These are my feet There are my toes And my knees And then come my thighs My waist and my hips And I’m unsure why But they slip and they slide Where they want to go I don’t even always know it I lose track of them At times for days and days From distraction to demand And this now This is my mouth Don’t get me started Oh my mouth Some days it’s here to say Simple stuff Some days it betrays And I find my foot there Sometimes I bite it before It embarrasses itself often Instead I accidentally miss And bite my cheek Enough to draw blood My tongue tries to run defense But it cannot keep guard Not at all hours Especially not when sometimes Some strange times of the year When the moon is full above Pushing and pulling persistently Tugging at my body weak My ears hear nearby moans My senses vibrate and tingle They tell the tongue You are not yours tonight Not these hours now when It is being called for It is being called on To perform some Other heroic acts Mostly though My tongue and mouth Much like two idiots Patting each other on the ass They just goes on n’ on About near nonsense Confident nonsense Some real thin words A bunch of bullshit frankly Such a ramblin’ tongue Tellin’ tales of nothingness As another unsolicited voice That thinks aloud Without a brain Thinking all the time that It demands to be heard Nothing worth its efforts at all Recycled and repeated words Facts these ears hear In supermarkets isles And on city sidewalks n’ streets Something about an article About why hydration matters Less about the war across the sea Less still about the one down the street These facts are likely not factual Probably so My mind never checks How dumb my brain It should know better Then to let such silliness in And I do know better But I’m also a lazy creature I have it so good some days I drift away thinking about All the complicated lives Displayed on the subway I have to fill myself up With the burdens of others As wrong thoughts slide n’ slip Make it in the nasal way As I gaze on blindly I must fill my brain somehow But never with my problems That’s far too much work Time can sort those for me So I give myself a break An extra break At times I must I need a rest from the rest of me Oh-me-oh-my-oh What dumb pleasure to close And turn my eyes away Seeing only the cosmic black Found there behind my eyes To vision that known kindness Fresh and empty spaces Of some sort of peace The kind that comes down As a hazed veil of sunshine Is it so strange to wanna see such But I was blessed with sight Sadly it is quite perfect they say I see clear with my eyes The world large and clear The way it works without me The way I work within it The way I navigate beside it The way I block much out The way I hide I can unsee myself clearly too I can undo mistakes of days I can be made so susceptible So easily swayed straight-faced Seriously said plain n’ easy So effectively plotted against Moved to my own undoing My own remolding Gaslighting of thy self Before stock is taken Actively in this present state The only state there is The one my body and mind Is forever bounded by I’m destined here forging on Forever unfolding in my mind Always manifesting myself …Oh; that was my humor there Who else is here to be kidding Rather laughable I nearly said destiny And I almost got away with it But my conscious couldn’t Wouldn’t let that one slide That near-blasphemous charge Against the great unknown Of vast nothing that keeps me Absolutely preposterously here In my agnostic knowing My conscious knows how utterly Unable I am to decide my own Anything at all without Mind numbing calculus It called me out accordingly Here clearly as dictated above Just right back there But so what if I tell myself Another lie to maintain control What’s another little lie What’s it matter to the unknown gods Who’s to say I don’t truly love The lies sometimes lived in There is some comfort here Maybe this reality is really Really-really all my preferences Weighed and processed Played out there and here I could almost be sure of it I am sure I searched my soul I pressed hard and said To myself I declared it true that I feel my best right now Just as at all given times before I do until the moments My id was outdone My ego came ‘round My superego too in tow Conscious calling again Just passing by to speak aloud Against this doubting way The self-obsessed occupations There I should not stay In some comfortable folie à un Partly fixed on the past Fully in my head or on the stars Barely present most days observably Not focused on the task at hand To make my days full and lived in This is not honorable amongst such beauty Of splendor and abundance about Surely never looking on the future Here my gut checks me It knows of truth too Intuitively so even It reports when I pushed too far When I’m bloated like a businessman Reckless and acting naughty Not keeping score Not taking care My gut knows what’s goin’ down It doesn’t have to see My skin dry and decaying My face swollen and sweaty Like an alcoholic’s toes My gut sees I should step back The gut’s brain says to do it slowly To stop and turn around To get a good look-over A real careful one taking it all in Stopping to look on as if new Get a view of the me now A palms perspective Held out but not held back Life examined from a forward distance Laid out in pure black and white The binary decisions in 1’s and 0’s All permeations and possibilities All the extravagant times to be had In life lived fully in other ways All the ordinary moments too Of an ordinary life Some shiny smaller special bits Unlike the old stale fragments Knickknacks from bygone times A mind palace many times moved Place to place offloaded each time there Set aside again on some new shelf With careful placement but needing Some frequent albeit minor upkeep More curation of those befores To lessen my load The road has been long And it’s longer still Now I need to recognize What unnecessary weight I carry I should take more off my shoulders Or make my baggage more useful Into totems of my already-lived-life Little reminders thrown about discarded Reminders to me to move on more To disengage them from my core So I can walk among them My memories laid lame As kept mementos allowing myself To get unfixed in moments Freed to tangle in the temporary Of reality that is fleeting fast So I stand and stare there at me My folds n’ crinkles n’ cracks All the new shapes and curves The fines lines streaking There across the face Stretching along down my ass I should twist and turn around Take a critical look-see One that distorts the scales even Tells me I’m fatter now More than I was yesterday surely Fatter as ever I have been As every unkind mirror has reflected Of which are all I have encounter Oh and I am older too Absolutely more boring As ever-more exciting youth Constantly being born but But that’s not all-seeing either That’s a single reflection Not along all the spectra See true seeing Comes from quite deep Further than a gut goes It’s a whole lot more beyond It’s an entire body electric A single body that feels Singular from similar sources Born too from an infinite network A mini universe contained within Magnitudes of tiny pieces Collapsed and tied together Many scales down Many molecules working it out A million quantum flares a minute Superimposed both here and out there All seen n’ taken in Flipped n’ filtered n’ processed Made sense of as my multitudes As I reflect a thousand ways My own senses alone cannot Understand this—this I must remember On hot blue days like these Remember and trust I must Trust what I do not know Trust what I cannot hear or see Be trusting enough to let go anyway And to be okay with the letting go I gotta remember to recall and feel My way in other ways not physical At least if I’m not already lost away I so easily get off track on matters Caught on these things that Don’t matter to anyone anyhow …Sometimes I’m here and …Sometimes I’m not I really hope I don’t need another scar Or new branding on this skin of mine To recall lessons constantly learned For them to finally sink in Or maybe now I need some outside help Like; at least two more hands And one more heart A mix of toes and feets and feelings Tangled together there without a knowing Of where one starts and the other ends I could forget when I being For nothing lasting survives earth alone An apple tree doesn’t eat the fruit it bears I too must bear for the benefit of the other I do hope I don’t need so much To constantly be checking and busy To keep looking only on my legs My same ole birthmark The one heart I always mind But for now this is what I’ve surveyed Here as what I have my own You see these are my fingers Connected to my minds eye They let these thoughts out And then when they’re through They will stretch to touch my toes To feel and know that I am still here Because these are my feet
2024, May 8th, Wednesday—Feeling Like Monday