Some Parts of Wisdom

Knowing when to speak and when to keep silent is difficult, but great
Knowing that everyone should not and cannot be spoken to in the same way, and changing the way you address different people doesn’t *necessarily make you unreal, fake, imaginary, etc.
Knowing that saying what’s on your mind at any time doesn’t *necessarily make you “real”
Knowing that being human is a very complicated and non-static thing
Knowing that everything isn’t for everyone
Knowing that you could offer a word to a certain person at the right time and change their direction 180 degrees
Knowing that you could offer a million words to that same certain person at a different time and have no effect
Knowing that sometimes you might have to say those words to that certain person, regardless
Knowing that you could do nothing and it could work out
Knowing you could do everything and it could still never work out—- and to not become bitter, hard-hearted or overly cynical during the process may be difficult, but beneficial, and does not necessarily translate into naivety
Knowing that things “working out” isn’t necessarily “working out”
Knowing that the world does not perfectly fit into the conventional binary of “good, evil” no matter how much easier it seems to make things
Knowing that there are infinitesimal worlds in this world, each containing infinitesimal stations, that people are all at their own stations, and that they arrive at wherever they are to arrive at the time they should, not when anyone else thinks that they should
Knowing that on some level, everything is truly in its right place, even the wrong things

Knowing that you truly know nothing about how all of it works and not being afraid to admit it.

The Wolves Teeth

Extracted straight from the mouth of the big bad wolf like dr. desoto because sometimes that’s what’s life’s quests requires. and huffing and puffing and blowing his house down because that’s the way life cycles.

‘The Wolves Teeth’ is the beginning of the narrative that unfolds in a frantic semantic landscape. The dismantling and reconstruction for the search of Truths sake. and the ending. And the inbetween twist together. It is beauty in difficulty and difficulty in beauty. Metaphors and symbols that transform in the head and in the hand, multiplying, converging and diverging. It explores the complicated relationships between myself (myselves) and yourself (yourselves) and the others. between brilliance and nonsense. between strength and fragility, comedy and tragedy, reality and absurdity.

headphones are recommended.

please click the thumbnail below for an enlarged view of the artwork.

dreamed free to love

I dreamed I was free to love
woke up to a screen screaming images of a jarring sequence
seen at the local precinct or torture center and I was the enemy
trying to shake any last decent thought I entertained of being human
like pouring wet cement
in the valves of this heart and hardened slowly
I didn’t let it happen

I dreamed I was free to love
Woke up with my fingers in the light socket
and blew my charred remains a kiss goodbye
I wait patiently for reassembly

Dreamed I was free to love
Woke up hanging by a thread
to some words that they told me were never said
But I held them in my head just the same

Had a dream I was free love
and woke up to insults being poured in wounds the size of a fault line
like a free for all in a salt mine
but I pay them no mind

dared dream I was free to love
Woke up inside the clenched jaws of some feeling heavy as a bear trap that wouldn’t budge
the glimmer of its stubborn steel teeth mocking me for taking the bait
for trying to love
I laughed back and kept prying at those jaws and wait
for them to open

Had a dream I was free to love
I was awakened by the sound of screaming doves
falling from the sky with firey wing tips
their crime was a love for the sun so intense
that it made them long for it
made them drawn to it so they set out at dawn
to meet its warm embrace
and as they came too close to its face it gave a kiss
too much to bear

and they collapsed

and I collect their cascading feathers from the air
and prepare for tomorrow’s endeavors-
perhaps-

to rebuild these wings
to try again—to take this sign
that love is not perfected in a day nor a lifetime
but grateful for the chance to try

and I thanked the owner of the sky
and the sun
for reminding me

that love takes more than a lifetime

and we have only just begun.

Sight beyond Sight

Sight

 The transparency of this overwhelming opacity.  How can one look at something so opaque and see right through it? How can one show sight clearly when everything becomes so nebulous, at one moment clear the next not? For the time being that is, until the day when all of this would seem like a day or a part of a day, that day when the veils are lifted and the sight is keen?  How far can one go and not move from the square one stands in? What is it to look?  What is it to see? What is it to perceive? The challenge is to look. The challenge is to see. To see the way children see.  To perceive.  What is the difference between looking and seeing and perceiving?

By that, I mean to take advantage of the two little organs that are plugging those sockets, those voids those holes in the skull rolling about hardly pausing too busy scanning gathering collecting the external environment capturing light rays of various lengths that criss-cross as they pass through the corneas in various amounts, various layers, depending on the level of dilation of the iris which depends on a number of factors none of which most people think about twice in a lifetime, into the retinas, upside down because don’t forget that the light rays were criss-crossed as they went into the cornea, back to the optic nerve that sends it to the brain combining two separate images that came in through those two organs that are plugging those voids and turns them right side up again, now registered as “visual stimuli” triggering senses reactions thoughts feelings emotions potentially activating areas of the mind you never thought twice about both old and new ones and the synapses are firing off left and right and middle depending on whether the visual stimuli has been previously experienced in that case it opens up some file or chamber or passage where the experience of that particular thing is located which then opens up a series of other files based on whether it is associated with pleasure or displeasure or neutral or other which may lead to memories which may lead to thoughts which may lead to feelings or  emotions which may lead to other bodily reactions and so on, or perhaps it is a new file in that case it will be a slightly different process in any case chambers are opened and closed in an endless process that happens constantly in just splits of seconds and it is a process that is more nonlinear and cyclic than linear if one thinks about it, more give and take, in that you are taking from the world and giving back and taking and giving pushing and pulling as the muscles of the eyes contract and that happens as often as the eye moves which is a lot seeing as the eyes don’t stay still for very long in their respective sockets and most never thought about it once in a lifetime.

Look again.

I challenge myself to look again to turn the bloody thing upside down and right side up again like the eyes do a billion times over without even being asked until the thing is no longer what it was when this began and yet still is in some way reminiscent of that but forever changed based on the fact these eyes have fallen upon it at this particular moment in time and based on the fact these particular eyes have fallen upon it as opposed to some other eyes for some other eyes would change it in a different way unique in its own right.

How far beyond can the eye penetrate and see nothing? To break something apart. to dissect it to bits and dissect those into bits and dissect those into bits and those into bits and those into bits  until you are looking at molecules atoms the very atoms that the universe is comprised of now blink and you are looking at the universe in an atom and you never really thought about it the very elements that are underneath this thing I am enamored by. The threads that if you were to chase them, to sustain the act of pulling upon them for long enough you would feel that the whole bloody thing would come unraveling yes eventually the whole bloody thing would come unraveling but somehow it just keeps going back around twisting and spiraling and giving and taking expanding contracting from clarity to formlessness to nebulousness and that is how transparency falls into opaqueness and back.

And so look again.

 

“Blessed is he who sees with the heart, but the heart is not with what he sees.”-Jesus

“there’s smoke in my iris…so I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids…” Aes

The View from Lebanon (photos)

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Lebanon–a small country with a HUGE view and an incredibly rich and immense history.
Here are a few moments that I was able to capture in that beautiful land.
Click on the images for an enlarged view.

modern ancient

The old world order
The new world order is built on
the slaughter of the lambs
the spilling of the blood on the lands on the pavement
it must be believed its a purifying agent.

It is done as the ancients done synchronized
with Mayan and Aztec mechanics
it must be believed that It atones sins, the way it is done.
It must be believed it keeps the ranks in their proper placement and the act is sacred
they say without words
“Approach the sacred altar with the offerings”
throw them on the pyre force feed to the fire
and pry your jaws wider because the fire is us.
Inside of us.
And the smoke of smoldering bodies rise up like the phoenix.

Trail of its ash cascading black blanket cast itself over earth
Twisted comfort
Trying holding the earth hostage holding the earth under its spell
the spell that men cast on themselves allow to be cast on themselves
enchanted by the furious shaking of the charred remains
in this snowglobe

 

Metal of the fork hitting the teeth

innocent sheep shoved in by the heaps the weak the wolf pack fighting over the last piece of meat pick your teeth with the bone splinters bleached white by the summer sun for some its winter for most.

Two extra mouths replace the eyes
feast them on and on the appetite grows.

 

Picking teeth with a broken wish bone brimstone
It never felt so good to be
To be the piece of meat that the dogs fight over
To be the dead mangled dog whose white teeth Jesus marveled over
To be or not to be.
Oh, to be the bone till its picked clean white bleached from the sun!!
bone white bleached from the sun!!

“Hack them to dust…”
“bomb them to the stone age…”
“collateral damage”
eye for an eye archaic justice mantra what nobody believes in but practice fervently in the same sentence

 

Sword swallower metal rusty medallions lost their shimmer
men that lost their glimmer from the post nuclear winter.
Once polished men that lost their glimmer in their eyes

glimmer in their eyes dulled from the lullabyes.
Children lay making snowangels in the ash
Ash of the phoenix that rose
from the ash covers all.

the awakened ones

There are amongst us those of elevated standing— of insight of faith so great
that it emanates in waves
that they cannot contain in their pores
they are walking magnetic fields
attracting and repelling according to sacred codes deeper than DNA
they are conduits breathing signals
surrounded by supernatural sentinels
the cloak they don a cloak of the dawn of understanding

There are those whose foreheads bore the marks of prostrating
whose digits of their fingers calloused and bleeding light
from counting countless cycles of 33×3 = 99
that’s one for every one of the divine names revealed to mankind
signs that came to show them openings paths to find

The Highest Companion

There are those who still heed the order
to enter the gates prostrating
those who lightly tread the path of
Umar son of the speech maker,
who knew truth from falsehood
and came through the gates of Jerusalem as the victor
his servant riding his camel while he walked
donning a tattered battle tunic
clutching the keys to the city he’d conquered
with his head held in humility to the sky

There are those who act as if they have seen The Throne
with their own eyes
whose hand of discernment allows them
to pull beauty from ugly and love from fear
as Arthur draw the sword from the stone and then
slash and break like a kesara vowel
through the howl of phantom fogs

Who recognize that trying to rewrite what the Author has written
is an exercise like
writing on water with invisible ink

Those who shielded their eyes from certain sights
and in return were given the delighted eye of certainty
The eye that see that the stars against a black sky are but holes in a black cloak
that would one day be thrown back revealing a blinding brightness
light upon light
and that time lay not far away

Those who would trade an entire globe of riches
for one act of complete sincerity
and not so much as bat an eyelash

Those who have not allowed certain ways of the world to pick at their heart
in the way that vultures’s beaks at dead rotting things
Those who don’t allow themselves to pick at their own hearts
in the way children do scabs in the process of healing

Those who don’t dig for findings that suit themselves
dolling up their desires so fancifully in charades of sincerity
acts of meta-okie doke doing the hokey pokey until they’re so dizzy
that they don’t know themselves

Those whose ears are trained to the pitch of the Call
and fall in response
whose respiration corresponds to the revolution of celestial bodies
Who have fine tuned their limbs as antennas
that sway and bend like branches in the wind of winter
synchronized to Higher Purpose

Who have tied their emotions with their intellect
But yet have not handicapped themselves with the latter

Those who would rather busy themselves with removing the impurities
in their own homes than go peering into the windows of others

There are those of elevated standing buried in our ranks
hidden well amongst us
unassuming in appearance
their marks are so subtle that
those too busy drowning in their own shallowness of thinking
would not notice if they came into contact with one
maybe they have come to you from time to time
and maybe you received them properly
and maybe you refused them

there are those who are strangers
who don’t sit at the feet of kings
who never cared to have their face frozen by cameras
who bled Revolution but don’t try to make their bread off it just live it
whether they do whether they do not,  so be it
who live as if they are already dead like Malcolm X once said
who are passersby and pass away quietly and unknown like
the woman known only as the black one who swept the Mosque

there are those
who go about their affairs
as the tree that falls in the woods with none to hear
and they take delight in being this way

there are those who are truly living
the awakened ones

just recompense (for the people of the land of the sun)

I bled this lead poem
from a third eye
from the dark side of an eclipsed solar disc
knowing it would shine again because an eclipse can’t last
and scribbled on the walls of the 69th cell in permanent red ink
like the author of the Algerian National Anthem before he escaped
and this was hurled and heard like mangled pieces of invisible shrapnel
but it ain’t just recompense

I don’t consider this just recompense
for brethren picking through mounds of rubble that used to be a home before missiles struck
twice in the same place like haywire lightning
in search of a baby sister
while the world watched did nothing for reasons that don’t make sense to me
hidden in plain view by
Mr. Sinister behind the podium standing at the center of the winter solstice
tryin to steal the sun from its land
telling the world with the forked thing between his jaws that he is not the maestro of a crazed Coliseum
with the forked thing between his jaws with a taste of blood for his own people

oh people of the land of the sun
an eclipse don’t last forever

I don’t consider this just recompense
because stories were distorted by the headlines to help fit them on one line to speed across the bottom of television screens
in order to make room for some photoshopped face celebrity latest break-up story
to appease devastated attention spans and boost ratings
in order to feed hypnotic conditions

so by the time I caught ear of it
the victims were the villains
and the sky wasn’t falling
and the one who’d sold the fangs to the fox in the first place was made to be the hero

What could be just recompense
for children missing for months
seized by shadows and
when they finally were sent home -the fingernails extracted from their fingers
came home wiser to the ways of the world than old men
came home with the lights in their eyes dimmed like
flashlights on the verge of burning out
and the worst of their wounds from
invisible shrapnel that hit them and they bled lead poems
that no one would ever see or hear

how could this bear witness
for one man from the land of the sun
that lay dying from shrapnel
who witnessed the event
of an unknown man in white– bright as the winter sun he had to squint
descending on him with glad tidings
that the eclipse would end
and the sun would shine again
and prophecy cannot be undone
enough to make that witness that lay dying smile

the witnesses of the witness testify he was squinting
like one staring into the eye of the sun
and he was smiling.

oh people of the land of the sun
an eclipse cannot last forever.

suffocate.

I supplicate this suffocate me.

I supplicate this suffocate you.

to take this illusion of air

that fills my body

infuses my limbs with

convoluted illusions of breathing
that suffocate.

you see
all this “air” we’ve convinced ourselves that
we’re used to breathing–
it is choking us.

I’ve convinced myself I’m living
fooled myself into thinking this is living
convinced myself that
this repeated inhaling and exhaling
is enough to count me amongst the living.

 but calling it “swimming”

when actually drowning

does not change what it is

does not change what is happening.

calling “drowning” “swimming”

does not change the reality.

I supplicate this suffocate us
I supplicate to resuscitate us.
to see what breathing is.

Many people have become 3-dimensional shadows
I myself come in and out of it
I used to sit and wait
For the wrong shadows to respond

I supplicate this suffocate us
and then I supplicate
to resuscitate us.

 

 

the Heart–audio

This piece is best with headphones or good speakers!
Throughout the ages the heart has served as symbol for many attributes – of love, feeling and emotion, spirit, courage, honor, kindness, mercy. A palpitating paradoxic, simultaneously strong and weak. Microcosm of the universe. The seat of secrets. What depths it holds. what knowledge it contains. A type of knowledge needed now as much as it has ever been needed before….and at the same time something that has been all but forgotten, abandoned…. we have to learn how to listen to it again.

This is “the Heart.” an audio piece that I spent a great deal of time thinking about in an effort to try to do it justice.  Can’t say I have. Hope that something in this speaks to your heart.