alone is okay

when i’m

in a fog dreaming

with fish in the clouds,

scales grey

torn fins bleeding

red ink for the mist

to pen

pages of sin, and

alone is okay

when it

stains me within

but a light in a fog

makes my

timid bones snap,

fright my fish from the

clouds and

red ink draws a map, says

alone is despair

when you’re

in a fog screaming

with hands in the clouds,

skin burnt

sharp claws scheming

no ink for the mist

to pen

pages of light when

alone is okay

for a

soul without sight

but i’m lost in myself,

in my

fog, mist, ink, clouds

with my fish floating dead,

grey scales

fall on the crowd, say

alone is okay

when you’re

in a fog dreaming

despair on your hands and

the clouds

pale, deceiving

black ink for the mist

to spill

and betray, say

alone is okay,

alone is okay.

There are times in our lives when, the storm has raged, darkness has rolled in, violent gales and pounding waves. The assault has levied its anger and left destruction in its wake. The toll it has taken is unbearable. Unfathomable. Devastating. What remains are splinters of what was once a life. A hard earned, carefully crafted, beautiful, soulful life. The clouds are still heavy above our heads. Ominous. The wind still whips our hair around our face, making it hard to see. The air is heavy, so thick it's hard to breath, suffocating. Dizzying. We can't get warm, the chill is bone deep, numbing, We are hunched over, Shivering, soaked, bruised and weary. Defeated?

And yet somehow, there is a sliver of light. There is a silence, a growing warmth and a calm. There is a small but present feeling that makes itself known and through all of the desperation, despair, and lost promises we start to catch a glimmer of something. It is what will give us the courage, the strength and the motivation to pick up the pieces. To start anew. It is HOPE. Hope is the rainbow that appears after the storm. Hope is the bird that resumes his song. Hope is the ray of sun slipping through the clouds. Hope is the flower left standing, it's sweet fragrance finding your nose. Hope is a soft Blanket wrapped around our shoulders. It is a long deep breath. It is your face tilting towards the sky. It is in the knowing that things will start to get better. The rebirth of dreams, planning for the future, faith. Hope is the friend that comes along and offers encouragement and support. Hope is searching through the rubble and finding a memory. Hope is sharing your fears and sorrow with another and finding a common peace. Hope is turning your own gloom into someone else's comfort and Hope. Hope is community. Hope is constant, even when we think it is gone or irretrievable, it is there, reaching out and offering it's hand, urging us to take hold.

Alas, demise is afoot and at hand.

Vision, goddess cast far beyond my reach.

Part of the sea - no safe harbor on land -

Haunting the sands on a desolate beach.

Separated by years and circumstance,

Tepid tears and decayed dreams, my repast.

Heart chained and manacled - mind in a trance - 

What weak, wretched knave should not be outcast?

Damn the cost of a voyage forbidden!

To sit cowardly by, never to try,

Would disgrace all of love ever written!

Thus burdened and bound, I'll find her or die!

Regrets and fears account nought for the brave;

A dark fate awaits in my icy grave.

The first tremor was when I was eight.

Standing from my chair, I looked around

the classroom, fellow students looming -shrouding and foreboding in my vision.

Lost as in a trance I left the room - their faces dancing and held in check as I faded to grayness down the long hallway.

Walking to the bathroom under the thin, steel awning, below the hammering, summer sun I was struck mindless by reverberations passing through my body surging as if electrical currents.

Seeing for the very first time that the people in my world, the ones I already knew and the many I would come to meet over time were

of significance and design for the benefit of this, my singular experience.

Life, as I knew it at that luminous moment was a messy and sprawling creation orchestrated by an illusion of self known as me.

I am God.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

My second tremor was at twenty three.

Adrift after four days of not sleeping from a state nurtured by a diet of lysergic acid.

I sat staring the length of my living room, the entire space breathing and pulsing with life force, interconnected by intricate yet ordered patterns of shimmering dimensional illumination.

Thats when the strings first appeared.

watched them for the longest time

Hell, I was a part of their perfect labyrinth

They were luminous and beautiful

as they rang of joy and symmetry

I plucked and played them

Like a harp

My fingers tingling......

The strings responded to my touch

they obeyed and shimmered

as I altered that landscape

and changed the world

I didn't want them to go

They have to though

Glimpses are all we get

in this fixed realm

It was a realization after all

and.....

realizations are funny like that

Everything counts

Everything matters

Everything zings

Take it from a friend

who has been placed here

........... for your benefit and experience

Lovely, deep and concerned you seem

When the heavy clouds carelessly rush before the winds

Uncovering, uncovering the nakedness beyond

You appear,...

look! we say, the color of the sky!

But it is always you, covering the nakedness beyond