Grapefruit Jams

"Everybody knows that you break your neck to keep your chin up." -Copeland, Chin Up

It's another beautiful day, even though it is cold.  The sky is grey as most things are turning out to be.  All of it just seems to be this vast work of art, and I cannot get my mind around it all, and the mystery is that I never will.  No matter how hard I think on all these things, or how long, I never get my mind around it.  We're made to miss something.  Be it in the fabric of our thought process, or in the fabric of our lives, missing someone, or missing something, missing the idea, or missing the formula.  We end up missing one thing or another, but in truth, missing many things altogether.

In this fabric of our conscious and subconscious, we'll always be missing someone.  This is our state.  We are merely stuck in one place in time and space, yet our mind goes elsewhere, knowing we are not in that other place with this other person or that other person.  We are here, missing all the people we do not even know yet that we will come across in our future, however long that will be.  We don't always feel this weight of the people we've yet to meet, and yet to miss, but we will find them in our time, and miss them just as much.

Maybe we just take for granted everything we've ever had.  Maybe we aren't taking anything for granted, but are so overwhelmed with what we do have, we don't feel good enough to live with what we've been given.  

Maybe my life was never meant to be about me.  Maybe your life was never meant to be about you.

Maybe our lives were meant to be bigger than this bubble that surrounds us with our own thoughts about ourselves, and we're really meant ot get outside that bubble and love on others around us.

Maybe there is more to love than we think.  maybe our ideas of love are broken as we've been broken continually around every corner.  But maybe, this shattered vision of love is something we can throw out with the trash because it was never really love to begin with.  Maybe we can get outside ourselves and love others, and its really what we've ben looking for.  I don't know.  Maybe we're content, not looking for a single thing and our lives are already full and complete and we need no one else inside it because we are like a stone, strong and cold, and collecting dust, and sneezing because we have dust allergies and soon we will swell up like a balloon and because we needed no one else, there IS no one else to take us to the emergency room, and there we will lie, colder than we were before with no one to find us...cold.

At any rate, we can still love, and stop being selfish brats about our existence.

Grapefruit makes the day better, too.

Unless you're allergic to grapefruit....

Reality Check

I'm no better than anyone else.

We are all the same.

In 1984, we'd find that this is the lower classes chant and phrase.

Regina tells us, "People are just people"

And they are just like you,

And we all are just people,

No better, no worse,

Yet we rank and judge and curse,

Our neighbors flesh,

The riotous breed

To conquer, we must conquer something,

To be someone,

To merely be.

But we conquer everything else,

Because the hardest task is ourselves,

To conquer and to know our hearts

That we've ripped out

Dust collected on the shelves.

You are not better than me,

But I need to remind myself,

I'm not better than you.

We always find a reason,

To claim kingship of what everyone else can do,

And to make ourselves better in some way,

We play these games.

But reality, stop nagging me,

Check to see if we're still flesh,

Still blood, still bone,

Still beating, still warm,

Still thinking, still breathing,

Still dreaming,

Always dreaming, crafting,

Being selfish, giving,

We are still people,

In need of love...

An abused word, as we are abused.

Pulse.

 I seem to not understand how all these things come together.

Timing worries me, yet I'm not worried.

The words move and I move,

And I stand still, standing strong,

Yet, strength is not mine,

As I cannot stand still in my own strength,

Scattered, traveling from word to word.

Never quite fully here,

Always in some way, somewhere else.

Scattered like the shattered glass,

Of mirrors shattered long ago,

From hating the eyes staring back,

Never knowing whose they were.

And I fall into my thoughts and disappear,

And I am disappearing for awhile,

To my heart to see what's going on,

Because from this distance, I'm unknowing

And as so much is happening and moving and being dug up,

I'm fighting the crowds of voices to hear the quiet

Beating inside my chest,

Beneath the ground, undead,

Only put away awhile

Dust collected, coughing, sneezing,

Opening the boxes of unrested thought.

Thoughts just pulsing, volume turned down,

Now the mute bond is breaking,

And there is some sorting to do.

There is some honesty to be had.

So I will step in front of the mirror,

And we will have a long talk,

The long avoided,

Long put off,

The conversation,

And my nerves are raw,

I hear my pulse in the deep of my throat

And I wonder if the eyes looking back at me,

Are as nervous as I am.

Disappearing

We take a drag on the cigarettes we hold,

Silently noting what we share and what we don't as moments pass that I would not trade.

Its like I want you to know everything about me.

I want to be selfish with our time.

I want you to know everything.

As much as I've hidden about myself

As much as I've not known,

As much as I've wanted to blurt out everything about me,

I want to be selfish in the time we've only begun to have.

I want to be selfish and take the time until I've had enough.

I've been a user.

A selfish breed because I've wanted.

And at some points I've wanted in vain.

I've made myself to expect nothing.

I expected nothing.

And now I don't know what to do,

Don't know how to get a hold of myself.

As you puff on your cigarette,

Puffing away your thoughts like pieces of trash on the floor,

Only to be thrown away later.

Too clouded to think past the next few hours,

Maybe even the next few moments,

All the while, aching while I'm away

Because I want to steal you away and know everything about you.

The lack of your presence has ben too long.

Even in the distance, I understand a few things,

It blows my mind, and I see your eyes,

And I know too many thoughts,

Wondering about the ones I don't know.

Another long drag, and another flood of memories.

Our present and past seem to swirl all too fast.

The smoke filling my lungs was the only constant,

And in some ways, the disappearing smoke still is.

In the lack of knowing myself, I am sad I changed my hair color

Because I want you to know the real me.

Not any type of projection.

The scariest part is that in far too many ways, you know me 

better than I do.

The Hours Moved. The Minutes Came. The Seconds Passed Away.

Our breath is being held.

Honesty is like fresh air to our lungs.

We spend our time burning.

We'd rather burn.

Our lies build us castles,

Nicely adorned with moats.

Cold stone floors,

Cold stoned windowless windows.

We are the damsel in distress,

And dragons rush to enslave us,

Keeping us where we are,

Scorching us with their breathed fire.

We long to hold the fire,

So we hold our breath

We hold dishonesty a close friend.

As long as we believe the lies,

We can still be the victims

Claiming pity

Claiming attention until we've had enough,

When the real aches of us are probably more serious still,

Pathological Liars

To play our own games because it started out as a game,

This life, this fire-playing.

We'd rather burn.

So well held is the fire, we can breathe it,

Even though we don't know what breathing is,

Yet, as we lie her breathless,

We realize, to play with fire, we need oxygen,

But that doesn't work when we stop breathing,

And the blue face worn,

Is shock and disbelief,

The victim is down

The selfish victim is down

And no one was there to hear the final cry

Because there was no crying.

No crying and crying out, as there was no breath left.

The fire burned.

We all know fire absorbs sound.

And leaves a forest, fired to the ground,

And nothing remains.

Anything within miles was consumed by the overwhelming blaze.

Exit Signs

I've got all these questions.

Some simple.

Some too complex to bring to light.

Too many things swirling like different storms

Coming to the front of the door

Dropping the wind current

Knock me down.

To be surrounded,

I am surrounded,

And they always seem to surround us with their words.

Negative in existence,

The pessimism drips forth like venom on the tongue

Wicked words finding their way to the surface,

And it makes me never want to know any deeper,

Skin deep is enough for me from you.

I can only take so much,

And your skin deep cuts like a razor blade to the chest,

Making patterns as if we were drawing pictures

With our crayons on a cream colored paper

Smearing the color as if it were paint.

You were always a fan of finger painting.

And the chest finds a way to swell with colder air

As the lungs constrict and restrict my words,

And I restrict your words letting you know my ears are full.

My heart is full of your words,

Yet I make you think I did not hear a word,

Because if you knew how deep this cut,

You would know how hard it would be to recover.

Ripping open old wounds with words not well thought out,

Your insensitivity has done you in.

You've been shown the exit sign, and have been left in the dark.

Reality

Marvel at the ways

Count the leaves like corn flakes

In the mornings cereal

Surreal in the complexities

Real in the Reality

The reality that seems like a dream.