Henri Cartier Bresson's Perception of America

Fallacy and Literacy

You have not read the proper series of letters

laid down by the wise, those artful masters of letter-laying,

the lovers of word and definitive meaning

and therefore you should be shunned from the wizard clan

for the mere hunch of probable ineptitude

and since we cannot track the way you think

without the erudite capacity that we so gallantly have honed

you undoubtedly have not the cognitive dimension

to even share a gaze.

Proposal 1

To be open-minded is to teeter between doubt (self-doubt) and trust (a trust in others);
it is to welcome an instability so deeply rooted that the stupidity 
of self assurance (the state that brings you trust from others and self- stability) can never save you.

Chimera's Song

This is where you will be freed

from the dome of your existence. 

This is where you will stretch out your heart and lift off the land. 

First you will cry tears of fire and love and hate,

with sobs so powerful that the earth will tremor

beneath your weak knees,

Then your eyes will be sufficiently washed,

and you will be purged of the heavy breath that lurked

in your lungs for all these years. 

Digging Through Darkness

To think

your way into the rabbit hole

digging

deeper and deeper with no foreboding

of what lies on the surface

and you know you have abandoned

the realities that exist above

in order to burrow through darkness,

solitude,

lifeless and directionless at times

and you continue to dig

your arms get stronger

as the earth collects under your fingernails

it cakes onto your knees

and you imagine that if you happen to

come across someone else

while you are in this place

they will look at you in distaste and turn away

the solitude of this journey soon weighs on your shoulders

and your digging becomes much slower and tasking

the strength of your body no longer can pull

the weight of your dragging spirit

and soon you stop  

and take a long rest.

How You Sleep in Your Shadow

You hide within the cold shadows of your

self inflicted delusions

precariously scattered throughout your

crooked terrain.

The nights that sleep graces you with her presence

you retreat to the mud-moistened crevices

between the hills

and curl into a tight ball

only to awaken at dawn's scream

and throw a spastic salute.

You pay your respect

but have no true idea why

your hand flings up to the tip of your

right brow.

As the day trudges on

the townspeople pass in groups of two, three, four

and stop to point at the bruises

that decorate your steep forehead.

Though these people move on in silence

you shout explanations at the air

that fills in the space

where their bodies have just traveled.

This is your grandiose effort

to rebuild

paper constructed

pride.

When even the air has ceased to listen

you pick up a pebble from the earth

and name it your companion

who will assure your every footfall.

This goes on for years

and you continue to wake,

salute,

be marked as the fool,

rebuke in false strength,

and retreat to the pebbles from the earth.

Soon your pockets are filled with stones,

your steps are heavy

your movement takes great effort.

Then the day comes

when your pockets are warn and bulging

and when the people point as they pass

and your shouts are not heard

you are left only with weakness.

You fall to the weight of the pebbles in your pockets.

You are so burdened by the

rocks you collected over years

that you cannot even push yourself up

off the ground.

Instead, you surrender to the caress of the dirt

and let it lather the skin

around your forearms,

on your cheek and

across your shins.

You wait there for the people to pass

and point

and you gather the dust from the earth
as your new kin.

Dualism on the Shore of Deception

Mental Mayhem

Echoes Between Cardboard

Chatter boxes

like the back of a cereal box

appealing to all under the age of

literacy

depth to fill your empty bowl

and the complexity of Styrofoam.

Pass the milk, it will taste better.

Beautiful.

Perfectly simple with the explanation

that life is so damn complex

unfair

ugly.

Put some eyeliner on

it will make you look

more like her who got him who got her to

look like this.

Pitiful.

Comrades in idealism

ideas are self absorbed

and this lipstick is filled with lead.

Memory's Abandonment

March 2010
He left me one night in a drunken blue haze
peeling out from beneath the layers and
tip-toeing silently across the dirt filled cracks
of red oak

I lay induced in a placid
coma ignorant of the overwhelming verdict

Awoken into dizzy consciousness
still unable to wrestle vision into stillness
the morning had already come and passed
and the birds outside had concluded their daybreak chatter.

I leaned on silence for support as I pushed
myself from the pillow's cradle and staggered
five laps around hotel furniture.

The Night's Illusion

The illusive face in your window

stares back at you

round eyes hollow like the moon's shadow

reflecting in the thick glass

of your stare

as it searches for the light's origin:

the grand illusion of the night.