A series of poems (cont.)

In hazy moonlight
Some somber tears glow.
Like roaring windswept
Hearth burnt embers floating on
The burning air of my soul.
Melting decadence
Until the structure
That is simply man remains.
These tears cannot rust
My times true virtue.
The divine alloys the earth
Into the superstructure
That builds skyscrapers.
That builds bridges into hearts
So thick with dry underbrush
That fire could not extinguish.
Set fire to the veils for years.
For years I burned my soul.
And still my soul burns.

Serenity

I have spent the past few days doing a hodgepodge of job search and applications, re-exploring the Bay Area, and simply being. I'm not going to lie, I'm really not sleeping enough, not eating right, and in pretty terrible pain because I just started running again.

As for the positive:
*I love my family, I love being around them thoroughly. I am continuing to build the relationships with them that I wasn't able to build when I was younger. I am picking up projects to do with them so we can make up for those lost younger years, but more importantly, because I want to do them.
*I have been dreaming. Not in the sense that I am engrossed in a story that I have trouble understanding. I am waking up, knowing exactly what needs to be done. I feel like I am being guided to a mental, emotional, spiritual and PHYSICAL place I need to be in this world. Mentally, I'm there, emotionally I've got a work to do, spiritually, oh lordy read me them prayers, but physically, I am close but far.

To expand: I know I have to be on a coast or in the mountains. I am at peace in these places. The sheer enormity and power that is nature grounds my fears, my sorrows, my melancholy and transforms it into something beautiful. A serenity of mind, heart and and soul that I can only achieve through meditation otherwise. Something about linking myself with the huge and immobile, and realizing how small I really am.

The moment I see the pettiness of my existence, I am able to escape the veils that I create for myself and achieve that happiness I thrive on. I have know this feeling around certain people, but this is a part of it I can achieve on my own.

Lastly: I'm a bit intuitive , but I don't trust the feeling much further then I can throw it (A friend of mine laughed at the idea of intuition. She thought it was all observation and a keen mind. I'm one to agree, kind of). I'm learning to trust it in certain situations, and I'm not going to lie, I think I am going to end up in Davis for work, or not going to be working at all. I'm ok with it. I thought I had to escape the place to acheive who I am, but that is silly and short sighted. There may be a place I have to be eventually, but wherever I am in the meanwhile is a place for me to grow.

So I just keystyled this, but its fitting:

I love to love. I love to care. I love to cry. I love the air. The crisp sensation, that cuts your breath. The fire in your lungs, the right and left. I cannot express, what tears evoke. I love to love. I love to hope.

Series of Poems

I've been working on a series of poems off and on over the past 6 months and almost all of them are in a classic Japanese style. Lots of 5-7-5, and some 7-7-7-5-5. All of them either following the style completely or mimicking a style. Here are a few of them... (None of them are named)

Enjoy.

Spring the laden petal drops--
Dew--Scent mingled solitude.
The thorns thus draw my force out.
Within; life courses
Through every beauty—
Even that which has no blood.
For love is beauty.

In the sky where lovers play
And truth is but a kiss
Of summer breezes.
I miss the gails and thrusting winds
That parry words without substance,
And demand my blood written heart
As a crystal vase for their spring blossoms.
My breath I would trade for your attacks,
If I could only know your voice.

Things I Must Do

I'm graduated and am free of any real commitment. This is a list of things I have wanted to do and haven't been able to for whatever reason:

1. Spend large amounts of time submersed in nature.
2. Read Catcher in the Rye
3. Return borrowed books and lend books to friends who have let me borrow them.
4. Return to the physical conditioning I had about a year ago.
5. Get the tattoo's I've wanted to get.
6. Continue my progress on the guitar
7. Write a real poem.
8. Smile
9. Visit friends and family I have not seen in some time.
10. Serve at Bosch.
11. Re-educate myself on the meaning of shibumi. Return to that ideal.
12. Related to 11- Be what I am, nothing more and nothing less.
13. Read Pride and Prejudice

That is it so far, but I feel the list will grow.

Sunspots

The time between slumber and wakefulness,
Where the world is observed through the lens of the subconscious.
The place where your showering and dreaming simultaneously
Is where I don't see sunspots.
Thats when I know it is time to wake.

I stand in my whitewashed,
2 by 5 shower and bathtub enjoying
The almost burning sensation of slightly too hot
(But not really too hot because thats how I drink my tea)
Water circumnavigating my body.
Those dreary eyes are slowly opening--
Trained.
They know what the shower means, so,
The day begins.
As I ponder my days activities
And have a mental discussion as to the best
possible courses of action I remember my first sunspot.
I remember looking at the sun because it was brilliant--golden-warming--perfect.
An orb of grandeur hanging in the midday sky tanning my skin to a color so dark,
Some persians thought I was indian,
And some strangers would speak Hindy to me.
Needless to say,
I burned my eyes.

This sunspot,
This blindspot.
This place I no longer have vision exists with me permanently.
A tattoo to remind me of childhood innocence.
A physical embodiment of what it means to look up at the skies.

My second sunspot happened much later in life.
A fluttering heart perhaps.
Or perhaps a thoughtful necessity.
Either way a conscious decision to behold a light so strong,
It burns away all veils of this reality,
Leaving you with nothing.
No sight to behold,
No truth to rationalize,
No stupidity to blame.
Just existence.
Just deep, profound, divine existence.
An existence so astounding I remained in a lowly stupor
For hours groveling at what it meant to be alive.
The pain so great you realize what it means to be alive.
A reality thought lost demands you to be alive.
All extremes demand of you to be alive.

As I scan the various latitudes and longitudes of this faux tile plastic knockoff waterproof indoor siding,
I see more sunspots.
Or rather,
I fail to see whitewashed plastic walls.
Almost as if,
They are mobile pinholes in my reality,
That give me a veritable peepshow into true existence,
Where the Sun burned through the veils of this world.

Some holes are barely noticeable,
And still others remind me of pop flies in the outfield,
Or headers that lounged too lazily in the sky.
They litter my vision in these morning hours,
Where the sun gently wraps its warmth over the land.
A time where I can stare at its magnificence,
Without fear of destroying my facade of human vision.

There are times in dreams where I stare at a wall and see no sunspots.
Times when the pages of a book are pristine and intelligible.
I frantically search for my past in those moments.
Needing my proof,
Of humbling myself before a higher power.
And when I fail to find them,
I always wake in a cold sweat.
Heart racing and soul fearful of a boy so overconfident,
He lays all his affairs on his feeble shoulders
And rests all his gazes on the shallow earth.
Slowly.
Very slowly I remember:
There is glory in abasement,
And transcendence in lowliness.