The First of Three Morning Coffees

Groggy thoughts coalese into milky daydreams as my eyes ignore the forest of air ducts and electrical wiring. The battles I fight with finance, the weeks of servitude, are kept at bay with a song and a dertermination to keep an innocent boy wrapped in his blanket of comfort. Metallic air, bitterly assaulting my senses as I exit the sweet smell of Autumn and enter this realm of miguided circuitry, can not overcome me and bring me to surrender, to an unconscious death. The first of three morning coffees strives to excite my blood, still sluggish from the too-early braying of my cell phone alarm, permanently set to an ungodly 5:00 AM. The stubble on my chin is a day older, a day longer; again I snoozed too long to shave, a modern mountain man longing to exit the city and find his way back up the verdent slopes, beckoning with the promise of home and peace. Random thoughts like scattered music notes mark the sheet of scrap paper crinkled next to my wallet in my back pocket, things to do, songs to write, bills to pay, places to visit, all too much for the few hours at night I can call my own before sleep again overtakes me; a weekly reminder of the race life creates between modern obligations and the eternal thoughts of a man longing to make the world his sanctuary. The ink will fade and the pulp will grow musty, and still lines remain uncrossed. But as I consider putting my pen down and walking to the break room to secure my second cup of coffee for the day, I remind myself it's about the journey, not the destination. I do what I have to do and keep a private promise to my integrity; there is a song to be sung, if only in my heart.

The Gauze Lifting

The evenings come soon these days, daydreams scatter with refused hours. Unrelenting hands pull us thin until it’s hard to find the will to breath. And here comes the cold with its fierce, seasonal slumber; we are forced to dig in and wait out the passage. A crucible of pressure and vacuum filled with near-cliché longing, a handful of obligations become months of denial. Not so patiently you wait within your own divide of consciousness from joy, calling forever to me with your silent and liquid call, wet and warm, where nirvana races cinematic on the inside of eyelids closed.

So quick we are to forgive, pretending we understand when desperation and proximity paint a positive picture. Your mechanisms shock me with their screaming and clutching gears of self-preservation, the gauze lifting from our teenage dream and the hush found in the moonscape of plowed and frozen farm fields between us grows deeper. Be quiet, no one can lie to you if you choose not to hear.

The Shuddering Mountain

Ceaseless noise, an extreme pounding, filters sluggishly, and gradually the peace arrives like the warmth of the day creeping slowly upon my awareness. I sit with eyes closed to the world I know, the world that chaffs and screams eviscerating within my very soul; who stole the sunlight of tomorrow, what happened to the gleam of today? At the edge, the rocky shore beckons as polluted streams course in reminders of yesterdays forever gone, forever the dream unattainable, forever the broken promise we make to ourselves as tender youth; who knew fulfillment stood on the edge of selfish and uneducated points of left or right, up or down, progress or slow death?

I smile, but I’m in shock, noticing the soft, folding landscape of you, the creased and worn tourist magazine I’ve leafed through a million times, never knowing the smell of the forests or the chill of the air. Another mind-numbing television show, empty digital calories feeding me with false excitement and the lustful urge to buy, I want to consume you. I want to stand silent and alone in mad turmoil as I absorb every tendril of your essence.

I am the shuddering mountain of slab and crevasse, weathered and exposed before this wind designed to mirror the hollowness of my every desire. I stand before you bruised by neglect and the crime of too many revolutions, still believing in the faith I found in hazy childhood archetypes, memories now colored with idealism and forgotten toil. Is it any wonder I utter your name as if a sinner prostrate before his god? Can salvation only come to those who have given up all hope? Or will I die a martyr for never outgrowing the devout tingle that glory is just behind the barrier of your permission?

Like Distant Supernovas

We seldom talk like we used to do.
It is the healthiest sign I could ever offer,
it is the nature of this workaholic year,
and I know, it just seems a shame.

We've soothed ourselves, our fevered minds,
with the artistic balm that in other lives
we welcome the dusk and the ocean tide
as friends brought together in presence and wine.

But those phantom days are only relevant
when we have the time to ponder
such depths and refractions.
In the now, wearing our workman-dull dress,
all that filters through
is the tired, winding-down hours at night
when we're off the clock,
and small realizations tease us like distant supernovas,
thousands of years old,
and their feeble light only now is reaching Terra.

All I can say is what I've always professed:
you are cherished and loved, poetic child.
I wish, as I always have,
I could give you more of the world
than you've managed to obtain.