outfielding the darkness.

◊ Sam | 18 | Southern U.S. ◊ My Prose My Poetry Featured Works All of My Writing

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VI. (The Sands of the Sea)

The sands of time are a figment of learned behaviors

We are linear mechanisms windup toys buried on the beach

We are charted territories known quantities

Yet perhaps it’s time we learned to denounce the hourglass authority to shatter the chains of our own making returning to the desert the empty expanse the sea of all time the waters of pure and unmolested identity those numberless grains that sporadically swirl in the stirring of collective consciousness

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V. (A Well // The Final Vanity)

When we are gone the stones will sing names of insult a requiem to break the bones of false belief

World-tamers Earth-eaters blind bipeds irreverent of antecedents

We may never gain credence in the annals of history for our blasphemy takes us where desires lead us through a hole in the wall escapist egress didactic power trip on which we learned to skip our daily bread to worship a god in our own image to make love to ourselves to detach us from violence to find us world peace

It’s a paradox a well of self-hatred because we love to hate and we hate to admit that we hate to love the things we hate because like in a well’s reflection a mirror for souls in our daily darkest hour we see ourselves fruitless vanitas anathema distorted at a distance swallowed up by an impossible light that same daylight upon our backs like a burden the light at the end of a tunnel a birth canal a broken promise of new life that holds only death a watery grave for those who jump at the chance for a closer look

We’re the last temptation of Christ the siren the mermaid the Venus flytrap and perhaps that is why vanity can be seen as a form of death and we have come to worship death as the final vanity

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IV. (Moving Parts)

My first car was ugly and still is because I’ve never had the patience for things with moving parts things with a set function things that leave no room for interpretation so I never bought a new one Proudhon would’ve been proud that when I merge onto the highway I see slavery that when I cruise for no reason for the hell of it to feel less alone I see a vast sea of prisoners master-less and peer-less straining at their work and growing fainter with each repetition striving for something better yet brought crashing back to Earth by their own ambitions obsessions indivisible boxes of shackles exchanged in a free market exchanged discreetly indiscriminate percents off at weekend garage sales We save money but lose ourselves drive fast cars yet are slow to learn I know how to change a tire still I will never change my ways

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III. (A Snake, a Lightning Rod, an Antenna)

I woke up one morning the same as every other heard the sirens keening cried for my mother knew that this storm would never pass that these small hands would never last sat stoic for my father his shadow aslant escaping the linearity of the downstairs hallway sat silent for the television whose deafening white noise translated blue skies into patterns of panic

I let it wash over me purify me cleanse me

They say fire is universal a symbol of rebirth

I had not yet been burned by my own existence nor been branded a witch or a zealot but this trial was not by fire but by water like barbed wire an abysmal baptism that taught me to own that fear as my own most treasured belonging

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II. (A Manic Hope)

In the spaces between we own everything and nothing We spread ourselves across the world the limited space we recognize like a misguided lover an indistinct stranger spreading his seed with a manic hope that a legacy will take shape embryonic a pond swollen oceanic that fertility will be enough to last until the red giant exposes herself proud to outlive us the dispossessed children of her crippled blue sister

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I. (The Spaces in Between)

Womb to womb ashes to ashes dust to dust dark to dark

This life is comprised of spaces in between of interstices of time both real and imaginary our claim to it illusory

What can be said of these architectures that will not be forever reflected in the upper dark replayed in the stars projected in moonbeams forever remembered by these causeless materials

Listen to the heartbeat of the sleeping the dreaming the heartbroken and weary and you will hear the answer in terms you can understand

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I recently read the essay What is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and decided to respond to it with a series of poems. In his essay, Proudhon attempted to define the human notion of property and questions humanity's right to claim resources that predate us as our own personal belongings.

Within my poems, I attempt to address the concept of ownership as it pertains to very different aspects of the human experience. I'll post them one at a time until all six parts are up. I hope you all find the topic as interesting as I do. 

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So much has happened in my life since I last posted on here that I'm almost feeling nostalgic just looking at my most recent posts. So bizarre.

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The Attic Light

This blue light spreads like water, drowning all of my earthly possessions.

My bed floats in the sea of night voices, and the tranquility soothes my aching soul.

These shadows grow long in their teeth; all is senile in the silence before the dawn breaks.

I won’t be able to see it. I will have passed on. Swaddled in the electric gauze of the attic light.   

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Absence

Her glassy eyes stare from beyond the death shroud.

Within them burns a stoic energy:

It’s hard to distinguish between peace and absenteeism.

Eternity lurches from the furnace and consumes: the final solution.

Who did she love? Is she in Paradise? Who can know for sure?

Permanence cannot be created, nor wrested from existence.

Therein a paradox lies: a closed system without a known end.

The moments of her life were but shadows of one shone upon by the stars which traverse every axis.

Even the most evil men are nothing more than perishable goods, and even memory succumbs to fire. 

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Beggars

Wash not the sins, rather let them steep— synecdoche beyond cleansing and reproach

We knock a steady homage upon the doors that line the street; the days spare no frowns, rather marching ever on

I have grown fond of you, surrounded by chain-link promises and crowned with golden webs

We’ve learned close to nothing and are yet no closer to the womb— so let us sing our quiet songs, our deathbeds pushed forever on

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The Stoic Fall

Highway spirals Desolate ruins Ruminating Icy noon-- the pallid sun warms the bones below What arises from the mud of spring: impulses come to light Bear upon the turnpike take that stoic fall and never cease to watch as the world grows close

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small mountains

Smooth pebbles are good for skipping, but my soles never felt that way, seeming only to grow more callous with friction.

Neither has my soul ever flown, nor even bounced, a sudden lightness, a foil to the tightness in my chest.

My hands, then, are the only synecdoche, one true part of me to have moved mountains— the stone is my being in motion.

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the final knot

We are flawless, moving through time like angels through plasma.

We are effortless phenomena, communicating all there is with trembling and erasure.

We trace the wrinkles imprinted on the silk of the universe, leaving none of our own.

We spin our looms at our own pace, but only until the threads run out— the end is the final “not” and nothing more.   

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vertexes

Cones of glass pierce the corneas, retinal fluid dripping to the fine point.

Light pouring in refracts the world in fragments of reality.

Contort what is seen into composite truth.

Immunity to distortion in the distortion.

And so the blind lead the blind with nothing but a mirror to direct them.

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Outsized

It’s so easy to want to die, but only until the glamour of it fades at the edges like the smallest white lie.

We play with our hearts like poker chips, betting that only the end can set suffering back a fortune.

Toy wrists are damaged the most, as projections of displacement suffuse from sharpie tips practicing peace-out quips.

Sure, bullets are cheap, but pulling the trigger is like putting a child to sleep;

The bed sheets will be messy in the morning as always.

Now we’re leaving quietly through windows at night, just like the smoke when we self-immolate.

Playing with fire is fun during breaks, but there’s a magic in the mundane that draws us back to chasing dreams;

We’re just little kids in big bodies playing hide-and-seek in dirty laundry heaps. 

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the garden window

Young flesh grows among the bright flowers outside— tenderness in rough disguise, we make love to only the thorns