the only constant
that deserves consistency
is the desire to live
a good life

because sometimes hypocrisies
and inconsistencies
are not a lack of character
but the courage
to constantly seek
a better way

do not mistake the man
of fixed convictions
for one
who completely knows
his mind

when the fixed and unchanging
may master the simplicities
of their cognitive dissonance
constructed on foundations
of convenient lies

but the man with courage
to question himself
and let what emerges
from the mind
do battle with itself

and yet still can welcome
with the flexibility
to accommodate and host
the ever changing new
will always find himself
a little closer
to the truth

pummelled by the light of stars
when all that I know how to be
is a shadow in the dark
a secret and hiding heart
with wolve's teeth to keep it warm
shielding with the viscosity
of its own blood
like there could be any outcome
other than the exposure that comes
when you pray to be really seen
but never have a say
on the parts where the illumination
is going to shine
and what is often seen the first
are the places you have hidden
so deep and dark
your eyes cannot withstand
the light that comes to touch
what has become comfortably blind
in the absence of the stars

if I come off as untrue
maybe that's just what comes
as the residual side effect
in inauthentic's form
when authentic means
the inconsistency
of feeling whatever it is
I feel
when I don't understand
or even know
what the hell it is
I feel

Standing Eight Counts

a fighter taught me once
we don't ask for mercy here
you stand your eight counts
when you gotta
but you don't drop down
upon your knees
so that I am learning even to pray
standing on my feet
to be ready to dance toward
an answer when it comes

and the ones
who will never pull a punch
are a blessing when you meet
cause it's the ones who get you
up against the ropes
who teach you to be quicker
on those feet

when there's no telling
what life is going to bring
so all you can do
is train to always win
where the battles are only lost
against the self
and never what you're up against

and in the scheme of things
there's only one way out
of this here ring
and so you have to learn
to take the blows hard upon the chin
and transmute the wounds to scars
or spend the hours on the mats
dying of the self-infliction
of the cowards and the weak
who don't know what it is
to face and then survive
and inherit from experience
the alchemy it takes to rise

no I won't ask for mercy
just gotta catch my breath
and while I'm standing eight counts
I'm sending up the warriors' prayer
that I will honour all the blows
that I have ever taken
and the places they came from
with the wisdom and the lesson
in what they had to teach
until I'm no longer a fighter
fighting against myself
but a dancer to my heartbeat
and the choreography of what it takes
to find the resilience and the grace
in every single test

modern society
and its days with names
putting the consumerism
in the connection
and taking money
for the meaning
removing rituals
from their proper time
leaving us with disjointed
rites of loneliness
and mass market marginalization
when we don't quite fit
the status quo

billboard assaults
and TV indoctrination
misappropriation that imprints
its varying shades
of Stockholm Syndrome
tattooed on our souls
so that we plug a little further in
to the empire of New Rome
and celebrate the selling
of our own hard labour
to appease the Hallmark gods
with the thorough replication
of their plastic alters
of storefront windows
in our homes

and if that can't be done
just right
you can always buy
a magic make-it-better potion
and a special little pill
or gorge yourself
on genetically altered
poisoned processed feasts
designed to make you
Type 2 numb

but you'll be fine
if you remember the cure
is to buy buy buy
until you fit right in
or can hide the fact
you can't quite squeeze
into the one size fits all dictation
of where they've exploited
what is closest to our hearts
then found a way to market
our emotions back to us

and if the emotions
don't fit just right
for the day that they proclaim
they'll catch you
with the purported
alleviation of alienation
guaranteed as advertised
because everybody pays
for their celebration

or their pain
when it comes 

to the days with names

it isn't when we lose our minds
that we go crazy

it's when we wake up
and realize how long it's been gone
and how much of it is missing
and where it went
and get to wondering how in the hell
we're going to get it back

that's when the madness sets in

they say people don't know
when they're crazy

I know

in this perpetual motion
of insanity
where the clearer
the madness gets
the more of it I have
and the more of it I have
the clearer everything gets

maybe madness isn't about
losing your mind
but learning to use it better
because madness
is a thinking man's disease

and insanity
is just what naturally happens
when you can clearly see
the craziness of the world
and have to accept
the logical responsibility
in the knowing
that you're a part of that

maybe sometimes
dreams and aspirations
belong only to the ghost parts of us
when the toxicity of being human
can't find its way back
close enough to pure
for the manifestation of vision
and the human that reaches for the dream
can do nothing
but haunt the ghosts

in a world where people have sex
while they figure out if they want to date
where people share intimate details
while they decide if they want to talk
and then call that "friends"
when everything is moving
contrary to the natural order of things
it isn't fatalistic
but realistic
to think that while everyone is waiting
for the next step
there isn't too many places to go
but to regress
in the slow downward spiral
of the disease of digression
in the breaking apart of the fibres
of human connection

what is not living
is dying

the difference
being found
not in the distinction
between pain and joy
but in the details that emerge
deeper into our consciousness
and the choices we make
between embracing
or fading to numb

so that what is not
permitted to grow
has been encouraged
to die

why do they call the free market
free
when nothing in it is free

except that it's a free for all
for the powers that be
who are free
to market anything they want
with a price just above
what the majority can't afford

selling us out
until we buy into the notion
that to be a part of the free world
you have to declare your life
as allegiance
to the prepackaged dream
of their advertised free

so that nothing in this life is free
especially free

I'm toxic as hell
just ask anyone
who tried to love me
but couldn't

and then others say
I'm a light
and bring me their needs
to be prayed for
and loved

and I can't tell
what the heck makes
the difference

is it what I have
or don't have to give
or maybe what they're
willing to offer
or what they
can't stand to lose

sometimes I think
the difference is in
the ones who really see me
and the ones who don't
with the seers knowing enough
to be afraid
and the ones who don't
being comfortably blind
when all that's on the line
is a temporary moment of need

or maybe it's all in what people
want me to be
and how well I deliver up
the version of me
that they seek

either way
the ones who don't want me
still want to feel close
when they need to feel close
to just the right amount
of anonymity that won't ask
for anything back

and the ones who want me
don't want me too close
because close can only be close
when it ain't

there is still so much
I need to know
gasping for clarity
between the tsunami of dreams
and the earthquakes
of encrypted whispers
and echoes

I have always known the things
I can't quite remember
when I've been remembering you
in my dreams
since memory was given to me
in this consciousness here

and I am remembering still
even with you moved on
into the next place
where I will find you
to meet again
carrying more questions with me
than I had before I had
these fragmented answers

and the only things I know
for certain
are that old soldiers
remember more
than they can bear
and less than they have done
and this here is illusion
with the reality being love
that transcends questions
and answers and memories
partial and full
and remembers the only answer
it needs to know
is love

they brought the devil
on a ship named Shame
first to my ancestors
and then to yours
unpacking their portable Hells
on the banks of our shores
like bio weapons
to infect our DNA
lodged as spores
inside our minds

do not believe them
when they say
shame is the inoculation
that keeps the Devil at bay
when the power of our shame
is what gives their Satan its form
and the only hell we have to fear
is the cage we construct
with the inauthentic
and the struggle to hide
that we fall short
not of what we truly want
but what we think we have to be

Hell exists first
inside the dimension
behind the eyes
and then is recreated externally
by the nightmares we pass off
to ourselves and to others
under the disguise of dreams
when they are only
fights and flights from terrors
and not pursuits of glories
we seek to manifest
and inflict upon this Earth

Heaven is a place
where we make peace
with our truths
and shame becomes
as much illusion
as the imaginary devils
we let take space and haunt
the sacred temples
of the holiness of our being

so if possession
by the devil is evil
why let the concept of sin
poses you at all
when you are free
to possess yourself
under the sovereignty
of your truth