all that counts, after all.”

~ Jan Westerhoff, In Reality: A Very Short Introduction   

Incredulity...

Holding to something you believe is true

While it is slipping away all the while

Till you wake up one day and it has all passed through your hands

Leaving nothing

But incredulity

Empty...

Half empty bar

Half empty beer

Half empty heart

Half empty life

Disposable

Dispensable

Moving furniture around in my soul

A renovation of being

Can my body handle the change?

Or…will it collapse into itself from the strain?

Into a cavern of emptiness

A blighted spirit of malcontent

Uttering a muted love cry

From a cauldron of emptiness

Disposable

Dispensable

Empty life

Empty heart

Empty beer

Empty bar

Abishag...

'When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. So his attendants said to him, "Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm." Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. The girl was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no sexual relations with her.'

~ 1Kings 1:1-4 (TNIV)

(Pedro Américo - Davi e Abisag - 1879)

Life lasts too long

Days are exhausting

Nights tedious

Spent alone in cold beds

Between sheets of discontent

Wrapped in blankets of blackness

Dreams filled with unrecognizable memories

Of a life which no longer exists

Who will lift the curtain of despair?

Climb into my bed

Be my Abishag and warm my frozen soul

Bringing heat to my dying body…

Trinity & Mystical Moments...

“Three graduating grey stones / stacked neatly / a perfect river snowman / left behind forever / unable to melt in the sun…”

 ~ words by @dreamwalks on Twitter

Randomly on the beach in Riomaggiore, Italy 2011

“We were never as close, Lisa and I, as that moment. I miss being that close to her. In a way I am still close to her, I am close in memory, and you would think being close and enjoying being close would prevent two people from drifting apart, but you’d be wrong.”

~ Wilton Barnhardt, Emma Who Saved My Life



Poems, Words and A Song...

 "It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield."

~ W.B Yeats

     (Alanis Morissette - Tapes)

Indescribable

The ache

 That follows me

 Entangles me

Surrounds me

It is me 

Grafted and grown into my bones

Deep in my heart it resides

Bidding me to darkness

“‘Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.’”

~ Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Falling

Another town

Another night

A stranger among strangers

Alone while surrounded by many

Invisible

What am I doing here?

First nights feel like this…I think?

Each new moment another beginning of exquisite fragility

A circle to nowhere and now whirling like a Dervish without ecstasy

Eyes all around looking and wondering

Caught in a simulacrum of replicated reality

Each place an illusion of another with the same beats pulsating

In discord behind the smoke and in the mirrors

My reflections betrays my soul

Words can mean everything and nothing

Disoriented in space

I close my eyes

Falling

Songs About Life & Spiritual Renovation...

“The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.”

~ Bruce Springsteen

                                                             (Carly Simon ~ That's The Way I Always Heard It Should Be)

“But there's things that'll knock you down you don't even see coming

And send you crawling like a baby back home….It's just nobody knows honey where love goes

 But when it goes it's gone gone…”

~ Bruce Springsteen

 

                                                                                                  (It's Too Late ~ Carole King)

“Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose,

And nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free…”

~ Kris Kristofferson

                                                                                              (Carole King ~ So Far Away)

I want to go to the EveryBar to find out what is

real and what is not…a place and a space to

reflect while between opportunities

in life ~ to be refreshed  and  experience a

spiritual renovation…

Broken...

A coercive power is strangling my body

Blurring my mind

A mist paralysis my will and I am staggering like a blind man in a hurricane

No home or arms to be steadied by

To be comforted in

Does geography matter?

Do bodies make a difference?

I am bleeding and no tourniquet can stop the deluge

The dagger of betrayal has cut too deep and close to the bone is the wound

I want to crawl into a lover’s bed and close my eyes and be held for a very long time

Is that so different from death?

Comfort in a still peace while the sun warms cold broken bodies wrapped in the morning dew of refreshing?

Where do the answers come from?

My mind is so tormented with possibilities which plague without a way out of the turbulence

The every present ache of loss

Is…

The demon of my waking hours tormenting each step I falter to take

Then…

The night conjures memories and images mixing with dreams

 I turn deeper into the darkness of regret

No escape from the terror of the Noonday Demon!

Twisting and turning in the hand of God

A child on the floor of eternity wanting to be let go and return to a time before I was

Life breaks too many

I am broken

My Old Friend...

"Just when every ray of hope was gone
I should have known that you would come along
I can't believe I ever doubted you
My old friend the blues

Another lonely night, a nameless town
If sleep don't take me first, you'll come around
'Cause I know I can always count on you
My old friend the blues

Lovers leave and friends will let you down
But you're the only sure thing that I've found
No matter what I do I'll never lose
My old friend the blues

Just let me hide my weary heart in you
My old friend the blues"

~ Steve Earle, My Old Friend The Blues

I Am...

I am the ruiner of everything

I am a mirage of happiness

I no longer know what to do

I feel the world closing in like a vice on my body

It is true as she told me: “Anyone who really knows you will hate you.”

If I don’t escape I will die

I am already dying a slow defeated death

Each breath an effort

I close my eyes and see death

I open them and only think of closing them again

I am tarnished and tainted

I am alone

Like she said, "You are too needy, too moody, I never wanted you..."

Cast overboard and no longer needed

I am lost

On the sea of dereliction

The Fundamental Question of Philosophy...

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

~ Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

I am now determined to answer this fundamental question of philosophy…

The Last Turn...

Darkness floods my light

Water drowns my life

Memories haunt my mind

Open wounds fester

Putrid smell of rotting flesh

I dissolve into ugliness

Tormented heart with demon worms

Infesting and burrowing deep

I ache with each labored breath

A beast chained to the wall of doubt

Death on my back

I acquiesce

I surrender

Turning to face my lot

I have crossed the Rubicon

The lashes of time mark my flesh

Blood of compassion drips to the ground

I look up and see a woman in the crowd

Her blues eyes catch mine

She glances and turns away quickly

From:

My spilt blood

My confessed love

My broken body

My salt stained face

My out stretched hand

My fidelity

My vow

My life…

All mean nothing to the harlot

Who spreads her legs for the world to enter

While in her bed a dagger cuts

Pierces deep to the heart of desire

She steals life

Her scent is Hades

Her arms Leviathan

Her breath betrayal

Cursed I am for touching her

In her turning away from my suffering

Her poison burns in my veins

She

Pauses

Turns her head

Smiles

Whispers the words

“It is all you fault – you are a horrible man…everything that happened is because of you.”

I crumble

At the last turn of the dagger

A Time...

There was a time when I did not wake

A time I did not exist

I knew neither of these times

No difference did the not knowing make

I have pondered…

To be awake or to exist is of no consequence

I would know neither if I did not breathe

What gain is there in being awake?

To know pain?

What gain in being asleep?

To know peace?