Lagumbay.com Reflections on Love, Rage, and Fear

Humiliated!
My Pride died again today
You must share its fate

Pretty butterfly
My cats would tear you apart
But they are not here

In meditation
Attainment of inner peace
What a crock of shit

Channel surfing bliss
tanto, daisho, tactical –
two hicks hawking knives

A herd of children
walking to the library
so long, quietude

I feel inferior
to everyone in this world
I want to destroy

My crowbar awaits
unsuspecting customer
demanding more time

a happy chorus
celebrating existence
I wish they would stop

Now all hope is lost
Here, there is only sorrow
Film at eleven

Leaves in autumn breeze
swaying in my memories
Summer really bites

I saw a sunset –
horizon consumed in flames
and it made me smile

Standing in the rain
wasting all my pleasant thoughts
wishing I was dry.

A tranquil garden
cherry blossoms all around –
where the hell am I?

Out there, I know,
Is the world I know –
The silly masquerade, parade, always on stage
on an ever-changing soundtrack played,
the dance so carefully contrived — a handshake and a smile
playing nice with guns and knives, extensions of a genetic strand,
primates who learned to stand, opposable thumbs in each hand –
and here they are, war after war against their own, the
earth, and sky unlike anything that came before –
they achieved but wanted more and evil spread
before the gods could shut the door.
Yet they pretend to find distinction between man and beast –
that they are invited to some Promised Land or Wedding Feast –
and it cannot be a novel thought that being born
a certain species makes them entitled to an eternal soul
for it is the same argument they use for power and control
over religion, gender, and race
ever so carefully, they dance with grace
around a truth that deep within they know –
that out there, they are the only world
I know.

I can’t say I know who I am anymore.  At one point, I was defined by
my sorrows, but that got old after a while.  I also described myself through
the food I ate, the clothes I wore, the television shows I watched, the music
I listened to, and the friends I had.  Then it was job title, religious
affiliation, operating system, and video game genres.  It was an Easton
composite with a Jagr blade and Bauer skates.  It was Basic, Pascal,
Javascript, Ada, Coldfusion, PHP, and Python.  It was General Ed.,
Mathematics, and Liberal Arts.  I was Eberlin, Gunther, Cameron,
Gaston, and Pierre.  I defined myself by the things I knew and
loved.  Then by things I did not know or hated.  I was defined by perception,
a spark of discontent borderlined rebellion.  I was evil personified
diluted by rent, car payments, groceries and various social and moral
obligations.  It was the teens, twenties, and thirties.  It is looking
at the world through borrowed eyes and wondering what the hell?
It is the fear that seventeen is coming back to an unfamiliar
mountain ledge.  It is resentment over being The Good Soldier and the
ridiculous absolution in the term “free will.”  It is the fact that
I am running out of excuses for this humanity, regaining disdain
for what it has become, and the hopelessness of its unenlightened future.
Yes, I am human, but there are times like today that I wonder why.
I wiggle my thumbs, I watch us destroy nations, then I hug my cat.
I don’t think I need thumbs for that.

Water doesn’t have to rhyme, I suppose –
It goes where it flows, a pitcher of thoughts
pouring into prose — absorbed into unsuspecting pages,
consumed by its confused creator, convinced
that any revelation of his soul is strictly accidental
dismissing the word-stained canvas as ornamental
a tie-dyed distraction from confessions seeping in,
that the master’s fortress wall is paper thin,
that the world may see the ghosts within –
to fight a fight he cannot win
But water doesn’t have to rhyme, I suppose.
It could meander where it pleases,
through paper’s microscopic creases.
Like the tide, I have seen it come and go
revealing of me things I did not know
And every time the unrhymed torrent passes through
I am broken into pieces, left to build anew.