Meridian

I'm standing, trembling on a meridian line
gauging either hemisphere for its value unto me.
I've followed it as far along its longitude as I dare, revealing naught but further questions.
And I know that matched emerald sheen of grass equally green in all directions will be split upon my first step.
So which is it? Left or right?
Two options clear as day from night, but who could choose between any of these?
It's a sick joke my psyche plays in its ploys to convey me to a conclusion but have me feeling regret long before I choose.
Left or right?
I stiffen in terror at every swift breeze, every loose leaf - the thought that the choice could be made for me by chance motion, by the shifting of the earth - it threatens to strip away the last vestige of my humanity; all of the me that's left in this body.
The light in my eyes has long since gone dim, intelligent thought the furthest thing from my mind, staring blankly at this meridian line and realizing that it's been etched straight into my brain, a long crease straight down the middle - The left saying right, the right saying left - my best laid plans split between east and west.

I've crossed so many lines in my time that I don't even know what side I'm on anymore, or if there were sides to begin with.
I scan my memory banks and filter through what few grains my synaptic shores haven't had washed away.
The left I took at 13 when I said "I think I'm gonna live with Dad."
The right I took at 17 when I thought "Put down the knife...it's going to get better."
The left I took at 20 when I said "University isn't helping me...I need to find my own path"
The right I took at 24 when I saw a single poem on youtube and said "I need to do this...now."

I sit down in the dust of indecision and exhale slowly.
I can do this.
I've seen these lines before.
They always look the same.
I rise to my feet with a deliberate balance and wipe the dirt from my legs.
Always the same left or right...
The sun and moon forever rise on this exact meridian line
A decision unreached is a life stopped from living.
deep breath in
deep breath out
I try to inspect the hemispheres, try to get some idea of
NO
A decision unreached is a life stopped from living.
I steady my nerves, shut my eyes
I cringe at the wind and think to hesitate
NO
A decision unreached is a life stopped from living.
Stop thinking, stop worrying, just move. In these moments, all we can do is act, and act now.
I steady my nerves, shut my eyes, pick a direction and prepare to jump
in 3
2
1...

The Poetry of the Moment

There is a stillness and silence to the world - the calm before the storm. Fire-coloured eyes lock and advocate a mutual understanding that we would polarize our lips and have them become magnets. Fingers initiate pilgrimage, a cartographic obsession driving nothing short of complete exploration. Layers of wrappings shift to reveal further ground to cover and, with the delicate care of a librarian handling a first edition, are removed entirely.

Goosebumps are a poor description - our skin blisters without pain, hair stands electric, screaming for freedom and escape from the flesh.

Sparse clouds in the night sky serve as a wordless marquee for a VIP performance intended only for the crickets, and the moon lay static - illuminated glass on deepest black satin waiting to be cracked. Ice begging to be broken so as to include all creation in our discourse.

Such is the music of synapse - that the occupation of one mouth can trigger the other to create a lone harmony with the power of both voices.

Such is the music of synapse - to be deafened by the crush of twitching thighs, to accept in the moment that hearing will never be as important as this - and to invite a further pressure.

Such is the poetry of the moment - to have lost all definition of "I" and "You" and to accept eternal that "we" "this" "us" is all that has ever existed.

It is in these moments that we are all artists - fingernails become paintbrushes on sweat-soaked canvas - voices sing freeform to a steadily intensifying rythm and percussion - and yes, we are acting - but we are acting like ourselves at last.

In song, we meet in reverent harmonies; our voices flow and crash, intertwining and growing in tandem like accelerated vines springing forth from our very throats with a power and pace that would convince us we had altered the axis of the planet.

The world is lost to consequence - the salt sting of sweat in our eyes as distant as the voice of a sparrow calling to God through a hurricane. The burn in our muscles a cool comfort compared to the inferno we encompass as one.

Such is the music of synapse - that one face buried in the crook where neck meets shoulder is, despite the tumult and torrent of urgent motion, somehow able to make eye contact.

Such is the music of synapse - to rise and build in a simultaneous vocal performance and deliver a sudden crescendo strong enough to drown out the entirety of the world's symphonies.

Such is the poetry of the moment - To succumb to the finality of exhaustion and collapse, breathless, synchronized, depleted - and to accept the whisper of the wind as nature's applause.

Re-Think

I don't come from the net.
I haven't traveled through systems, peoples, and cities.
I live in this place.
Mainframe. My home.
My format? Binome.
The overlooked backbone, little 1s and 0s.

I know you're all out there.
Out past the system, out past the user, past the net, past the web...outside somewhere completely different, and you're watching our town.

I know the cameras would have you believe the hyper-sensation that is life on Baudway.
And yeah...it's pretty nice. The circuits are clean, and the people friendly. Great place to live. Must be nice for the sprites who can afford it.

But take a trip down through the stacks of the city. Each one a level of life, and each declining in quality. The best keeps to the top so as not to ruin Phong's view from the Principal Office. But scurry down the steps and you'll find me, in my null's nest apartment just a hop, skip, and a jump drive away from Al's slow food.

Funny to think this place has only two restaurants...one at the top, one at the bottom. The closer you live to one or the other determines the likelihood that it's "more in your price range."

So yeah...it's not exactly heaven down here. We live in a constant state of fear, with viral armies going most unchallenged in my neighbourhood. So we scurry, left and right, and just try to keep away from Megabyte. But then...most of us end up working for him.

And then come the games, and I know what you see. You see Bob, big time hero, tear-fixin' virus fightin' Bob. And you see him kicking user ass again and again. He saves the day again and again. But the binomes who die? You think they're just fine? Sorry friend, but their asses get straight nullified. I hear that hellish warning come day after day - The incessant buzzing of "Incoming Game" And all I can think is "I wonder which neighbour I'm going to lose?" I can barely muster the will to reboot.

What I have to say is simple. What I have to say is "What you are experiencing is a temporary distortion of reality." Mike the TV isn't cute, alright? There's only so many times a binome can hear "ninety nine ninety nine ninety nine" Before he wanders out to Lost Angles and throws himself into the fucking sea.

Wouldn't be so entertaining, would it? To focus on the daily struggle of low-level binomes, hiding from virals, and waiting entire SECONDS for their meals.

Hell, when that web creature attacked? Why do you think it hit level 31 first? Because nobody ever bothered to LOOK down here.

One last thing...and I don't want you to pretend like this hasn't bothered you. If you've seen our lives, you've wondered if other versions of us live in other systems. You've realized that you, too, are called "the user". And you imagine that the enemies in your beloved games are your heroes; Bob, Dot, Enzo, AndrAIa. Don't worry, they're not. It's just the binomes. Those big time sprites are saved for endgame, and you never really manage to win, do you? Guardians are great at these games, but what am I supposed to do? I'm just a fucking spelling checker! Death comes only to low-level, wide-eyed, trembling little 1s and 0s.

So just remember, next time you play on your pc? The next bad guy you kill, well it just might be me.

To Begin

I'm a stranger in a strange land
of dangers and stage hands
mystics and madmen
and I'm dancing among them

Replete in semantics
of shallow pedantics
who pose as romantics
in wallet-fold leather
their shoelaces tethering
both feet together.
And next to them, brilliance
IQs in the millions
kings of the hill, hence
comes my frustration
a core fractured nation
delaying my patience
delaying my patience
delaying my patience until
snap

I feel like opportunity's passing me by
I feel like opportunity's passing me by
And if I'd just take a moment to look at the world I'm standing it, I'd see
The opportunity's there. Just open your eyes.

Too often do we look at ourselves and see verdant cravens of
carven viridian,
envious of craftsmen,
craving affection like
vermin in crow's feed.
Vitriol spit in tremble and facade, and all directed inwards.
We feel like failures, but we haven't taken the steps to succeed.
They say art is found in an artist's blood, but that art's gonna die if you're too afraid to bleed.
So take a step back, and realize that we're all born diseased.
Life is gonna kill you, whether you advance or retreat,
and I'll be damned if I go out lying face down in the street,
so neat and tidy, afraid to die, we
exercise our right to remain silent.
But there's too much violence in our silence.
We watch it grow from a lack of "no"
to a flat out "go ahead".
"Take my life away, today if possible,
because I don't want to argue."
I'll mutter misery, utter mute vexations
to bobble-headed peers, whose fears mirror
mine. Spineless yes-men, all of us
comparing sizes in cynicism, but all of us too afraid to say "no".
Too afraid to say anything, outside the huddle.
It's a small world, after all
and someone might overhear if you decide to disagree.



Performance of "To Begin" at CFSW 2011

My Name is Music

My name is music, and I'm a universal language.
I'm a bandage for wounds made of soothesounds commanded
and handed quite candidly out by romantics
and realists alike, as if both took a stand
to say "this is the one thing we share on this planet".

The places I'll take us in less than no paces
are spaces immersed in emotional phases
from craze and amazement to cracks in the pavement
your faces lack ways to display this arrangement
of raw, pure emotion, the tool of my tradesmen.

I'm a breaker of boundary, surrounded by sounds
to impound your hounding instincts
to impede a foundation, a real common ground
to step round all the sounds that you make with your mouths
in one language "gefunden", in another, just "found".

My name is music, and these are my wonders
and yet you debase them with thunderous bluster
of genre conundrum, the blunder of functionless
styles to list under. With ponderous pomp,
you shred the whole purpose of my voice asunder.

Carry the arrogance off in a barrow,
a carriage if need be, but end the foul marriage
you've made with disparaging comments
at cherished opinions of positive credit.
"That band sucks" is a point of no merit,

There are treasures unmeasured and yet-unknown pleasures
for unfettered minds unafraid to sprout feathers
and fly beyond genre and matters of whether
or not music X is the best music ever.

My name is music, and I am remarkable, if you really think about it.
So please, sit down, relax, and just enjoy me for what I am.
Not what you think I should be.

Lost in Words

Have you ever been lost in words?

Phrases flow in flux around me, painting exquisite portraits of nothing.

Dancing and teasing some semblance of meaning but ultimately saying nothing like so much poetic masturbation.

The inspiration flutters and flicks at my senses, but gives me no hint as to why. I know it to be there, and I know it locked within me. An amazing muse in an amusing maze.

This, then, in theory is a thesis of the malleability in meaning and the mercurial motion of words.

Allow me to paint in phrase, and step away from the point. Allow the point to truly be the poetry, and allow me to say nothing for the next couple minutes.

Find yourself on a cracked city street, alone with thought and the wind batting at your face, forcing your eyes half shut in a wave of new perspective. Breathe deep of the oxygen laced with whatever poisons the city holds. Pay it no mind. Allow your gaze to venture skyward , catching flickers of headlight reflections on the posted orders that surround us – slow, children playing, maximum speed 40, school crossing. Let it pass without register and reach with your vision for the stars that have always made you feel so small. Stand, static, stupefied in knowing that, even obscured by smog and light pollution, the few glimpses of twinkling worlds changes everything you sense yourself to be. Exhale with a new sense of inner peace and slip your hands into your pockets, lifting a weary foot from pavement to take you on your way. Cast gazes left and right, passing forgotten creations of humanity, structures of red brick and concrete, split and crumbling, ignored in almost every sense. Take a moment to reflect on the creation before you. Every building put up by a team of human beings, each with a life, a history, some semblance of family, and an infinite span of independent thought.

Now take this feeling. This realization, and multiply it for each building you pass. Catch the faces of the late night drivers, and add them to the equation. Everything you see has nearly infinite history. That napkin discarded in the street came from a factory built and maintained by humans with stories. Everything we experience, and all that our world is connects us all in the most miniscule ways as if to say we’re all in this together. In thoughts and actions, we’re all in this together. We are infinitely huge, in our connections. We are alive on a living planet, and we are enormous. But look up again, and catch that shimmer through the clouds. Vast, and forever, declaring us Lilliputian in scale. We are paradox, and we are without a point. And yet…I’ve never felt more comfortable than I have in knowing that.

Texapportive

There's a plague and decay in fullest form
raining white hot ashes on silver streets
over which we skid and slide, our blood pressure rising
neath blackened skies laced with cyanide
Our destination: Labour; and the fruits therein
a vicious craving, but a place wherein
we lose our conscious lust for life
The passions printed in paint, prose, poetry & performance
an orchestra of colour becomes a monochromatic kazoo
And we, we feeble dependants, allow this to happen
We, purveyors of creation would contain ourselves
And all for the cash to purchase the gas
to get us back to work again
These words come from an office where the only windows are on the computers
This is a grey scale nightmare
A place where imaginary friends go to die
It is the home of Sisyphus in the digital age
The tragic hero Cubicles, whose only charge is to aid
the less tech savvy in their day to day, though the unspoken truth
is a wave of abuse spit twixt split lips into the open ears of a human trying to help
Because we, we are not human beings.
We are a disembodied voice with the gall to ask you to help yourself a little bit
We are just a limb on an enormous corporate corpus,
and our primary dedication is the express ruination of all that is your life. Right?
We have watched our world go digital and silicon blue
right before our eyes, and the unbelievable ease
of living with machines has rendered us helpless.
The lack of a functioning television moves a person to tears,
and I wish above all else, that that was not an exaggeration
We are so convinced of our dependence that we would rather berate a stranger than read a book.
We have grown so accustomed to these devices that hand us everything that we cannot bear
the idea of learning anything. Not even how they work. Learning takes too long.
We refuse to acknowledge or appreciate the complexity of the system before us.
And because of this self-imposed ignorance, we grow to rabid fury when presented with a problem.
But if I must, I will seek inspiration in what this place means to do to me.
It would kill what I am. It would re-shape a form of love and words and tool it into an answering machine.
Write. Sing. Dance. Pretend. Play. Paint. Whatever it is. Whatever expression is in you, do it. And always do it.
Do not become an answering machine. Do not become a hammer.
Take what would make a tool of you, and make art of it.
Thank you for calling tech support. My name is Dan. How can we help you?
I've got a better idea.
Thank you for coming to this poetry slam. My name is Dan, and it's wonderful to be here.