Into Obcurity

All these things I can't explain

Or escape

That I need to explain

Become less clear by the moment

And why bother

Because I only really want one approval

And that feels so distant

In each consideration and consultation with truth

Hope recedes

Distance increases

And I fear that this vision declines into obscurity

December 2023

Waiting For the Storm

In the approaching distance

This dark eastern horizon

Spilling over in anger and rage

Receding bright western sky

Forced to the edge

Not a question which will prevail

The first soft, sparse raindrops

Give little word of the lurking deluge to follow

Though one glance at the sky

Speaks volumes towards the imminent fury

November 2023

Waltzing Silhouette

Violent longing and burning soul

Blackened roots weeping in silence 

Sustaining darkened grace

A fire rages

Casting spells of passion

A silhouette waltzing among somber shadows

Desires an unburdened heart

Without resignation to circumstance

November 2023

Reverence and Awe

Laced in varying sketches of disdain and doubt

This brooding, disheveled sky

Forecasts the demeanor of the moment

Preparing to herald the encroaching fury

Suspected to be a horizon away

Over the dividing line between my horizon and yours

Within are patches of light promising eventual calm

Its power measured in the bending posture of the distant evergreens

We revel in these moments finding renewed security in the promised aftermath

Behind, another and another, these clones of nature

Repeating the steps of what came before erasing the recess between

Each seething, venting, moving on along its destined path

And we stand in silence, looking on in reverence and awe

October 12, 2023

I'm fascinated with the seemingly endless cycle of storms that often blow through here in western Oregon in the spring and autumn. Storm moves in, vents with wind and rain for 15-30 minutes, moves on, the sun comes out, a rainbow appears, all is calm .... but not for long. There's always another storm approaching.

This is not a stormy sky. It was actually taken at the height of regional wildfire season

The Realization

Occasionally, in the blind slivers of silence, when you ultimately come to mind, the realization that your existence in this tiny corner of time and place, becomes an overflowing measure of how absolutely fortunate one was, to be present in the moment, to be a small part of, to observe the beauty and passion, to know the power of your brazen soul. If I could know the depth of your raging heartbeat, if I could fully experience its lack of boundaries, if I could touch its unifying force, how much more enriched and greater my days would have been and just perhaps, the myth, the whispered rumors of pure and blatant, inexhaustible joy would be realized.

September/October 2023

A fictional thought ...... or is it?

Creating Magic

Listening for a visionary, revelatory voice

Rising above the accepted noise

A vision follows

A shadow from another time announces arrival

A presence that alters this world

That even frenetic fragments of time wait for

Ruminating on what matters

Keeping past times vital 

Reshaping the usual static around life

The conclusions are being redefined

Creating magic from the world's chaos

And illuminating minds

Nothing is pre-determined

Reassuring that there's infinite and everlasting beauty around

September, 2023

The Dream

Looking around this room at all these faces 

We started out together

So young at that time

Many of us stayed together through it all

A few departed and returned

Some parted and never returned

Except for this moment, this dream

It's twelve years later

We've changed and yet we've remained the same

For so long I could have never imagined this moment

All together again

Like that first day

When I cried as my mother left me with you

We were all together when we lost JFK

We followed along when they walked on the moon

Friendships blossomed

Some lasting, some faded

We once thought we'd always be together

And this was my sudden dream

I often reflect on those days

Who's survived

Who remains

Who has last

And I've felt this connection for sixty years

And in this one moment, In this simple dream

We were all so young again

And these days

When I sometimes fear I'm in my final hours

For this moment we were together again

Which has always been my unspoken desire

September 6, 2023

Half a Chance

Despite humbling trepidation

Balancing fear with uncertainty

Considering dreamed of possibilities

But failing to take that risk

While searching for a path to reach .....

.....  a heart

Another soul

I suspect given half a chance

I could fall in love

August 2023

Occasionally there's someone who just appears so fantastic .... and you're afraid to risk losing that presence in your world by taking a chance. 

In That Needed Moment

Like from a risen whisper

Or revived rumor

You appeared in that needed moment

Radiating undefeatable light 

And a universe of unearthed desires and possibilities

Spreading potent significance to this place

To this lost foolish life 

August 2023

Assumptions Countered

These visions pass in frantic seconds

Becoming incomplete memories before allowed to reconcile with the present

The shattered shards of unverified promises await restoration

At the least, clarification

The process aborted with every muted reckoning

Between worth and gain

Benefit or salvation

And discovering, countering all assumptions

That it wasn't intended to be lasting

Or rewarding

July, 2023

An Unexpired Calling

Obscurity and lamentations be pushed aside

Relevance is dominant

There is always a time .... a place

Even moreso, an essential need

For vital beauty

For a raging soul

A presence both random and targeted

Intended for this time

To promote what's often unseen or neglected

To create slivers of openings for light

To create existence and beauty from sands and seeds of notions

To create from humility and passion

To sew love into the linings of ignorance

To cultivate ideas and concepts

To take little and shape into infinite forces

To deny apathy of minds and imaginations

No borders

Welding embers of abstract uncertainties and possibilities into vitalogy

Vision that interprets significance in tiny remnants of void and doubt

There's radiance emitted

Reflecting on what's latent and concealed

An unexpired calling 

May 24, 2023

For a beautiful friend who due to sudden circumstances, has been expressing questions and doubts about her future and place in the world.

Final Memory

Subdued light and fractured shadows remain

The herons have retreated for the evening

To majestic hidden sanctuaries

We silently observed and documented their parting

What if the world ended tomorrow

My final memory will be being here with you

May 2023

A time and place imagined. The person it was imagined for, very real. 

This Place

I've seen this place before

This former place of pending affirmation

In that vision

That was a different universe

An assumed reality to last beyond forever

Dictating a time

Years now lost in a mirror

May 2023

This Aging Silence

This aging silence

Too many times we've explored its lonely architecture

Aborted missives lost in the haze of fears and doubts

Though the wounded faith and passion persisted

We accepted frail victories

And sadly, documented monumental failures

Once mistook it for a bad dream

Two worlds ceased yet continued

Navigating a broken path lacking in purpose

Or direction

Why should any of this matter?

No life altering sacrifices being offered

From me

From you.

2023

Untitled For Now

A pause, as if for dramatic effect

The realization that everything had changed

A disparate chill invading this suppressed reality

Frozen in stagnation amid reluctant withdraw

Little remained from the original vision

Only icy fragments dispersed among forlorn pages

You were gone, I feared forever .....

March 2023

Sometimes sleep dreams arrive with their own reality, taking bits and pieces of the past, meshing and mingling (clashing?) with endings that never took place, creating alternate emotions and stories.

Becoming Legacy

Exist to create

Each space dictates

The beauty known to unique eyes

And abstract visions of an unlimited world and mind

Designs and legends unimagined by others

Reviving remnants and things forgotten

Telling stories for posterity  

Reinventing possibilities

Scattering grains of light

Finding wonder in ideas

We might not otherwise take notice

Becoming legacy

February 2023

For a friend. Hoping that she recognizes herself in these words. A beautiful and kind person with a passion for the arts.

Erasing Fears

Graying memories intersect with

Darkened false images from recurring dreams

Extending worrisome reactions

Emphasizing aging fears

It's taken decades to erase

How truth became obscured

How sentiment turned.

2020

For two or three years, I had a series of dreams, in which a person from my youth was reacting towards me in a manner that never happened in real life. Pushing me away. Avoidance and sarcasm. I was very confused and rattled trying to identify where the dreams were coming from. The dreams finally ceased. (I hope.)

Your Name?

Dozens of hellos and I still don't know your name

And now, stifled by fear (or shame), terrified to ask

Acknowledgement in passing is not enough.

Refusing Obscurity

Every day

Every moment

Occupying the space between frantic seconds

Tidying the chaos behind each step

Refusing to fade away to obscurity

Destitute dreams of what could be

Never forgotten

Existing in yesterday's shadows

And in words through a fractured sky

Where truth can't be touched, rendered lost by absence

Or altered by hostile forces

What matters never changes

What matters is greater than hopes and dreams

This is not the final version

(Year not noted or remembered)

The Way

A thousand centuries will pass and there will not be another as beautiful, designed by favored poets and artists, all the masters, after an unaccountable number of trials, errors and revisions, until determined as perfected, then the blueprint abruptly and purposely destroyed, discarded and forgotten to preserve total solo uniqueness, though that distinctive, isolated result, unofficially ordained to never to be erased from mythology for the sake of antiquity.

2019

Echoes

It's so quiet in this outdoor cathedral

Where there's only thoughts .... and hopes

Each developing into a penetrating likeness of unparallel beauty and soul

Visuals serving undefeated spirit

Rising images born in the fires of a boundless heart

Then the stillness here, broken by echoes of a voice

Arriving with the northern winds

After the storm and ensuing calm

And it's always been here for ages, spreading warmth

An advertisement for spiritual tenacity

How could it be anything else?

2019

Everything Stops

Your treasured presence is announced in this rolling thunder

In the intensity of your stunning essence

The ethereal softness of your voice

In your never expiring beauty

And your determination to alter the odds

You're there .... and everything else stops

2019

Too personal to share until now. Found in the pages of a notebook. I don't think it's very well written or visioned but it now reminds of some powerful feelings I was experiencing at the time.

Surviving Improvisation

Barely surviving improvisation

This was never meant for interpretation

In a language I fear

July 2020

About the attempt to sound more exciting than I really am and the reactions and assumptions of another.

Final Moments

What was the thinking in those final moments?

No hesitation or regrets?

Nothing to cause you to pause and reconsider?

For the sake of six young souls

Their aching cries in unison

What might have been

..... was forever lost in a demented vision

Of an easy way out

All silenced for greed

For an imagined charade of eternal relief 

..... from demons and ghosts 

For insane jealous satisfaction 

2021

Possibilities Without Limitations

I'd once assumed your kind had faded away

Significant grace in chaotic days

You see the world in infinite shades of compassion

You share your soul by extending dignity and passion

Sounding fragile in your convictions

The truth is far different

Rooted in ways of another time

In a refined foundation of elegance

In a gentle intensity

Speaking of possibilities without limitations

From faraway sources of inspiration

A seer in this life

Assigned roles of timekeeper and storyteller

For fear that those things might fade to oblivion

For remembering the truth

For explaining the universe

For discovering forgotten gospel

Rejoicing in those moments of shared revelations

Erasing obscurity

To the benefit of lost generations

Sifting through the muse

With insatiable calling and purpose

You became all those things

In this needed moment

When visions border on extinction

Found in the pages of a notebook. I guess I didn't think it was very good. I still don't. But it's there. it exists. I read once that it doesn't matter if what you create is good or not. Just create something. So I guess that's what this is. It simply materialized one day. 

The Distance

The distance between here and there became too great to comprehend

Constantly navigating in torturous fear

Rigid paths of twists and left turns

Once thought to be negotiable

In a naive earlier moment

Eventually declared impassable

Despite bargained terms of acceptance

Made in the truce between remaining emotions

Devout persistence yielded even lesser results

Yet submission to reality wasn't an option

Hopes teetered in the shaky stability

No ending seen ahead 

Found in the pages of a notebook. From sometime between 2020 and 2022. Even earlier possibly. Detailing a struggle.