Thursday, January 31, 2008

I

On most days, I am Rip van Winkle crushed by ambition. I would relax, let go and be a perfect bum if it weren't for the constant, niggling need to at least try and be all I want to be...kinder, more generous, a little more wicked perhaps. Mathematical linguist. Someone who knows what that term means. I want to be able to open hearts and minds with a tune, as I dance through currents of words and string them together to form magnificent water garlands of soul, expression and poetry. The waking dream of a genius poet of ocean eyes and honest countenance. Ocean eyes that are at once gorged on and starved for depth. I want to be omniscient, sensually peaked, immortal. It's no wonder that I usually disappoint myself.

But sometimes, almost like a reward for wanting, just wanting, to be more, I feel happy like a little pigtailed princess. Alive, awash with rhymeless glee, askamper by the absence of guilt. Paranoia? What means that? Compulsion? Tchah and pfoo!

It isn't the hearty, chest-inflated satisfaction of righteous indignation or the smirksome, gloatful leer of cynicism. It isn't that perverse contentment claimed by self-proclaimed martyrs. Nor does it spring from being loved, liked or admired. And It's not that warm feeling. It's a feeling of certainty. A point when time, space and consciousness are all in phase.

It's most definitely not a return to innocence. That would just be two steps back. The Grand Trunk of life is an uphill one-way. And sometimes you have the good sense to get out of that damn box. Walk, run, drown in the sunset, hang by your tail off a branch, get high on spirals of warm air. So you don't remember if you were smiling or bawling your guts out. So when the clinical grip of thought yanks you back to caution and habituality, you'll know. When your little gift of precious years runs out, and you ask yourself...did you feel it? You'll know you did. And until you master this feeling so that it comes as thoughtlessly as breath, the rest of the shebang - career, success, people, beauty, knowledge, winning, losing, acquiring - is just incidental.

I hope to understand. I hope to lose my mind.


Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Pose-try

Meeting is over
Wisdom pretended
Bellies distended
Smugly appraising
A job not quite done but then sagely appears otherwise

Fingers are twitching for
Soddenly dancing
Play a musician
Play bard or poet
Play an adult, plodding to a respectful demise

Words twist to meaning
'sploding, asunder
Whipped into metre
Swift, short-tailed offering
Curse all expression, can't think of a single last line