Love me to my bones...

Time stood still,

just like a photograph,

you made me feel like this would last forever.

Looking in your eyes,

I see my whole life,

They say you know it when you know it, 

and I know.

Promise that you'll hold me close, 

don't let me go.

It's not on you, it's in you...

Taking my mask off...

I'm here to tell you, and myself as well, that if at any given moment we feel like we're too much, there's still a place for us here. If you feel too much, don't go. If the world gets too painful, stop and rest. If you need a break, it's okay to stop for a while. This life is not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win. It's okay to slow down. We are here for more than a job, more than a promotion, more than keeping up, more than getting by. This life is not about status or opinion or appearance and we don’t have to fake it.

And I know this isn't a revolutionary thought. A lot of us feel this way. It's just good to be reminded that if your heart is broken, it's okay to stare at the shattered pieces on the floor. If you feel stuck, it's okay to take your time wiggling yourself out. If you can't let go, it's okay to stubbornly hold on. We are not alone in these places and we are more than just our pain. We are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence. There is still some time to be surprised. There is still some time to ask for help. There is still some time to start again. There is still some time for love to find you. It's not too late. If you feel too much, there's still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don't go. There is still some time.

Finger on the pulse...

It's not what you look at that matters; it's what you see. And my perspective was now open to uncertainty. And where there was uncertainty, there was also possibility, whatever the present looked like. I see so very clearly the life I could lead, the lives I could change, the memories I could make. But the path to this paradise is hidden. I occasionally see the outskirts of a path, but as quickly as it manifests, it slips from sight. There is something out there for me. To take as my own. To use. To redefine. I will not fear, and I will continue to grasp towards it. I think I can see something in the dark. 

May he be forgiven...

For the first time, it's really evident to me that as much as I might desire change, I have to be willing to take a risk, to let go of the past. In other words, I have to finish what I started. And then what? This isn't so much about time on my hands as about life in my hands. And it's life as currency. Where am I going to spend it? What’s the best value? I'm limited only by what I can dream and allow myself to risk. It seems pointless to go on for the sake of going on, if there isn't some larger idea, some sense of enhancing the lives of others. I have so many plans and fantasies of how the world could be a better place. But no idea how to get there.

Going somewhere sane...

That's just the way life goes,

I like to slam doors closed.

Trust me, I know it's always about me,

I love you, 

I'm sorry.

Dance with me one more time...

Losing track of days...

The endless void of space stretched out before him. Millennia had passed as he roared through the planes of the galaxy. The awesome ellipse of his original path was continually altered by intermittent proximity to myriad stars. He gave off minute bits of himself as he rocketed silently through the vacuum of space, but still, after all these millennia, he was counted large as such things were measured, and the fact that he had never collided with anything else after such a tremendous interval of travel was a mute testimony to the vastness and comparative emptiness of the universe.

Much as the people around him, he is comprised mainly of space, not of matter, so the universe, for all its galaxies and solar systems, is comprised primarily of interconnecting emptiness. Dark, colossal, mindless, and mighty, he came on and on through space. The great alignment had set him on his path. Now, one last nudge had fixed the remainder of his course on a fateful rendezvous. Though he was oblivious to his own destination and nothing in the universe with awareness had yet detected him. His path was set.

Something's got a hold of me lately...

Time breaks your heart...

It really hurts to let go. It seems the harder you try to hold on to something, the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left with a feeling of loneliness that can't really be explained. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? 

Don't let the curtain catch you...

Dredging of great white sharks, 

swimming in the bed.

And here comes a killer whale, 

to sing me to sleep.

Thrashing the covers off, 

has me by its teeth.

A ship to wreck...

Might not be forever...

Being alive is finite. That which exists must be finite. That which does not exist is infinite potential. The potential is potential existence. That which may exist already exists in a different form. The infinite potential is the ability of the being always to be new. Nothingness exists in the form of nonexistence. Existence of nonexistence exists. Infinity of the finite is the secret of existence. The very finiteness of the eye of the universe leads to infinity. Only nothing is infinite in its endlessness. Its endlessness is its end. The nothingness of itself and for itself is absolute.

Hold his chest, let it breathe...

Sometimes, I'm overwhelmed by it all, the vastness of this life, the absolute miracle that I exist at this moment in time. How much magic is out in the universe, stretching beyond what the eye can see, reaching distances the mind can't even comprehend? Yet I am here. I am alive. 

When it comes to success, he can't ever get enough. His entire self-worth is based on it, and he tends to go from victory to victory to avoid feeling awful. In a way, it's pure homeostasis at work. The buzz from triumph is neutralized quickly, leaving him in a state of hangover and angst. Knowing he will be looking for the bump again very soon, his brain ultimately adjusts to a baseline feeling of anti-success. After a while, he needs it constantly just to not feel like a failure. He will run and run but make no real progress toward his goal - simply avoiding being thrown off the back from stopping or slowing down.

It's okay, I'm okay...

When it's all said and done...

I am not okay,

I'm barely getting by,

I'm losing track of days,

and losing sleep at night.

I am not okay,

I'm hanging on the rails,

so if I say I'm fine,

just know I learned to hide it well.

Listen to the ones that love you...

Don't prove I'm right...

He hopes he'll get to see you again one day, and that you'll say sorry, and he'll tell you you're forgiven. He hopes he'll find all the pieces of his mind that fell out of his head over all these years, and that he'll be able to put himself back together again. I hope the echoes of pain will fade, and the memories of sorrow will die, and that he'll have visitors when he's old and grey. And he hopes you'll have a happy ending of your own. For who could think of hell without hope?

I move too fast...

I'm starting to get really hurt by the injustice of how his life turned out. He did everything right as a son, a brother, a husband, and a father. And then being dealt this hand so late in life? Cruel and unnecessary. And the worst part is, I don't think there's basically anything I can do about it. Perhaps most of all, I should not make it about myself and learn to live with this hurt, stand up, and move on as he will undoubtedly have to. It's what I'll do now. It's what I’ll do tomorrow and the next day. For however long this fight goes on. Just stand up. And I rise slowly to my feet. Heavy and shackled with weight. I still move. 

Please, please, please...

He was afraid, but he knew now: fear usually meant he was standing on the edge of something new, something self-altering, something potentially good. Fear was not something he would never shy away from ever again. Because life is full of near misses and absolute hits, of great love and small disasters. It's made up of ice cream and tears and your face slowly getting older. It's dead-ordinary and truly truly amazing. What he's realized is it's all here now. So he takes a deep breath and swallows it whole, for life; it just whizzes by.

There is a pattern in all things that are part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of a berry bush or the pattern of a leaf. We try to copy these patterns in our lives, seeking the rhythms, the dances, and the forms that comfort us. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. The ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death. 

As foolish as he can be...

There's always a joker in the pack,

there's always a lonely clown,

the poor laughing fool falls on his back,

and everyone laughs when he's down.

There's always a funny man in the game,

but he's only funny by mistake,

and everyone laughs at him just the same,

they don't see his lonely heartbreak.

I'm the joker now...

Dancing in the flames...

Lost in the words that he screams...

A great burden awaits him on his path. Soon, the dice of fate will be rolled once more. Is he strong enough to face the tests placed in his path? Is he strong enough to save his family? His heart beats furiously. He has to beware of the lord of shadow, while seeking the twin flames. And then he must figure out why he keeps returning to beginnings - why he seeks the single thread he might pull to unravel the tapestry of his life in the hope that behind it he will find the truth of why. But there is no truth. There is only why. And when he looks closer he will see that behind that why is just another tapestry. And behind it another, and another, until he arrives at oblivion.

I need plenty more...

In all important transformations of life we have to take a leap in the dark. If I decide to leave the riddles unanswered or if we waver in our answer, that is a choice I make at our peril. If I choose to turn my back altogether on the will of the universe, no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that I am mistaken. I stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which I get glimpses now and then of paths that may be deceptive. If I stand still I shall be frozen to death. If I take the wrong road, I shall be dashed to pieces. What must I do? Simply act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes, and if death ends all, I cannot meet death better.

And it looks like it's all unraveling...

Because when I'm seeing double,

It's your lullaby love that keeps me from trouble,

It's your lullaby love that's keeping me level,

It's your lullaby love that keeps me awake.

An avenue once bent in shadow...

Swim against the tide...

I want to change things on my own terms, to show that there's no right or wrong way to change the world. There's no entry test. I don't need to suck anything up. Pay any dues. Just me and my anger and my voice is enough. If I only have the courage to use it.

It was like he'd climbed Everest, had the summit in his sight, the flag in his hand, all ready to pierce it into the top of the mountain and proclaim victory. And then, out of nowhere, perhaps from the heavens themselves, an avalanche swept him right back to the bottom of the hill again. As he lay underneath tons of snow, he wondered if it was even worth bothering to free himself and climb it again? He was exhausted. So profoundly out of breath. He'd already climbed it. He didn't want to do it again, but what other choice was there?

Sweating through the sheets...

Here's a short recap of his state of mind: when he fights for what he believes in, he comes across a lot of obstacles. People who don't agree with him, people who agree with him but only some bits, people who delight in ripping him down, people who are threatened by the strength of his belief. But he was beginning to realise, the biggest hurdle to overcome was the hurdle of himself. The true test of life isn't how he copes when everything is going in his favour; it's how he deals with things that could destroy him, if he lets them.

It's the last call...

That's the thing about anxiety. You can worry about anything and everything, dream up all sorts of weird and wonderful situations to be terrified of in the hope your fear will control the world somehow ... and yet the world remains uncontrollable. So we all carry on with scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories - we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can't make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us, and why we're finding it so impossible to get over. You can't force pain to leave until it's ready to.

Give me all you've got...

It might seem crazy,

what I'm about to say.

happiness she's here, 

you can take a break.

I'm a hot air balloon 

that could go to space.

With the air, 

like I don't care by the way.

Everything that hurts me is still the same...

Not like us...

And I cry, it's not fair...

I have always felt as though I have something to prove: I have to do more, be better, to make other people's gifts and offerings worthwhile; to earn their care or justify their faith. I spent years trying to live up to the sacrifice I believed the people in my life made to allow me there, while also trying to be good enough for other people to love. I am still living as if the choices made by others are debts I have to repay, marks in a ledger I can never hope to expunge.

He finds himself, leaves himself, go towards himself, comes from himself, nothing ever but him, a particle of him, retrieved, lost, gone astray. He is all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that he is them, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else. Yes, something else, that he is something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that he listens, and that he seeks, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts.

Die with a smile...

I don't want to tell just one story, I want to tell every story, everything all at once, not anything in particular that might be said through the words I know. I try to roll all sounds into one, to accumulate more and more syllables, as if they might make a new strip of language in which everything, everything is contained. There is a hidden rule even in this quest, though - that the sounds have to resemble real syllables, that they can't disintegrate into brute noise, for then I wouldn't be talking at all. I want articulation - but articulation that says the whole world at once.

I just woke up from a dream...

If the world was ending, 

I'd wanna be next to you.

If the party was over,

and our time on Earth was through,

I'd wanna hold you just for a while,

and die with a smile.

Since I survived, I realized...

Waiting to begin...

Nobody's promised tomorrow...

These final stages of my abdication are going on for quite awhile. My soul and my mind are here, but the body can't do anything else to be in sync - it's like I became split. A natural rapture that will define the rest of my life. The funny thing is, that at the moment it happened, I didn’t want it to end. I just wanted another to lie there, another hour, another minute. It felt so precious and so close to life that I didn't want it to end. It's like I was able to see every single detail of my becoming. I just wanted to take everything in. Fingerprints, photos, every story, nights that were too long. The right time to die? To be separated? To not be in pain all the time. To let go.

I am of years lived...

Opened up my journal to a page,

everything that hurts me, is still the same.

Feels like there's nothing new for me to say;

why, why, why?

What can we do in our abandoned solitude but gaze at ourselves? Examine ourselves in endless bouts of fascinated distraction, fall in love, and in hate. And as you look upon your own soul, the only answer is forgiveness. Because holding grudges keeps you focused on pain. Forgiveness frees you to focus on looking for whispers from the universe that you're on the right path. Then in time you will not only become overwhelmed by the vastness of possible signs, that the only logical conclusion will be that you are indeed on the sidelines of the universe. That there is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness.

Put some miles on it...

It was that sort of sleep in which you I woke up every hour and thoughts to myself that I have not been sleeping at all; I was able to remember dreams that almost felt like reflections, like daytime thinking slightly warped. The thing is that I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go. I've always thought of my anxiety like a rocking chair. It gives me something to do, but it doesn't get me very far. Not very far at all.

Pack the car and dry your eyes...

So clean the house, 

clear the drawers, 

mop the floors,

stand tall,

like no one's ever 

been here before or at all.

Here comes the two to the three to the four...

When it comes to my family, it feels like I'm drowning in a sea of words, words that, more often than not, bore no resemblance to their dictionary definitions. What was the point of communicating if, inevitably, a subtext bubbled up, one I had trouble making sense of in my confusion? What was the point if a word's meaning had been distorted to fit agendas of long-held grudges, flip-flopped for unknown ulterior motives, withheld for other reasons? Translating what anyone said had become impossible for me, my love of words failing me when it came to my own family. All my writer's fantasies proved useless in trying to decipher a lifetime of plots within plots, subtexts buried beneath more subtexts.

Not getting any younger...

Birds of a feather...

My biggest gripe with him is that it hasn't dawned on him that life is unpredictable, that one day, one of us could suddenly cease to exist and what then? What would be the joy in having left so much unsaid? With what memories would we fill the empty silence? I understood something that he wouldn't ever admit - that we were talking about family. And family is the ultimate trap, it's something you carry with you for life; the people you come from and the marks they leave on you.

For the first time since he gave his word, he can hear his inner master fighting to be let loose and he know it is only because he is searching the universe within him for an answer that will make his love an unhealing scar on time itself, so that it will gush blood endlessly on sight and leave no chance of doubt or misinterpretation even after he gives up his body and the world fills with those who will only ever see him as an unfeeling beast. A monster willing to sacrifice everything, to get something of his own.

Until I'm in the grave...

I will lead with faith, not fear. Faith that everything that is happening, is happening for me, not to me. Faith that I am being protected, not rejected. Faith that I am finding, not that I am lost. Faith that the universe is working along side me, not that I am alone or on my own. Faith that I am coming full-circle, not that I am without direction. Because the way upstream may not be easy, for I have strayed far. But one is never too lost to rediscover the path. Like a bird, I can always find my way back home.

Why, why, why...

I stepped off the stage 

with nothing left,

all the lights 

were fucking with my head.

But here I am, 

writing songs again.

Ease my mind,

I don’t know why.

Nothing new for me to say...

No one had ever told me that I had been nursing a raging storm inside and that the pressure would build until nothing less than my soul spilling would ease it. No one had told me that inside me there were threads of skin, muscle, and fat, and that I was a thing sewn together by the pulsing heat of life, and for me to embrace it, I had to come undone. For all the people I had seen rise above their minuscule existences, I did not know how much ascending life necessitated actually placing it on the line.

I'll put it all on the line...

All must choose...

I want to give it all I've got...

Maybe in a parallel universe my moment would be able to collide with the fabric of the future. I am quite certain that at least in one timeline it did. Maybe I shouldn't lose hope yet for this one. Maybe it will happen in a few days, or next week. Maybe it will happen when I am fifty. But just now I feel like the chance has missed, and the jet trails of the crisscrossing moments left an awkward vacuum in their wake. I can feel it in my bones, though I can't really understand which exact outcome flew by me, and when I tried to guess, I got it wrong.

Why did he think something good could happen to him? Why did he dream? Hope? And fantasise? He was so certain that was a world out there that embraced him. Fully and without question. Where he was used as a vessel for change. The kind that brings a cathartic shift and throws everything off balance just long enough for it to swing back stronger than before. As he let his deep breath calm him down, he open his eyes and saw himself standing infront of a mirror. It's hard to explain why, but he started to laugh. He laughed at his fierce naked self, frowning into the mirror. And he liked the man who was laughing.

All my favorite songs...

I've tried Jack,

I've tried Jim,

I've tried every last one of them.

Old heartbreak bottles up on that shelf,

But the burn doesn't work,

and the buzz doesn't help.

Been taking these shots, 

everything they've got,

but the whiskey doesn't kill like it's supposed to,

your memory must be bulletproof.

Outlines of new eyes and visions of you...

The reality of my life has become an unsettling arabesque puzzle and I still want to add more filigree embroidery to it, so I might, some day, expect to stray from the point of recognition, lose the final thread, be expelled to the edge of delusion and forced to dance on the brim of chaos. If anything, my capacity for self-delusion is apparently infinite so how am I ever meant to know, except by existing in a state of absolute pessimism, that once again I am fooling myself? No, no. This is it. I can really feel it this time. It's all going to work out exactly as I imagine. 

He is heaven sent...

He is your shelter from the storm. He is your strength when you are weak. He is the fire that burns through your veins and heats you when you are in need. He is the one who will fill your heart and protect the life you will create together. He is your light in the darkness and the one who guides your way when you are lost. He is the creature who will destroy worlds to keep you and will never allow you to fall. He is wind in the night. The sail of a sturdy boat about to embark on a long voyage. He is not a shield; he is a sword. He is not a victim; he is a victor. And who are you?

The future of my past...

I don't know this song...

Here's what I know, or at least think I know: life is infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination. It is the invisible essence and substance of every visible form. Its nature is goodness, truth, wisdom, beauty, energy, and imagination. And I found that my highest satisfaction comes from a sense of conscious union with this invisible force. The eye of the universe. All my endeavours are an attempt to find it and get back to it. To find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt, and uncertainty vanish and I'm able to become a conscious observer. 

It's easy to pretend...