Inspire Me He Said . . .

Inspire me, he said.

Craning to the Heavens before faltering and crashing to Earth.
Picking himself up and dusting himself off, he looked skyward once more.

Inspire me, he said.

Reaching for the unreachable, he slipped, tripped, plummeted, fell on his knees.
One foot and then the next.
Breathe the breath.
Think the thought.
Dream the dream and try again. 
Bigger.
Better.
More.
Fight for the light.
Need the need.
The passion of the doomed.
The spinning rock gives you one go.
So go.
One chance.
You can't stop time, can't stop the turning.
You can only ride the ride.

Inspire me, he said.

This time was different.
He didn't look up, didn't look down, didn't look out.
He looked within.
Lightening flashed, thunder clapped.
And kept on clapping.
There.
Inside.
The thousand points of light burning away.
The fire inside.
The need.

Inspire me, he said . . .

Looking Back At Myself

I like my lines.  Those etchings in my visage. Those ephemeral furrows of a life lived.  Of laughs had.  Of laughs made.  I'm proud of those little reminders of years ticked off.  Of experiences had.  Of battles won.  The older I am, the more I've survived.  Battle scars of wind and time.

I don't feel old.  Don't think old.  I feel as young as I ever did.  Just grumpier.  Just more placid.  More satisfied.  More unsatisfied with waiting for life to happen.  Go and live it.  The secrets of life seem less secretive now.  What is important so much more tangible.  Friends get divorced now.  Friends die now.

Each new stage of life comes more quickly now.  Races up to you and is gone again.  Before you saw it.  Before you knew it.  How did we get here?  How long ago?  Familiar refrains now.  Black and white long gone.  Absolutes vaporized into reality.  Seeing the depth beneath the water.  Like a graph turned 3-D.

Seeing the world more simply.  Beyond the politicking.  Beyond the superficiality of man made desire.  The rational reality of fact.  Simplicity at a higher level.  A Universe immune to us.  A world that outlives us.  Every one of us.  Being born to die. The understanding of which lets us live more fully.

Gaze into that glass.  Revel in the evidence of time.  Immemorial.  In memoriam.  Age is a gift denied so many.  Too many.  Live your life vicariously through yourself.  Be a living monument to the passed.  To the past.  But most of all -- relax.

Pen

The tease of inspiration,
Of art held at pen's edge,
Struggling to stay distant,
Begging to be intimate
With the paper.
The pen drifts across the sheet
Lazy.
Willfully aware of its limitations,
Fearful of muddying the waters of inspiration
With so dull an instrument
As its own hand.
Guiding but not grasping
The depth of its own desperate genius.
Letting it happen of its own accord
As all art must for those without the gift
Of conscious talent.
Drifting, dancing,
Reckless but free.
Flitting and teasing
Gently and awkwardly caressing
Like a hand in the dark reaching for a body
Waiting for the electricity
To strike
To heave up and explode
Like the birth of a
Universe.

Water

Tripping light across the water
Bubbles burbling, gurgling,
Living and dying on the surface -
Scratching at the air
Before retreating to the depths of their own ego.
Existence passing below them as they
Transition willfully
Futile in their hope to move beyond the water's scope
The world they'd know if they could only
Know consciousness.
But alas . . .
Impossible for something that fails to exist
Longer than it does not.

This Temporary Life

Your life, and mine, and all lives in fact are, by their nature, anomalous. When you think about the sheer amount of circumstances needed to fall into place for you to exist . . . well let's just say that's it's a lot more likely that a particular human being won't exist than will.
Not a single one of your ancestors failed to breed.  Each one of them survived infancy and childhood.  Every one one of them lived to adulthood.  Don't get me started on the math required to demonstrate that you exist solely because each one of your ancestors mated with your specific other ancestor (out of a smorgasbord of other potential mates) at that exact moment back to the beginning of time.

You are the product of countless generations.  You are at the sword's point of evolution.  You are an anomaly.  We all are.

So when you consider the actual living miracle it is that you're here, don't forget that every other one of your planet-mates is in the same boat.  From your family members, to your neighbors sure, but also to those starving children in some far away land that you've seen pictures of but would rather click past than be troubled by.  It's not just you.  None of us likes to be sad, and thoughts like that make us sad.

We occupy our little place on Earth for a time so quick, it's practically over the moment we realize it is.  When you're a kid, a hundred years is a thousand lifetimes away, when you get a bit older you realize it's just one.  At a certain point, your vitality is behind you.  Your youth and energy are trapped in photographs yellowing in an album somewhere.

If you're of the fortunate ones, you get to see your skin sag and hair whiten, you're blessed with memories that may need a jump-start every once in a while but are long and rich.  My Dad has always said "Age is a gift denied to so many".  Ain't that the truth.  As much as we shake our heads and feel sympathy for our elderly brethren, they are the fortunate ones.

This life is temporary no matter how long we shuffle this mortal coil.  Just being here is a miracle left unfulfilled by literally trillions of other potential people - who knows how many geniuses we're never to hear of.  Every decision you make in your life should honor that evolutionary miracle that puts you behind a computer reading this.  Every choice you make for your own life should also take into consideration the fact that every other being on this Earth is as much of a miracle as you and should be treated as such.

Your whole life is spent in transit - from the moment you slip into the world to the moment you slip out.  It's easy in this make-believe world of ours to put so much importance on details that we forget the big picture.  We spend so much time living our lives that we forget to be alive.

In this temporary life of yours remember to live.  Stopping to smell the roses was a cliche to me until I moved into a house with rose bushes.

Rain

Rain falls from the heavens
Misting sheets like curtains
Wash the roads
The cars
The people's crowns.
It clouds his life
Depresses him
Uncleansing drizzle
Tripples, freezes his hands
A cigarette comforts him
Smoke wafting past his face
People hurry past hunched
Stooped in an effort to avoid
The downward plummet
Liquid clouds falling to Earth.
Buildings rush skyward
To meet the droplets.
Millions, like an invading force
Invading his world, his thoughts.
Consumed with Rain.

Stand Alone On A Stage

Stand alone on a stage and be.  Be that person deep inside that yearns to break free, to exist, to breathe.  That person that yearns to surface.  To lurch from the yoke of the water's grasp and gulp down lungfuls of acrid air - heavy in the incense of a ritual to be observed yet not obeyed.

Stand in the light and be seen.  Seen for the most vulnerable face of you, made raw in the spot's light.  The honey glow of truth and redemption and fear.  Numbing fear of failure to be ignored and trampled on, trounced, made ready for the purchase of a new grasp.  A new grip.  A handhold on the granite face of that thing you call life.

Stand with nothing.  Nothing but your honesty.  Your honesty that in that moment alone you are true and real and strong and nimble.  Feel that mutinous heart beat from deep within that cavernous chest and answer back with a quiet calm and resolve born of redirected fear.

Stand and see.  Not the audience or the curtains or the stage, but your own hands and feet.  See what you inhabit and own.  What you control.  What husk you are and will leave.  But for now, here you are.  In this moment.  On this stage.  See with the eyes of ten thousand men and women what space you occupy and in whose body you live.  See the mirror in your own mind and adore that shell of yours for the vessel it is to guide you through this pain and love and peace.

Stand in that pool and feel.  Feel that charge, that electricity, that inspiration, that perversion of a talent that you have at your disposal and stand in awe of what you will spend a lifetime seeking and chasing and yearning and loving and being in deep addiction to.  That resonance that feels so good and seems so hardly out of reach.  Be lifted to your toes by your own inspiration.  It bubbles to the surface.  You part your lips.  You open your mouth.  And you . . .

Stand alone on a stage.