Complacent

Sunsets enjoyed from my backporch have always defined good moments of my life, and tonight was a recollection and awknowledgement of those special transitions: A book, a cigarette, a cold beer, and the slowly sinking colors of the day bathing this quiet, tranquil space in peaceful changing actualization. No matter how many times I've reveled in this sensation I still connect and reflect and absorb anew the moving-shadow imagery of our planet's rotation...and the sensory presentation of the concept of time.

I sat out back and watched the gentle swaying of the trees and bushes, heard the scampering of birds and squirrels as they slowed the day's activities, noted the coming-home sounds of the neighbors resound and fade off like the churn of the distant roadway traffic, and let my eyes gradually react to the diminishing light of this day's color spectrum amid a restful disattachment from my usual cares, worries, and emotions.

Satori

Onward drips the heavy rounded beads of days, gravity pulling the weight of each contained drop downward into a sort of mini-river of memory, with the past being that gathered pool underneath the river's waterfall. A defined, calculated slice of the passage of this constant current is a day--a 24-hour period in which the earth circles a full rotation inside of its greater orbit of the sun. One day is a circular completion of each given water drop: specific in its fluid edges which separate this encapsulement from the greater water source, the drop is now pulled into a motion after a maturation of density bearing a gravitational descent; yet this individual drop forms a particular shape pattern, colored by reflected light, and expresses unique soundwaves generated upon impact with the greater flow of the mini-river of memory. Even enveloped into the splashed conformity of formless, flowing days past, amid swirling inclusion of the ever-flowing stream of events, a recalled memory can find and identify a completed drop once immersed into the collective liquid. The mini-river gains force and widens as it degenerates over a pitched edge, cascading airly and sprayed into splintered projections onto a general pool of all the created drops, which slowly ebbs and flows and pulses and reflects...until a final drop shatters the calm surface, breathing outward a concluding reverberation.

Unspoken

Chocolate layers of deepening receptors swallow eyesight
Inverting reason and capturing care on slick pitcher-plant walls
Absorbing, engulfing, encapsulating, compiling
Stacked and packaged and arranged presentations
To discover the sincerity of the origin
In a lingered, shiny flash
Portrait-painted faces and masked visages
And ensnared words captured, sticky,
On locked tongues, withheld
Under such a powerful glance.

Bloody Frustration

Touching the black and white wires sparks and arcs and crosses currents and melts, burns, rends the segregated halves of the system. Dazed-in shock-I reel from the eye-blinding burst on contact and stagger over to the toolbox. I reach for the metal, long and kinda skinny, flattened phillips head with a rachet and drill bit that has the bubble in the magnetic extension ruler...the non-existent instrument that will fix my fused, reversed current, deflated, empty and dried, dead, broken life. My collection of hand tools, accumulated from my years and lessons and experiences, lacks the special implement needed to restore and repair this wasting heap that I work on daily. I wipe my hands on a dirty rag, swig on my flat can of beer, puff off my nub cigarette, and swear under my breath at the time I've wasted on this dead-end project.

Easily Captured

There are things in life that each individual is really good at for unknown reasons, a natural adeptness that is unexplainable. One of my lucky traits is making musical mixes. I can take 10 completely random artists and put them together to create a mood, a statement, or a dreamy background fade. I don't know why I have this ability but I cherish it, and so do my friends. Most of my mixes are simply made to see what can be made from this "stuff", which is very consistent with my "throwaway art". I have a term called throwaway art to which I apply on any kind of art that is created or reformed or hacked together to create a bigger, more organized on concepted artwork, particularly if the elements come from found or discarded materials. The end result is that the finalized piece is to be "left" for others to find and ponder over. The ability to mix music, burn it onto a cd (or record it onto a tape in old-school days), is a tangent of my throwaway art form. My friends benefit greatly from this habitual, hobbyistic trait of mine. I most recently took 10 dusty cds from various artists that I haven't, literally, played or even touched the cases of in at least 6 years and within 30 minutes I easily had one of my mixes. This latest one I truly like: a dreamy background fade. It is music that you play while you read a book, take a bath, clean the house, etc. It really is not meant to be listened to with scrutiny, rather it is a space absorber.
My pals Andy or Dan...or maybe even Sue...definetely my cuz DJ Jubei...will reap the understanding of this mix. If you are interested in any of my throwaway mixes, shoot me an email telling me why you'd like to hear one and I'll send it out to you on my dime.

Took 15 Minutes

A series of opening lines...

1. The fork tines rang anger in clanking waves of constrained soundwave rings that was easily heard amid the hunched shoulder, tense but polite guests seated for the dinner. "Invites be damned, if he...," she thought while locking her forehead into the opposite of tense, but nowhere near relaxed. "HEY, oh shoot, dinner is on the table!" her husband proclaimed as he and her best friend emerged to join the dinner in progress from their extensive, lengthy tour of their basement.

2. "Drop me off here dude...", and then he added, "please." The rain was fierce hammering points of liquid fury onto fools out-of-doors. He slammed the truck's door and dipped into his coat's hood with the repetitive rain clouding his hearing so that he only heard the passing hiss of air as if he was trapped in a seashell's cavernous nautilus, intoning brief reflection on his youth before quickly striding down into the dark neighborhood streets of danger, demise, regret...alone.

3. Exiting the train station he had the cigarette perched upon his lip, ready, before he opened the exterior push doors. The cold scratched at his exposed skin, a flame kissed the awaiting tobacco stick, wind curling around skyscrapers making ignition troublesome. A down-on-his-luck character approached him in his hurry; eyes connected, pleading looks and inward groaning, he shook his head no. Across the busy street he paused, guilt clouding his gut. He looked back to recompense his callousness but the person was gone, the moment passed, decision cast.

4. I raced into the train as the doors shut, settling into the gaze of an old gentleman observer, and in reaching for my small Bible I saw the hidden fortune cookie. I offered it to the man, who was so surprised that he took a long time before shaking his head negatively, and it caused me to smile to myself as I put the unopened message back in my satchel in exchange for the book of Mark in my tiny Bible given to me as a gift when I was baptised.

5. I was so happy to have time alone with her because she amazes me with each topic we squeeze in between the crowd's surges and exclamations and peels of laughter. I'm too scared to let her know that I admire her, nervous to move too fast, cautious of error, and I find myself spending long thoughts, daydreams I guess, hoping for more minutes to become lost together with her.

Gentle Extending Hand

A message to myself and those smart enough not to tune out...

"So we must listen very carefully to the truths we have heard, or we may drift away from them. For since the messages from angels have always proved true and people have always been punished for disobeying them..."

I choose the KJV here for this one to tie it together, more bossy and bold:

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..."

But I love my LIfe Application version sooooo much, which says it as so...

"What is faith? It is the confident assurance that somthing we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead."

That is encapsulating, engulfing, to me. That is worth seeking out on any terms prescribed unto me. It sure beats the terms I've been given by any other persona in my life.

Faith is needed: My alcohol problem, my smoky lies, my unfinished attempts...faith. Faith. FAITH, carefully, words by both authors show the love, guidance, care, concern, needed articulation of faith to those that seek or care or even peer in curiosity in a moment's lingering. We should see the unquestionable love that extends to us, backward and forward, from our meager step to take one mico-brain second to believe, or even give pause for consideration.