The Persistence of Feeling

How amazing that I touch 58 buttons to form this sentence.
More amazing that I subconsciously chose this number correctly.
Only to validate myself with precisely 58 touches to the →.
Wonderment defiled by cold, surgical knowledge.
Time wasted in the name of preserving my schizophrenic Ego.

There are lots of big buzzwords I learned to say at my job
so the people in charge would believe what I think:
expectations. quantifiable. statistically. initiative. metrics.
along with:
alignment, momentum, camaraderie (though some prefer synergy).
Ultimately, it is numbers that speak louder than words.
More than a thousand pictures...unless they're stacked bar charts.
Oh, and accountability.

I ramble on with a Pavlovian fear of the after-hours on-call
cellular device—weighing heavily, capital ventures over personal.
Incessant boredom with the mediocrity of pre-middle management.
While a safari of ideas persist nestled in the shadowy crevasses
of my mind; Untapp'd in lieu of redirected professional optimism.
Caught up in The Game, climbing a Sisyphusian ladder evermore.

The 2/7 compromise weekend salvation freedom preserves my sanity so,
as I yank down the marionette and repurpose her strings to floss out my thoughts.
A bloody act of fine-tuning my mental health.
Dentists and psychiatrists implore the same wisdom—
that time can be found any day to strengthen this tissue
and ensure the persistence of feeling.

Floored

Chet Atkins' early years (Disc 1 of 5) wafts its way upstairs
old-timey jams between saw buzzes and hammering—not to the beat.
Measuring, laying the self-install wooden planks over poured concrete.
The knights of the kitchen table rap the keys of their aluminum
devices—iconic, but not to the bluetooth air-wave-form music
and infinite prowess over the 802.11 radiating our cabin fever souls
while snow and cloud blanket Gaia and Sol.

The Green EP paces itself along, centralized sound accompanied
by a symphony of sniffles, hiccups and the revolutionary Kitchen Aid;
mixing and mixing and mixing and mixing and mixing
the recipe for warmth in a dip of buffalo chicken for the big game.

Free-time reading and free-range cooking partake in dance with
the floor-by-floor workers, respectively. Where one commits his youth
martyred to the preservation of the future, the other commits to the
antiquity of words and experiences to bridge the new to the old.

On Chaos

Balance, like Utopia, is but an unsustainable destination. We do what we must so that we do what we wish, but the unbiased gravity nags relentlessly; teetering in either direction against our will thus throwing the world back into chaos. The elephant in the room thus becomes the notion of accepting the chaos for what it is, mount a sled and leverage the pull as an enjoyable downhill ride.

While we may find ourselves wavering in temporary bliss, our realization of this conquest so enacts the indiscriminate up-shift in the proverbial Chaos Engine. That is to say, we find ourselves in pockets of perfection only so long as it is not sought out.

Life is not inherently difficult unless one should find themselves perpetually struggling to maintain this balance rather than allow its timeless crescendo and conclusion. Around every unknown corridor exemplifies life's potentiality for simultaneous odds of adventure or doldrums. And while so much of our assumption systems rely on automatic knowledge (I don't expect to look out the window and witness the snowfall literally freeze mid-fall in memoriam), the true predictability of our knowledge (read: belief) systems are meager at best.

It is for these reasons that I accept a "less-than-ideal" life. Our culturally bound notions of what life should be so greatly skew the worldly beauty that exists in the full scope from mundane to tumultuous that I deem the dreams of blockbuster action movies, fairy tales and the like to do an injustice to the realism, and thereby wonder that permeates our filters unbeknownst to our Pavlovian response-based brains.

There is something to be said in riding the endless wave known as life in the universal sea, and while the vibrations of such traversal may seem unorganized (perhaps even unorthodox!), the vibration of waves supersede our own fundamental understanding of travel in that these vibrations can seamlessly pass through one another unscathed. That degree of perseverance and interaction within the fullness of the ever-changing universe provides a necessary purpose, and thereby a necessary comfort for our so-uncertain existence. To rely on the ability to persevere, to thrive, to experience. That single, simple notion of riding a wave that will cease to falter, in its most majestic crests and hopeless troughs, from shore to shore, and with split-second alignment with the rest of the universal ocean, provides reliable transport, and intangible understanding of the overwhelming chaos.

Paradise Transient

The pull of Utopia beckons the good will of Man, but upon arrival at the gates of dawn, elusive stagnation of existence.

A cat looses focus of the game should the laser refuse to play, throwing the world back from whence it quested and longed.

Like so, the life of the trapeze artist, mesmerizing in her ability to walk the line, above it all, absolving her knowledge of the catch-all net below.

All-being, spotlight shone and centered, yet simultaneously nothing, a show, drifting without purpose for the pure sake of amusement. Isn't it all so amusing? Isn't it all so laughably trivial and wonderful?

Sacrosanctity

We descent a set of stairs of the main drag, Little Nigeria as it is called
and I see the first spider of this trip, it's been a week without any notion
of micro-Tokyo. Even the damning cicadas kamikaze-ing for the faces of
too-tired business men or anybody really were hardly considered small.
But with the realization of seeing two spiders subdermal to Tokyo's neon
acne-ridden facade, slick and ever restless, an angsty teen of a city filled
with the oldest souls, conflicted by notions of honor and repression,
behind all of that, there must be a livelihood to these eight-legged creatures.

So the night goes on, and the questionable hooker Coco and her
cerulean, Aeropostale-donning pimp? mingles with the passive-aggressive
hipster from America who showed up with my crew and insisted Elmer's
was the best way to wax and curl a moustache for days. God-forbid he
wound up dead in an alley way, unable to pay off Coco's exhorbitant fees;
only the best in Roppongi. I knew then and there I had to find myself there
as a means of utilizing my hotel, the unlikely Ritz-Carlton looming over
the madness of aggressive men wandering the streets below, asking the visiting
white guys, "Hey, hey man, hey listen. What are you up to tonight? Oh, you have plans?
Cancel them. 5000 yen, and these girls, they like to fuck. What, too good for that?
Listen man, you have to help me out with this. Serious. They'll kill me."
I floated back to the Ritz, where more nuanced, reformed predators lurk.
The waterfalls are turned off, and I pass a Maybach, and a Maserati, and a Mercedes,
a few Porches, a Lambo, a Ferrari, a Rolls, a Bentley and a vintage Aston Martin.
Sweet Japanese Jesus!
Finally, back in the safety of my hotel, where the cigar smoke has faded and the
seemingly underpaid are spot-cleaning the Grand shining against the moonlight
in the main ballroom. Goodnight, Tokyo.

The following day, I find myself in Rikugien. The garden helps me forget
of the mana-powering orchestrated chaos machine of this island giant.
Between pictures, I enjoy watching turtles climb rocks and fall onto one another,
elongated necks and the koi staring onward in such a stupifying manner that
it felt cartoonish to me as I stared back (probably looking about as stupid)
and thought about the way in which Japan has taught me
to appreciate the use of space and arrangement.
And my legs were taught that mosquitoes exist most everywhere.
A lesson effectively remembered by the 26 bites on my legs alone.
So I left the park and navigated to Akihabara, which means "Field of Autumn Leaves"
but should really be called "Field of anything electronic ever made ever."
It was a poignant reminder of how unfulfilling anything out of balance can be.
I'm no stranger to neither technology nor consumerism, but Akiba is
all of that on meth. After spending hours in one six-story store, trying on
thirteen-thousand dollar headphones and watching eighty-four inch televisions,
passing rows of camera tripods and lenses that were the size of an elephant penis,
taking escalators up and down more times than I cared to and trying to understand
what anything about the place, I left, walked 2 kilometers, ate the best dumplings
and called it good for now. City life just isn't my thing.

the opposite of lost

Flowing asphalt guides hitchhiking souls only so far,

before giving way to trails unblazed, unrecognized.

On a personal journey to find the tranquil Sanctuary,

Eden's Garden of self-acceptance in the world of flux.

But not before losing oneself in the shadows stretching

outward, clinging forth to its cooling veil, enticing those

burnt and scorned by the brutality of unadulterated exposure

that comes with walking alone without direction and forgetting

that one is hardly lost.

Lifeline

I fear not my own death, for I've accepted my fate
or rather, that I won't have to mourne my own loss;
that after my full numbing to nothing, I won't feel it.
Selfish. Nevertheless, a means to a meaningful end.

That which I do fear greatly is the death of others,
for in that I have no control, only the battle between
nothing and everything that will wage within, hollow
trench warfare, it is always darkest before dawn.

Odd how feeling empty is part of rounding out experience
that wisdom is not encompassed in filling up, but also
co-existing with the breaking down, the inevitable natural status
that so harshly reminds us that we're still just animals.

So I ask myself, what is a better way to live--for me, for all?
Wage a lifelong war, prolonging the consummation with Death,
or forget long enough to experience a fulfilled, albeit limited life?
And then I know, the beauty lies exactly in making that decision.

Piece of Mind

Slowly I peruse the marquee of struggle, binding by binding

my head, contorted, neck kinked in a confused, doglike manner

generalized under monikers of Self-Help, Eastern Philosophy and Finance.

Lamar may as well sell billboard space atop each shelving unit,

QUICK ANSWERS, FASH CASH, SNAKE OIL! CALL (800) 235-2627.

Books and their contents weigh down on the mahogany shoulders

cut down to their most utilitarian form, these once mighty giants

to support the ongoing questions eternally teased through by man.

The screams of the struggling author muffled on either side by

the tomes of whorific vampire/werewolf star-crossbred lovers

marginally better than the latest Harry Potter Hermione/Centaur fanfic,

save the author with a sixth sense for making shitloads of money.

But hey, sex sells, Rule #34, don't knock it til you try it?

Sorry but I think that one gets the gavel, cover or not.

A tweenage 25-to-life setting new precedents for unrequited love,

can we get Lamar off hold today, I'd really like some ad space!?

The Cosmic Party

The lingering universal hum. Big Bang's resonant remains.
An homage to man's evolutionary mental stability by way
of patterned sound, of pulsing around the constant.
Double-helixed lovers synchronize to the onward drone,
the universal constant, simultaneously reassuring and maddening;
a line blurred by bass drivers of a galactic scaling, the cosmic party.
Feigning contentment despite the onset entropy, the lingering cold
that comes from the stillness, the antithesis constant which derives
all of its nothing from the building tension and eventual spillover
until the Universal heartstring is plucked anew, and the music resumes.

No Better Time...

Shattered glass for brains fragments of memories
the pieces still reflect if you shift, zoom, enhance
and they show exactly what perceives them.
A polyamorous web of time spent fighting the barrage
of cobweb mental block that is nothing more than
the ethereal lack of dwelling on what has come to Be,
Here, Now.