Two Pieces on the Internal Being

I rarely used to write this kind of thing. But, since listening to poets read their struggles at open mic nights and the candid yet richly metaphorical lyrics of Twenty One Pilots, I have tried it myself and found that regurgitating my mind's chaos can be cathartic, if generally unfit for human consumption. Most of them are dead-end complaint-style exposition. Like, dear self, why are you such a disaster?
But I wrote one with a pretty metaphor that pleased me. And then I wrote one that wasn't quite an answer to the first, but could be. At any rate, I feel like it's two sides of a coin. It's a negative view and a positive view, side by side. Sort of borrowing imagery from TØP and Björk in a few places, with ships and video loops. So, here they are. Just because. I guess it's for myself; I do too much Hamlet-ing.

Part One: Screaming Creatures and Ships
Sometimes, it's loud inside. As if a small creature is trapped in a dark cave somewhere deep inside. It is wailing, but the sound is lost in the exitless cavern. It reverberates and builds, pressurizing like a steam engine. But there is no outlet,  no safety valve.
Surrounded by others, isolated humans, disconnected,  all pretending. Do they have screaming creatures inside? Or hollow caverns? They may, they may not, but no one will admit it, no one will say, no one will ask.
So we just keep pretending. Pretending we're ok. We remain as islands, isolated by waves of shyness, currents of shame, salted with the savor of safety.
We close off our trade routes and scupper our ships.
What foreign cultures will we develop in our isolations?
I just want to sleep all the time.

Part Two: Circuit-Breaker
You can make yourself a victim. It will feel good. You will be sour with bitter hatred and sorrow. It will feel good. It's not your fault, you have been hurt by others: people, the world, destiny, even another aspect of yourself. Your problems were caused by another. It's not your fault. It will feel good.
But it's a trap. It's a cycle, a circuit you lock yourself into. It feels good to feel bad. You nurse your sorrow like a baby. That baby will grow and grow and become heavier and heavier. One day, it will consume you. It feels good to feel bad. But it still feels bad. It's a trap. It's a cycle. A treadmill you can walk and walk and walk and get nowhere. Step off of it.
It feels bad.
Leave it behind. Abandon the child of sorrow and let it die on the rocks, un-suckled. It won't be easy. But you can release yourself from the cycle. Stop repeating the video-loop. Release play and look forward. You can let yourself out of the trap and leave self-pity behind. Sadness and hardship might not leave right away. But now you have the chance to escape them.

It will feel good.

Cottonwood. A Poem.

This is an utterly random poem/thing I spontaneously wrote today while picking up a load of hay for my sister's horse. We drove by a slough and it had just rained and the window was down. I've always loved the smell of wetlands, water, marshes, rivers, and cottonwood trees...so this weird poem was born. If you can call it a poem.


Trees, you grow by the water.
I smell you.
Cold breeze, cold day, moist is the cool cool air on which your scent claws it's way to me, bloody and sweet like the dew of deep sewer gods. A bitter sweetness of rotting things and liquid. Ducks.
Your light reproduction would float on the gentle winds, tufted and soft, but the air is too thick with recent rain.
Trees, you grow by the water and your veins are filled with its fragrance.
Silvery bark and whispering leaves.
I smell you.
Mud is between your toes, oozy and dank like the meme. Dead things are in it and live things, squirming. Life is struggle and tiny lives burrow in the muck, fighting and killing and eating. Between your toes. If you could wiggle them, you would crush millions of lives. And duck shit.
I smell you.
Rotting grass, you are sweet and caress the ankles of the naked tree. Erotic and slimy.
Towering over it all, you grow by the water and clap your tiny, multidunious hands in a fluttering rhythm like Björk. You are not Björk, but a cousin to that pale-skinned saint-tree.
You grow by the water and its music lulls you to sleep so that you do not move your toes and squish the dark muck between them in oozy fountains of duck shit.
Sleep then, and do not kill...until the lightning strikes and your boughs crack and fall down down down through the yards of sparkling air to crash through the rusted roof of a Nissan and crack the ball cap of a scuzzy trailer park red neck.
I smell you.
Cottonwood.

A More Positive Piece of Personal 'Poetry'

Happiness
Happiness has been made into myth.
We seek it, we yearn for it.
We dream of soft, gold-colored days, foggy with impossibility, and tinted with shimmering desire. Always in the future, future-bound.
We say if I had this, I would be happy. We say, happiness is thus and thus, and since thus and thus are missing, happiness cannot be here. Dreaming is good, dreaming gives us hope when it is dark, gives us the ability to move forward.
But if we are asleep: if we dream too hard at all times, we fill our eyes full of glittering gold so bright we cannot see the gold that shines around us.
With our virtual reality headset we see a great golden chalice, brim-full of Mead. We reach for it, but our hand passes through, unable to grasp this beautiful vision, which is not vain in and of itself, but focusing on it at all times prevents us from seeing the shining cup of joy that sits beside it in the real world erased by the vision of the alternate, virtual reality.
Dream. But be content.
Contentment is the secret to happiness, and it is available at any time. Not just tomorrow.
Remember to drink deep the cider of autumn while its beauties surround you, though you might yearn for the sweetness of spring. Remember to bask in the sun-glow of friends while they surround you.
Remember.
Happiness is now.
Happiness is always there, just like sadness. All you have to do is look.

The Creature's Lament

One for me.
One like me.
Just one, for all others spurn,
I am alone, cast aside,
That thing which I dearly yearn,
Cruelly, I have been denied.

Unknown bliss.
Void's dark kiss.
But for you, I'd know not pain,
Had you not blasphemed this way,
Meddled with limbs and brains,
It's your fault I saw the day.

One for me.
One like me.
Last chance to make oblation,
To exist, I will need love,
Redress your foul creation,
Tis plain what I am made of.

What you've done,
All will shun.
Condemned me to loneliness,
Now you must do what you can,
To restore your holiness,
Make one like me, a woman.

One for me.
One like me.
A hideous monster-bride,
A creature who will love me,
Not one who will run and hide,
Now go, Father! Make it be!

Lover's kiss,
Coldest hiss.
Now I see, naught will avail,
Your artifice worked too well!
Her crimson cheeks now turn pale,
She banishes me to Hell.

One for me.
One like me.
Must I trade a lover's kiss,
And despair of holding hands?
Trade it for the coldest hiss,
Colder than the Arctic lands?

Even she,
Can't love me.

The MerQueen

The MerQueen, queen of the deep,

Monarch of coral-made throne,

Reigns from her fortified keep,

Built on stone and Fomor bone.

She bids lost souls to find her,

And strains them through her baleen,

The Tyre mollusks all mind her,

Charybdis calls her Queen.

The MerQueen, queen of abyss,

Monarch of seafloor so vast,

Reigns with clammy cold kiss,

All who go before the mast,

Risk becoming her vassals,

Death Knell toll and billows roll,

Dine upon pearls and mussels,

Gain the world but lose your soul.