Pornfunk

Last night we had another in a series of quasi-fruitful band rehearsals. The whole band has not gotten together since before Christmas, and there are many reasonable explanations for this. Seems the lot of us have been going through relationship issues that we needed to devote a level of mental time to, and there has been a definite lack of cohesiveness in the band and where we think we are going. Since I have been living with the reality of a collapsed relationship, I sort of got on my soapbox and took to analyzing where we are as a band as if we were all in a relationship together. I think the metaphor helped us look at ourselves in a different light, and hopefully, by looking at it in new ways, we can see what the next step is. In the beginning, of course, it was awesome. Whatever we played together clicked and we were all filled with the vitality that we were going to go far and long together and make music that meant something to us and was technically good. Of course we noted where it was going to need a lot of work, but the proof was in the energy that we had after we played. Purely sexual. When you hit it together and each part harmonizes and radiates off each other, you lose yourself and become the music itself, and when you stop, there is the buzz and a certain happiness knowing that you are going to do this again and again and it is only going to get better. And this is what happens. Sometimes when one of us had an idea that we wanted to get across, a kind of feel, or a progression that we wanted to explore, we would get caught up in labels and issues and inhibitions, and there was difficulty and we got uncomfortable, but we also understood that whatever we talked about today, even if we disagreed, was going to get worked though tomorrow. We all just wanted to play and get better together and continue to discover what was special about playing the kind of music we wanted to make. Our library of songs grew until we thought we had barely enough to play the local bar, and then we went out and played there. If I remember right, there were very few people there, and none of them were much interested in hearing music that they did not know. We are not a cover band, so no one could have known our music. That and the band's pornographic name have always been known issues, and though we regularly discuss changing both, we are what we are, and we wanted to be known for that. I have very little interest in making music that does not move people in a new way. I never want to be in the background musically, something that sounds like what you expect and already know. There is too much out there not to dare to show what you hear that is unique. This is my opinion, and not all members of the band share it. This is an area we disagree on. But last night, being in a mood to dig all the way to the core if need be to try to get at what we need, I kept turning the conversation from you want he wants I want to what we want. As a unit. As a band. Where are we going; what are the band hangups? Do we need to change personnel; am I the weak link? We all seem to agree that we need to get on stage, but what that's going to take is an issue. I would go on stage with no material and make it all up if need be. I would play all our old songs. I would even play covers, although I would make sure that I did them all my way. Some of the others only want to go on stage when we have reached a certain polish and have a certain number of songs that we thoroughly know. Again, I have to ask, can we get there through these differences? Like a relationship, despite what we know we don't have, do we think we can get what we need and do we think that we will all be better for it? How much am I willing to give up of what I want personally so that the greater whole can take us to the next level? Because it is about the next level. The band reached our apex in the months that we were playing at the bar, culminating in a live off-the-board recording that went on to a cd that many of our friends have received and probably forgotten by now. There is much dissension about whether this is a "complete" product, but, based on what we have done since then, it is surely the best that we have put out so far. In the Spring we decided as a band that we were not going to put any more energy into playing the local dive and we were going to focus on venues with audiences perhaps more receptive to alternative music. We continually refined our sound and explored our relationships musically in the studio, and the music that we made in those days began to suggest that we were much better and tighter than we were used to thinking we were. We have astonishing recordings of moments where we reached heights of musical communion, and buried in hours of tape are many songs that could become focused into compositions, but we were all charged with the exploration, and every rehearsal was another night of free love. We thought we could come back and work out the details contained in the jams, but we also dearly loved what we were making. But being on the cusp, some of our insecurities began to show through, and instead of trust with one another's visions, we felt as if we weren't measuring up to the expectations that we sensed the others were looking for. We tried to talk about it, but the dynamics of the individuals seemed to doom reasonable progress. Others variables included one of our members getting married and moving a considerable distance away, another member moving a fiancé from Philly, and other personal matters of that sort. We also had another musician join us and spent a lot of time bringing him up to speed with our music before he left, suddenly, to do something else. The result was a sort of stasis where we were making really good music, but we were unable to feel the band's progress toward a unified goal. We dragged through the summer and into the fall, until we got to where we are now: a group of talented musicians that hasn't played together for months. Some of us are actively looking for new bands. I asked last night, unafraid of the answer, if this band was going to go on? Do I want to go on with this band? And I do. This is the band I have. This is the band that I believe in. Could I express myself better in another setting? Certainly that is attractive. Considering the energy that I can bring, and my penchant for performance, a new relationship could be quite explosive, but I also know that it was this way in the beginning with the band I am in now, and though it is not what I want it to be, and I am, in fact, quite dissatisfied with what it is now, I believe what we can do in the very near future can surpass what we have accomplished so far. That we all have to believe is the issue. I can't make it happen without them. Unless we all believe, we have nothing. We are just marking time and dreaming of the unknown, puffing ourselves up to look like it's not us that is the problem. Blaming and trying to control situations beyond our power drains the spirit and takes the spontaneity and fun out of our time together. We begin to avoid it and when we do show up, we only give a little and try to protect ourselves from criticism that may not even exist. We no longer need to hear from others about our deficiencies, we anticipate them and create them by ourselves. I mentioned last night that we should probably be having this conversation with a therapist in the room. A moment of humor ensued. And we played a little. I have been going out of my comfort zone to learn a little of a new instrument, and we messed around with the sound. And it wasn't great sex, but it was nurturing attention, and for the moment, we were just a few guys who loved music, working out with what we had and laughing. As to the future of the band, we just can't know this. All anyone ever has is now, as tenuous as this may seem. We can talk about what we want to have happen and we can work toward it, but both of these things happen in the moment, and merely provide the impetus to give or not give the next time we are in the now together. The real question becomes: "Do I have the courage within me to bring my best to a situation that may not work out how I want it to?" See you on stage.

That Circus Shine

How often I forget who I am. I get lost
So easily. To step outside for awhile. To
Suddenly see the moon as itself as it
Always is. It's never been my lover or friend.
It's just a light that changes shape from
Bright to gone. It reminds me of when
I first saw the beauty of a face and knew
That I wanted to look and look, knew that
I would fall asleep and wake to absence.

And absence has been my memory alone.
Not as real as the love showing as shadow
On the lawn, so long unseen by design
And hurry and desire. The little crooked
Smile grows deeper in his bed. Not where
I am anymore, nor can return nor would.

How easily I lose the certain glow of change,
It's power forgotten in daylight's intensity.
Step outside for awhile. The quiet is now
And there is no one who will believe
That circus shine is not meant for you and me
Unless we sleep. Unless we sleep, love grows
Beyond whatever we wanted, and around its
Strange adventure of forgetting, goes on.

Scribe

Tonight I feel a little lost. It's ok, because I have been a traveler my whole life and I am used to it. I know the terrain well, and even though I don't know exactly where I am, I know that I am looked after. I know that I am loved. I have this impulse to write that has been neglected in the last few months, and I have been posting on this and on the mirror. I can't stop. I feel like I have a fountain of words in my head and I have to let them out or go crazy. Writing has always been my therapist, and I am always saner when I let it out. Some of you may have read most of the poems I have been posting already, but I find it so strange to come back to them and see that they are still me. The test of a good poem is if it speaks to you even when it was written long ago. Something that was written by a different person about different circumstance (really still me, just back in the sea of time, or rather swimming in a now as memory) still calls out with truth. I wrote the last one about the moon, but, because something on the order of 90% of all poems ever written are about the moon, I tried to find what it was about the shape and the shadow that was unique. Somehow it became a paean to life in the lost lane, a plane that I have been dancing on for a few days now. I was struck anew by it's poignancy, and how much like it I felt today. It's so hard to accept truth when it is not what you thought it was, and when you have been thinking of yourself as part of something, it is wretched to realize that you are back to the beginning again and you are alone. I believe with my whole heart that the only thing left to do is to love more. When my mother died, I grieved deeply, but I didn't let go of the love I had for her. I loved her more. When my intimate relationships have broken down and it becomes obvious that we are no longer a couple, I say goodbye, and then I love them more. Of course, I can't love them in the same way. I can't touch them with the intimacy that I once did, but I can still believe in them. I loved them. Once they were my world. Would I really rather forget them and let my world contract, or would I rather keep that love, nurture it, forgive, and accept them so that there is more love? This is the personal philosophy that I take the most heat for. Most just don't seem to understand. Usually, I am thought of as still being "in love" with my ex-lovers. Sometimes I get mistreated by those I continue to love because they know that I love them beyond what they do. For my legion of flaws, (which, taken all together, make the perfect self) this is not one of them. Each time I love, I grow stronger. Each person that I have loved stays with me in their most beautiful state. The forgetting is for the bad times, the misunderstanding, the fights. Forgetting is for how I feel when deep in loss. I honor my love by loving, and when I feel lost, like tonight, I remember how my heart felt the first time I saw her face, the first time I held him in my arms, the first time I gazed into my mother's eyes and saw in them myself as love.

Mourning

On Saturday, my relationship with a fine woman came crashing to an end. Well, I feel like I was in a crash, but the actual breakup was pretty reasonable. We had a mutual understanding that there was no longer enough spark between us to continue with all the detailed arrangements that we had to make to be together. I have a son, she has sons. Blended families are hard enough. I am now in the vacuum of post relationship. For the last several months, we have been in constant contact with each other at work and home. Now that is gone, and though it is good to know what it really is, I miss her. No more instant messages. No more pictures. No more emails. No more contact. Harsh reality. Where once she and hers were mine, now they are not. It's Tuesday today, but it feels like Monday again. And I am happy in many ways, and optimistic. It was a good relationship to have, and I am glad I had it. We tried hard enough to make it work and it didn't. I can live with this. But the mind, still used to it's habits, spins out the questions. They keep me up at night, and there is a deep sadness in the shadows of my life. Yes, Time, I know you will cure me. Meanwhile, the dance goes on. Work and son, friends and music. The issues I had before I met her are still with me. What is the point of my art? What am I really going to do about the issues I feel passionately about? How am I going to break out of the musical funk that I have been in with my band since Fall? How am I going to be the best Dad for my son? I stare at the screen. Outside, the sky is gray. This is the feeling of freedom. The familiar feeling that the wind can come up at anytime and up I'll go. And I remain intent on seeking the deepest of me I can find. This is the constant. I know so much, and there is so much more to know, and my mind does not stop. Undisciplined mind. I love you, but you gotta give me a little break here. Accept, finally, what is before me. I am a big fan of being here now, but I am in the past. Remembering, loving and feeling the love, even as it releases me, grow. This is part of my mandate. No matter the hurt, I live in it so that I know it's power. I open to it as honestly as I can so that I can learn Love's true nature, so that I can open out and release it back into the world. To bring more light where there is so much darkness. I can do this.

Three if by Sky

In the air
as if solid I leave her
behind miles of clouds
and the telephone of her voice
her world enclosed between
ancient elevations that become
meaningless in the drone.

I am heading from the last woman
who knew me to the first, searching
for the part of love that resists me.
I am hidden inside the flashing eyes
of what I have become.

Somewhere
below is a body that hunts for mine
with perfumed breasts and loneliness.
Her eyes will watch for me all night
but her silence is what I will always
put my finger to as if the heat
of what I don't know causes me
to appear only to her
only to the sound
of something moving just beyond her reach.

The Other’s Breath

Skin bursting through skin—
In the morning, am I without?
Bedclothes twisted about my body
From turning after my beloved—
Where is the one who has touched me
In the dark? Arched back,
Slope of thigh, parting red sea—
The dense odor of two desires
Rises and slowly dissipates—
Burning away, as the sun becomes
My lover's vital mouth.

We are caught in the old web
Of saying the spinner is dead
Because the husk of its body
Has been eaten by the young—
But every night the legs interweave
With something that has more life.
Something near us in the dark
Whispers with an urgent voice—
Quickens with the other's breath.
Something beyond our own urges—
A lover beyond what we can see.

He Comes Home

Being from here and returning, a thief
Recognizes the structure through change
And complies, stealing quietly about

Among our houses and lawns, courting
The old gods with supplications
Dragging his lamed leg, his face

Shiny coming through the bushes.
He intends to get back in.
The child has left the window open.

Raft

I would love to lie right now, about how I can take it.
I would love to have hope with me on my shoulder.
I would love to believe, in this moment, that all I have is exactly what I need.

But they have come, and into my being they desire
My eyes and what I see, my mind and what I think,
My heart and who I love, my hands and what they do.

My raft bobs on the sea and carries me too far out
To be loved by one heart. The fog has taken my view
Of your face from me and your voice is lost in the wind.

And these are yours, which are mine, too. And the words
Trail after the shoulders of time; too complex,
Too complicated. Too much like what you already know.

Alive in me, their wings fold in when I wanted them open.
"Don't cover me! Don't come for me! Let me sleep
In my lover's arms." Their hearts roar with love!

What I felt as my raft is become the next stage,
The one I have been shouting about is come
As a hand on my face, turning it toward the ache.

At Dawn All Night

Always with this sword it is change that brings the night
out of the day and puts the word against the curve
with a kind of wind that is hot within the breath

with a quick flash of rose across the cheek of interest
that starts at the end and moves to smooth hope
again to die, at last to breathe it in and keep

the passionate victories at bay with quelling
and an ointment made of metal shavings and blood
stuffed in whatever break in the dam that should appear

because the nature of alive is drawing in
and the war is always me and what I own against
what I have only wanted as the truth of who you are

that this sword deep in the fist and singing
has a word etched beneath the crimson shine
and the night will bring its velvet cloak to dawn

Words Aimed With a Strange Precision Like the Burning Toward Relief

It is with the rain on down that come
the senses of change must adorned
in hollow drum of course and run

and where is the tin ally who requires
the ear to balance along the eave and hang
ballasts governed by wit begun

A shallow blackness nothing more
said or anything that leaps up-stream
can hide from one who lay beside
the music of no one's hand but God

as patient and relentless to dreams
not yet born but come, but come

How Do I Say

As if it were the very meaning of it all
against the light of others who mean
to let their cats fight all night long
and just get a new dog in the morning
because the money is good
and they forgot to fret about the meaning
or the meaning was enough
and they let the money come and go

But it was you I wanted to impress
with the madness of my spins
through the empty parking lot
at the old college of before now
it was you I always looked for in the thin
crowd I wouldn't command without
and they danced and I made out
like the feeling of this and the edge
held anything more than lost hours

And I got a little bit down at the corners
and tucked in where I was asked
and brought out the dust and the sighs
and lost out behind the desks of day

Where there was no darkness
and pain was something that forgave
and asked again anew if there was
anything I kept trying to forget

And I said with my face in a curl
I am this box scratched from the inside
and one of your cats is not going to live
and the money you sent is only paper
drawn on with a child's hope
and if I get another chance to go on
with the wine and the laughter and the dance
what has changed will be the music
of how broken means more more more

Rare Earth

I am so full of strange appreciation for what my life has become since coming to Randolph. This little town has been great balm to me. I have had a lot of help, and most of it seems to come from some sort of just-out-of-consciousness place. I came here trying to recover from a failed relationship that had managed to strand me high on the rocks for a very long time. I had to leave to salvage what was left of me. But it wasn't as if the bonds were broken. They were merely stretched a longer way. And I survived and rejected the impulse to return when I got so very lonely for what I once had. Ever the question: what is it I want? And what I want became what I had as I peeled back the lamina of heartstains. And as time continued to pass, gradually I began to understand. Gradually I began to remember. I am as flawed and beautiful as I can be in this human skein, and the stories I tell to become who I am are honest in their moment, but remain just stories. But that's the deal here. This is what we have. I am what is, and what I love becomes me. Doubt undoes the laces of love's shoes, but though it can be made to seem to stumble, this love was here before, and will remain long after the memory of falling down. This is the love that brings to you what and who you need as if rare earth. But much of the time, we spend trying to control our world according to our accumulated stories of it. We compare our stories with others and see if they see the same plots as we do; we doubt what we feel when our stories don't follow the ones we were telling before. We listen to tales of romance or woe, and we wish our stories were so or not so. And we have to decide. As long as we believe in our stories as real, and we try to control the characters instead of letting them be what they want to be, we will be in hell. Every time I try to write the plot for me and another, there is anxiety when the inevitable twists come, and it takes great effort to remember to let the story tell itself—just be true to the moment, for really, that is what we have.

The Dark Secret of the Gods

"Beyond the sighing billowed pasture Instead of yellow or white he finds A haze of bluing smoke approaches And no protection from the minds" The dark secret of the gods—who come out of the imagination of the poets and whose power is uncontested until the name of the god is known. There are people who are so visible in their lives, they have names and are regularly found where you look for them. Their names are familiar and their voices are known. These are parent people, and I am supposed to be one of them. This is what sets me in strange lines at angles and odds; it makes me sad and strong and causes some when they think of it to become sad and some others when they think about it to become angry. I see these, but I am not one of them, nor do I want to be like them nor do I seek them out. They and their satellites orbit in universes far away from mine. But I search for that which is not like the others while still having the same set of known in my arsenal. He comes in. Blows around the room trumpets a riff he just heard and gauges my reaction,,, roles away back through the door, causes me to blow up and out the same door when he stamp walks shuffles across the hard wood floor and I blow out a huff not this. Pot separates me from him and me from certain states and me from. It is the separator. This is the separator. I am caught between the thought and the action. How to tell the story and be the story and disappear into the stream…becoming comma chapped and jay branched and out the windowed and next to the road between the house and the field. How I live in the brain and the mind is the wind. How I lose in the fray but get back all the minutes that wasted on wallpaper in a flash of torpor and smoke. Drive him away with out the exclamation. It's a give an out where thirst is covered by the what if of alloy and play gives the soft rolling hill without the form of familiar blue moves. Without an anchor, I am as the chaff in the wind and the wind itself in tow. And yes it is the holiday but books about Christmas do nothing for me. They stack up on the shelves and piles and towers unstable and mock at me in the way the volume of synonyms do. I give up, and come to my place on the top of the bed. You can, too. Because I want to make you happy in the way an unexpected yellow flower cup on a brown forest floor surprises the thought of walking by yourself where you belong. Along the river and through the colors that should be covered in white by now, should not be me strolling this way or yellow to make someone as smile as that. What surprise and happy. Where you go because I. Where I am because you. What all forgetting does to the mouth and the taste of freedom shouted into a microphone. Without hope and without awareness. As a string without the rounded impression of the young woman's ass that my hands were seeking all night in dreams, you have to know that you were meant to slide in that way with the joke and though it is not understood as it was sent out must be carried through with as a new undertone and a place along the going path. And there is where you see your hat. How it got in the stream is where we will have to come back to in the way things are gotten to. I cannot conform. Not to what I think I should conform to, nor to anyone's idea of what should be. I cannot conform. I will it to not. This is my internal mandate. This is the prime directive. This is the internal monologue that cannot be shut off. A constant virtual scan of what is normally done is instituted and applied, with variations and the piece of itself that will has or is. It wants what it is; it is what it wills. This is what is operating as my god. This is the god in place of the one that could have me in its center. This is the law I am unto and why I must for the things that can the least be understood readily, why the color has a hue on the edge where it can hardly be seen, and why the normal party is not the congregation of the most stupid of the society against that which will only isolate itself away from by any means available. Moving into the world this way, I am not disappearing so much as I am reassembling myself into what I think of things. This is the picture my mind wants to take and the manipulation of the physical that has itself for its want and for its desire. Unto itself, as itself in the capacity of what it is. What it is is what I long to leave imprinted, though only virtually on the consciousness of itself. This is the commandant dream and the onus of its own weight. I am this which is written, in the place of the writer now and having been there in no position to ever be erased, even if erased. Listening through the back of the sound, by being, as it is without outside, behind and between as a moment when there is only one. Only you and I am not. I am was and am not am, but behind and upbetween where the two edges overlap and blur and mean two things and neither thing…where the dinosaurs go when I am with them and where the deal is met with the dark beings of the other side. And I wanted there to be us there and I wanted you to have the movement and the wind and there were enough coffins already where the souls were burning and you could slip in and out there right there along the walls. Find yourself without any reason to stop and the lines move together and form the swimming vision of what is always right there but has no image that can settle with the language that there is available. Swims on and out with or without us and I am and You, the horned one and the savior whose birth had a fall to knock the taste out of the mouth of stars and the cattle cars and the iron bound gesture. The waiting there is no without with. No further out than that or that and no further. I don't expect to find numbers here of anything or a blender that mixes what you want with what I am, because we already are this amount of us and all in circles and order now not so much and less now gone and you say is it really that easy? Without the constant sound, without the chatter of the long ago outmoded addiction, what rushes in is the night with its images of the absolutely known in the forms of contiguations of stars and the space that we jump through to get beyond. We are the space of mostly not. Where time fills in the missing information and the feeling of grass growing so close to our faces wants chatter, wants forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness that has no end and no beginning, that stretches into the ink of the between stars and makes the maze so impassable. Just looking up is the forgiveness, just walking toward the end of the day in the gloaming, thinking of all the words that mean nothing how the collide of wind and breath and the solid sounding names of the houses and the people passing within them. We are the outside of rivers misnamed flowing beneath the empty tolerance of the bridge. The dance of the fireflies is long ago and will not be coaxed back until it is time. When the time is crossing the same bridge on the other side at the same time as this one, what is it that is negated? What motion is it that hides from our knowing wet and makes it live in the arms of old lovers the same? The fireflies, and the cans of empty beer and the stubborn toothbrush of our quick passing childhood, now mottled and shared among a certain number of others, wanting order, forgetting passage beneath as if it didn't happen every day that way. That we didn't pass this one in our truck only two days ago, when the sign was still posted and before the last of the paint fell from the randy birch. Oh melon of smashed besides, still uneaten in the pastures and snow unbidden though won't come, and the piece in the lilacs buried still in the memory of the back yard, throw the redness into the abyss and come over with me. Come over with me now without the edge to your voice. Come over with me, I have crossed so many times already with this basket and this brazier, my smoke convincing in its palaces and knights. I would weigh without the candles how my felt head wood pull into pages of passing, rough gloved and true enough to bring the guardian down and face the webs of sleep without challenge; haunt the refuge until there was a valley of unmet corn in shallow rows. From within I would hurl toward the fast moving future the ears of my childhood as they listen for you in the distance of the last whine almost completely gone now, almost completely gone. But out and over, the story walks down across the river and between the schools and while the soft steps tap past the porch of women they lull just a bit and you can feel the attention briefly, like a bite of an apple or the taste of grapefruit on the sides of your tongue. Make him wait any longer and you will have to run all the way to the end and back and your story doesn't have you moving in here until several more as yet undisclosed events have been tweaked into existence by you. Master of carnivals leaving in the night, master of songs song from the bottom of a well. It eases beyond the interest of one and as the story becomes so does it come out of itself, to do the instances it would, have its hunger recognized and the gain was the leaky pail kicked over in a Jimmy Stewart western, where the action stopped and there was no where else to go, the line so distinct and so crossed over, the paleness of her face you see from the sides but never from straight on. That's what I wanted to get at before; the straight on is what, a confluence of the intended, the expected, the known and accepted? The question with the answer you just don't notice when you got it as a sing song in your breastbone and the slaughter of the daughters firing faster fingered bullets through the softness of her mouth.

Happy to work for it

Strange the many ways that events can be labelled. I had a fitful night's sleep. Brainpan was overflowing with charge. I had dreams of visitations from beings that were so compassionate and so overwhelming. I don't usually dream like that, but there have been many parts of my life calling out to me. I was feeling a little powerless. When I woke my son, he complained that he had been awakened three times by the color 'red', and I certainly remembered how red these beings were. I don't put a lot of stock in the world usually unseen by us, but it regularly interacts with me. Another way to put this is that I have a lot of impulses that I can follow or not. Not following leads to restlessness. Following them brings me strange energy. I have allowed myself to be consumed by the world, and I am a sad and misaligned creature when I am in this way. But something always rouses me from my slumber. I can't manage to stay awake on my own, but I have a lot more help than I usually admit. Awakeness is happiness, and unhappy things can be going on all around me, but when I am in line with my true being, I see them as a play that I have joined. My part is really to enjoy the show. Harder than it sounds. I really get into my roles sometimes. The role of "Dad" is a heavy one for me when I sleepwalk through it. I get all caught up in the right thing, and trying to raise a good little human. I forget that soon enough he won't be little, and I forget what Dads look like to little kids. He spilled some mystery liquid into my computer keyboard and now the letters stick. He wouldn't admit he did it and I found myself getting very upset and gearing up for another lecture, and he started to cringe, and though I rarely spank him, it is the nuclear option for me and he knows it. And I saw him cringing and I could feel his fear, and I told him, "No one is going to hit anyone over this. But I am mad and I want you to know how I feel." He totally relaxed and I felt like he heard me. This little bit did a lot more for me. I felt the power of control surge through me. I felt the compassion of deeper knowing. Another role that is challenging for me is "Boyfriend", sometimes known as "Mate", "Partner" or "Husband" among others. This role has such power. The art of sexual gratification, the sharing of simple things together. The promise of carrying ideas and goals forward with another beautiful human. But the dark side is that it is so easy to lose sight of what brought you together in the first place. Like trying to do things for yourself, seeing another for what they are takes a lesser priority to the bells and clanging of the rest of the world. As it slips in priority, so it slips in its power. Instead of little everyday maintanence, I find myself taken aback by what I have allowed to idle without my breath. It has been my habit to sleep heavily when I most need to be alert. This is a lesson I have had such trouble learning, and so I have to keep auditioning. Fate always brings me what I need, and I always want to practice learning to love more. There is an endless supply of love that just needs to be acknowledged for all obstacles to fall away. But that's getting out of the role. That's the next level, and though I know it is right here right now with me, I have to stay awake for it. I have to know it is there and live it. Which is where I am now. "Trouble, it is not true that I know you..." Not denial of all the complications and challenges, but a willingness to see them for what they are and work to make the powerful world inside me stay visable that it can benefit those I love. Just this knowing that I am cared for beyond my understanding invites me to turn to those I have loved and make of it more light, more love, more forgiving, more compassionate, as those who love me keep showing me.