dog eared bent and unbent pages remind me.
i wake each day to learn the hard facts of life
i wander from address to home
street to life
chair to wall
memory to forgetfullness
to learn what breaks us all in an un-noticed moment-
grief
pain
loss
and
misunderstanding.
there is conviction of the heart that lives here in these parts.
i search for a commonality
in every corner that i park myself
i look for the condition
and the one connection
that binds us all
sometimes i find it
and other times i lose myself in trying to create it
i wake up and i seem to recreate the dilemma
that plagues me here in this life.
the lesson of persistence.
but a wayward persistence that undoes itself in the making.
i have fought hard to learn these lessons
and though we've spoken about it-
it eludes me now
and the lesson is temporarily lost again
while i am out there searching for myself
again.
desperation can make a predictable fool out of us
what we want
what we think we deserve
and what we fight for-
all intermixed in the cloud of privilege and greed.
i never quite understood the later parts
and how they are largely ignored in the psyche of most.
i never quite understood how dismissive people can be as well.
if you can't register something genuine
then how can you fool yourself into believing what isn't?
i am simple
when i'm complicated
i work on a system of levies
and tides
you won't find me anywhere but in the waters
floating
sailing
sinking
and
swallowing
there is a notice
a red flag
that presents itself to me
time and tide again
the lesson i'm forgetting
and denying
and not privy too
often enough
it lies in the curly
and the tangled
parts of the cut off parts of me
but it's growing back
and i'm coming around again to notice-
it tells me
and this time
finally
i recognize the letters
written in slow
big
letters
on my back.
they say:
you need to listen to the voice inside...
